KOYUKON

The name Koyukon, pronounced ko-YOO-kon, is a contraction of Koyukukhotana, meaning “people of the Koyukuk River.” The Koyukon of present-day north-central Alaska are in fact discussed as three dialectal subdivisions: the Koyukukhotana, living along the drainage of the Koyukuk River; the Kaiyuhkhotana, living along the Yukon River between the Anvik and Koyukuk Rivers, including the drainage of the Innoko River; and the Yukonikhotana, living along the drainage of the Yukon River between the Koyukuk and Tanana Rivers.

Other Athapascan-speaking peoples lived nearby: the INGALIK to the west along the Yukon River; the TANANA to the south along the Tanana River; and the KUTCHIN to the east, extending into Canada. All these groups are classified as SUBARCTIC INDIANS, that is, as part of the Subarctic Culture Area. To their north were the INUIT, who were of the Arctic Culture Area.

The Koyukon, like other ATHAPASCANS of the region, depended on a combination of hunting, fishing, and gathering. They had permanent villages of semisubterranean sod houses along the rivers, which provided a reliable food source for them, in addition to seasonal camps in various locations. Salmon runs upriver, caribou migrations, berry ripening, and other such events determined the tribe’s calendar. Like most other Native Americans, the Koyukon believed that all the elements of nature, animate and inanimate, had spirits and had to be given proper respect. One did not boast about killing animals, for example, but honored their spirits through all stages of preparation and utilization of food, clothing, and tools so that other animals might be captured in the future. The villages or a collection of villages were politically autonomous, but people of different villages gathered for ceremonies and trading fairs.

Traditional Koyukon subsistence patterns endured after the arrival of non-Indians in the area, the Russians being the first, in the 1830s. The outsiders brought new diseases with them, leading to a smallpox epidemic among the Koyukon in 1839. After the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the village of Koyukuk at the confluence of the Koyukuk and Yukon Rivers became the site of a military telegraph station. Starting in the 1880s, gold prospectors altered the demographics of Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory. Steamboats, as many as 46 by the year 1900, carried traffic along the Yukon to mining camps. A measles epidemic in 1900 further reduced the Koyukon population. Diphtheria, influenza, and tuberculosis also took lives.

After gold mining declined in the early 20th century, lead mining brought a new wave of outsiders to Native lands. The Koyukon continued to fish, hunt, and gather wild plant foods into modern times but with new technologies. In 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) settled aboriginal claims to territory and created Native regional and village corporations with legal title to a portion of ancestral tribal lands. At that time the Koyukon villages, along with those of the Ingalik, Tanana, and other Athapascans, became part of the corporation known as Doyon Limited. In 1985, various tribes formed the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments (CATG). In 2005, CATG was among the first recipients of grants from the Fund for Indigenous Rights and the Environment (FIRE), a not-for-profit project designed to address the cultural, social, political, and economic needs of indigenous communities.