Chignik

Chignik, or Cirniq in Alutiiq, lies on the Pacific side of the Alaska Peninsula. Its river connects salmon-rich lakes and a lagoon with Chignik Bay, and has long offered a route into the peninsula's interior. Archaeological sites line the waterways of a treeless country inhabited by Alutiiq people for millennia. At Chignik Bay stood the Alutiiq village of Kaluiak, destroyed by Russian intruders in the late eighteenth century as the fur trade spread along the peninsula.