Eyak

Edward Vajda

daχũhyuˑ, daxuhyu

Except where otherwise specified, the descriptions of traditional Eyak culture and society given in this summary reflect Eyak village life in the second half of the nineteenth century, as recorded by Frederica de Laguna during no more than three weeks of intensive work in 1930 and 1933 with a small number of Eyak survivors who were already considerably influenced by twentieth century American culture. Many aspects of pre-contact Eyak heritage were sketchily recorded, if at all. Everything written since the 1930s about traditional Eyak lifeways, including the present report, is secondary and reflects de Laguna’s 1938 monograph, authored jointly with Danish anthropologist Kai Birket-Smith.

The word Eyak, used as a self-designation in English and pronounced‘Iˑyaˑɢin the Eyak language itself, derives from the Chugach (Sugpiaq, Alutiiq, Pacific Yupik) nounigya’aq, which means ‘throat’ and refers to the outlet of Eyak Lake that empties into the Copper River. Most nineteenth century materials identified the Eyak people or their language by using various adaptations of the Chugachuŋalaʁmiut“southeast people”: Ugalakmiut, Ugalachmut, Oogalakmute, Ugalentsi, Oogalenz, etc. No earlier autonym for the Eyak is known, who may have called themselves simplydaχũhyuˑ, meaning “human beings.”

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Eyak lived along a narrow strip of the Gulf of Alaska coastline in a 250-mile west-to-east arc stretching from Prince William Sound to the Italio River below Yakutat Bay, now located well within Tlingit territory. Though their inland neighbors, the Ahtna Athabaskans, called themdanɢene“upland people,” all documented Eyak villages were located near the Pacific coast. The westernmost Eyak territory bordered on Chugach lands, while a large and expanding Tlingit population occupied the coastal zone directly east of the easternmost Eyak. Most historically documented Eyak territory overlays Chugach place names in the west or Tlingit place names in the east, which makes it difficult to determine any specific original location for the Eyak in prehistory. Substrate toponyms of Eyak origin found inside Tlingit territory in the general vicinity of present-day Yakutat attest to a former Eyak presence there, which seems to have ended by 1830. This concurs with historic evidence that before 1800 the Tlingit were expanding rapidly westward along the coast, intermarrying with Eyak people and assimilating them linguistically. Relations with the Chugach, who lived along the coast west of the Eyak, were less frequent and less friendly, possibly because the Eyak after 1750 had pushed into former Chugach hunting grounds around Controller Bay and the delta of the Copper River in response to demographic pressure from the Tlingit.

Frederica de Laguna, the first (and only) modern ethnographer of Eyak culture, characterized the Eyak during the previous century in terms of four local groups. These were distinguished not by language or distinct political organization but rather by location and degree of interaction with either the Tlingit or Chugach. The easternmost group was composed of Tlingitized Eyak living in the wider vicinity of Yakutat Bay, who by 1830 had all been absorbed into the Tlingit nation. Next were the Yakatags living between Cape Suckling and Icy Bay, who were also well on their way to becoming Tlingitized in both culture and language during the mid-nineteenth century. The third were those in and around Chilkat village on Controller Bay, an area that probably was the westernmost portion of Eyak-inhabited territory in late prehistory. The Chilkats too had become Tlingitized by 1900. Finally, there were the Eyak proper, who lived in the late 1800s on the Copper River Delta, territory formerly belonging to the Chugach. This westernmost group had experienced the least direct outside influence from the surrounding aboriginal languages and cultures. Tlingit influence on the village of Alaganik in the Copper River Delta was ongoing in 1883 but was checked by the disruptions caused by White influence in the last decade of the nineteenth century. These westernmost Eyak people, living in the vicinity of Cordova and located beyond the tribe’s earlier territory, comprised most Eyak encountered by Americans after the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867. Home to the last Eyak native speakers and bearers of traditional Eyak culture, the Cordova area is usually placed within aboriginal Eyak territory on maps showing the pre-contact distribution of native tribes, whereas most of the earlier Eyak land eastward along the coast is shown as Tlingit.

