Tikchik village: a nineteenth century riverine community in ... - Cluster

334 FIELDIANA: ANTHROPOLOGY, VOLUME 56the canneries in Nushagak Bay could not get along without hiringsome Eskimos, particularly at the peak of the salmon runs.This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the effect of thesalmon canneries on settlement patterns and other aspects of NushagakRiver Eskimo life. It is sufficient to note that the presence ofthe exotic canneries and the possibility of employment and interactionwith the foreign fishermen and cannery workers drew peopleto the bay area from all over southwestern Alaska. The inhabitantsof the Nushagak River region, already accustomed to making summertrips to Nushagak to trade their furs, tended to prolong thesevisits once the canneries provided an added attraction. The residentsof Tikchik were doubtless no different from those of other villagesin this respect, although Ivan Ishnook insisted that membersof his family never worked for the canneries and had very little directassociation with the workers. Perhaps the people of Tikchik weretoo conservative and unfamiliar with outsiders to join actively thelarge number of cannery "hangers on." Nevertheless, the cannerieswith their exotic personnel and new and strange material culturemust have acted as effective agents of change into the orbit of whicheven the most retiring Tikchik resident must have been drawn. Itwould be very surprising indeed if the villagers did not return to theirsettlement each summer with a store of new ideas, impressions, andperhaps a few material items not obtainable at the post, but availablethrough trade with a friendly fisherman from San Francisco or ahomesick cannery worker from Hong Kong. It is known, for example,that the canneries frequently distributed food to the Eskimos,and the people of Tikchik may have first become acquainted withAmerican foods in this manner, foods that would not, toward theend of the century, have been stocked by the Alaska CommercialCompany post at Nushagak.Turning once again to a consideration of Christianity in the NushagakRiver region, we note that after the purchase of Alaska by theUnited States there was a decline in mission activity. The priest atNushagak was withdrawn in 1868 and the mission was left in the careof a lay reader. This move seems to have been prompted by a fearthat it would be impossible for the Nushagak and also the Yukonparishes to exist without the logistic support of the Russian-AmericanCompany. For a while the Nushagak area converts to the RussianOrthodox Church had little contact with their priests. It wouldseem, however, that the church authorities gradually reconciled themselvesto working out satisfactory relations with the Alaska Com-