Nadene

The Nadene peoples include the Tlingit of the Alaskan coast, the many Athabaskan, or Dene, peoples of the northwestern interior, and the Apachean Diné and Indé of the Southwest. The Athabaskans, who include the Chipewyan, held one of the widest territories in North America, from Alaska across the subarctic of Canada.

The Tlingit lived in the rainforest of the Alexander Archipelago, in matrilineal clans, and first met Europeans in 1741, when Russian explorers arrived. The Apachean peoples are descended from Athabaskans who migrated far south. By the 1600s the Diné lived in Dinétah, New Mexico, and took up farming from their Pueblo neighbours and sheep from the Spaniards.