Kuskokwagmiut

The Kuskokwagmiut — the people of the Kuskokwim, or Kusquqvak in Yup'ik — are the Central Alaskan Yup'ik inhabitants of the broad lower Kuskokwim River and the shores of Kuskokwim Bay on the Bering Sea, while Athabaskan peoples hold the middle and upper river.

Their villages, among them Mamterilleq, whose people were called the Mamterillermiut, the Smokehouse People, lived above all on the river's salmon and whitefish runs, supplemented by seal and beluga hunting and fur trapping inland, with the qasgiq men's house at the centre of village life. Yup'ik groups had spread up the coastal rivers from the Bering shoreline by about the fourteenth century.

Russian seamen first recorded the river's name in 1826, and in 1832 the Russian-American Company founded Kolmakov Redoubt on the Kuskokwim as a fur post, binding the Kuskokwagmiut into the Russian trade network.