ATV U
R
I
K
, A
K
N
P
P
:
A T
O
by
Douglas Deur, Ph.D.
Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit
University of Washington with contributions by
Don Callaway, Ph.D.
Alaska Regional Office
National Park Service
PNW CESU
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
COLLEGE OF FOREST RESOURCES
BOX 352100
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 980195-2100
Completed under Task Agreement J8W07070031 to Cooperative Agreement
H8W07060001 between the University of Washington and the National Park Service.

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Executive Summary
The Physical Setting of Igiugig and Kokhanok
The Communities of Igiugig and Kokhanok
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4
6
Chronology of Motorized Vehicle Use in the Study Area
Dogsleds
Snowmachines
Three-Wheeled All Terrain Vehicles and Motorcycles
17
17
21
25
Obtained Area 36
Hunting
Fishing
Plant Materials
36
41
44
Other Reasons for Visitation 49
Seasonal Transportation Barriers: Peck’s Creek and Gibraltar River 60
Trails
Procurement 65
70
Recent Economic Changes and ATV Use
Effects of ATV and Snowmachine Use on Lands and Resources
Sources
Appendix: Maps
Notes
88
98
102
106
112

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This report provides an overview of all-terrain vehicle (ATV) use in Katmai National
Park and Preserve by residents of Igiugig and Kokhanok, Alaska. The contents of this report are drawn principally from focused interviews on the topic with five past or present residents of the community of Igiugig, conducted for the National Park Service
(NPS) in 2002, as well as four interviews of Kokhanok residents conducted for the NPS in 1999 by Don Callaway (NPS) and Bill Schneider (University of Alaska, Fairbanks), and one interview conducted for the NPS in 1997 by Judith Morris. This interview data has been clarified using published and unpublished reports on the topic.
These sources provide a general view of ATV use within the two communities, as it has evolved over the last half century. Setting the stage for this discussion, the report addresses the history of transportation in these communities, including vehicles other than ATVs, such as dogsleds and snowmachines. Igiugig interviewees mention snowmobile use in what is now the Preserve, and probably the Park (together, the “study area”), as early as 1960. While available written documentation from earlier studies suggests that ATVs were not owned by Igiugig residents until sometime after 1974, interviewees for the current project suggest that three-wheeled all-terrain vehicles were used in these communities as early as 1970-71, and were sometimes borrowed from households in neighboring communities prior to the purchase of ATVs by Igiugig residents. Igiugig interviewees indicate that ATVs had become a well-established part of subsistence and trapping by the mid to late 1970s, and were used in lands now in the
Preserve at around the same time. Kokhanok residents, in contrast, describe the limited use of military surplus vehicles for subsistence purposes as early as the late 1940s, though the geographical extent of this use is unclear. Snowmobiles first arrived in
Kokhanok between the late 1950s and early-1960s, and were used by some residents to
“rediscover” the Preserve at that time. Some Kokhanok residents used motorcycles for hunting purposes in the late 1960s or early 1970s, despite the limitations of these vehicles. Kokhanok residents suggest that their use of three-wheeled ATVs began no
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later than 1974, and possibly sooner; by 1981, ATV technology had developed to the extent that Kokhanok residents had intensified their use of the Preserve. Residents of both communities also describe the considerable expansion of ATV use in the 1980s and
1990s, reflecting the wider availability and lower cost of this technology, coupled with climatological changes that have reduced the period of potential snowmobile travel.
Consistently, interviewees report that the use of ATVs and other transportation technologies in the study area is seasonal. They indicate that ATVs are used from fall through spring, when the ground is frozen, but that snowmobiles are used instead of
ATVs during periods with especially heavy snow pack. At the present time there is only limited and sporadic use of Katmai National Park and Preserve by Igiugig residents during the warmer, frost-free period each year, due to the significant barrier posed by
Peck’s Creek. For the residents of Kokhanok, Gibraltar River provides a somewhat less imposing barrier to access, but it is impassable during high water conditions.
