Transcript
This site is an Alutiiq village from the early years of Russian contact. And it's characterized by a number of objects that came from the Russians and represent this new technology that came into the region. This is a hand forged iron knife. Here's the shank. It would have had a wooden handle around it and the blade. Probably quite a valuable piece of equipment for Alutiiq people in the 1790s or early 1800s when this first came in. We know from looking at the other tools that people were still making and using all of their traditional tools and weapons—the ground slate hunting lances, for example, and arrows. But they were also gaining access to some of this new technology including iron knives. From historical accounts we know that iron was one of the things that people were most interested in, in trade, for skins.
And something we're finding a lot of are different kinds of trade beads. Now these beads—I'll show you one of the large wire-wound blue ones—These beads were brought over by the Russians in large quantities and used to pay, a kind of nominal payment for sea otter pelts. And this is a kind of robin's egg blue bead that was probably made in China and these came into, these were purchased by the Russian American Company at Irkutsk, and before that by the Shelikhov Fur Company that was active in this area as early as the 1780s. And so this bead has come all the way from some workship in China to here on the Southern Alaskan coast. Even when Captain Cook, James Cook, first came into these waters in the late 1700s, 1778, he was here on this coast and Chugach people were already wearing these beads for facial jewelry and this was before any nearby Russian post had been established and it was clear that they were coming into the area through trade from the Aleutian Islands where the first Russian fur-traders went in the 1740s. This is one of two beads made out of hard coal that we found here at the site. The source for this material is the Alaska peninsula. There was a coal seam at Pavlof (?) Bay. And one of the reasons this is interesting is that it's evidence of trade to the west from this Kenai Fjords area. That was also part of the Alutiiq region. And it reminds us of the mobility of people in this region—both their knowledge of navigation and the skin boats that people had, kayaks and larger open ones called angyaq, which let them take voyages of hundreds of miles along the coastline. What it looks like is that they excavated down in, which was typical to make the bottom of the house somewhat below ground. They probably dug a large basin in the gravel. In the center of that basin, the ground slopes down and here is what appears to be the central fireplace with these fire-reddened rocks surrounding this pit. And this of course was full of charcoal and we excavated it out to find the bottom. And also in this area: a lot of bone from cooking. And around this hearth we found several tools. There was a green-stone knife. There's a slate ulu, which was used for cutting meat and fish, and a stone adze, which is for chopping wood. So it looks as though this was a central place where people gathered around the fire of course and left some of their tools behind. It's always a mystery in archeology whether people left things behind on purpose or they lost them. Maybe if this was a place they returned to each summer, they were things they knew would be there, and one summer they didn't come back. And so we find them now, 800 years later.
Transcript
Welcome to Kenai Fjords National Park—your National Park. One of the most amazing things about public lands is that these special areas have been set aside and protected by people we have never met in order that you and I could experience them. With that great gift come comes a great responsibility that you and I are each responsible for stewarding this gift and legacy into the future for the visitors who will come after us and the future generations who will visit perhaps 100 years from now.
These special sites preserve some of the most remarkable landscapes in our country and some of the most inspirational stories of bravery and challenges, overcome. They also reflect on some of the toughest stories in our country’s past—in order that we never forget. It is important that all of these landscapes, monuments and stories be protected and made available so that people can experience them, learn from them, be moved by them—first hand. It is also critically important that we always create space for youth to have transformational experiences in these special sites, whether in a field trip to Cesar Chavez National Monument or to see Exit Glacier first-hand in Kenai Fjords National Park. From one day experiences in places like Yosemite to multi-day backcountry adventures in the Grand Tetons. From desert parks like Bryce Canyon to east coast gems such as Acadia, to the rich stories preserved for us at Brown vs. the Board of Education or Manzanar to the now quiet battlefields of the South and the stories found along National Historic trails, such as Selma to Montgomery—the gift of public lands is rich and deep, bold and beautiful, turbulent and triumphant. All of these have been saved for us and we need to assure that the youth of today have access to these special places and riveting stories that each of these sites holds. We need to create space to connect youth to the environment as well as our country’s deep cultural history. Public lands are a tremendous gift—not all countries have them, and we do. In many ways we are seen as a leader in public lands management worldwide and this stewardship and the legacy that carries them into the future takes all of us. So today, as you visit Kenai Fjords National Park, consider what you can do to help protect the park, not just during your visit but for all the visitors who will come long after your visit is over. I hope you will find your own way to steward the park into the future. Thank you for visiting Kenai Fjords National Park—your national park—and we hope that you will continue to find ways to make public lands a part of your life and to steward them into the future for the generations of visitors we will never know.
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Kenai Fjord Stewardship Transcript
INTERVIEWER:What do you like about being out here? PARTICIPANT 1:Everything. I just like being away from people and being able to like see different things that I've never really seen before. So yeah, I liked it. A lot. INTERVIEWER:Did you find anything cool? PARTICIPANT 1:Yeah, I found a Russian coin and a couple of beads—that was my first day. And then yesterday, I and Dan Anocknock (?) found a brown bead. And in the screen I found a green bead and a pink bead. INTERVIEWER:So what was it like when you found this coin? What did you think? PARTICIPANT 1: Well I was, I don't know, it was the first hour and I'd never dug before or anything, and I was digging and it kind of moved, you know while I was going through and then I picked it up. It was really, really discolored so you couldn't tell what it was, but they took a look at it and it was really, really old. And then they looked on the back and when they took off some of the dirt and it had an eagle with two heads on it. They said it was a Russian coin. It was really cool. INTERVIEWER:Did you get pretty excited? PARTICIPANT 1:Yeah, I did. INTERVIEWER:What did it make you feel like? PARTICIPANT 1:I don't know it just it made me happy. Before I found it, I was just finding shells, bones, it kinda felt really...because I wanted to find a bead or something really bad and then I found beads and then I found the coin so it made me really happy. Yeah. INTERVIEWER:Now, your ancestors are probably the people who were out at sites like this. Is that true? PARTICIPANT 1:Yeah. INTERVIEWER:Does that make it any different for you then just going to say, Mexico, and digging or something? PARTICIPANT 1:Yeah, it actually does because I can see how my ancestors lived and what they used, what sort of things. So it's kinda cool. PARTICIPANT 2: Yeah, I found some artifacts. I found some parts of lances, some slate pieces. Found some beads. And a lot of shell. (laughs) INTERVIEWER:So what's it like, I mean, so I've never dug anything up like that in my life. What's it like to uncover a lance point? PARTICIPANT 2:It's exciting. I was screaming, you know, running around. It gets me more into it knowing that somebody I might have been related to, or that someone that I can relate to culturally, that I'm digging up what they left behind. Which is really interesting. It gets me excited when I find just a little tiny bead. You know, it's really small but I know that I was related to them. It's really amazing...that it's buried. Digging in the dirt to find my culture.
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Last updated: June 11, 2019