A culture in transition: A history of acculturation and settlement near the mouth of the Yukon River, Alaska

Three Eskimo villages, located near the northern mouth of the Yukon River, represent a succession through time of cultural and environmental change. During the 1985 field season, I worked with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower Yukon Delta and participated in the survey of two of these villages to document historical places and cemetery sites under Section 14(h)(1) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Oral history accounts solicited from Native elders, combined with the results of pedestrian surveys, are used here to document the importance of these sites to area residents. One village, Pastuliarraq, reported to be one of the oldest and largest Eskimo villages in the lower Yukon Delta, was abandoned after the 1918 influenza epidemic. Most of its residents moved to Caniliaq. Caniliaq, in turn, was abandoned by 1962 because of severe flooding, its residents relocating to the third village, Kotlik. In this paper I attempt to piece together archaeology, ethnohistory, and oral history to rediscover the extent of these communities and their roles in regional events. Discrepancies between these data sets are highlighted.