Salluq

Aqpik (Salmon Berry) growing on the tundra in Cape Krusenstern National Park

NPS Photo

The Iñupiat of Northwest Alaska have a connection to Cape Krusenstern National Monument that is centuries old. Fish Camps along the coast of Cape Krusenstern represent family use of the land dating to more than 5,000 years. For the Iñupiat, it is not Cape Krusenstern, the land is known by dozens of traditional names that reveal the way the land has been traveled and used over time. Each lagoon, sand spit, bluff, creek, slough, and valley has a name.

One such place, Salluq, is known for being a place of abundance, particularly with salmonberries which are gathered in the summer.

“'Salluq' refers to the place marked with a large dot on this map. It is also the location of several subsistence camps and the broad area of beach ridges, lakes and sloughs between the ocean and bluffs to the north. This is the Salluq Flats - the southern/southeastern portion of what generally is called the Sealing Point or Cape Krusenstern lake and beach ridge flats complex. It was in this location that much of the archeological work justifiying creation of the Cape Krusenstern National Monument took place.

 

Image captured from Bob Uhl's Story Map marking the location of Salluq in Cape Krusentern NM

NPS Photo

"It is probably also one of the most productive bits of land in the whole region with respect to salmonberries (Rubus chamaembrus). Each August, many tons of sweet orange colored salmonberries ripen here and are enthusiastically harvested by people, geese, cranes, ptarmigan and other smaller creatures. Just the sight of these low-laying flat lands under a bumper crop of ripe salmonberries is surely one of the two greatest wonders of the far north. Vegetation just above marsh level is dominated by lichens, moss and salmonberry plants. The moss and lichens are low story and the salmonberry plants with a large orange colored juicy berry on top are above all and outstanding. The surface of the ground is colored by the bright reddish orange sight to people, geese, cranes, and smaller birds who cannot be seen, at least to this magnitude, in many other places. Local folks now and historically see this value of their land to be much greater than any underground evidence of the past use of this area by their ancestors." -Bob Uhl

Bob and Carrie Uhl lived on this landscape for five decades. Carrie Qisiliaq Williams Uhl was raised at Sisualik in the Iñupiaq subsistence way of life. She taught her husband Bob, and in turn he documented his life at Cape Krusenstern in daily journals. Explore the journals of Bob Uhl to learn about the natural and cultural history and placenames of Cape Krusensentern in: Bob Uhl’s Cape Krusenstern StoryMap.

 

Cape Krusenstern National Monument view between Anigaaq Ranger Station and Salluq.

NPS Photo/Emily Creek