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

VANSTONE: TIKCHIK VILLAGE 229early in the nineteenth century and may never have been occupiedexclusively or even primarily by Kiatagmiut.Bailey's population listing of 31 for Tikchik seems low in light ofthe appearance of the site today. However, as will be noted later,there is no reason to believe that all the house pits presently visiblewere occupied at the same time. An informant at New Koliganekreported that her father, who had lived at Tikchik as a young man,often told her that many residents had died from illnesses before hewas born. Since periodic epidemics swept the Nushagak River regionafter the initial arrival of the Russians, it is likely that the residentsof Tikchik would have been affected just as were those of themore accessible villages along the Nushagak River and in Bristol Bay.The period around the turn of the century at Tikchik was vaguelyrecalled by Ivan Ishnook, an elderly male resident at New Koliganekin 1965, who is reportedly the last surviving person born at the settlement.He was born in 1889 and told me that he moved from thevillage with other members of his extended family when he was "justold enough to remember." When Ivan was a small boy the people ofTikchik would leave their village in early summer not long after theice had gone out of the rivers and lakes and travel down the Nuyakukand Nushagak rivers to the Alaska Commercial Company post atNushagak to trade their furs. They travelled in large skin boats thatwere covered with caribou skins or sometimes brown bear hides. Atthe post they would sell their furs and obtain tea, flour, sugar, tobacco,gun powder, crackers, and other items in exchange. A brisktrade with peoples of the bay area would also take place as a resultof which the Tikchik residents would acquire seal oil and othercoastal products. When it came time for the return trip, the bigboats would be traded or abandoned and skin-covered kayaks acquiredfor the return trip which was made by way of the Wood Riverand the lakes. By this route it was possible to avoid the arduousascent of the Nushagak and Nuyakuk rivers. By the lakes routethere was only the one long portage from Lake Kulik into NuyakukLake.Ivan Ishnook remembers little about the physical appearance ofTikchik at the time he lived there. Nor is he able to estimate thenumber of people who were in residence when he was a small boy.He does remember clearly, however, that his own family was the lastto leave. The population of the settlement had been virtually wipedout by the "great sickness," as the influenza and measles epidemicof 1899-1900 is termed locally. Apparently the last survivors were