Eastern Pacific High Sea

The waters of this eastern Pacific sea lie beside the temperate rainforest coast of southeastern Alaska and the Alexander Archipelago. This is the homeland of the Tlingit, an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast whose autonym, Lingít, means “People of the Tides.” Their society developed amid islands, sheltered channels, rain-soaked forests, and rivers draining the Coast Mountains toward the sea. Rather than relying on farming, the Tlingit maintained a complex hunter-gatherer culture organized around the semi-sedentary management of fisheries. Maritime products made dense settlement possible along a coast often divided by difficult terrain.

Kinship gave Tlingit communities their structure. Children were born into their mother's clan, and property and hereditary roles passed through the mother's line. Tlingit traders also moved inland along rivers such as the Alsek, Tatshenshini, Chilkat, Taku, and Stikine. Regular travel through the Coast and Saint Elias Mountains supported extensive exchange and intermarriage with Athabascan peoples of the interior. Inland Tlingit communities lived as far away as northwestern British Columbia and southern Yukon. European contact began with Russian explorers in 1741 and Spanish expeditions in 1775, after which epidemic disease caused severe population loss. The archipelago's waterways remained central to a society in which fishing, travel, and kinship were closely linked.