“10. Watershed Ethnoecology in Yup’ik Place Names of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta” in “Memory And Landscape”
LOUANN RANK
10 Watershed Ethnoecology in Yup’ik Place Names of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta
Here is this lake, which is the water source. And then during the spring, when the fish are returning upstream, fish traps are used; then, once the fish are plenty, the traps are removed and the fish continue upstream. Then, in the fall, they are used again when the fish are returning downstream, reversing what was done in the spring.
PETER WASKIE (IN PHILLIP, WASKIE, AND NAPOKA 1988)
Traditional Yup’ik place names in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta traced seasonal migrations of fish through local waterways, interpreting linear and spatial networks of
resources within the tundra. These names remain as historical markers of Indigenous cultural settlement and land use. The immense watersheds of the Yukon River and the Kuskokwim River in southwest Alaska
merge in the delta and have supported traditional Yup’ik fishing through time over thousands of square miles. Nearly half of the tundra surface area between the rivers is covered by water, in the
form of rivers, shallow lakes, and meandering sloughs and streams. These arteries abound in fish, which were,
and still are, central to Yup’ik diet and culture. Among the more important species are Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), whitefish (Coregonus spp.), northern pike (Esox
lucius), Alaska blackfish (Dallia pectoralis), and burbot (Lota lota), known locally as lushfish.
FIGURE 10.1 Yup’ik women at a camp preparing fish to be hung to dry. The woman on the left is holding the handle of an uluaq, an arc-shaped knife traditionally used by women, primarily for skinning and cutting fish. Raised on the crossed poles are two sealskin qayaqs, both lying on their sides, with their keels facing the stream. The photograph, while undated, was in the possession of Dr. Joseph H. Romig, a physician and Moravian missionary who served villages in the vicinity of Bethel from 1896 to 1905. Joseph H. Romig Collection, acc. no. 90-0043-0-1933-1, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections and Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Yup’ik names for fish species vary by dialect area within the wider delta, but in the lower Kuskokwim area, the Yup’ik names for the five local species of salmon are taryaqvak (chinook/Oncorhynchus tshawytscha); iqalluk (chum/O. keta); sayak (sockeye/O. nerka); amaqaayak (pink/O. gorbuscha); and qakiiyak (coho/O. kisutch) (Coffing et al. 2001, 30). These five species arrive sequentially on the Kuskokwim River from late spring into the fall, in the order just listed, with the runs determining harvesting seasons. The principal non-salmon species include freshwater whitefish: akakiik (broad whitefish), cavirrutnaq (round whitefish), and imarpinaq (Bering cisco); cuukvak (northern pike); can’giiq or imangaq (Alaska blackfish); and manignaq (burbot/lushfish). Of these, local varieties of whitefish, as well as northern pike and burbot, can be harvested throughout the year while blackfish are harvested primarily during late fall and winter months of the year. In keeping with the species, the season, and the waterway, Yup’ik fishers have traditionally employed a variety of methods: gillnets, dipnets, weirs, taluyaq (traditional fish trap), and hook and line through the ice.
For those living along the lower Kuskokwim River, whitefish were especially crucial as a food source. Whitefish feed in lakes and small adjoining streams over the summer and then migrate in early fall into tributaries of the Kuskokwim to spawn. As anthropologist Darryl Maddox (1975, 210) observed, whitefish “are taken in the greatest numbers in set nets anchored at the mouths of creeks and sloughs or in eddies along either the main body of the river or a short distance up its tributaries and feeder streams.” At the end of the spawning season, the fish move into deeper river waters for the winter, before migrating in the spring back into summer lakes.
Yup’ik oral history traces the enduring presence and movement of fish species between source lakes, streams, and rivers, naming waterways together with associated settlements and seasonal harvest sites to create an ethnoecological map for the region. In this Yup’ik landscape, certain harvest site toponyms share their names with proximate streams and lakes, a repetition that serves to mark pathways along which fish travel, as well as the linear watercourses significant to traditional fishing within watershed networks.
