WILLIAM E. SIMEONE

7 Inventing the Copper River Maps and the Colonization of Ahtna Lands

Ever since Euro-Americans arrived in Alaska, they have made maps. These maps reveal the accumulation of geographical knowledge and chart the history of exploration. Explorers, prospectors, geologists, anthropologists, developers, and biologists created maps for their own purposes, adding layers of knowledge. At the same time, maps have served as tools of colonization (Boelhower 1988; Hämäläinen 2008). They reveal how Indigenous lands were transformed into Euro-American territory through a process of “cartographic dispossession,” whereby Indigenous territorial claims were delimited and delegitimized (Hämäläinen 2008, 195).

The maps described and analyzed in this chapter were selected as representative of different periods in the post-contact history of Alaska. The earliest map in the series dates from 1834, while the most recent dates from 2015. The maps represent a section of east-central Alaska that is the homeland of the Ahtna, an Athabascan-speaking people whose traditional territory encompasses approximately 40,000 square miles in the area of the upper Copper and upper Susitna Rivers (figure 7.2).¹ Archaeological evidence indicates that prior to contact with Euro-Americans, the Ahtna had inhabited this area of Alaska for more than a millennium (see, for example, Workman 1977).

In the nineteenth century, the Ahtna comprised four regional groups, the Lower, Central, Upper, and Western Ahtna, each corresponding to a distinct geographical area and speaking one of four dialects of the Ahtna language (de Laguna and McClellan 1981, 642–643). Ahtna bands were composed of people who belonged to one of several matrilineal clans, but one clan often asserted its inherent right over a specific territory (J. Justin 1991). The Chitina River, for example, was considered Udzisyu country, while the upper Copper River belonged to the ’Ałts’e’tnaey clan. Over time, rights to a territory could shift from one clan to another. For instance, Tyone Lake was originally home to the Tsisyu clan but was later claimed by the Taltsiine clan, as Tsisyu men married Taltsiine women.

The significance of place is embedded in the Ahtna language. The word for a person or people is koht’aene, literally translated as “those who have a territory.” Regional band names are a combination of a place name with the word hwt’aene, indicating “people of a place” or “people who possess an area.” Lower and Central Ahtna are thus ’Atnahwt’aene, “people of the Copper River,” Upper Ahtna are Tatl’ahwt’aene, or “headwaters people,” and Western Ahtna are Hwtsaay hwt’aene, or “small timber people” (Simeone et al. 2019, 127).

Certain Ahtna leaders, called denae, were known as nen’k’e hwdenae’, or “on the land person,” and described by Ahtna elder Annie Ewan as “men who lived and died in a particular place,” signifying their close association with a specific place. Denae held titles composed of a place name and either the word ghaxen or denen. The denae of Mentasta was known, for example, as Mendaes Ghaxen, “person of shallow lakes.” The Ahtna recognized at least seventeen chiefs’ titles: eight located in Lower Ahtna territory, six in Central Ahtna territory, one in Western Ahtna territory, and two in Upper Ahtna territory. This suggests that the titles were associated with sources of copper, important salmon fishing sites, and major trails leading into and out of Ahtna territory (Kari 1986, 15).

Ahtna recognized territorial rights based on continual use and occupation. Territorial boundaries were enforced, but obligations based on kinship and clan affiliation meant that food resources had to be shared, especially in times of shortage. As a result, many people had some recognized right to resources in another band’s territory (Reckord 1983, 76–78). Uninvited interlopers, however, risked being killed on sight (de Laguna and McClellan 1981, 644; McClellan 1975, 227). American explorers observed several instances where non-local Indigenous people were reluctant to enter a “foreign” or “alien” territory (Abercrombie 1900, 598; Rice 1900, 786).

Ahtna regional territories can be thought of as multi-dimensional spaces consisting of people, animals, plants, earth, water, and air; a terrain lived in and lived with. Wilson Justin put it this way when he talked about his home territory to the east of the upper Copper River:

So when I say “Nabesna,” I’m not talking about where I was born, I’m talking about the idea that my family and my clan lived, hunted, died, and spent their time in the area called Nabesna. Not just where I was born, but the whole area.

When I say Nabesna, I’m not talking about a specific plot of ground, 20 or 30 acres that I was born in. I’m talking about the trails that led through to Nabesna, the trails that lead up and down the river, the hunting trails that go to the sheep [hunting] sites—the camps that we [. . .] have used for hunting areas for centuries.

