Unaligmiut

The Unaligmiut, or Unalirmiut, are the Central Alaskan Yup'ik people of Norton Sound, whose villages included Unalakleet and St. Michael on the south shore and Elim and Golovin on the north, and who spoke the Unaliq subdialect of Yup'ik. Their country was a meeting ground of Yup'ik, Iñupiaq and interior Athabaskan peoples, for Unalakleet, at the end of the portage route linking the sound with the Yukon River, had long been a major trade fair between coast and interior.

In 1833 the Russian-American Company founded Redoubt St. Michael as a post for trade with the local Yup'ik. Later in the 1830s it added another post at Unalakleet, drawing the Unaligmiut into the Russian fur trade.