In the 1980s, researchers involved with a program established pursuant to section 14(h)(1) of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act interviewed Yup’ik elders from villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, in the course of investigating sites of cultural and historical significance.1 Although elders from communities along both the Yukon (Kuigpak) and Kuskokwim (Kusquqvaq) rivers contributed invaluable oral histories of local sites, this chapter focuses on information provided in 1982 and 1988 by elders residing in the lower Kuskokwim communities of Akiachak (Akiacuaq), Akiak (Akiaq), and Tuluksak (Tuulkssaaq). Contemporary residents of these communities are descendants of the families who settled, camped, and named the mosaic of sites along the inland lakes, streams, and rivers of the region. The elders whose comments are quoted below belonged to interrelated families that had lived in the area for many generations, and all seven were fluent speakers of one or more dialects of Central Alaskan Yup’ik. Together, they identified more than five hundred local place names, which were subsequently mapped onto an area of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of approximately 12,905 square kilometers (4,983 square miles) (figure 10.2). One of them, Joshua Phillip (1912–2008) (figure 10.3), was responsible for the identification of over 350 place names.2 He offered especially vivid accounts of how these sites were used, along with detailed descriptions of waterways and fish behaviour.
FIGURE 10.2 The study area (indicated by the shaded square) lies between the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers in southwest Alaska. Map produced by Robert Drozda.
FIGURE 10.3 Joshua (Maqista) Phillip at spring preparation time for wooden boats prior to summer fishing, ca. 1950s, Akiachak, Alaska. From the collection of Tom Kasayulie by permission of Willie Kasayulie (2017).
Landscape Names, Settlements, and the Seasonal Round
Indigenous place names are often rooted in the local landscape and its resources. In the area of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, terms such as qagatii (“lake from which a river flows”) and painga (“mouth”) may be incorporated into proper names. For example, the source lake of a stream named Keggiartuliar is known as Keggiartuliaraam Qagatii, while Quuyam Painga (“Quuyaq’s mouth”) is the name of a traditional seasonal camp located at the point where a stream called Quuyaq joins a larger river. As we will see from these and other examples below, such names are fundamentally relational, serving to designate hydrological networks. A similar emphasis on geographic relationships is also visible in names that identify routes or paths, as in Kuigpagcaraq (“the way to Kuigpak [the Yukon River]”), Arviryaraq (“the way to cross over” or “to take a shortcut”), Kanaryaraq (“a place or way to go down, usually to water”), and Qipsaraq (“the way with a sharp bend”).3
The primary focus of the present discussion is that of Yup’ik toponyms and hydronyms that identify the natural resources or waterways available at specific sites. Examples of traditional place names identifying resources found at a site include:
Cavirrutnartuli: “one with an abundance of [round] whitefish”
Cimerlituli: “one with plenty of smelt or smelt-like fish”
Cuukvagtuli: “one with plenty of pike”
Qugtuliar: “one with plenty of firewood”
Qugyugtuli: “one with lots of whistling [tundra] swans”
Tayarungualek: “one that has false mare’s tail [Hippurus vulgaris]”
In the context of a subsistence economy, the functional utility of such names is obvious.
Although Yup’ik knowledge and use of resources in the study area encompassed fur-bearing mammals, waterfowl and other bird species, and diverse flora, of particular interest in the present context is the subsistence round as it related to fish. Simply put, people established settlements and travelled to seasonal camps primarily according to where the fish were. As Joshua Phillip put it, “They did not stay in places where there are no food sources, our ancestors, for the fish was what kept them alive” (1988a, 3). Phillip also illustrated the depth of local knowledge about fish and their movements:
There were people who camped in the fall, dipnetting whitefish [broad whitefish, Coregonus nasus]. That is the way the river was used. They would also build a weir and fence and set fish traps for whitefish at the upper end of the river. [. . .]
The blackfish was the chief use from the rivers branching off. They would migrate out to the [Kuskokwim] river itself. They would remain in the deeper areas of the river during winter. Then, when the current becomes active, they’d return back upstream to release their eggs in the lake sources. . . .
The lower river in the area behind Akiacuarmiut called Makeggsaq had many whitefish. The river has a large lake source. There were not only one [kind] of fish but several kinds which have been mentioned. The first fish that swam out are whitefish, then the pike, including lush (loche/burbot). Then at the end of the pike and the lushfish season, the blackfish migration strikes when the weather is starting to get cold. There were some little rivers that had fish all winter season. . . .