So you don’t say “I’m from Nabesna” in a street sense. You say, “I’m from the area where my clan has obtained exclusive use and jurisdiction over many, many, many thousands of years.” (Quoted in Ainsworth 1999, 43)

Justin later provided a detailed description of the boundaries of Upper Ahtna territory in which he mentions that the area around the Nabesna and Chisana Rivers and the White River (see figure 11.2) is “well known to my family since that’s where we are from” (W. Justin 2014, 77).

The cartographic colonization of Ahtna territory took place in stages. Initially, explorers and cartographers relied on Ahtna knowledge to produce the first maps of Ahtna territory, and they frequently retained Alaska Native toponyms to fill in the “blank” spaces. Ahtna geographic knowledge was essential in developing both the local fur trade and the regional mining industry. As colonialism matured and administration became the priority, the Ahtna presence was reduced and eventually eliminated, their culture erased under an overlay of alien place names. Alaska was not only an alien landscape to Euro-Americans; it was land never before subject to the sovereignty of a state and therefore considered terra nullius, or “vacant land.” Because it was no person’s property and unencumbered by legal title, the land was deemed to be part of the public domain and was thus open for settlement and development.

Nation-states acquire power by creating physical boundaries through the process of mapping, measuring, and surveying, a classificatory exercise that enhances control over a profitable hinterland, such as interior Alaska (Cruikshank 2005; Innis 1950). These efforts are rationalized both as a production of knowledge and as serving the interests of state administration, but they undermine local traditions, so, for example, Indigenous land claims are diminished as people’s presence is erased (figure 7.3).

In the colonizing process, maps serve as ideological tools in making claims about a particular territory. Maps precede settlers and developers and then assume a normative role in pre-establishing a spatial order for hegemonic claims. Place names are one tool used both in establishing and securing those claims. Through place names, the landscape is symbolically transformed as new toponyms reflect a foreign, imposed history and culture. Toponyms can be read as the inscribed body of the nation, as glosses on a somewhat magical unit called the “the United States of America” (Boelhower 1988).

Maps are powerful tools because we assume they reflect reality, but they are only an explanation or interpretation of reality, and their production is influenced by the political and cultural views of their makers (Harley 1989; Medzini 2012, 24). Euro-Americans assume that maps mirror reality, in part because they are produced through scientific means and use conventions such as the cardinal points of north, south, east, and west, which are assumed to exist in nature. But not all cultures make textual maps nor use the same geographical conventions. For example, the Ahtna have no tradition of making or using textual maps. Instead, they have developed and used a shared, memorized, verbally transmitted geographic system based on a set of principles different from those used by Western cartographers (Kari 2008). For one thing, the Ahtna did not use the four cardinal directions, or left and right, for spatial orientation or in geographic terminology (Berez 2011; Kari 2008). All directions refer to the major river drainage. For Ahtna living in the Copper River basin, this is the Copper River, while for the Western Ahtna it is the Susitna River. In addition, Ahtna geographic terms often contain information not included in standard United States Geological Survey (USGS) feature types. For example, the Ahtna have words describing not only the flow into a lake (‘ediłeni), but the flow from a lake (‘edadiniłeni) and the flow from a hillside (ts’idiniłeni).

Over the past thirty years, linguist James Kari has documented over 2,500 Ahtna place names through interviews with Ahtna elders and archival research (Kari 2008). Figure 7.4 shows the density of Ahtna place names just associated with salmon fishing on the Copper River and its tributaries. The author created this map using archival sources and data from Kari’s (2008) Ahtna Place Name Lists. Today, there are 2,206 officially recognized toponyms for the Copper River region, but only about 237, or 10 percent, derive from an Ahtna place name (Kari 2008). Approximately 125 of those names were mapped or written down prior to 1910, primarily by Henry Tureman Allen, of the US military, and geologists of the USGS, while another one hundred names were added later (Kari 2008). The dearth of Ahtna place names in the official record is a reflection, in part, of the colonial process in which the use of Alaska Native languages has been systematically undermined by the state. The Ahtna place names that do exist only dimly reflect peoples’ presence in the Copper River basin or the fact that the basin is the Ahtna homeland.

Probably the earliest map of the upper Copper and Susitna Rivers was produced under the direction of Ferdinand von Wrangell (or, in German, Wrangel), chief manager of the Russian-American Company from 1830 to 1835. A German in Russian service, Wrangell was also a founder of the Russian Geographic Society and a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (Pierce 1990). Published in 1839, the Wrangell map (figure 7.5) illustrates the stage during which colonial cartographers relied exclusively on Indigenous knowledge, while also suggesting the limits of Russian hegemony in interior Alaska. The single feature alluding to a Russian presence is “Kupfer [Copper] Fort,” located to the north of the mouth of the Chitina River. This was Mednovskaia Odinochka, a small trading post operated by one or two men that had been established by the Russian-American Company in 1821 (Znamenski 2003).