In 1889 there were no more than about 200 Eyak living in three villages on the Copper River Delta or Controller Bay, in the westernmost portion of recorded Eyak territory. By that time, all the Eyak living farther east, closer to Yakutat, had adopted the Tlingit language and clan membership. Though the tribe may have numbered closer to 500 before the eastern Eyak groups were Tlingitized and—prior to the ravages of European diseases, most notably a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1837-38—there is no evidence that the Eyak population had been significantly larger in the past. Only with the establishment between 1889 and 1893 of four canneries in or near Eyak territory did the tribe begin to experience a precipitous decline due to multiple negative influences from outsiders. In less than a single generation, epidemics of measles and other European diseases, alcoholism, and disruption of traditional Eyak subsistence patterns by predatory commercial salmon fishing every summer quickly destroyed all three remaining Eyak villages, reducing the tribe’s population to fewer than 60 individuals by 1900. The construction of the city of Cordova, begun in 1906 at the terminus of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway, which was completed in 1911, opened up the region to significant year-round settlement by Whites, ushering in a final end to Eyak-majority communities. In the 2000 census, 552 individuals identified as at least part Eyak, and in 2014 the federally recognized Native Village of Eyak (comprised mostly of Eyak, Chugach Region People, Tlingit, and Athabaskan) registered 515 members.

Eyak belongs to the widespread Na-Dene language family, which consists of a Tlingit branch and an Athabaskan-Eyak branch. The entire Athabaskan sub-branch—which contains over 30 languages stretching from Interior Alaska across much of northwestern Canada, with geographically separate languages in the Pacific Northwest (Tolowa), California (Hupa), and the American Southwest (Navajo, Apache)—is related to Eyak at a time depth of probably no more than 3000 to 3500 years. The geographic location where ancestral Eyak separated from Proto-Athabaskan was likely somewhere in interior northwestern Canada or adjacent parts of southern interior Alaska; a more precise location may never be determined. There is no evidence that Eyak shares any closer affinity with the neighboring Alaskan language Ahtna than with Navajo in Arizona or Hupa in Northern California, which demonstrates that Eyak is related equidistantly to all Athabaskan languages. Despite the extreme importance of Eyak for an understanding of Na-Dene prehistory, the language’s structure was barely documented before the second half of the twentieth century, aside from a number of vocabulary lists of varying length and quality, left mainly by early Russian colonial officials or travelers between 1792 and 1867. Despite being recognized during the Russian period as a people and language distinct from Tlingit, Athabaskan and Yupik, this early understanding of Eyak was obscured in the later English-language literature until 1930. Beginning with the first decade of American administration in Alaska, the Eyak were repeatedly mischaracterized as “Tlingitized Eskimos”, and their language mistakenly regarded as a marginal variety of either Chugach or Tlingit, if mentioned at all.

In 1961, the linguist Michael Krauss, then director of the Alaska Native Languages Center in Fairbanks, embarked upon a decades-long collaboration with the language’s few remaining native speakers, the last of whom, Marie Smith Jones, died in 2008. This work was possible only because no English-language school had been built for natives until 1923, which allowed the few remaining Eyak children to grow up speaking native Eyak. This collaboration resulted in extensive, high-quality documentation of both the vocabulary and grammar of the Eyak spoken by the last native speakers in the second half of the twentieth century, including words for kinship and many cultural aspects that complement de Laguna’s earlier anthropological work. No systematic dialectal variation was recorded among Eyak speakers during the period of contact with Europeans. Efforts to revive Eyak through learning it as a second language began in 2014 using the extensive materials recorded from the last native speakers by Michael Krauss and later adapted to an online format.

Early contact with Russians was sporadic, consisting mainly of explorers, hunting parties and missionaries, and involving occasional armed resistance against Russian incursions. Russian influence led to a nominal acceptance of Christianity by the westernmost Eyak, alongside traditional shamanism and other native practices. Only a modest amount of trade developed between Russians and the Eyak. Large numbers of Whites entered Eyak territory only after Alaska had been sold to the United States in 1867, beginning abruptly with the establishment of the first commercial cannery in 1889. By the early 1890s there were four canneries operating seasonally in the Cordova area. Each cannery employed seventy whites and an equal number of Chinese workers (all males) living in the vicinity of the last remaining native Eyak villages for several consecutive summers, greatly outnumbering the Eyak population. This contact led to rapid cultural degradation and a precipitous population decline from introduced epidemic diseases (notably measles) and the availability of alcohol. With the arrival of a railway and the building of White-majority towns in the early twentieth century, the remaining Eyak became a small minority in their native land. English language and American culture quickly began replacing traditional Eyak lifeways and language. There are no longer any full-blooded Eyak. Members in the Eyak Corporation (established after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971), with even partial Eyak descent are a small minority in contrast to members of Chugach (Alutiiq) ancestry. The Eyak Preservation Council, conceived in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, is dedicated to reclaiming elements of Eyak cultural heritage.

