Unalakleet

Unalakleet lies at the mouth of its river on Norton Sound, at the coastal end of the Kaltag Portage. This overland route links the river valley with the Yukon and made the settlement an important meeting place for coastal and interior traders. Unaligmiut exchanged goods with Athabascan neighbours, while wider networks carried furs and other products toward the Bering Strait. In the 1830s Russian traders entered this established world of exchange. An epidemic in 1836 devastated the village, and its surviving inhabitants later moved across the river mouth.