Amiq

Amiq is the Unangan name for islands in the Bering Sea north of the Aleutians. Their shores are breeding grounds for vast numbers of northern fur seals. An Unangan account tells of Igadik, a young man from Unimak, who was driven north by a storm and found an island crowded with seals. After a year there he returned home with the story of this distant land.

In 1786 the Russian navigator Gerasim Pribylov reached the islands while searching for the seals’ breeding places. Russian traders brought Unangan hunters from the eastern Aleutian Islands to work the rookeries, and the skins entered a profitable fur trade. The islands became known to the Russians as the Pribilofs, with the largest called Saint Paul.