The northwest part of Katmai appears to be on the geographical margins of Igiugig and
Kokhanok’s subsistence hunting (and historical fishing) territories and the use of this area appears to vary considerably from year to year – the extent of its use reflects, in part, the availability of fish and game closer to Igiugig. Despite this, the Preserve is reported to have some level of visitation by Igiugig residents especially each year, traveling by ATV and/or snowmachine. Interviewees especially discuss Kukaklek Lake as a center of recent hunting and trapping activities in the Preserve. Consultants suggest that the physical traces of ATV use in the Park and Preserve are few, due to the fact that ATVs are almost exclusively used in this area when the ground is frozen, and the number of users is small, reflecting the small populations of these communities.
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This report also provides a thematic overview of other aspects of ATV use in Igiugig and
Kokhanok, addressing all of the principal themes that emerged in the course of the 2002,
1999, and 1997 interviews with residents of these communities. Their accounts describe how ATVs have become the transportation method of choice within Igiugig and
Kokhnok, and have been integrated into preexisting patterns of subsistence and economic
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activities over the course of the late 20 th
century. Interviewees’ accounts suggest that these communities’ residents view ATV use as fundamental to most local transportation and a necessary adaptation to modern economic pressures, as well as climatological changes that have made snowmobile and dogsled use untenable for much of the year.
Motorized transportation, interviewees note, is especially efficient and does not require the considerable time and labor requirements of dog teams. While this report presents a faithful summary of interview content, it is important to note that the interviews were recorded between 6 and 11 years before the time this report was written; therefore, certain observations on the contemporary status of subsistence activities or transportation options may not be current.
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Igiugig is located within a lowland spruce-hardwood forest biome, while just outside the village are pockets of black spruce populating large expanses of muskeg. The wetter lowlands to the east and south contain a mixture of trees such as stunted tamarack, birch, aspen, and poplar. Lowbush cranberries and willows are buffered by a carpet of mosses and sedges. Horsetail, blueberries, bluejoint reed grass, Arctic dock and sweet coltsfoot are commonly found in the area. Igiugig is located at the western outlet of Iliamna Lake about 20 miles northwest of Kukaklek Lake, which is within the boundaries of Katmai
National Preserve.
The community of Kokhanok is situated on the southeastern edge of Lake Iliamna. Also situated within a lowland spruce-hardwood forest biome, Kokhanok’s adjacent muskeg areas are somewhat less expansive than those found adjacent to Igiugig. Iliamna Lake, located 200 air miles southwest of Anchorage, is the largest lake in Alaska. Lying lengthwise east to west, the lake is 78 miles long and 22 miles wide and up to 986 feet deep. Iliamna Lake covers 1,000 square miles and is the second largest lake (second to
Lake Michigan) lying completely within the United States. Located directly southeast of
Kokhanok is Gibraltar Lake, a lake that is seven miles long and about five miles wide.
Two other lakes, Kukaklek and Nonvianuk, are located south and west of Kokhanok and are situated completely within the boundaries of Katmai National Preserve.
The Iliamna Lake region is located in a transitional climatic zone. The continental air masses from Alaska’s interior interact with the marine air masses from Bristol Bay, resulting in highly variable climatic conditions. King Salmon, with the closest NOAA-
CIRES weather station, notes that daily mean high temperatures were rarely above 60°F, while daily mean low temperatures are seldom below 0°F. Climate plays an important role in the choice of transportation modes by Igiugig and Kokhanok residents, as will be discussed in the pages that follow. Most notable has been a trend towards warmer winters with little snow. Windy conditions prevail throughout the area and sometimes
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scour the tundra and drift snow, sometimes removing snow from much of the landscape in times of low snow cover.
The portion of Katmai National Park and Preserve discussed in this document – the northern portion of Katmai – is part of the lake-studded Nushagak-Bristol Bay Lowlands, while also containing foothills of the Aleutian Range. Lakes are numerous in this area, and represent part of a broader hydrologic system that also includes ponds, rivers, streams, and marshes situated in valleys that have been partially dammed by glacial deposits. Drainages are irregular in this region, but the area grades generally westward, toward Bristol Bay, and northward, toward Lake Iliamna. On the western edge of the
Preserve are mountains of well over 3,000 feet in elevation.
