Chugashigmuit

The Chugashigmuit, also spelled Chugachigmiut or Chugach Sugpiaq, are an Alutiiq people of the southern Alaskan coast, centred on the Kenai Peninsula and Prince William Sound. Their autonym Sugpiaq means real person, and their Chugach dialect of Alutiiq is a Pacific Gulf language of the Yupik family.

For millennia they lived from the sea, hunting sea mammals and fishing from skin boats, trading and fighting by turns with the neighbouring Eyak, Ahtna and Tlingit.

In 1741 they became the first indigenous Alaskans to meet Europeans when Vitus Bering's Russian expedition reached their shores. Russian fur hunters soon drew them into the sea-otter trade of Russian America, and Spanish, British and American explorers visited the sound later in the century.