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

VANSTONE: TIKCHIK VILLAGE 335mercial Company and by 1878 there was once again a priest atNushagak. At this time, too, the first chapels in the Nushagak regionwere constructed. The locations are not known, but it is likelythat there was one on the Nushagak River, perhaps at Kokwok(DRHA, vol. 1, p. 329).Nevertheless, the influence of the missionariesin the 1870's and 1880's was not great. Petroff (1884, pp. 135-136) noted that although all Eskimos were carried on the register ofthe Orthodox Chuch, it was rarely that the outlying settlements receivedeven an annual visit from the priest at Nushagak. This wascertainly true of Tikchik and it is doubtful if, during this period,villagers had any contact with the priest at all except when theycame to the post.In 1886 the Moravian Church established a mission and schoolat the mouth of the Nushagak River just a few miles from Nushagak.Although the new missionaries worked hard to extend their influencethroughout the area and eventually maintained two small chapels onthe middle Nushagak River, they were unable to make much headwayagainst the opposition of their Orthodox counterparts and theventure was abandoned in 1905. There is no indication at all thatthe Moravians made any converts among the Eskimos of Tikchik,although the people may have visited the new mission and school ontheir trips to the bay (Hamilton, 1892; Schwalbe, 1951, pp. 51-64).In evaluating his work during the 1880's the Orthodox priest atNushagak noted that most of the river Eskimos, living as they didfar from the church, retained many of their old beliefs and practices.He saw little hope of any improvement until these people could bevisited at least two times a year (DRHA, vol. 2, p. 144). Thesestatements seem to sum up very well the extent of Christian influenceat Tikchik, the most remote of the Nushagak area villages. Itmay well have been that many, perhaps even most, of the villagerswere nominal members of the Orthodox Church. As infants theymay have been baptized and perhaps some couples were marriedwhen they visited the mission. But there appears to have been noreal understanding of Christianity and no practice of Christian ritualin the settlement itself. At the time the village was abandoned, theresidents were virtually as pagan as they had ever been in spite ofmore than 60 years of at least peripheral exposure to Orthodox teachings.This fact alone suggests the nature of isolation in the interiorat the time when the bay area was rapidly becoming a cosmopolitanand highly acculturated center.