They certainly knew the kinds of fish swimming in the rivers, our ancestors of the past. They were able to give descriptions of the fish in certain rivers. [. . .] They were very knowledgeable about where the fish come from. Some of the little rivers only had young pike fish with no blackfish. That is the way it is in our area up there. The many settlement sites are all located in places where there are fish. (Phillip 1988a, 1–3)
FIGURE 10.4 Disturbance vegetation denotes the old village site of Pugcenar, on the Elaayiq river. View to the southeast, May 1988. Photograph by Matthew O’Leary. ANCSA 14(h)(1) Collection, case file AA-10208, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Anchorage.
It is worth noting Phillip’s reference to an area “behind Akiacuarmiut.” As is well known, throughout Yup’ik-speaking areas groups of people commonly refer to themselves by the addition of the postbase -miut to the name of the place where they live. Thus, Akiacuarmiut literally means “the people of Akiacuaq,” that is, Akiachak. Particularly at the local level, however, such collective terms often function as metonyms for the village or settlement itself, such that Akiacuarmiut becomes a place name, a fused identity that underscores the symbiotic relationship between people and place.
These village communities were fundamental to Yup’ik social organization. Fienup-Riordan (1984, 64) notes that Yup’ik family networks were rooted in “territorially centered village groups,” in a pattern whereby “a single village group might gather at a central winter settlement, but ordinarily was scattered among a number of seasonal camps.” Resource use areas extended out from settlements to include seasonal camps that were associated with specific extended families and individuals who used the site or sites and had become familiar with that locality. However, land was not owned in the Western sense: it was not regarded as personal property. As Joshua Phillip (1988a, 17) explained, “Traditionally, people were always moving and did not claim to have ownership to the land. They all survived from the land. [. . .] They all shared the land.”
Yup’ik customary land use supported shared access; however, the established occupants of a site were recognized as holding certain rights of usage. As Phillip described, “it was the custom of the people to always notify the usual hunter in the area before someone decides to hunt there. We were told to notify the seasonal hunter in the area. Even though they didn’t claim ownership of the land and allowed one another hunting rights, they were always careful not to hurt the other’s feelings” (1988a, 19). These comments are consistent with patterns of Yup’ik land use and territoriality also found in the lower Yukon River area. As summarized by Robert Wolfe (1981, 242), “there are rightful occupants and users of a region of land and water, but no rightful owners. This idea approximates the concept of ‘usufruct.’”
Collective Yup’ik knowledge of kinship ties remain culturally central, and narratives concerning traditional sites often include acknowledgment of the individuals who generally hunted and fished there. The hunting and fishing areas discussed here were used by families affiliated with the modern communities of Akiachak, Akiak, and Tuluksak. Each village’s resource use area was loosely bounded according to the families who seasonally camped at named peripheral sites. Village camp areas overlapped between the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers, and continued southeast of the Kuskokwim beyond Tuluksak.
The blend of ecological significance and social history attached to many Yup’ik place names is encapsulated in Joshua Phillip’s description of an old settlement called Pugcenar (figure 10.4), located on the Elaayiq river about 32 kilometres (20 miles) north of the contemporary community of Akiachak. As he explained, the site had been occupied longer than anyone could remember and had been used by the ancestors of those who eventually became the Akiacuarmiut. These ancestors had once occupied a site named Nunapiaq, which was located “about one or two miles” upriver from the site that became Akichuaq. According to Phillip:
Pugcenar is an old village site from time immemorial. Our ancestors probably didn’t even know when it became inhabited. But I know that it is one of the original sites [. . .] the houses were no longer standing even before I was aware of my surroundings, but there are a lot of house pits. That was how that place was. But then as life continued, houses were once again built. Then after the residents all died off, another person reinhabited it. . . .
Beginning from time immemorial, whenever a site was deserted, another person would come in and re-inhabit it, that’s how it was since the past. They never settled just anywhere; they’d set up sites where fish were bountiful. That is how Pugcenar is. [. . .] It was a site which was occupied by the residents of Nunapiaq, who are now the Akiacuaq peoples today. If they had not moved they would have been the people of Nunapiaq, those residents of Akiacuaq. It was right above their village, close by. (Phillip 1988b, 1–2)
Phillip went on to comment on the origin of the site’s name:
The meaning they say [. . .] there is a lot of fish there, those ones, whitefish, and they are usually fat. When they cook those, they would skim the fat with a wooden spoon, skimming them. That is what is referred to as skimming (pugciluteng) the oil, doing like so (motioning with hands) that is why it is referred to as Pugcenar. They would cook the stomachs of the fish and when the oil rendered, then they would skim them with a wooden spoon, dipping out the fat and storing them carefully. [. . .] That is the meaning [of] Pugcenar; it was because of the fat fish. It is [. . .] the old village site of the residents of the Akiacuaq people, their ancestors. (Phillip 1988b, 4)4
Thus, embedded in the name Pugcenar is knowledge not only of the history of the site but also the preparation and use of whitefish, for which the site was named.
