Nabesna

The Nabesna are the Upper Tanana people, the upriver branch of the Tanana Athabaskans, whose language is also called Nee'aaneegn'. Their country lies in the upper Tanana valley of eastern Alaska and extends into the Yukon, where the Beaver Creek and Scottie Creek bands lived; Tetlin, Northway and the old Nabesna village were their Alaskan centres.

Like other Tanana groups they were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers organized into small matrilineal bands, moving between a winter village and seasonal camps to take caribou, moose and whitefish. Cut off from the sea by mountains, they traded with Tanacross, Han and Tutchone neighbours, and Russian iron, beads and tobacco reached the upper valley through native middlemen long before any outsider visited it.