It should be noted that, in recent years, certain game species have been in rapid decline on the Alaska Peninsula. Caribou numbers, in particular, have been declining rapidly, including the Northern Alaska Peninsula herd, the Southern Alaska Peninsula herd, the
Nushagak herd, the Mulchatna herd and the Unimak herd. In the last three years, caribou numbers have reached a threshold so that Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the
United States Fish and Wildlife Department have instigated hunting closures for some of these herds and approved expanded predator management near the calving grounds of others. These recent changes are not reflected in the 1997-2002 interviews that inform this document. The impact of these changes on hunting in the study area, and on the use of alternative transportation technologies, remains unclear.
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The community of Igiugig is situated at the mouth of Lake Iliamna where the Kvichak
River exits this lake. Mention of the community is absent from most historical records although it has long been remembered by indigenous residents as a fish camp and village site. Residents of the community are descendants of residents of the Igiugig community, as well as small villages in the nearby areas of Kaskanak Flats, Newhalen, Big Mountain,
Branch River and Kukaklek Lake. The consolidation of a single permanent village from these historically dispersed and seasonal communities was among the factors that contributed to a diffuse geographical pattern of resource use by these residents, as well as wide-ranging patterns of travel that originated well before the era of motorized vehicles
(Endter-Wada, Levine, and ADF&G 1994, Morris 1994, Callaway n.d., Callaway pers. comm. 2007).
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In 2000, Igiugig consisted of 53 people, representing 13 families living in 16 households; the populations is reported to be 71.70% Native American, 16.98% White, 11.32% claiming ancestry from two or more races and 1.89% Hispanic (U.S. Census Bureau
2000). Based on her 1983 research, Judith Morris (1986: 28-29) reported of the Native community, which is conventionally identified
“as predominately Eskimo; however, in conversations with local residents it appeared that most referred to themselves as Aleut… Community members were closely knit, by overlapping kinship ties which bound together several of the households. Yupik continued to be used as the first language in many households. Most residents were Russian Orthodox in religious practice.”
While today there are residents of all ages, the community’s residents are relatively young with 43.4% of the population under the age of 18 as of the year 2000 (U.S. Census
Bureau 2000).
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Source: Callaway n.d., based on U.S. Census data
Interviewees noted a number of interpersonal ties linking the communities of the area – especially Igiugig, Kokhanok, and Levelock – and it is important to note that some of the findings regarding any one of these communities might be cautiously applied to the others.
3
Though commercial fishing has declined somewhat in recent decades, fishing still accounts for roughly 54% of Native household income in Igiugig. This far exceeds the proportion of household income from education (18%) and local government (15%), the second and third largest sources of household income respectively. Trapping, the only other primary resource industry employment reported for the community, provides only
1% of Native household income (see Chart 1).
4
While Igiugig clearly has an active cash economy, subsistence resources continue to be very important to the community.
5
Igiugig is heavily dependent on the harvest of wildlife resources with an estimated annual per capita harvest of 725 pounds of wild fish and meat (calculated on the basis of average animal weight multiplied by the number of animals reported caught).
6
As indicated in Chart 2, this figure is towards the high end of the distribution within Alaska. It is worthy of note that while Igiugig’s per capita harvest is lower than Kokhanok (one of the highest in the state) it is considerably more than the averages for rural Alaska (see Charts 2, 3; Table 2).
7
7

Igiugig Native Source of Income
18%
HH Ave Wages Fishing
HH Ave Wages Trapping
HH Ave Wages - Transportation
HH Ave Wages - Services
HH Ave Wages - State Gov't.
HH Ave Wages - Local Gov't.
HH Ave Wages - Education
54%
15%
5%
6%
Source: ADF&G 1992a, as compiled by Callaway n.d.