The map appeared in Wrangell’s Statistische und ethnographische Nachrichten über die Russischen Besitzungen an der Nordwestküste von Amerika (Statistical and ethnographic reports regarding Russian possessions on the northwest coast of America) (Wrangell 1939). Exceptionally detailed, the map reflects some of the earliest first-hand information about the region predating the earliest English, French, and American surveys. Figure 7.5 shows only the eastern section of a map that also includes Cook Inlet and the Kuskokwim River.

Wrangell compiled information from hand-sketched maps, a diary made by the Russian explorer Afanasii Klimovskii (who explored the Copper River in 1819 and named Mount Wrangell), and information received from Dena’ina and Ahtna informants (Wrangell [1839] 1980). According to Wrangell, the “Galtsan,” or Tanana River people, travelled ten days to Lake Knitiben (Butte Lake) to hunt “reindeer” (caribou), and the Dena’ina travelled to this lake to trade with the Tanana. He goes on to say that Upper Ahtna from the village of Nataełde (“roasted salmon place”) and Ahtna from Tazlina Lake (identified as “Mantilbana” on the map) travelled to Lake Chluben to trade with the Dena’ina and hunt caribou (Wrangell [1839] 1980).

Because the Russians were so dependent on Native knowledge, they were also susceptible to mis-information provided by Native traders protecting their own interests. In his analysis of toponyms on the Wrangell map, Kari (1986) concluded that Dena’ina Athabaskans from Cook Inlet provided much of the information on the map. For example, the Upper Ahtna village of Batzulnetas, written as “Nutatlgat,” is based on the Dena’ina pronunciation Nutł Kaq, and not the Ahtna, which is Nataełde (table 7.1). Kari also concluded that the Dena’ina may have deliberately provided misinformation to the Russians because the trail leading from Copper River to Athabascan (“Kohlschanen”) villages that passes near Mount Wrangell (“Vulkan” on the map) is almost a mirror image of the actual trail around the base of Mounts Sanford and Drum (Kari 1986, 105; also see Kari and Fall 2003, 87). Ahtna elder Andy Brown said the trail went around the base of the two mountains, crossed over the upper Nadina and Dadina Rivers, the Chestaslina River, and ran into the upper Kotsina drainage before heading across the Chitina River to the village of Taral (Kari 1986). According to Wilson Justin (2014, 76), this trail belonged to the Ałts’e’tnaey and Naltsiine clans. The trail was later co-opted by the Americans and renamed the Millard Trail (see figure 7.12, Abercrombie’s map of the Copper River Basin).

In 1867, Russia ceded Alaska to the United States through the signing of the Treaty of Cession, whereby the territory of Alaska became the property of the United States. Russia’s legal claim to Alaska ultimately rested on the Doctrine of Discovery, a long-standing legal framework adopted by the colonial, Christian nations of Europe, according to which the nation that first “discovered” a land in the so-called New World “acquired title to the land and dominion over the original inhabitants exclusive of any other discovering nation” (Case 1984, 48). In 1823, the Doctrine of Discovery was formally recognized in a US Supreme Court decision, in which Chief Justice John Marshall argued that, upon discovery, European nations had assumed “ultimate dominion” over the lands of America, including the sole rights of alienation, and that the original inhabitants of these lands had lost “their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations,” retaining only a right of “occupancy.” ² In essence, this meant that the Indigenous peoples of Alaska had no rights to their homelands except those granted by the United States government.

When the United States acquired Alaska, the Treaty of Cession conveyed to the United States dominion over the territory, and title to all public lands and vacant lands that were not individual property. The treaty provided that “uncivilized tribes,” which included the Ahtna, would be subject to such laws and regulations as the United States might later adopt with respect to Indigenous land rights. In other words, the question of whether the Ahtna had Aboriginal title was left in limbo. In 1884 Congress passed the Organic Act, one of several statutes purporting to protect any land actually used or occupied by Alaska Natives (Case and Voluck 2012, 24). The unspoken implication was that Indigenous people in Alaska, unlike those in the contiguous United States, could not claim Aboriginal title to vast tracts of tribal property (Case and Voluck 2012, 24).

