Yupik

The Yupik group gathers the Eskimo and Aleut peoples of southwestern and southern Alaska, closely related to the Inuit. The Central Alaskan Yup'ik live on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and along Bristol Bay, with fish camps in summer and villages in winter; the Alutiiq, or Sugpiaq, live on Prince William Sound and the Kodiak Archipelago; and the Unangax, or Aleuts, live along the Aleutian Islands, numbering perhaps 25,000 before European contact.

Russian occupation of the Alutiiq country began in 1784, after Grigory Shelikhov's men killed hundreds of Sugpiat at Refuge Rock. By the early 1800s Kodiak held more than sixty Alutiiq villages. In the 1820s the Russian-American Company moved Aleut families to the Commander and Pribilof Islands.