Certain Alaska Department of Fish and Game technical reports document the role of subsistence resources in the community, providing figures for the harvest of various species in recent decades (Morris 1985, 1986; see also Behnke 1978, Dissler 1980).
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Historical information on subsistence uses and areas for the community can be found in the work of Behnke (1978). In addition, the Katmai Research Project report contains detailed information regarding subsistence practices in Igiugig and neighboring communities, as well as changes in these practices over time, that should be consulted for a more complete perspective on this topic (Katmai Research Project n.d., Endter-Wada,
Levine, and ADF&G 1994, Morris 1994, Morris, Keenan and Hanewald 1994).
Regrettably, available data do not facilitate meaningful analysis of trends in wild game
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procurement or consumption. Alaska Department of Fish and Game data sets are only available for 1983 and 1992; a third data set, representing 2004 harvests, is forthcoming but at present unavailable for use outside of the ADF&G.
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The considerable variability in year-to-year harvests for wild game species, especially the highly mobile caribou herds, makes meaningful inference from two data points problematic. In addition, available Alaska Department of Fish and Game harvest data do not provide the kind of geographical specificity that would allow meaningful analysis for the current project
(Don Callaway, pers. comm. 2008).
10
The targeted interviews conducted for this project in 1999 and 2002 were conducted in such a manner that they partially remediated these shortcomings.
Kokhanok
Western Alaska
Igiugig
Rural Interior Alaska
Arctic
Southwest-Aleutian
Kodiak Island
Rural Southeast
U.S. Store Bought Meat/Fish
Rural Southcentral
Juneau
Anchorage
Fairbanks/Delta
35
19
16
222
197
276
248
Per Capita (lbs.)
505
652
704
725
767
U.S. Per Capita Consumption
Igiugig
998
Kokhanok
Western Alaska
Igiugig
Rural Interior Alaska
Arctic
Southwest-Aleutian
Kodiak Island
Rural Southeast
U.S. Store Bought Meat/Fish
Rural Southcentral
Juneau
Anchorage
Fairbanks/Delta
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Source: ADF&G 1992a,1992b, n.d., as compiled by Callaway n.d.
For general comparative purposes only. Data on Alaska communities represent dressed weight of all subsistence harvests, per capita; U.S. Per capita consumption figure represents average purchased quantities of meat, fish and poultry nationwide.
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Source: ADF&G 1992a, as compiled by Callaway n.d.
41%
14%
25%
4%
10%
2%
5%
Salmon
Non-Salmon Fish
Large Land Mammals
Small Land Mammals
Marine Mammals
Birds and Eggs
Marine Invertebrates
Vegetation
All Resources
Salmon
Non-Salmon Fish
Land Mammals
Large Land Mammals
Small Land Mammals
Marine Mammals
Birds and Eggs
Marine Invertebrates
Average Pounds
Consumed by Household
2826.25
693.73
392.00
1264.44
1158.00
106.44
282.93
68.36
0.00
Per Capita Pounds Mean Per Capita
USE/DAY
724.68
Pounds
1.99
177.88
100.51
324.21
296.92
27.29
72.54
17.52
0.00
.49
.28
.89
.81
.09
.28
.05
0.00
Source: ADF&G 1992a, as compiled by Don Callaway n.d. and Mary McBurney n.d.
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Over 35 miles to the east of Igiugig is the community of Kokhanok. The original site of
Kokhanok (a term meaning “east wind”) was probably located a couple of miles down the beach from the site of the current community. The original community site referred to as Isiguig (“point of land”) is probably the location where people were enumerated in the 1890 census. By 1907 a Russian Orthodox Church and a store were present at the original site. Shortly after this date, a reindeer station was briefly established at Isiguig and the community apparently relocated at this time. The herding area for this station was south around Big Mountain towards Kukaklek Lake.
As with Igiugig, residents of the community are descendants of residents of numerous small villages in the nearby area. As Morris (1994:74) notes,
“Many of the family groups living in Kokhanok in the late twentieth century have ties to the villages of the general Lake Iliamna area that date back decades.