The US government was the first jurisdiction to acknowledge Aboriginal title, which is based on actual use and occupancy by Indigenous people. Under American law, Congress has the authority to convert Aboriginal title into a full fee title, in whole or in part, or to extinguish Aboriginal title either with or without monetary or other consideration. US government policy is to grant tribes title to the portion of the lands that they occupy and to extinguish Aboriginal title to the remainder of the lands by placing such lands in the public domain (Case and Voluck 2012). As a result, when Russia sold Alaska to the United States, Ahtna territory, along with most of Alaska, became public domain and open for settlement and development.

After the United State purchased Alaska, a number of maps were published showing the new acquisition. Colton’s map (figure 7.6), published in 1868, is one example. An unusual feature of this map is the isothermal lines. The map shows that American cartographers had some knowledge of the Alaskan coast but knew very little about interior Alaska or the Copper River. None of the Indigenous toponyms that appear on Wrangell’s map appear on Colton’s map. What is left is the name “Atna or Copper River,” “Mt. Wrangel,” and “Mantilbana L.,” along with the now long-abandoned “Mednovskaia Odinochka” (written as “Odinotenka” on the map), but little else. Interior Alaska and the Copper River basin appear as vacant land, truly terra nullius.

While Colton’s map shows an apparently vacant land, William Healy Dall’s map (figure 7.7) shows Ahtna territory encompassing a large swath of land—all of the Copper River drainage as far west as the upper Susitna River basin (an area roughly similar to that shown in figure 7.2). Colonial powers acquired new territory in order to obtain land and resources. To make use of these new assets they first had to be systematically located, inventoried, and mapped. Often these new lands were already inhabited, so the current residents had to be inventoried as well. Dall was part of the American effort to inventory the mineral, animal, and human resources of Alaska. In 1871, he was appointed to the United States Coastal Survey, and later joined the USGS as a paleontologist. Dall’s map resembles later maps produced by geologists, with swirls of colour indicating the location of different Indigenous peoples and the languages they spoke. The spelling “Ah-tena” was introduced by Dall, who erred in thinking this was “their own name for themselves” (Dall 1877, 34). In his short description, Dall (1877, 34) writes that the Ahtna are “known principally by report . . . and occupy the basin of the Atna or Copper River.”

In 1881, as the Indian Wars in the continental United States were drawing to a close, the veteran Indian fighter Major General Nelson A. Miles was put in charge of the US Army’s Department of the Columbia, which was responsible for operations in the Pacific Northwest, including Alaska. Fascinated with reports from Alaska, Miles sent Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka on an expedition to explore the Yukon River in the summer of 1883. Schwatka’s success led Miles to determine a more ambitious goal of ascending the Copper River and crossing the Alaska Range into the Yukon River drainage. A new cartographic period for the Copper River was about to begin.

Miles first sent Lieutenant William Abercrombie to explore the Copper River, but Abercrombie turned back after advancing only fifty miles. So in the spring of 1885, Lieutenant Henry Allen and two hand-picked men began an expedition in which they travelled 1,500 miles, ascending the Copper River, crossing the Alaska Range, floating down the Tanana River to the Yukon, then crossing overland from the Yukon to Koyukuk River, floating down that river to the Yukon, and then out to St. Michael on the Bering Sea coast. The goal was to explore “uncharted” territory and report on the disposition of the Native people, including whether they posed a threat to future development of the territory. Allen’s expedition is significant because he provided the first detailed information about the geography of the Copper River and much of interior Alaska. Allen also set the cartography of the Copper River; indeed, all his place names remain in use today. For example, after Allen, the Copper River was never again labelled on maps the “Ahtna or Copper River” but always the “Copper River.”

Allen produced several maps, including a map of the Copper River basin published in 1887 (figure 7.8). The map represents an intermediate stage in the evolution of the cartographic tradition, as Allen begins the process of filling out the blank spaces on the map using both Indigenous and colonial toponyms. American hegemony is stamped on the region by the naming of all of the major peaks of the Wrangell Mountains after American personalities, but Allen also acknowledges the Ahtna presence by using Indigenous toponyms for all of the major tributaries.

Born in Kentucky, Allen attended West Point and was educated in various languages; he could read both French and German and was learning Russian so he could read the Russian literature on the Copper River (Twichell 1974). His interest in languages is reflected in the fact that he compiled a brief word list of the Ahtna language and recorded and retained Ahtna toponyms for most of the major tributaries of the Copper River.

