The Fate of the Eyak Indians in Russian America (1783–1867)

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the dramatic history of the small tribe of Eyak Indians during the period when Alaska belonged to the Russian Empire. The article was written with the use of archival data, published documents, notes of contemporaries, the use of statistics, materials of field research of ethnographers, native legends, and a broad circle of scholarly literature in the Russian, English, and German languages. The article examines controversial questions on the topic, and erroneous, from the author’s point of view, versions are critiqued. The work presented to the reader is the most complete outline of the ethnic history of the Eyak, who were a kind of “Mohicans” of Alaska, the last full-blooded representative of which died in 2008.