As with Igiugig, it appears likely that modern Kokhanok houses descendants of residents from Kaskanak Flats, Newhalen, Big Mountain, Branch River and Kukaklek Lake.
Also, residents’ accounts make it clear that there have been intermarriage and migration between the communities of Igiugig and Kokhanok. And, as with Igiugig, the consolidation of a permanent village from historically dispersed communities arguably has contributed to a diffuse geographical pattern of resource use by these residents, as well as wide-ranging patterns of travel that originated well before the era of motorized vehicles (Endter-Wada, Levine, and ADF&G 1994, Morris 1994, Callaway n.d.,
Callaway pers. comm. 2007). To underscore this point, interviewee Gregory Andrew recalled of his parents’ generation,
“they live quite a few different places, they move around a lot. There were no schools back then that I know of...they went where it was easier to hunt, for the fish, and trap. Where it was easier living, mostly” (Andrew
1999).
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In 2000, Kokhanok consisted of 174 people, representing 40 families living in 52 households; the population is reported to be 86.78% Native American, 8.05% White,
4.02% claiming ancestry from two or more races, 1.15% Hispanic, and 1.15% from
“other races” (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). Most Native Alaskan residents commonly identify themselves as Aleut, while others identify as Yupik, Athabaskan, or some combination. Based on her 1983 research, Judith Morris (1986: 28) reported that over
75% of the residents of Kokhanok identified themselves as Aleut or “Eskimo.” As in
Igiugig, Kokhanok’s residents are relatively young with 35.1% of the population under the age of 18 as of the year 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau 2000).
As Table 3 (below) indicates, the population of Kokhanok has grown steadily, especially in the last three decades.
Like Igiugig, Kokhanok has an active cash economy, but subsistence resources continue to be very important to the community.
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Kokhanok is remarkably dependent on the harvest of wildlife resources with an estimated annual per capita harvest of 998 pounds of wild fish and meat (calculated on the basis of average animal weight multiplied by the number of animals reported caught).
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As indicated in Chart 2, this figure is very high, even by the standards of Native Alaska. It is worthy of note that Kokhanok’s per capita harvest of fish and game is almost 4.5 times the per capita consumption of fish, meat and poultry eaten by the average resident of the United States (though clearly there are challenges to comparing grow harvest weights of Alaskan Native communities with store-bought meats found elsewhere in the U.S). (see Chart 2). While land mammals represent a significant portion of the Kokhanok diet, the consumption of fish is proportionately greater (66% of the subsistence diet, as opposed to 38% in Igiugig) – a difference, noted by some interviewees, that might shape uses and perceptions of Katmai
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(Chart 4). As noted in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Community Profile
Database for Kokhanok, existing data for Kokhanok suggest that the community is on the high end of the spectrum for Alaska communities in its reliance on subsistence resources:
“The annual per capita harvest of subsistence foods for Kokhanok in 1992 was an astounding 1013.3 lbs, and was comprised of the following resources: salmon (55.6%), non-salmon fish (10.4%), land mammals
(28.8%), marine mammals (0.4%), birds and eggs (2.2%)…marine invertebrates (0.3%), and vegetation (2.2%)” (ADF&G 1992b: 343).
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Source: ADF&G 1992b, as compiled by Callaway
All Resources
Salmon
Non-Salmon Fish
Land Mammals
Marine Mammals
Birds and Eggs
Marine Invertebrates
Average Pounds
Consumed by Household
3390.50
1885.10
352.60
976.46
135.61
745.92
101.72
Per Capita Pounds
1013.30
563.39
105.38
291.83
40.53
222.93
30.4
Source: ADF&G 1992b
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A N
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The current study draws primarily from a series of interviewees conducted in 2002 on the topic of ORV use, which were undertaken by the NPS to supplement other available data sources. The 2002 interviews included five individuals, who were past or present residents of the community of Igiugig, including: Randy Alvarez, Michael Andrew,
Mary Olympic, Dan Salmon, and George Wilson, Jr.