Allen’s success on the Copper River was based, in great part, on the Ahtna’s willingness to guide him, and he was made well aware of territorial boundaries, observing that different leaders controlled various segments of the Copper River. Nicolai was the “autocrat” of the Chitina River and Taral, while two other chiefs, Conaquánta and Liebigstag, “held sway” over the river between Taral and the mouth of the Tazlina. Batzulnetas was the leader of the Tatlatans—or Ahtna who lived on the upper Copper River. According to Ahtna elder Andy Brown (Reckord 1983, 77), Chief Nicolai told Allen, “We have law in our village that you can’t stay here. You’ve got to get your own place to stay. We got law here and it’s the same all the way up the river.” Nicolai then said he would send a man so that nothing happened to Allen and the guide would tell other Ahtna, “They not Russians. Americans look like good people to us. Don’t bother them.” Then from the next chief other guides would be sent further up the river so that Nicolai’s men could return home.

Allen (1887, 67) also remarked, “how great is the geographical knowledge of these primitive people.” His guides provided information about trails, which enabled Allen to avoid costly detours, as well as names of all the principal tributaries of the Copper River, many of which Allen recorded. Over time these names have become altered so that Kentsii Na’ (“spruce bark canoe river”) became the Tonsina River, Tl’atina’ (“rear water”) became the Klutina River, Tezdlen Na’ (“swift current river”) became the Tazlina River, C’el C’ena’ (“tearing river”) became the Gulkana River, and Ggax Kuna’ (“rabbit river”) became the Gakona River. In the Ahtna language, na’ is the word for river (Kari 2008). In addition to collecting Ahtna toponyms, Allen recorded the names of Ahtna leaders he met along the way. Instead of using the appropriate Ahtna place name, Allen often substituted the name of a leader, and for a number of years these names appeared on subsequent maps of the Copper River. The Ahtna called “Liebestag’s village,” Bes Cene, or “base of river bank” (no. 26 on figure 7.4), while “Conaquánta’s village” is probably Nic’akuni’aaden, or “place that extends off from shore” (no. 35 on figure 7.4). Perhaps the most famous of these substitutions was Batzulnetas. This settlement is located at the confluence of Tanada Creek and the Copper River, and in the Ahtna language is called Nataełde, or “roasted salmon place” (no. 89 on figure 7.4). Allen called Nataełde Batzulnetas, using the name of the leader/shaman Bets’ulnii Ta’ (Father of Someone Respects Him), who was actually the headman for the village at the mouth of the Slana River (Kari 1986). The name Batzulnetas stuck and is often used by Native people today, and it appeared on many subsequent maps of the river.

Allen’s map represents a hybrid stage in the cartographic process by which explorers relied extensively on Native knowledge but also began to symbolically claim the land for the United States by naming the most dominant geographic features in the Copper River basin, the great phalanx of the Wrangell Mountains. The enormous shield volcano Mount Wrangell (14,163 feet) (figure 7.9) was already named after a Russian, but Allen named three other peaks after people prominent in his life: Mount Blackburn (16,390 feet), named after Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn, a US congressman from Allen’s home state of Kentucky; Mount Sanford (16,337 feet), after Allen’s great-grandfather Reuben Sanford; and Mount Drum (12,010 feet) (figure 7.10), named for Adjutant General Richard Coulter Drum.³ In the Ahtna language, mountain ranges, such as the Wrangell Mountains, are referred to as dghelaay, “mountains,” or “plural objects that are suspended.” Mount Wrangell is called K’ełt aeni, but also Uk’ełedi “the one with smoke on it.” Mount Drum is referred to as Hwdaandi K’ełt’aeni, or “downriver K’ełt’aeni,” while Mount Sanford is Hwniindi K’ełt’aeni, or “upriver K’ełt’aeni.” Mount Blackburn is K’a’si Tlaadi, “the one at cold headwaters” (Kari 2008).

In 1898, gold was discovered on the Klondike River in what is now the Yukon territory of Canada, resulting in a stampede that brought thousands of people north. The problem was access: How to reach the goldfields? Initially the stampeders followed a trail through Canada, but American objections to Canadian regulations created a desire for an all-American route. One route, pioneered by the Ahtna, led over the Valdez Glacier to Klutina Lake and then up the Copper River, through Mentasta Pass and on to the Tanana and Yukon Rivers.

