Tsedi Na'

Chitina stands where the Chitina River joins the Copper River, below the Wrangell Mountains. Ahtna families lived in semipermanent camps in the surrounding valleys, moving seasonally to fish, hunt and gather. The confluence supported a large village and lay on trails linking the Copper basin with the Tanana, Yukon, Cook Inlet and the Gulf of Alaska.

Copper from the Wrangell Mountains was shaped into tools and ornaments and traded through established Indigenous routes. Ahtna chiefs controlled access to important trails and acted as intermediaries, exchanging copper, furs, tanned skins and dried salmon with neighboring Dene, Tlingit and Eyak communities. Salmon runs supplied food for the villages and became an item of exchange, tying the river settlement to both interior and coastal economies.

Russian traders reached the Copper River in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but Ahtna communities retained control of most routes and remained selective about direct contact. Goods reached Chitina through Native intermediaries, while wars and epidemics also moved along the same corridors. The large village and its salmon fishery were the central institutions of the place.