FIGURE 10.5 Source and stream networks. The distance from the community of Akiachak on the Kuskowim River northwest to the Yukon River is approximately 80 kilometres (50 miles). Map produced by Robert Drozda.
Source Lake and Stream Site Networks
“The mouths of every little river have old settlements,” said Joshua Phillip (1988c, 6). Traditional settlements and seasonal camps in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta were indeed often located at the outlet, or igyaraq (“throat”), of a source lake, or at the painga, or mouth, or painga of a lake’s stream emanating from the lake as it entered a larger stream or river.
As an analysis of place names in the lower Kuskokwim region located within the traditional resource use areas of Akiachak, Akiak, and Tuluksak reveals, an emergent conceptual pattern for certain fish harvest sites is evident across the study area. In this pattern, camps and settlements were often named in relation to their watercourse sources. Accordingly, Yup’ik hydronyms would trace a distinct pathway from a source along a stream to a site, with source lake, stream, and harvest sites mutually identified by a shared base name. Where a site is named along a stream emanating from a source lake, the source and site, and often the connecting stream, may have the same base name. A source lake may have qagatii or qagan (“lake from which a river flows”) appended to the base name. This source, stream, and site naming pattern is visible at a number of fish harvesting network sites in the study area, of which six have been selected for discussion, situated in one of four localities on the Kuicaraq, the Elaayiq, and the Kuik rivers. These six harvest networks are described within the four localities: Kuvuartellria, It'ercaraq and Cuukvagtuli, Nanvarnaq and Quuyaq, and Keggiartuliar.
FIGURE 10.6 Location of the seasonal fish camp Kuvuartellria relative to the surrounding water system. Note the overland winter trail connecting the site to Akiachak, on the Kuskokwim River. Map produced by Robert Drozda, from USBIA MAP 88CAL12A, Marshall B-1.
KUVUARTELLRIA
The fish camp site named Kuvuartellria is located at the mouth of a stream also called Kuvuartellria (“one that suddenly poured out”) that originates at a source lake known as Kuvuartellriim Qagatii. From the lake, the Kuvuartellria stream meanders southeast through a marsh before flowing into the Kuicaraq river (known in English as the Johnson River) at the site of the fish camp. Thus, the stream emanating from the source lake is called Kuvuartellria; the source lake is Kuvuartellriim Qagatii; and the seasonal camp named Kuvuartellria is at the mouth of the stream. Another stream, called Kuvuartellriim Egmiumanra (“Kuvuartellria’s feeder”), joins the lake at its upper end (figure 10.6). As Wassillie George Sr. (1924–1996), of Akiachak, explained: “Kuvuartellria has a qagan, a lake source, and stream [‘river feeder’] running off. That one used to abound with blackfish. And all the fish traps would be full of the overnight catch” (George 1988b, 12).
In both spring and fall, residents of Akiachak would travel up to Kuvuartellria to fish, harvesting primarily Alaska blackfish but also whitefish. As George notes, fish traps were used for blackfish, and people would dipnet for whitefish. He remembered the site well:
Kuvuartellria was my hunting place. That Kuvuartellria was a place to catch blackfish, fish, that is, like a supply of fish (or “food”). But now, I see, the beaver have made it less of a river. And sometimes that Kuvuartellria tends to produce neqpiat (“real fish”), little white fish. That’s how . . . that’s how that Kuvuartellria is.
. . . And whenever we go up to Kuvuartellria by dog team or boat in the fall and spring, we go back and forth to that one. And blocking the river, we [would] dipnet, at Kuicaraq. Sometimes we would catch a few fish. Those much earlier used to catch fish there. And when they went fishing for blackfish from there, they would fill over 15 or 20 grass baskets full of blackfish from that Kuvuartellria. (1988b, 2)
George refers here to a type of basket called a kuusqun, woven of grass or reeds, that was traditionally used for storing and transporting freshly caught fish (figure 10.7). Joan Neck—an elder from the village of Kassigluq, situated inland between the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers roughly 60 kilometres (37 miles) west of Akiachak—described the kuusqun as follows: “We made them different sizes, some bottoms were almost as big as a large tub. We fill the grass kuusqun with gutted white fish, big ones in separate kuusqun, little ones in another. And we made ones out of dried reeds, bigger than those grass ones. We fill these with dried salmon” (quoted in Monica Shelden, pers. comm., 2017).
