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

348 FIELDIANA: ANTHROPOLOGY, VOLUME 56Another point of interest on which we have already touched brieflyis the possibility that the people of Tikchik were somewhat moresedentary than is usually the case with riverine peoples. We havesuggested that the settlement may have been one of year-round occupationrather than one that was abandoned at certain times of theyear when people moved inland to hunt, as was apparently the casewith most Nushagak River villages during the nineteenth century.If such was indeed the case, the reasons can be found in the far inlandlocation of Tikchik which made it convenient not only for theimportant summer salmon fishing, but also for caribou hunting andthe trapping of fur-bearers. This possibility is strengthened by thestatements of Ivan Ishnook who took care to point out that Tikchikwas a year-round settlement and that hunters and trappers wereseldom away from the community for more than two or three daysat a time. There was good caribou hunting as well as trapping in theimmediate vicinity of the village, particularly in the high country tothe north and east and farther up the Tikchik River. This combinedwith the extensive salmon runs in the Tikchik in July and Augustand the good winter fishing for whitefish and trout in Tikchik Lake,allowed the residents to practice all the subsistence activities thatwere characteristic of riverine Eskimos without making long tripsaway from the village. There are indications that a similar stabilityof the physical settlement may also have characterized the middleKuskokwim River but here we will only stress the fact that as far asthe Nushagak River region as a whole was concerned, it is likely thatfor those settlements in the upper river area, and possibly in theWood River Lakes region too, the settlement pattern was somewhatmore stable than on the lower and middle Nushagak.If Tikchik was indeed a year-round settlement, then it seemscertain that it never could have been very large, and that all tenhouses could not possibly have been inhabited at the same time.This also seems unlikely for other reasons that we will examineshortly, but it is clear that a community of at least 130 persons,which would be about its size if all the houses were occupied simultaneously,could not support itself by exploiting only that part ofthe environment within a two- or three-day trip from the settlement.It is much more probable that no more than three or four houses wereoccupied at a time throughout the total length of occupation andperhaps at times as few as two. This would permit the heads of perhapssix or seven nuclear families to utilize fully the adjacent environmentfor purposes of hunting and trapping. A much larger population