Little is known of Eyak history before Russians arrived in this part of Alaska in 1792. It is likely that the Eyak originated somewhere in interior Alaska or northwestern Canada, migrating across the mountains to some point on the Gulf of Alaska. The documented Eyak presence along the coastline between Cordova and Yakutat is slightly west of the original Eyak location, which appears to have extended to the east of present-day Yakutat. Combined Eyak-Tlingit attacks on the Chugach between 1806 and 1825 led to Eyak settlement in the Copper River Delta, beyond what had been the northernmost Eyak presence in late prehistory, which probably extended no farther west than the inner portion of Controller Bay. The lack of dialectal differences, despite the relative isolation of Eyak village groups in this territory, suggests that the Eyak presence in their documented coastal homeland was not ancient. Eyak relations with the much larger Tlingit tribe were amicable enough to allow considerable intermarriage and the acceptance of members from each tribe into the other tribe’s exogamous marriage groups (moieties or phratries), though a dispute over war booty taken from a Russian fort destroyed near Yakutat in 1805 led to a massacre of the local Eyak by the Tlingit. Relations with the Chugach located along the coast to the west of the Eyak seem to have begun later than with the Tlingit to the east, and involved more hostility and less cultural exchange.

A number of Eyak settlements once existed along the Gulf of Alaska coast, from Prince William Sound to just east of Yakutat Bay. Much of this area had already been assimilated by the Tlingit before 1830, so that the Eyak settlements encountered by Americans were all located in the westernmost part of Eyak territory, on lands that once bordered the Chugach or which in fact had been Chugach hunting ground before the mid-nineteenth century. In 1889, the year that commercial canning operations began in Eyak territory, there remained only two villages with predominantly Eyak inhabitants. The first was Eyak Village (sometimes spelled Hyacks, Ighiak, Iggiak, Ihaik), located at the outlet of Eyak Lake. The second was Alaganik, in the Copper River Delta. A third village located near where Bering River empties into the northwestern part of Controller Bay, sometimes called Bering River Village or Chilkat, probably had a majority of Tlingit inhabitants by 1900. The Chugach origin of the village names Eyak and Alaganik (borrowed from the Chugachalarneq“switchback turn in river” via the Tlingit language and pronounced by the Eyaks asAnaχanaq) belies the relatively recent Eyak presence in the area.

The Eyak lived and subsisted on the narrow coastal strip between the Chugach, Robinson and St. Elias Mountain ranges and the Gulf of Alaska. Though settled into permanent villages, they pursued a hunter-gatherer-fisher lifestyle dictated by the seasonal availability of various food sources. This included harvesting mollusks, seaweed, bird eggs, lily bulbs, and various berries, as well as taking molting birds. The Eyak fished for trout, cod, whitefish, herring with their spawn, and eulachon (a small oily fish). But the salmon harvest (chinooks, cohos, pinks, sockeyes) lasting from May through early November was the single most important source of food. The Eyak hunted bear and mountain goat in forests and crags near the coast, but never ventured into the interior portions of the coastal ranges. Sea mammals were not pursued in the open sea, though they were sometimes scavenged on the beach; seals were harpooned on the ice in early spring. Fall and winter was a time for trapping fur-bearing animals, and for arranging potlatches.

After 1900, some Eyak worked in the canneries centered near Cordova, becoming part of the multi-ethnic population of the adjacent town. The subsistence-based Eyak villages that existed prior to 1889 were too small to support any large-scale commercial activities.

Opportunities for trade were greatly constrained by the geographic setting in which the Eyak lived, as well as by limitations of their technology. Extensive travel along the coast using traditional Eyak plank canoes was dangerous due to ocean conditions, so that each village group tended toward economic isolation. Nor was there any river travel directly from Eyak coastal territory through the mountains to the interior. The Ahtna sometimes traveled from the interior to the coast by paddling down the Copper River to trade furs or copper with the Eyak. The Tlingit traveled through the mountains along the Alsek River, east of Eyak territory, sometimes bringing trade goods to the Eyak farther west along the coast. Otherwise, trade involving the Eyak was limited and strictly local. Dogs were not used for traction; sleds were pulled by hand. Eyak snowshoes were webbed only under the feet and less adapted to extensive travel than those of the interior Athabaskans.

The division of labor was largely influenced by the sharp tripartite social stratification between chiefs and their families, commoners (the majority village population), and slaves, the latter mostly Chugach war captives. Male slaves often performed heavy labor, such as cutting and hauling firewood or fetching water. Female slaves assisted with housework and helped during childbirth. Slaves did not hunt, but often were taken on journeys to help paddle canoes or pack game back to camp. Free men belonging to the same moiety often formed economic partnerships involving hunting and food sharing. Mothers generally looked after young children but there was no stigma for a father to participate in child care. Older brothers were in a position of dominance over younger brothers and could exact labor service from them.