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This represents a majority of the long-distance hunters in the community, and perhaps all of those who were hunting prior to the passage of ANILCA. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are only 30 adults residing in the community; moreover, Don Callaway estimates an even smaller population – with perhaps a total community population of 32 individuals, with only half of these being active adults - at the time of these interviews (U.S. Census Bureau 2000;
D. Callaway pers. comm. 2008). In a community such as Igiugig, where perhaps 30% of the residents feed the majority of the population; NPS Alaska regional Anthropologist
Don Callaway notes that the list of five interviewees for Iguigig includes “the major hunters from all of the families” in that community (Don Callaway, pers. comm. 2008).
The 1999 and 1997 interviews included five individuals, who were past or present residents of Kokhanok, including: Gregory Andrew, Gabby Gregory, John Nelson, Jr.,
Garith Nielsen, and Danny Roehl. While a proportionately smaller pool of interviewees in a community the size of Kokhanok, it is worth noting that there are no more than 107 adults in this community, living in some 52 households. The interviewees are thus residents of roughly 10% of households and, if regional trends apply, may represent the principal hunters for roughly a third of the Kokhanok population, and apparently includes a majority of those hunters in the community who were active prior to the passage of
ANILCA. Project interviewers, Don Callaway and Bill Schneider, have recorded biographical information regarding each of these interviewees that is available in the files of the NPS Alaska Regional Office.
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For the purposes of this report, “off road vehicles” and its acronym, “ORV,” are used in reference to all off-road vehicles, including wheeled all-terrain vehicles, and other motorized forms of land transportation used by residents of Igiugig and Kokhanok to access subsistence hunting and fishing areas. (This report also discusses snowmachine use, which was addressed incidentally in the course of project interviews.) The term “all terrain vehicle” (a subset of “ORV’s”) and its acronym, “ATV,” is used specifically in reference to three- and four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles.
Regrettably, the available data do not provide a comprehensive or unambiguous view of the geographical extent of ATV use within Katmai National Park and Preserve, the frequency of ATV use, or the relative importance of preserve lands as a source of resources used for subsistence in relation to lands outside the Preserve. It is apparent that
ATV use within Katmai by both communities is principally concentrated in the Preserve, especially in the vicinity of Kukaklek Lake. It is also clear that some ATV use, especially by Igiugig residents, occurs in the northern portion of the Park, in such areas as
Battle Lake and the south shore of Nonvianuk Lake.
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Where specific geographical information is available, it is provided in the text that follows - especially when this information suggests uses within Katmai National Park and Preserve. A number of place names mentioned by interviewees are included in this document to provide a sense of the geographical scope of ATV use; nonetheless, it cannot be assumed that this list is a complete reflection of the areas visited by ATV. When Katmai National Park is the area being discussed, it is specifically named as such in this report. When the geographical areas addressed remain ambiguous, but are clearly located somewhere in the Park and/or
Preserve, this document simply uses the term “Katmai” as a shorthand for the entire NPS unit. The term “study area” is used more generally in the text – this term is used in reference to lands within Katmai National Park and Preserve, but also may refer to lands of ambiguous provenience and in some cases might sit near, but outside of the Katmai boundary.
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Interviewees described decades of use within the study area, with modes of transportation ranging from dogsleds to modern four-wheel ATVs. While their references to events prior to the 1960s were few, interviewees did provide occasional references to earlier times.
Prior to the introduction of motorized vehicles, lands now in Katmai National Park and
Preserve were accessible principally by dogsled and by foot. According to Igiugig interviews, families from that community visited the Kukaklek Lake area by foot and by dogsled, apparently into the first half of the 20 th
century:
“I know my dad was used to lots [of] walk[ing]. Sometime he come down, he had a store over there, used to call him Igiugig Trading Post. Sometime he come down from Kukaklek, walk, he go back up round trip, walk.
[That round trip took him] Nine days… Sometime he take five dogs, he could carry stuff…Pack dogs, yeah. One dog, he could carry one case of milk. And one dog would carry one case of food, in a can” (Olympic
2002: 5).
