Dex Xit'an

The Dex Xit'an, or Deg Xit'an, are an Athabaskan people of western Alaska, settled along the lower Yukon and the Anvik and Innoko rivers. Their autonym means local people and their language is Deg Xinag; the older name Ingalik, given them by their Yup'ik neighbours, is regarded as offensive.

They travelled the rivers in birchbark canoes in summer and by dog sled in winter, cooking in clay pots and wearing parkas and boots sewn from beaver or fish skin, with women marking their chins with two blue lines. Animist belief ordered a life built on river fishing and hunting.

Russian America reached them late: in 1830 the navigator Ivan Vasiliev explored the Kuskokwim country for the Russian-American Company, and in 1835 Andrei Glazanov crossed from the Yukon toward the Kuskokwim and left the first written notes on the Anvik River people.