Stampeders needed maps, and one result of the gold rush was the publication of maps that could be used to reach the goldfields. The Canadian geologist and cartographer Joseph B. Tyrrell produced one such map titled “Copper River Alaska Route Map” (figure 7.11). As a travel guide, the map includes information about river conditions, the location of forage for horses, and hearsay evidence regarding prospective deposits of gold, copper, and iron. In the lower right, Tyrell lists travel distances from Alaganik (at the mouth of the Copper River) to specific Ahtna villages, including Liebigstag and “Conagunto” (that is, Conaquánta). There is also a note about where to find “Game etc.,” as if to convey the impression that it would be easy to live off the land—when in fact, as Allen himself attests, he would probably have starved to death if it were not for the Ahtna (Allen 1887, 59–61).

In 1898, the disposition of Indigenous peoples was still an important consideration when one was travelling through unknown lands, so Tyrrell not only includes the location of Ahtna villages on his map but also adds a quotation from the explorer Charles W. Hayes (1892, 125), who explored the Copper River in 1891, reassuring the traveller that the Ahtna are a friendly people: “The Copper River Indians have an unenviable reputation for treachery and hostility to whites; but we saw nothing to justify it. They are greatly superior to the Yukon Natives physically, and have much more elaborate family and tribal organization.” This comment appears near the center of the map, to the west and slightly south of the plot for “Liebigstags” village.

Nothing on the map, however, informs the user that the Copper River basin is Ahtna territory, or that the traveller should seek permission before crossing or using resources on that land. This omission is equally evident in Abercrombie’s map (figure 7.12), which in its title claims to show “a proposed U.S. govt. mail road and shortest feasible all American Railroad route from Port Valdez via Copper Center.” The implication of Abercrombie’s map is that Americans have the right to build a road and railroad through Ahtna territory, including the usurpation of a traditional trail, that Abercrombie has labelled the Millard Trail. This trail is in fact the same trail that appears on Wrangell’s map of 1839 (see figure 7.5).

However, Americans were well aware that the Ahtna claimed the Copper River basin and had, in the past, defended those claims with violence. More than once, American travellers encountered resistance when they did not ask permission to use the local resources. The prospector William E. Treloar (1898, 56) told of an encounter with an Ahtna kaskae or leader from Mentasta: “There was an Indian village a short ways above us and they had traps in the stream but were not catching many fish and when they saw us catching them it did not set very well with them. The old chief came down and stormed around and talked Indian to us” (Treloar 1898, 56). The chief then sent another Indian, who

came down, one who had been out to Fortymile Post [on the upper Yukon River] and could speak a little English. He told us chief heap mad he say P-hat man (meaning white man) must not catch fish or else P-hat man leave quick. P-hat man catch all fish Indian man all die, so to pacify him we sent him a lot of fish. Before long the chief came down to our camp again and shook hands with us then he took up a fish and ran his hands across the back of its head and motioned that he wanted the head. Then he gave us to understand we could catch fish but we must give him the heads. We assented to this and he went away pleased. (Treloar 1898, 56)

“Birds Eye View of Copper River Valley” (figure 7.13) was included in a published pamphlet that touted the development and settlement in the Copper River Valley and included articles on the agricultural and mineral resources of the valley, investing in gold mining, and the availability of the “Free Lands in Alaska.” Included with the publication was a fold-out map, printed on pink paper and titled “Birds Eye View of the Copper River Valley” (figure 7.13). The map is the epitome of colonial cartography, showing an accessible, bucolic land with military roads, telegraph lines and stations, and prospectors’ trails, along with the new town of Copper Center. There are also locations of gold and copper. Three small dots identifying the locations of “Indian Villages” are the only evidence of an Ahtna presence.

The desire for an all-American route to the Klondike resulted in the US Army constructing a pack trail between Valdez and Eagle in 1898 that was eventually upgraded and renamed the Richardson Highway, after a general in the US Army, Wilds P. Richardson. Congress also authorized construction of a telegraph line between Valdez and Eagle, and by 1904 the Alaska Communications System had stretched a cable and established “meteorological stations” between the two communities. Figure 7.14 is one of four sheets published in 1909 by the Alaska Road Commission showing trails and roads in Alaska. At this stage in the mapping process, all Ahtna toponyms have become anglicized or have disappeared altogether. For example, the Copper River is never again referred to as the “Atna or Copper River” but only as the “Copper River.”

