In Order to understand the problems presented by the archaeological material from the middle and lower Yukon Valley, we will need to see this region in a cultural perspective. The area is inhabited today by Athabaskanspeaking Indians whom I call the Tena, following Jetté. These correspond to Osgood's Tanana, Koyukon and Ingalik. Practically all the specimens we shall have to discuss come from the territory of Osgood's last two tribes.

These Tena had, at the time of white contact, a culture which was much like that of all the interior Alaskan Athabaskans, whom we can take as typical exponents of the Snowshoe hunting stage, discussed in Chapter X. The Tena differ from their relatives in two respects: first, they had a richer source of food in the salmon which come up the Yukon every summer to spawn, and second, they had borrowed much from the Eskimo. On the north, west, and southwest, Tena territory abutted on that of the Eskimo, and their strongest contacts were with the Eskimo of Kotzebue Sound, Norton Sound, the deltas of the Yukon and Kuskokwim, and Bristol Bay.

The material on which this report is based was gathered in 1935 on an archaeological and geological reconnassiance under the author's leadership along the lower Tanana and middle and lower Yukon valleys, between Nenana and Holy Cross. One of the main purposes of the expedition was to study the Pleistocene and Recent geology of the region, with reference to the problem of early human migrations. Dr. Eardley, our geologist, naturally assumed charge of this task. Considerable attention was also paid to more recent archaeological problems, especially to the relationship of the Indian culture to that of the Eskimo near the mouth of the Yukon. Preliminary reports have been published by the author, and Dr. Eardley has also published two geological papers. Although we visited a number of sites at which the bones of Pleistocene animals are exposed, we found no trace of contemporary man. From late Tertiary times to the present, the Yukon has experienced complicated cycles of deposition and erosion; in the valley, the land surface on which Pleistocene or early Recent man would have hunted and camped is now largely destroyed, and the present topography gives no clues to likely camping places.

The information about archaeological sites is presented under eight regional sections, seven of which roughly correspond to seven of the tribal subdivisions listed in the third section of Chapter II. The territories of group 5 on the upper Koyukuk and of group 9 on the upper Innoko were not included in our survey. There is, however, an eighth archaeological region, the Yukon near Holy Cross, which yielded specimens of a more pronounced Eskimo character than anything found in the areas above. These sites are, therefore, tentatively listed as “Eskimo.”

In the following sections of this chapter there will be a discussion of all former village sites in the regions covered by our survey, including sites mentioned in the early literature or reported to us. For the convenience of the reader I present below a list of the sites from which specimens were obtained, grouped according to the region in which they are located; their probable age is indicated. The presence of stone adzes and the absence of trade goods of white manufacture are taken as indications that the site was prehistoric, although in most cases, especially where we did little excavating, such an assumption is based on rather inadequate information.

According to our own observations and to the published accounts, the Tena have practiced many different methods of disposing of the dead, and there are also a number of supplementary traits associated with these methods. We may list them as follows:

• 1. Inhumation

• a) Simple inhumation (lower Innoko, Blackburn to Holy Cross)

• b) In the house (prehistoric, Khotol River)

• c) Under a grave house (Nowitna to Holy Cross)

Not much information about Tena houses can be found in early published accounts. Travelers report permanent villages with semisubterranean houses built of logs, and roofed with bark and turf, from all the Yukon tribes which we visited, with the exception of the Tanana, but give few details of construction. Dall however, specifies for the Un'ā-khō-tanā, between Tanana and Ruby (or, as we should say, between Tanana and the Nowitna), that “their houses are less solidly built and less permanent than those of the Lowlanders [Nulato to Holy Cross].” Of the Tanana Indians, Schwatka reports:

The specimens recovered from the sites visited on the Yukon and its tributaries, or acquired by purchase from others who had visited such sites, comprise about eighty types. In making this count I have considered the material of which the specimens were made, for example, listing netweights of stone as a different type from netweights of bone, and I have also treated the separate parts of composite implements, like harpoons, as distinct types. If I had considered each of the design elements used to decorate bone objects or pottery as separate types, the list would have had to be still further expanded.