George went on to describe seasonal travel between Akiachak and the Kuvuartellria fish camp:
The people of Kuvuartellria go to spring camp there at its mouth [the mouth of the Kuvuartellria stream]. And it’s a travel route to Akiacuaq from there. When they move from Kuvuartellria they use it as a trail. And they sled by way of its qagan in the winter. (1988b, 10)
FIGURE 10.7 Replica of a traditional Yup’ik kuusqun—a loosely woven grass basket used to store freshly harvested fish—made by students of Akiachak School, 2015. This basket is about 23 cm (9 in.) in diameter and 38 cm (15 in.) long. Photograph provided by Sophie Kasayulie with permission of Katie George, Akiachak (2017).
As was generally the case with such camp sites, Kuvuartellria was occupied consistently over time by certain families, often interrelated, and their descendants. George Moses Sr. (1920–2005), of Akiachak, emphasized the importance of family connections:
So that is Kuvuartellria. They used to call them Kuvuartellriarmiut. It was their fall camp, they would go fall camping there. And we, joining them, used to be there [. . .] because, I discovered, we were related to them through the children of my father’s older sister, and through this one [. . .] whose habitation it is, the one to whom it was handed down. (Moses 1988a, 15–16)
As mentioned earlier, such extended family groups did not own these sites, in the Western sense of holding legal title to land. They did not claim sovereign power over these lands, but they did exercise certain rights of access and use, which were then transferred from one generation to the next.
FIGURE 10.8 The Kuicaraq river flows to the southwest, so the two Cuukvagtulirmiut sites lie downriver from the those at the junction of the Kuicaraq and It’ercaraq rivers. Two overland trails lead to Akiachak. Map produced by Robert Drozda, from USBIA Map 88CAL12A, Russian Mission B-7.
IT’ERCARAQ AND CUUKVAGTULI
Further upriver on the Kuicaraq were three sites named It’ercaraq: one site located directly at the confluence of the It’ercaraq river and the Kuicaraq, with the other two on either side (figure 10.8). The word it’ercaraq means “place or way to put something in quickly or briefly.”
Joshua Phillip (1982, 5) reported that his grandfather, Ircalik, was “the first in this land” at It’ercaraq and used the area all year round. Peter Nick (ca. 1917– 2010), a resident of Russian Mission, located on the Yukon River roughly due north of Tuluksak, also remembered fishing at It’ercaraq:
They call this river It’ercaraq. And mouth, mouth of It’ercaraq, used to be old, old village. And they call them It’ercaraq village. [. . .] I used to [travel], every year, back and forth, spring and fall time, by that winter trail. . . . In fall time, we used to put a fence in that creek. A lot of whitefish in there. With fish trap. Used to be this [. . .] round. Maybe 30 feet long. They made it by hand. Sticks. Sometimes boatload of whitefish. Nothing but whitefish, they come out in fall time. In October, they started [. . .] to run. [. . .] People long ago used to stay in a place where lot of fish. Lot of blackfish and whitefish. They stay in winter and summer, summer they can go for salmon. And hook whitefish. Even they dry those blackfish. Put through the sticks. Lots of them, bunch of them. [. . .] And [. . .] just dry them and put it away. Wintertime, they eat it with whitefish oil, seal oil. And some [. . .] make it blackfish from under the ice. On the little creeks. (Nick 1982, 1–2)
Writing at the end of the nineteenth century ethnologist Edward W. Nelson described the traditional Yup’ik taluyaq, or fish trap, of the sort to which Nick refers:
On lower Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers wicker fish traps are set, with a brush and wicker-work fence connecting them with the shore. These fish traps form an elongated cone, with a funnel-shape entrance in the larger end. Each has two long poles at the sides of the mouth or broad end and another at the small end, by means of which it is raised or lowered. It is set at the outer end of the wicker-work fence [. . .] and held in place by poles driven in the river bottom with their ends projecting above the water. (Nelson [1899] 1983, 184)
Cuukvagtulirmiut is the name applied to two seasonal sites at the outlet of the lake called Cuukvagtuli (“one with plenty of pike fish”). In this example, the lake outlet also forms a confluence with the Kuicaraq.
