Eyak

The Eyak are an Alaska Native people of the Northwest Coast whose villages stood on the Copper River Delta around present-day Cordova, between the Chugach Sugpiaq to the west and the Tlingit to the east. They trace their origins to interior groups who descended the Copper River for its salmon runs, wintering in permanent villages such as Alaganik and using seasonal fish camps.

Their language forms its own branch of the Na-Dené family, closest to the Athabaskan languages. Small in number, the Eyak were long pressed by Chugach raiders and drawn into trade and intermarriage with the Tlingit.

Russian fur traders reaching the Gulf of Alaska in the 1780s recognized them as a distinct people, mapped their territory and brought the Orthodox faith and new diseases, which together with Tlingit assimilation sharply reduced their numbers in the early nineteenth century.