Qawalangin

The Qawalangin are Unangan people of Unalaska and the western Fox Islands, where volcanic slopes rise above the waters between the Pacific and the Bering Sea. Villages stood on Unalaska and neighbouring Amaknak long before Russian traders arrived. People hunted sea mammals and travelled among the islands in skin boats, drawing on knowledge of currents and weather.

Russian fur hunters came to Unalaska in 1759, and trade soon gave way to open warfare. Unangan resistance in the 1760s destroyed several Russian ships, but the traders returned with armed force, inflicting heavy losses on island communities. The newcomers sought valuable sea otter skins and increasingly compelled local hunters to supply them. Later, Unalaska became a centre of Russian trade in the Aleutians.