Tribal members take field trip to Anan Creek

A group of Tlingit residents had a unique opportunity for an historical site visit with state archaeologists last week at Anan Creek, revisiting a traditional fishing ground.

Now known best for its bear observatory, what draws those bears is the creek's yearly run of salmon. This salmon run at Anan has long been a source of food for the nearby population as well, as attested to by the remnants of a tidal fish trap still near the creek on Sealaska Corporation lands. The United States Forest Service has logged a number of similar stake-based traps around the region, placed along tidal flats to trap fish within as the tide ebbed off.

For last week's trip USFS brought over two of its staff archaeologists from Petersburg, Jane Smith and Gina Esposito, to accompany a group of elders and associates of the Wrangell Cooperative Association. Around 20 people in all made the trek on May 17 to Anan, a site on the mainland just south of Wrangell Island. WCA tribal administrator Esther Ashton worked with USFS recreation director Tory Houser to arrange the trip.

"I had heard the tribal organization really wanted to go down there," explained Houser. "We put together a grant and got the money together for our charter."

It was a two-year process to navigate, she went on, but funds to transport the archaeologists and send the whole group down were acquired. Unplanned but appreciated, it was a beautiful day to be out as well.

"We're super lucky we got this day," said Houser.

"I think it was just a good opportunity for us to get together with the Forest Service. We've had an awesome, collaborative relationship with them," said Ashton. "We tried to bring as many board members as we could, we brought employees, and we wanted to find a couple of tribal elders along to share what they knew."

"It was interesting, I haven't been down to Anan for years and years. Back in the 60s we were down there a lot," said James Stough, a member of the WCA Council. Participating in last week's visit, he explained the creek had been a mainstay for his family's subsistence fishing.

"My mother's mother used to take her back there," Stough recollected, close to 90 years ago. "From my understanding it was more of a summer place where they gathered and put up fish and gathered berries."

Arriving at the beachside site, the group explored the old trap setup. Anchored deeply into the soil, wooden stakes as big as five or six feet would be sharpened using stone adzes and arranged in a funneling line that led to a sort of corral. The exposed stumps of those at the Anan trap number in the hundreds, and Smith explained radiometric dating suggests the materials have been in use there for around 1,500 years.

"We can use archaeology to verify that," she said. "It's not just a historical site. There's a really ancient, prehistorical component. People have been down there for thousands of years."

Of the 369 or so trap and weir sites currently known of around Southeast Alaska, a few sampled sites date to modern times, while the oldest stake found dates back 5,600 years. For context, that would put the trap site 1,000 years older than the first pyramids in Egypt. Most tested sites were built between 2,250 and 1,500 years ago, however.

Another way to observe sites like Anan is through the use of soil augurs, handheld tools which pierce the earth and pull up several-inch cross-sections. Esposito said a revealing find at a fish camp such as the one they were visiting is its shell midden – old piles of discarded fish bone, crushed shell and charred sediments that have long since been covered with time. The layering of this material can under closer scrutiny help indicate how long the site has been in use.

"That shows us that people were at one time harvesting shellfish, living on that site either as a campsite or, as we saw today, maybe village-sized," Esposito said of the midden they found. She said that further ashore there are indications of large berms and other apparent modifications to the land, features which would be interesting to examine on a longer visit.

"Quite a lot of berries were growing at that site," she noticed.

Coupled with the evident stakes, Smith thought it seemed like Anan had been an important local fishery.

"There are thousands of stakes out there. So it also speaks to the breadth of the economy. There's a lot of people working at that site 1,500 years ago," she commented.

The group only stayed into the afternoon, returning to the harbor at around 4.

"It was a real nice day to do it," said Stough afterward. "I think everybody enjoyed themselves. It was a little bit of Native history not a lot of people know about."

One intent of the grant and the trip is information exchange, and Smith explained the elders' input was valuable to her work. Stough said his interest in traditional food and preservation methods had been rekindled by his daughter's work with local youth several years ago.

"I enjoyed it. It was fun to teach the kids how to salt and dry fish," he said. "It was an exchange program. We had kids from Kake that came down. They taught us how to take care of seals and seal oil."

Ashton said one of the more interesting finds had been one of the stake ends, which had been freed from the soil through natural processes. Examining it closely, she said the tool markings were still visible after so many years.

"It was pretty amazing to see," Ashton said.