There was no established geographic division between moieties or clans, and all Eyak villages contained individual family dwellings belonging to each of the matrilineal moieties. Raven or Eagle Moiety families could build a house in any location, and also use the same potlatch house.

The Eyak were exogamous and matrilineal, divided into an Eagle and a Raven Moiety. This arrangement had parallels to the Wolf and Raven division among the Tlingit, which may have influenced its origin. Most of the seven clans recorded within the Raven Moiety, and the six clans of the Eagle Moiety, possessed Tlingit names in the early twentieth century. The Eyak themselves recognized several of these, including the Wolf Clan of the Eagle Moiety, as adopted Tlingit who had been incorporated into the Eyak clan system. Tlingit extension of their system of clan relations, especially through the marriage of Tlingit women to Eyak men, furnished a means for the numerically superior Tlingit to increase their wealth and broaden their economic influence, given the reciprocity in ceremonial gift exchange that accompanied the spread of the marriage-based clan system. Clan membership was reckoned through the mother, and clan leadership, though the prerogative of males, accordingly was passed on to a maternal nephew or younger brother. Potlatches were held by a particular moiety, with members of the other moiety invited as guests.

Eyak kinship terms are semantically and formally complex, and along with anatomical terms, comprise a set of nouns normally spoken together with an obligatory possessive prefix. Unprefixed vocatives exist for certain ascending cosanguinal relations, such as child to parent or grandchild to grandparent. Other kinship terms have no special vocative form, and the regular noun with the prefixsi- “my” is used to hail relatives. The Eyak kinship system has distinct terms for each of the four grandparents, which are used reciprocally between grandparents and grandchildren, though when used to address a grandchild they include the diminutive suffix –kih. Kinship terms tend to distinguish the sex of older relatives with greater classificatory precision than they do for younger relatives. Reflecting the Eyak matriarchal clan-based system, nomenclature for affinal as well as cosanguinal relations often differs according to whether kinship extends through the mother or the father.

Marriage was contracted between members of opposite moieties; violators suffered ostracism by the entire community. Village location played no role in marriage arrangements. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the moiety system encompassed marriage with the Tlingit, but the Eyak observed no moiety-related restrictions in regards to marriage with their western Chugach neighbors or with Whites, Chinese, or other outsiders. Polygyny was practiced, but not polyandry. If a man married two or three wives, he did not divorce or mistreat an older wife, who continued to live in the house and was expected to work for her husband and his younger wife. Cross-cousin marriages were preferred, and entailed bride service, the couple living with the husband’s eldest maternal uncle (avunculocal residence). A widow might be taken as wife by her deceased husband’s brother, and a widower could marry his deceased wife’s younger sister (levirate and sororate). A strict taboo existed against communication between son-in-law and mother-in-law, but men could freely interact with their father-in-law. Adult brothers and sisters also did not normally interact, though brothers were expected to punish sisters who committed adultery.

All grown men in a household belonged to the same moiety, with the oldest among them assuming a leadership role. In terms of work responsibilities, younger brothers were subservient to older brothers, and older wives to younger wives. If a mother died, her sister assumed the role of disciplinarian for her daughters. Sons were expected to care for elderly parents. Two living members of the same family never had the same name, as name-giving marked the reincarnation of a dead relative into a new child. Adoption of unrelated children was not common; there are records of such adoptees being poorly cared for.

The Eyak had relatively little property to inherit compared to the Tlingit and other Pacific Northwest tribes. There is no record of crests or privileges being inherited through membership in a particular clan. Most personal property was destroyed upon the death of its owner, except for special mementos bequeathed by the dying person or items distributed at a potlatch to members of the opposite moiety. Otherwise, keeping property belonging to someone recently deceased was thought to invite trouble from the dead person’s ghost. Dogs, however, were never killed and usually passed to sons since they were useful in hunting. Slaves could be killed upon the death of a chief, but were more often set free when their owner died, after which they could choose either to remain with the tribe or find their way back to their home territory.

Fathers disciplined sons and taught them hunting skills; the maternal uncle also played a guiding role in raising a boy to manhood. A mother or her sister was charged with a daughter’s upbringing. At puberty a girl was secluded from other family members and practiced sewing and basket weaving, activities that could be done alone.