Such a list is given below. In the first column are given the types represented by the supposedly Eskimo material from the vicinity of Holy Cross. In the second, are types from prehistoric Tena sites; in the third, types from Tena sites of uncertain age; and in the fourth, types from historic Tena sites, to which are added in parentheses the types actually seen in use in 1935.

I Have preferred to describe in one section the pottery from the supposedly Eskimo site at Fox Creek and that from the Indian sites above Holy Cross, since there seems to be no real difference in the shapes or general character of the ware. The Eskimo of the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim also make very similar pots and lamps, though there seem to be slight differences in decorative style peculiar to each locality.

Apparently all the Tena groups of the middle and lower Yukon Valley made pottery. Rainey reports potsherds from the fields of the Government Agricultural Experiment Station at Rampart, 80 miles above Tanana, and potsherds and deposits of fine clay used for pottery making at Arlan Jordan's camp six miles below Rampart Rapids, or 34 miles above the mouth of the Tanana. Indians from the lower Tanana used to come to these clay beds, and clay vessels were apparently traded as far up the Tanana as the Delta River, some 425 miles above the mouth of the Tanana. Pottery was not made, however, on the upper Tanana or on the upper Copper River. Our own informants told us of pottery 100 miles (by water) up the Nowitna and on the Innoko about 80 miles above Hologochaket. We found sherds at almost every site investigated from Tanana Mission and Kateel down to Fox Creek below Holy Cross.

While it is difficult to classify as either Eskimo or Indian the archaeological material from the sites in the vicinity of Holy Cross, it seems to have more of an “Eskimo” character than that obtained from sites farther up the Yukon. For this reason, it is here described in a separate chapter. This material consists of three small collections: the largest is from Fox Creek, about 14 miles below Holy Cross, and was collected both by Mr. Fox and by ourselves; the second is from Ghost Creek about a mile and a half above Holy Cross and was collected by the trader there; the third was collected by Mr. Charles Ray, and is said to have come from Fox Creek. It was purchased from the trader at Ghost Creek in Mr. Ray's absence; because of the slight uncertainty about the provenience of these specimens they will be indicated by an “R” in references to the plates.

Although the material from the middle and lower Yukon is for the most part so modern that it might with some justice be called ethnological rather than archaeological, and although it is a somewhat haphazard collection rather than a set of specimens from systematically excavated sites, it can illustrate in part the material culture of the Tena just prior to white contact. Typologically it lies between the culture of the Pacific Eskimo and Aleut (of the Kachemak Bay III horizon) and of the modern Bering Strait Eskimo on the one hand, and the culture of the interior Athabaskans of the upper Yukon, Mackenzie and Copper rivers, on the other hand. It seems to be a blending of old and new elements of diverse origins: some are from the ancient Icehunting horizon of the northern Eskimo; some, from the interior Snowshoe hunting complex of the northern Indians and Siberians; some seem to stem from an ancient North Pacific cultural continuum, others, from a recent circum- Pacific culture drift. It does not seem to be a particularly rich blend, however, even though we make due allowances for the scantiness of our collections. But because Tena culture is such a composite product, it will be interesting to take the various types which we found and attempt to trace their distribution and their relationships to similar types in the surrounding areas. In this way we may gain some insight into the building of Tena material culture.

In Attempting to analyze the various elements which belong to Tena culture we have purposely allowed ourselves to digress in order to discuss the possible origin and development of a number of traits that were only poorly represented in Tena culture, or even of those which we found no further up the Yukon than Fox Creek. But now we must return and try to place together the Tena elements in some sort of order. I must confess that my discussion has been perhaps too much from the point of view of Eskimo culture and not enough from the point of view of northern Athabaskan culture. This is in part the result of a personal bias, and in part because the literature is far fuller on Eskimo than on Athabaskan material culture and technology. On the other hand, it will by this time be quite evident that the Tena have been very strongly influenced by their Eskimo neighbors.