In the Euro-American imagination, the Copper River is famous for two things: copper and salmon. Copper can be found lying on the ground throughout certain parts of the upper Copper River drainage, and the Chitina basin has particularly rich deposits (Mendenhall and Schrader 1903, 16; Moffit and Maddren 1909, 47). Archaeologists have concluded that the Ahtna began using copper between 1,000 and 500 years ago (Cooper 2012; Workman 1977, 31). In 1797, the Russian explorer Demitri Tarkhanov (or Dmitrii Tarkhonov, in an alternative spelling) explored the Copper River looking for the source of copper (Grinev 1993, 57). Tarkhanov reached the Lower Ahtna village of Takekat, or Hwt’aa Cae’e (Fox Creek village, no. 6 in figure 7.4), located across from the mouth of the Chitina River. He was probably the first European to see the Chitina River, but he never learned the source of copper (Grinev 1997, 8; Kari 2005).⁴ Allen (1887) may have been the first non-Native to obtain knowledge of a source of copper. In April of 1885, he visited Chief Nicolai upstream on one of the Chitina’s main tributaries, the Nizina River (Nizii Na’), at its junction with Dan Creek, and subsequently reported that Nicolai had pointed out the locality of a copper deposit that was then above the snow line (Allen 1887, 158).

There is some question as to why Nicolai would reveal the source of copper to Allen when, according to most Russian sources the Ahtna violently resisted showing them (Grinev 1993, 1997). One reason, given by Ahtna elder Frank Billum (John Billum’s brother), is that Nicolai felt well disposed toward Allen because he was a “nice guy” who wanted to know what Indians knew and wanted their help, in contrast to the Russians, who were “pretty bad guys” (Billum 1992; see also Pratt 1998, 85–95).

Another interpretation, provided by Ronald Simpson (2001, 106–107), imagines Nicolai showing Allen the source of the copper by pointing across the “Chettystone” River or Tsedi Ts’ese’Na’ (“copper stone creek”). As he points, the white explorers turn silent: “It was as if they had found something holy.” When Allen asks Nicolai to describe the place, Nicolai waves him off, although he senses that “he had just done something he might later regret” (Simpson 2001, 106–107). Nicolai reasons that Allen is merely the leader of a small expedition, not a prospector, and he wants only to know that the source of the copper exists, or so Nicolai hoped. Of course, that was not the end of it.

In July 1900, two prospectors discovered the first of several large copper deposits in the Kennicott Valley. Eventually a syndicate of Eastern financiers—known as the Alaska Syndicate, which included the Guggenheim brothers and the House of Morgan—developed the Kennicott Valley prospects, investing in a mining operation and building the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad to transport the ore to tidewater (Bleakley n.d.). Construction of the railroad, the route of which is shown in figure 7.15, began in 1907 and was completed in 1911. After flourishing for roughly two decades, the mine ceased to be sufficiently productive, and, in 1935, it closed. By the end of 1938, the railroad had been abandoned as well. Like many colonial entrepreneurs, the Alaska Syndicate appropriated the land, developed it, and then abandoned both the mine and the railroad as soon as they were no longer profitable.

While copper was important to the Ahtna as a material and trade item, salmon were critical to their existence, and it was over salmon that Ahtna challenged American industry and government.

A commercial fishery began to exploit Copper River salmon runs in 1889, and by 1896 the Ahtna were protesting that the runs were depleted, and they were facing starvation (Moser 1899, 134). In 1915, commercial fishers began fishing in the Copper River and built a cannery at Abercrombie, located about 55 miles (just over 88 kilometres) north of Cordova. As a result, the commercial salmon harvest increased from an average of about 250,000 sockeye before 1915, to over 600,000 in 1915, and over 1.25 million in 1919 (Gilbert 1921, 1). The Ahtna protested and eventually their complaint came to the attention of the Bureau of Education, the agency responsible for the welfare of Indigenous people in Alaska. Arthur Miller, an agent of the bureau working at Copper Center, drafted a formal petition.

Miller produced a map (figure 7.16) to present at a hearing in Seattle about the Copper River fishery in November 1918. In sharp contrast to other colonial maps of the region, this map emphasizes the presence of the Ahtna and was used to present their case to the government and commercial fishing industry. The map shows the locations of Ahtna villages and estimated populations as well as the location of the commercial fishery in Miles Lake, and the location of the cannery at Mile 55 on the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad. Eventually, commercial fishing within the Copper River was banned, saving the fishery from probable extinction. However, in banning in-river commercial fishing, the US government also outlawed any commercial enterprise by the Ahtna that would have allowed them to benefit from a naturally occurring resource in their own home territory. Instead, it became an issue of regulating the commercial fishery to protect the capital investments of the canners, who agreed to the conservation measures to protect their property (Taylor 2002, 366).

