As promised, a blog post about the interior of Alaska, the location of our cabin, and the inspiration for several of my stories. In particular, my horror novella, The Dark Land, inspired by the Legend of the Cet’aeni or the “People with Tails.”
Since the white man’s “discovery” of the land the Aleut’s call Alyeska, there has been an intense fascination with this broad expanse of wilderness. Most people who visit barely scratch the surface, never understanding the true scale and depth of Alaska’s land. They stick to the tour buses, enjoying the safety of what my husband and I call the “look, but don’t touch” Alaska. These tourists will never experience her harsh bite. They can’t comprehend that behind her glacial beauty, beats a cold and unyielding heart that has lured many to a premature end.
None understand this better than the native peoples who populated this vast land long before the Europeans set foot here. Many distinct tribes and cultures lived within Alaska’s varied terrain. The subject of the different tribes and languages could take up multiple blog posts and books. If you are ever visiting Anchorage, a great stop is the Alaska Native Heritage Center:
They break down the enormous state into the 5 distinct regions of tribal peoples. It is a great place to get a better understanding of how these people lived and thrived in Alaska
As mentioned, most tourists see the southeast of Alaska. they take a cruise from Seattle or Vancouver up the inside passage. They see the land of the Haida and the Tlingit. Tall trees and totem poles. Calving glaciers and orcas.
They might head further north to Anchorage, or Los Anchorage as some of us who live here call it. Alaska’s largest city of roughly 300K people might seem paltry to outsiders, but it is a behemoth considering almost half the state’s population lives in one city. There’s another joke about Anchorage, “Alaska, 20 minutes from Anchorage.” Tourists who only come to Anchorage haven’t seen the real Alaska, they’ve just been brought here to spend money.
Some brave tourists venture into the interior, taking tours of Denali National Park and Fairbanks. Few tourists venture into the Eastern interior. Those who do might go visit Kennecott Mine, inside the boundaries of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, the largest US National Park by area. A few more might make the drive up the Alcan, visiting the Canadian cities of Dawson or Whitehorse, then visiting Chicken and Eagle on the US side of the border, all remnants of the great Yukon/Klondike gold-rush. Gold is still actively mined in these regions to this day. For those of you who regularly follow my posts, you’ll know this is where the cabin is located, just outside of Chicken.
The interior is the land of the Athabascan. Most people would think that the North Slope/Arctic region would be the coldest, but that is not the case. Without the warming/cooling effects of the ocean, the interior experiences the extremes of weather. The Alaska interior holds the record low in Prospect Creek, AK at -80F (-62C for my friends on the Celsius scale). The record low in Chicken, AK is pretty close, at -76. The record high was at Ft. Yukon (north of Fairbanks) at 100F.
The native Athabascans adapted to their landscape and extreme environment and carved an existence out of the harsh beauty.
The fierce, tenacious tribes of Athabascans that inhabited this particular region of wild rivers and harsh extremes were the Ahtna and Tanana.
The first attempts by Europeans to navigate and chart the copper river were met by fierce resistance from the Ahtna and Tanana. The parties disappeared, never returning.
It wasn’t until 1885, Lt. Henry T Allen and two other men set off from Portland, OR with explicit orders to map and navigate the Copper and Tanana Rivers and bring back information on the peoples living in the region. A link to information on this expedition is below.
https://armyhistory.org/5102-2/
The Ahtna, like all people have myths and legends. Legends of the Gguux (pronounced gookh) that pull people into the water to drown. Stories of the “Hairy Man” much like the Bigfoot or Yeti of other cultures.
But the tale I will spin for you is based loosely on the legend of the Cet’eani or “People with tails.” My husband has done a great deal of hiking and skiing in the back country of the Copper Valley and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park while his brother had a homestead in Slana. This story is loosely based on some of his experiences.
There are multiple iterations of this tale, as it varies depending on location, tribe and dialect.
http://www.native-languages.org/ahtna-legends.htm
But first, I will relate the basic tale:
A young hunter set forth from the village in late winter to provide fresh meat for his family. When he did not return, a party went out searching. They tracked his steps some distance from the village to a valley that was seldom explored. It was whispered that evil spirits dwelled within, lurking in caves and trees. Creatures with tails.
The hunters entered with caution. Coming over a ridge in the dark, they saw a bonfire in front of a cave. Creatures with tails frolicked in the firelight, playing a game, kicking the young hunters head to and fro. The hunters waited until the creatures retreated to their cave for the night. They sealed the entrance with rocks and lit it on fire. They went back to the village and warned others of what they had seen.
Knowing they had not truly vanquished the Cet’aeni, they made the valley forbidden, calling it the “Dark Land.”
As I get ready to self-publish my horror/paranormal romance novel, the Dark Land, set in the back country of Wrangel St. Elias National Park, I’ll be doing more posts about this particular region of Alaska, and our plans for our cabin this summer!