Apart from the dualistic moiety organization, there was no tribal or village government among the Eyak. Social cohesion was based on the family unit and also one’s membership in a particular clan or moiety. The moiety leader in a particular village also served as the local chief. Since members of both Raven and Eagle moieties lived in every Eyak settlement, there were normally two chiefs in each village. One chief might assume a senior role, depending on the relative number of moiety members in the village. Chiefs were male, and the position could be inherited by a brother or by a nephew belonging to the same moiety. Hunting territory was communal and not divided according to clan or moiety, though individual potlatch houses may have been owned by particular moieties. Eyak living in separate locations did not represent distinct political or social units. There was no paramount chief, though all Eyak groups maintained a clear sense of the boundary between Eyak territory and that of the neighboring Chugach or Tlingit.

Most social control was centered at the household level, with established obligations of certain family members to others. Owners exercised firm control over their slaves within their own family households. Chiefs and wealthy commoners were expected to distribute property to the poor and members of the opposite moiety. Hunters were obligated to share game. Mutual obligations between the two moieties also helped maintain social cohesion.

Murder and other crimes were dealt with at the family or clan level unless committed against a member of the opposite moiety, in which case the grievance would be aired publicly in the form of insulting songs. Material compensation might be paid to the aggrieved member(s) of the opposite moiety. A ceremonial paddle could be inserted between rivals during public meetings to prevent escalation to violence. Some individuals seemed to have been recognized as peacemakers, but what this role entailed or how it was acquired is unclear.

Conflict beyond the tribe was most serious with the Chugach, who reportedly sometimes stole Eyak women encountered while out berry picking. Sporadic warfare by Eyak or Tlingitized Eyak against incursions of Russians and their native Aleut or Chugach hunters also occurred in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There is no evidence of warfare between different geographic groups of Eyak, though localized blood feuds between families or clans sometimes occurred due to failure to resolve disputes arising from individual theft or murder.

The Eyak believed that everything, whether object, place, or living being, possessed its own spirit owner, or soul. The human soul was thought to be able to leave the body temporarily during sleep or trance states, and could also become separated from the body accidentally, leading to insanity or other illness. After death, the Eyak believed that a person’s soul was reincarnated upon entering the body of a pregnant woman in the deceased’s maternal line. Land otters, fur-bearing seals, walruses and wolves were not purposely hunted, as they were believed to have once been human beings or to have the ability to transform into humans. Eyak hunters treated hunted game with respect, leaving the bones and other body parts in an appropriate place to help ensure the animal’s reincarnation and thus continue nature’s bounty. There were taboos against women touching or even stepping over a man’s hunting tools. The Eyak addressed prayers to the Sun, and Eyak folklore preserves accounts of dwarves, the Thunderbird, and giants who stole humans. The Raven Cycle of stories is shared with other North Pacific tribes.

Eyak shamans were men or women believed to be able to commune with the spirit world, a power they could use to cure illness. There also were male and female witches who obtained evil power by wearing a dog’s skin over their head and by stealing human bones from burials to use as special whistles that allowed them to change shape or fly through the air. Shamans were respected, but had no political power, while witches where reviled and feared.

The potlatch was the most prominent Eyak ceremony and involved the giving of gifts to members of the opposite moiety. Guests also received gifts for dead relatives who had not yet been reincarnated. There were ceremonies connected with a girl’s puberty, and with a boy’s first successful hunt, the meat obligatorily being shared with members of the opposite moiety.

Eyak art was rudimentary compared to the Tlingit, with the use of moiety crests and other clan designs playing a less prominent role. Eyak boxes were made by mortising four pieces of wood to the bottom, rather than by bending a single piece of wood.

The human soul accidentally separating from the body was believed to cause insanity or other illness. Deaths or injuries purportedly caused by witchcraft were fined or punished like ordinary crimes. Shamans could cure illness by placating or driving out malevolent spirits or inducing the return of a patient’s soul which had strayed from the body. Shamanic séances involved dances in special costume to attract the spirit help needed in effecting a cure. Specific information about Eyak folk medicine was not recorded, aside from shamanic beliefs and practices.

The Eyak believed in reincarnation of the soul into a newborn baby belonging to the deceased’s maternal line. The afterlife was envisioned simply as a period preceding reincarnation rather than a permanent state or location. The body of a newly deceased person was kept in the house for four days before being either cremated or buried, following the wishes of the relatives. Animals were not killed to help send off the deceased to the afterlife, though sometimes slaves were killed upon death of a chief, probably in keeping with the more general practice of destroying a dead man’s property.

The culture summary was written by Edward Vajda in February, 2018.

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De Laguna, Frederica (1990). “Eyak.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 7,Northwest Coast, edited by Wayne Suttles. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 189–196. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/cultures/na07/documents/002.

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