Wassillie George, Sr., of Akiachak, knew both It’ercaraq and Cuukvagtuli:
When I became old enough to remember, this is how we were: by dogs, by boats. There were no snowmobiles. We would travel around by dog team. We would relocate in the fall and in the spring. We used to be in the same site as our relatives from the Yukon, Kuigpagmiut, at the mouth of It’ercaraq, It’ercaram Painga. That is, those cross-cousins of mine. And so there were mud houses, perhaps five in number. [. . .] Then, we lived this way: in the fall, when I observed it once one fall, blockading the river, they dipped whitefish all night with dipnets. The boat was really full. Together, the relatives would feed on that supply of fish when they did that. (George 1988a, 2)
. . . Downriver from It’ercaraq, that one that is a kangiqucuk [“a little bit of a lake source”] is called Cuukvagtuliq. That’s what we call it. [. . .] This It’ercaraq is a former settlement of mine and my ancestors. (George 1988b, 7, 9)
FIGURE 10.9 “Aug. 1896. Bethel. Fish trap.” Established as a Moravian mission in 1885 on the Kuskokwim River, Bethel is approximately 30 km (19 mi.) downriver from Akiachak. Note that the funnel-shaped wicker entrance commonly inserted into the larger end of a fish trap is not pictured here. Joseph H. Romig Collection, accession no. 90-043-863a, Archives, Alaska and Polar Regions Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
FIGURE 10.10 Nanvarnaq seasonal camps and old settlement sites. Quuyam Painga, also a seasonal camp, is located at the confluence of the Quuyaq and the Elaayiq. Adapted from AHP-CPSU site map for BLM AA-10336. Original map drawn by Ken Pratt and Sue Steinacher, 1982.
FIGURE 10.11 Quuyaq seasonal camps and old settlement sites, approximately 10 kilometres (6 miles) east of Nanvarnaq sites. Adapted from AHP-CPSU site map for BLM AA-10331 and AA-10332. Original map drawn by Ken Pratt and Sue Steinacher, 1982.
NANVARNAQ AND QUUYAQ
On the upper drainage of the Elaayiq river (location C in figure 10.5) are two large lakes, Nanvarnaq (“one like a big lake”) and Quuyaq (“closed-in area”), with which a total of five named fish camp sites are associated (figures 10.10 and 10.11). Because of the close proximity of these sites, some residents reported having camped at either Nanvarnaq or Quuyaq at various times (Wise 1982, 1–2).5 The remains of house pits were found in the 1980s at the settlement sites closest to each lake. Year-round settlement reportedly ended by the late 1800s, followed by seasonal camps at each location. The Quuyaq site at the confluence of the Nemrarun and the Nasqunartuliq streams (see figure 10.11) was used as a seasonal camp from the early 1900s. (Pratt 1983a, 1983b, 1983c).
Study interviewees for these harvest networks were from Tuluksak, some of whose residents continued to use Nanvarnaq and Quuyaq in the 1980s for spring and fall camps. Et’uryaq, the elongated lake between Quuyaq and Nanvarnaq, is translated as “a big deep one.” On the 1952 USGS map (Russian Mission B-6), the stream named Quuyaq that flows from Nanvarnaq into the Elaayiq river does not appear to be physically connected to the lake of Quuyaq, but their shared name indicates such a connection formerly existed.
Edward Wise (ca. 1921–1999), a Tuluksak resident, described the sites of Nanvarnaq and Quuyaq. Nanvarnaq, he said, “was a spring camp”:
Younger generation, we just move in[to] a spring camp. In the fall I lived there, hunted. This is an old, old village . . . before I was born. [. . .] My dad used to stay there in the camp in fall and spring. [. . .] Sometimes we live here in Quuyaq. (1–2)
. . . And then there’s another lake to Nanvarnaq. [. . .] We use that long lake. [. . .] Summer and winter in here. I think from Nanvarnaq, they move here [Quuyam Painga] . . . because there’s lots of fish in there. [. . .] Fishing, whitefish. They move from here [Nanvarnaq], sometimes they live in springtime . . . Quuyaq, yeah. (3, 5)
. . . We call that little creek Quuyaq to Nanvarnaq. [. . .] Only when they move down there they stop at Quuyam Painga . . . they just stop there to get proper rest [. . .] There’s no cabin. Just a camp. [. . .] Two, three days. ‘Cause they had to row . . . by hand. They rest, Quuyum Painga. (Wise 1982, 13–14)
KEGGIARTULIAR
The old settlement site and seasonal camp of Keggiartuliar is several miles downstream from its named lake source (figure 10.12). A stream meanders southward from Keggiartuliaraam Qagatii to terminate at a lower lake, where the Keggiartuliar site is located at that lake’s outlet into a stream named Keggiartuliar. Linking Keggiartuliar’s source lake and harvest site by name across miles of marsh and tundra reflects a thorough understanding of both the watershed and fish migrations. The knowledge required to name the Keggiartuliar network is more fully illustrated by the USGS map used in the field by ANCSA researchers to record place names, which shows the complexity of intervening streams and ponds in the area (figure 10.13).
