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Living
in Kenai Fjords
Living in Kenai Fjords: Background
 
Left to right: Fjord
Ecosystem; Rockwell Kent Journal Sketch; Exit Glacier.
 
 
Left to right: Stellar Sea
Lions; Bald Eagle Student Drawing; Black Bear; Rockwell Kent Jr.,
Sketch
Coastal Geography :
Kenai Fjords
National Park is situated on the steep and rocky southeastern coast of Kenai
Peninsula. The park includes glaciers, icefields, fjords and peninsulas,
streams and lakes and abuts the Kenai Mountain range to the north and west.
Located "on an active tectonic shelf of the Pacific Ocean Plate…in one of
the most seismically erratic regions of the United States…," geologic
forces have also shaped the region.
The mile-high Harding Icefield, named after
President Warren G. Harding, is one of the park's spectacular features. The
icefield and its glaciers influence the land and climate. Thirty-four tidewater
and hanging glaciers emanate from Harding Icefield and ten of them are in Kenai
Fjords National Park. Offshore and out of the boundaries of the park lay
fjords, islands and the open sea.
The land accompanying the outer coast does
not appear to have had a name of its own. During the Russian occupation, the
coast was referred to by Russian names, Kenai Bay (Cook Inlet) and Chugach Bay
(Prince William Sound). "The coastline provided an intermediary ground for
resource use, trade, and travel on the peninsula."
In 1867, the U.S. Congress commissioned an
assessment of the coast. The report described coastal positions and natural
resources. The maps prepared in the early 20th century indicate "the outer
coast was geographically dynamic…that after 1900 all glaciers had begun to
recede."
The impact of Native, Russian, American,
Spanish and English cultures resonate in the names given to the park's
geographical features, including the glaciers. Many of the names were conferred
in honor of an historic person. Others reflect visitors' observations and
desires; still others had particular meaning for the original inhabitants.
Rough and rock-bound as the coastline was,
historical accounts indicate evidence of "land use, and the presence of people
and activity along the coast…." This evidence is found "in the description
of trails that crossed the peninsula. These trails linked people of the
southern Kenai coast with resources and trading partners in Cook Inlet and
Prince William Sound." Trading routes existed over glaciers, also, diminishing
"the idea that glaciers were barriers to communication and
trade…."
Coastal Life :
The coastal people
may have migrated from Kodiak Island or the Alaska Peninsula. "The Native
inhabitants of the Pacific coast" are the Alutiiq Chugach. One of the Pacific
Eskimos groups, they crossed a portage through one of the fjords to settle near
the Chugach Islands. Some say they came from Kodiak Island and may have been
driven out in a war with the Dena'ina people. Evidence documents a Native
presence on Kenai Peninsula at least 800 years. Early contacts from Europe
(1786) say they saw very few Chugach. In 1800, it is estimated there were only
600 people living on southern Kenai.
The Chugach did not let inter-group
hostility and geographic boundaries limit with whom they traded. They bargained
with different groups for what they needed, for example caribou skins, copper,
snowshoes and sea and land animal pelts. In exchange, they offered dentalium
shell beads and spoons.
The people traveled along the southern
coast to trade and hunt. Hunting provided most of the food for the villages.
"Taking advantage of stopping points and layovers in protected coves and
passes, the Kenai coast inhabitants managed to access all reaches of the
peninsula in a series of stages." During severe weather, they used portages,
trails and set up temporary camps.
The Pacific Eskimo had a village-centered
culture, with subtribes having membership in more than one village. Overall,
the populations were small and the village sites scattered.
Skilled hunters, the Chugach depended on
the sea for food. Maneuvering small boats out into the open waters, they hunted
salmon and halibut with bows and arrows and whales using darts and harpoons.
They set up temporary fish camps in the summer and inhabited the villages in
the winter. "…[T]he Chugach tended to place villages near the entrances to
bays, rivers, and recessed fjords" for easy access to fishing but, mostly, to
be able to anticipate and prepare for an impending attack.
The villages maintained cache islands to be
used for food, as a place of escape when needed, as portages and as burial
sites. The Chugach covered the faces of their dead with masks. On them were
painted pictures of family spirits as animals or humans. Other sites were used
to set up camps for hunting sea otter, for gardens and for places where they
could collect eggs, feathers and wood.
Village life changed dramatically when, in
the 1780s, Russian hunting parties moved along the Kenai coastline. The
Russians tried to entice the Chugach into joining the parties but they ran
away, abandoning their traditional villages to form larger ones. Eventually,
the Chugach hunted sea otter for Russian companies and were paid in beads and
tobacco.
As the Russian hunting parties grew in
number and frequency, the Native population began to drop off and the numbers
of Native hunters declined. Concerned with having as many furs as they could
for trade, the Russians "prevented Natives from making fur parkas," which left
them only the skins from small animals and bird feathers with which to make
parkas.
The Russian trade disrupted traditional
village life. Away all summer at sea, Native hunters had too little time, on
their return, to prepare for the winter. After a few years, the people went
into decline. In 1798, an epidemic hit an already weakened population. Then,
from 1835 to 1840, smallpox decimated the population: 1 out of every 3 Chugach
died. The survivors were too weak to hunt, villages went hungry and orphaned
children were transferred to other villages. Another smallpox epidemic occurred
in the 1860s. By the end of the century, Chugach village life had all but
disappeared.
Adapted from A Stern and Rock-Bound
Coast by Linda Cook and Frank Norris
Rockwell Kent in
Perspective:
Rockwell Kent and his nine-year-old son, also named
Rockwell, shared a 7-month Alaska adventure. From August 1918 through March
1919, they left their home and family in New York and traveled into the
northwestern wilderness.
On Fox Island in Resurrection Bay, near
Seward, Kent and his son turned an old goat house into a warm home. They
cleaned it, filled the gaps between the logs with moss and old clothing, and
furnished it simply.
At a large window that he cut into the
cabin, Kent sketched, painted and wrote in his daily journal. He and his son
chopped trees for firewood, snow-shoed through the wide expanse, climbed icy
cliffs and faced rain, snow, cold, wind and waves on their small island home
and surrounding bay.
In 1919, Kent first published his journal,
Wilderness. It describes the day-to-day tasks of finding shelter,
warmth, food, entertainment and companionship in the wilderness. It looks at
the politics of a land far-removed, yet still part of a world at war. It tells
the stories of people who explore the unknown and make their home there. It is
a legacy of the wildlife, the people, the climate and geography of Alaska in
the early 20th century.
Wilderness is also a nature journal,
filled with sketches and word pictures that present a view of a world few have
experienced. Kent shows us sunsets and sunrises from across the bay or above
snow-capped mountains. He makes us aware of the twilight of northern winters
and lets us feel the bitter cold and stinging wind. We watch as he and his son
track bear and otter, watch for sparrows, crows, eagles and whales, and keep a
magpie and a porcupine as pets.
Wilderness supplies the details:
daily menus, packing lists, recipes, Christmas gifts sent and received, maps
and how-tos. And, paints a broad picture of frozen lakes and waterfalls,
towering white cliffs, rocks, streams and precipices. Kent reminds us that
during his stay in Alaska, World War I was coming to an end, men were drafted
and gold rushes and boomtowns had come and gone. Even the deadly influenza
pandemic of 1918 was felt there.
Kent tells us that his journal was
"…not meant for publication but merely that we who were living there that
year might have always an unfailing memory of a wonderfully happy time." He has
done much more.
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