During World War II, the road system in Alaska was improved, such that by the end of the war the Copper River and its rich salmon resource was accessible by road from the growing urban centres of Anchorage and Fairbanks. In effect, Ahtna territory became a recreational area for outsiders who wanted to fish or hunt. Figure 7.17 shows a map produced by the Bearfoot series of travel magazines showing recreational fishing locations within the Copper basin. Many of these locations were once traditional Ahtna fishing sites (see figure 7.4).

Between 1867 and 1959, when Alaska became a state, little was done to solve the issue of Indigenous land claims. When admitted into the union in 1959, the State of Alaska was authorized to select and obtain title to more than 103 million acres of public lands. These lands were regarded as essential to the economic viability of the state. Although the Statehood Act stipulated that Indigenous lands were exempt from selection, the state swiftly moved to expropriate lands still being used and occupied by Alaska Natives. Without informing the affected Native villages, and ignoring the blanket claims the Natives already had on file, the Bureau of Land Management, an arm of the US Department of the Interior, began to process the state’s selections. Natives became alarmed and pressed for a settlement of their claims.

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971 was a watershed in Alaska Native history. In exchange for relinquishing their land claims and hunting and fishing rights, Alaska Natives received close to a billion dollars and 40 million acres of land. Instead of creating reservations, the land was conveyed to Native corporations, whose stockholders are Alaska Native people. In his report, published in 1887, Allen (1887, 128) had estimated that Ahtna territory encompassed approximately 25,000 square miles. More recent research has expanded the area to about 41,000 square miles (de Laguna and McClellan 1981; Kari 2008). ANCSA entitled the Ahtna to 1.77 million acres, or 2,765 square miles—about 7 percent of their traditional territory. The remainder is owned by the State of Alaska, the federal government, and private landowners.

An essential fact of American colonialism is that Indigenous land was taken and then transformed into national land so that it could be settled and developed. Maps were an essential part of this process. The Indigenous presence was first eliminated and then relegated or confined to dots on the landscape. These dots represent the recalibration of land and life on the colonizers’ terms without reference to Indigenous antecedents (Harris 2004, 179). As villages, the dots represent the triumph of civilization over savagery, of the American ideal of a settled existence. Erasing Alaska Native toponyms and introducing new place names further transforms the landscape from an alien, unknown space to a landscape familiar to the colonizers. Even when Ahtna place names were used, they were altered for convenience and their meanings were subsequently lost. A case in point is the Copper River itself. In the Ahtna language, the river now known as the Copper River is called Atna (beyond river) or Ts’itu’ (major river or straight river), while the Chitina River is called “copper river” or Tsedi Na’ (Kari 2008, 37, 44).

When tourists enter the Copper River basin today, they have no idea they are entering the Ahtna homeland. Most information provided to the casual tourist about the basin emphasizes the spectacular mountain scenery, Kennecott copper mine, and fishing. For example, the Milepost, which advertises itself as the “Bible of north country travel” and is probably the most widely used traveller’s guide in Alaska, describes the Tok Cutoff as the “principal access route from the Alaska Highway west to Anchorage,” and provides detailed information about the area, but makes no mention of the Ahtna.

Maps are not transparent openings to the areas they depict; rather, they comprise a particularly human way of looking at the world (Harley 1989). We are taught that maps are objective descriptions of “natural facts,” that is, of the lay of the land, but they also reveal “political facts,” that is, who has hegemony over the land. In short, maps are about who controls the narrative about land. The maps in this series demonstrate the development of the colonial narrative. When Russia ceded Alaska to the United States in 1867, interior Alaska appears as a blank space. Allen’s map reveals the Ahtna presence, reflecting his charge to assess the disposition of the Ahtna toward the US government. Subsequent maps reflect the American interest in developing the riches of Alaska. No longer considered an impediment to development, the Ahtna have been erased from the maps.

While the Ahtna presence was erased, they have never been physically removed from their homeland. Eventually, the US government and the State of Alaska were forced to acknowledge the Ahtna presence and their land claim. Produced by the land department of Ahtna, Inc., the final map in this series shows the results of this acknowledgement (figure 7.18). Land received by Ahtna under ANCSA is depicted by pale red squares, federal land shown in green (Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve), and land managed by the Bureau of Land Management is shown in pale grey. Current Ahtna villages are located along the road system. But the map also shows the outline of the Ahtna homeland. Recently, Ahtna Inc., with support from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has put this map on one of six informational signs developed to reverse the colonial narrative and inform the public of the Ahtna presence. Produced by Ahtna, Inc., the map is an assertion of Ahtna claims running counter to those of the State of Alaska or federal government. It is a declaration that Ahtna are still present and have persevered in place despite a century of colonial policies designed to erase them from their homeland.