Joshua Phillip called attention to the association of Keggiartuliar (“something to do with biting well, as with an animal or insect”) with several interrelated families who had occupied the site for many generations:
It is Keggiartuliar. An old settlement, a spring camp and a fall camp, and their ancestors used to stay over during the summer, because it was a good fishing site for whitefish, this area here. [. . .] They referred to them as the residents of Keggiartuliar [. . .] as the people of Keggiartuliar.[6]
Akiacuaq already had had a school for some time when there were still houses still standing there, and it was still inhabited by people at that time, it was around 1929. Well, it was since a long time ago they talk about the residents of that village, Keggiartuliar. That river is a good fishing area. [The people of Keggiartuliar] were related. Their descendants, the people that lived there, are living down at Akiacuaq. (Phillip and Waskie 1988, 6, 10)
“The ancestors remained there,” Phillip recalled. “There was always somebody there” (10).
The Keggiartuliar site is distinctive both for the distance that separates it from its source lake, Keggiartuliaraam Qagatii, and for the intricate network of streams that intervenes between the two. The shared name suggests that the people of Keggiartuliar had a close understanding of the migratory behaviour of fish and the paths along which they travel. A somewhat similar situation is visible at the Kuvuartellria harvest site, which is situated more than a mile from its source lake. The two are linked by a somewhat tenuously defined stream, also called Kuvuartellria, that makes its way through an expanse of marshy terrain.
In contrast, several of the sites—Cuukvagtulirmiut, Nanvarnaq, and Quuyaq—sit very near the outlet of their respective source lakes, with which they exhibit a simple pairing of names. In a few cases, camp sites share a name with the stream on which they are located, most often at its confluence with a larger river. Yet what stands out is the connection between a fishing camp and a source lake, as signalled by a shared name. The Yup’ik residents of the area recognized and named each harvest network holistically, not only according to where fish were available but as to how they got there.
FIGURE 10.12 The old settlement and seasonal camp of Keggiartuliar is located at the outlet of a lake several miles from the named source lake, Keggiartuliaraam Qagatii. Map produced by Robert Drozda, from USBIA MAP88CAL12A, Russian Mission A-7.
FIGURE 10.13 The site of Keggiartuliar relative to its source lake and stream continuing southward. Place names were recorded by ANCSA researchers onto USGS map (1954) 1:63,360 Russian Mission A-7.
FIGURE 10.14 “Ougavig Natives. Nov. 1902. At Thanksgiving Time.” Fish trap sections frame Yup’ik residents of the Moravian mission at Uaravik (or “Ougavig,” as it was also spelled). The mission was established in 1892 at the pre-existing Yup’ik site, located approximately 100 kilometres (62 miles) upriver on the Kuskokwim from Akiachak. Although the Moravians abandoned the site in 1908, Yup’ik use and occupancy of Uaravik continued into the early 1920s. Joseph H. Romig Collection, accession no. 90-043-863a, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections and Archives, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Conclusions
In Yup’ik communities, fishing was more than a subsistence strategy: it was integral to community life itself (as figure 10.14 suggests). The location of settlements and seasonal camp sites was grounded in an intimate understanding of local watersheds, as well as the fish present in them, and place names embodied this knowledge. A name might explicitly refer to fish resources: Cuukvagtuli, “place with plenty of pike,” for example, or more indirectly signal significance, as with Pugcenar, whose name literally refers to the skimming of oil and implies “fat fish.”
