Mythologies of the Tanana Athabaskan Tribe

The Tanana Athabaskans, Tanana Athabascans, or Tanana Athapaskans are an Alaskan Athabaskan people from the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group. They are the original inhabitants of the Tanana River (in Tanana languages Tth'itu', literally 'straight water,' in Koyukon language Tene No', literally 'trail water') drainage basin in east-central Alaska Interior, United States and a little part (White River First Nation) lived in Yukon, Canada. Tanana River Athabaskan peoples are called in Lower Tanana and Koyukon language Ten Hʉt'ænæ (literally 'trail people'), in Gwich'in language Tanan Gwich'in (literally 'people of Tanana River'). In Alaska, where they are the oldest, there are three or four groups identified by the languages they speak. These are the Tanana proper or Lower Tanana (Kokht'ana) and/or Middle Tanana, Tanacross or Tanana Crossing (Koxt'een), and Upper Tanana (Kohtʼiin). The Tanana Athabaskan culture is a hunter-gatherer culture with a matrilineal system. Tanana Athabaskans were semi-nomadic and lived in semi-permanent settlements in the Tanana Valley lowlands. Traditional Athabaskan land use includes fall hunting of moose, caribou, Dall sheep, and small terrestrial animals, as well as trapping. The Athabaskans did not have any formal tribal organization. Tanana Athabaskans were strictly territorial and used hunting and gathering practices in their semi-nomadic way of life and dispersed habitation patterns. Each small band of 20–40 people normally had a central winter camp with several seasonal hunting and fishing camps, and they moved cyclically, depending on the season and availability of resources. Their neighbors are other Athabaskan-speaking peoples: in Alaska, Koyukon (north and northwest), Gwich'in (north and northeast), Hän (northeast), Dena'ina (a little part of the southwest), and Ahtna (south); in Canada Hän (northeast) and Northern and Southern Tutchone (east). The language of the Upper Kuskokwim people is more closely related to the Lower Tanana language, but not neighbor.

Tanana, Athabaskan-speaking North American Indian group that lived along the headwaters of the Tanana River in what is now central Alaska. Traditionally, they were nomadic hunters, relying chiefly on caribou, moose, and mountain sheep for food and clothing. They lived in skin-covered domed lodges in winter and in bark or brush lean-tos or huts in summer. They were organized into several loosely led matrilineal clans and used the potlatch to distribute material wealth throughout the group and to increase personal prestige. Although the central person in Tanana religious life was the shaman, the religion was highly individualized; each person developed his own beliefs, practices, amulets, and taboos. (See also shamanism.) Early 21st-century population estimates indicated some 200 individuals of Tanana descent. Tanana River, river, east-central Alaska, U.S. Its name is an Athabascan word meaning “river trail.” An important tributary of the Yukon River, it rises from two headstreams, the Chisana and Nabesna rivers on the north side of the Alaska Range, and it flows some 570 miles (915 km) from the head of the Chisana northwestward along the base of the Alaska Range to join the Yukon River near the village of Tanana. The river drains the north slopes of the high Alaska Range and is fed by a number of glaciers. The river drains approximately 44,000 square miles (114,000 square km) of interior Alaska. The Tanana and White rivers together contribute almost 30 percent of the total water flow of the Yukon River, though they make up only about 20 percent of its drainage area. The sediment-laden Tanana is rich in minerals. Its flow peaks in July, and by late summer it becomes a shallow stream. The river was first explored by Russian traders in the mid-19th century. The Tanana valley, an important gold-producing area made famous in 1904 by the gold rush, is also a lumbering district and one of Alaska’s major farming regions, producing potatoes, truck crops, and small grains. Fairbanks, the terminus of the Alaska and Richardson highways (which follow the river west of the Yukon territory, Canada) and of the Alaska Railroad (from the port of Seward), is the commercial and distribution centre of the Tanana valley. In 1967 the river overflowed, flooding Fairbanks. Along the river is Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge and Tanana Valley State Forest.

Tanana /ˈtænənɑː/ (Hohudodetlaatl Denh in Koyukon) is a city in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. At the 2010 census the population was 246, down from 308 in 2000. It was formerly known as Clachotin, adopted by Canadian French. Jules Jetté (1864–1927), a Jesuit missionary who worked in the area and documented the language, recorded the Koyukon Athabascan name for the village as Hohudodetlaatl Denh, literally, ‘where the area has been chopped’. Several residents are chronicled in the 2012 Discovery Channel TV series Yukon Men. Almost 80% of the town's population are Native Americans, traditionally Koyukon (Denaakk'e) speakers of the large Athabaskan (Dené) language family. Subsequently, an Anglican mission and several other trading posts were established nearby. In 1898 the U.S. Army, under the leadership of Capt. P.H. Ray, founded Ft. Gibbon at the present location of Tanana. Ft. Gibbon's purpose was to oversee shipping and trading, maintain civil order, and install and take care of telegraph lines connecting to Nome and to Tanana Crossing, on the way to Valdez. All other Euro-American activities in the area near the Tanana-Yukon confluence moved upriver to accommodate Ft. Gibbon and the increased steamboat traffic caused by gold seekers. St. James Church moved to the present site of Tanana to serve the Euro-American population, and the Mission of Our Savior was constructed at the bottom of a hill opposite the confluence. The mission site became a center of activity for indigenous people in the area. Ft. Gibbon closed in 1923, but the town and mission remained. In the 1930s a regional hospital was built in Tanana, and the Native Village of Tanana was officially chartered by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1939. The hospital served people throughout most of the rural northern regions of Alaska until 1982. During World War II Tanana's airfield was one of the stops for aircraft en route to Russia as part of the Lend-Lease program. Postwar, a White Alice communications site was built on a hill nine miles behind Tanana, as a part of the Cold War Era's Distant Early Warning system (DEW-Line). Also during the 1950s the mission closed and the indigenous families still living at the mission site moved down to the main town.