The Yup’ik place names discussed in this chapter illustrate the use of linguistic continuity to structurally describe dynamic ecological systems, an understanding of which was essential to subsistence strategies focused on the harvest of fish. Some names involved, such as “one that suddenly poured out” or “closed-in area,” in and of themselves do not denote relationship, but rather illustrate connection through their repetition. Such patterns of naming broaden the capacity of language to interpret the landscape in terms of spatial configurations.
The historical and cultural context of Yup’ik place names is clearly integral to a more complete understanding of the communities’ interactions with the landscape and its resources. An ethnoecological record exists in the names given to landforms, river drainage systems, and harvest practices, names whose origins and contextual meanings are ultimately reliant on collective memory embedded in shared oral history.
During the ANSCA 14(h)(1) interviews, elders of Akiachak, Akiak, and Tuluksak would often emphasize that specific individuals should be consulted for accurate knowledge of particular sites because of the long use of the sites by their families, and their consequent awareness of change over time. As George Moses Sr. observed of historical place names, “All of these, you know, after they have not been talked about all these years cannot be suddenly written down” (Moses 1988b, 16). Each place name has a long history. The names can be recorded, but, absent their particular cultural narratives, they have less meaning. As change continues over time, that meaning has come to reside largely in the knowledge of elders whose stories and landscape interpretations this chapter has endeavoured to capture.
Acknowledgements
This study builds on the work and insights of Robert Drozda, former manager of the ANCSA 14(h)(1) records in the Alaska and Polar Regions Department of the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), whose detailed work on an impressive map of Yup’ik place names (compiled with Vernon Chimegalrea and other 1988 ANCSA field crew members) piqued my interest and made this research possible. This chapter owes its existence to the advice, perseverance, and map assistance of Kenneth Pratt, ANCSA program manager, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Anchorage. Dale Slaughter contributed final details for some of the maps. Rose Speranza, of Alaska and Polar Regions Collections and Archives at the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, UAF assisted generously with photo research. Steven Street and Monica Shelden of the Cultural and Environmental Sciences Department of the Association of Village Council Presidents, Bethel, Alaska, assisted with kuusqun research, as did Sophie Kasayulie of Akiachak, who provided the photograph of a kuusqun shown in figure 10.7. I am forever grateful to Sophie and Willie Kasayulie for allowing the use of a photograph of Joshua Phillip from the collection of Tom Kasayulie. William Schneider, former curator of the Oral History Program at UAF, generously extended my research through support for travel, interviews, and map work carried out with elders of Akiachak, Akiak, and Tuluksak in 2004 as part of the Yupiit School District Project Jukebox. Early stages of the study for this chapter were supported financially by the UAF Center for Global Change and the International Arctic Research Center, as well as by the US National Science Foundation, through the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training of the Resilience and Adaptation Program at UAF.
Notes
- 1 Under section 14(h)(1) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), passed by the US Congress in 1971, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was mandated to investigate late claims brought by Alaska Natives in connection with sites of cultural or historical significance and also burial sites (see Pratt 2009a). The program ultimately generated an irreplaceable collection of taped oral history interviews, translated transcripts, site investigation files, maps, and photographs (see O'Leary, Drozda, and Pratt 2009, 425–457). The interviews on which this chapter builds represent a total of more than ninety tape recordings within this collection.
- 2 A biography and photograph of Joshua Phillip, accompanied by excerpts from two 1988 ANCSA 14(h)(1) interviews, can be found at http://www.jukebox.uaf.edu/yupiit/akiachak/htm/interviews.htm, a page on the Akiachak Then and Now website, one of three schools featured on the Yupiit School District Project Jukebox website (http://www.jukebox.uaf.edu/yupiit/yupiit.htm).
- 3 Unless otherwise indicated, translations of Yup’ik words and place names are based on those originally provided by the late Irene Reed, who also supplied the orthographically correct spellings. A Yup’ik language specialist and former director of the Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Reed was instrumental in developing the orthographic system that remains in use for Yup’ik today.
- 4 The original audio recording of Phillip’s description of Pugcenar, accompanied by an English translation, is available on the Pugcenar Project Jukebox website at http://jukebox.uaf.edu/site7/interviews/4173.
- 5 Those for Nanvarnaq and Quuyaq were taken from ANCSA 14(h)(1) site survey forms AA-10335 (Nanvarnaq) and AA-10331 (Quuyaq) (Pratt 1983c, 9; 1983a, 9).
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