Kokhanok residents spoke in more detail about the period of dog team use. Dog teams were depicted as the principal source of transportation through the first half of the 20 th century. For example, Gabby Gregory recalls that his family used dogsleds to access their fish camps inside what is now the Preserve into the 1940s and perhaps the 1950s:
“Those days when they used to drive dogs” (Gregory 1999).
The seasonality of resource use was significantly shaped by the limits on transportation.
Dogs could be used when snowpack was good in the winter, but there were significant dangers to traveling with dogsleds during the shoulder seasons, when ice was thin and the ground was not frozen. Still, dogs were sometimes still used in summertime resource harvests as well:
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“Old days they used to walk mostly in summertime. Take their dogs, put pack to em or when they move to the place where they wanted to stay there until this time year [November] maybe when lake started freezing they came back to their village. They go hunt or something, hunt game and trap where the fur are maybe” (Gregory 1999).
Kokhanok residents recall that dog teams allowed them to have considerable mobility in the wintertime, allowing people to relocate to distant camps for hunting, fishing and trapping:
“sometimes spend the night out [when traveling by dogsled]...where those old-timers had a camp and [I] spend the night with them or even trap with them in the wintertime. And those were the good years for me” (G.
Andrew 1999).
An entire family could be pulled by a large enough sled team, so that families could participate in the processing of fish and game at these sites (Roehl 1997). However,
Kokhanok interviewees also noted that the effective use of dog teams requires a considerable investment of time and resources, so that each family had to store hundreds of pounds of fish or meat to sustain their dogs through the year:
“you’d see these guys with a happy dog team and...that’s the kind you wanted. Everyone wanted a happy dog team. Keep ‘em well fed and run
‘em all the time. Take good care of ‘em” (G. Andrew 1999).
While non-motorized transportation appears to have been most common in the first decades of the 20 th
century, Igiugig residents recall that certain motorized technologies arrived during this period. Interviewees recalled outboard boat motors, for example, which were sometimes used in what is now the Preserve.
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Speaking of the family red fish camp on Battle Lake, Mary Olympic recalled that her family used an outboard motor on their traditional umiak boat:
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“With that, the little motor five-horse Johnson…they always make the umiak, they call them umiak, almost like canoe, put skin, all kinds of skin, brown bear skin, moose skin together… When they freeze up, we stay in the winter camp up there. With reindeer. Even reindeer we have to move more with us [by boat]” (Olympic 2002: 13).
Kokhanok residents also recall that boat motors were among the earliest motorized transportation technologies to arrive in the region. Speaking of the 1940s or 1950s, apparently, Danny Roehl recalled,
“you always had a power boat, what you call a power boat, you know. It had one of those conversions with a motor in it. Then the outboard finally came along. There was the old Evinrude and pretty good sized skiff and a kicker on it. And that was how we get [around]” (Roehl 1997).
Andrew Gregory’s accounts imply that these motors arrived in the early 1950s. Speaking of Kokhanok residents, he suggests that
“Summertime they used canoe...some of ‘em did. ‘Course they did not know outboard since early part of ‘50s maybe now around here. Most of em...didn’t have much motors and machines” (Gregory 1999).
Together with dog teams, the use of motorized boats resulted in a combined transportation pattern that emphasized dogs in the winter and boats in the summertime:
“seems like in the wintertime it was dogs, where ever we went…we went with dogs and summertime with the boat” (Nielsen 1999). This dual seasonal pattern existed prior to the arrival of motors.
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It is clear that the general pace of adoption for motorized vehicles was faster in this general area than was true elsewhere in Alaska: “Variable winter conditions and the increasing use of aircraft, jeeps, and ATVs caused the use of dog teams to decline in this area much earlier than in other parts of the state” (Behnke 1978: 139). Trucks and tractors were sometimes found in the region. “Jeeps and other four-wheel drive vehicles” were in common usage in the region by the 1940s, tied to the military presence in King Salmon, the Iliamna airstrip, and other locations in Alaska during World War II (Behnke 1978:
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139). Some may have been used in Igiugig in the mid-20 th
century, from the 1930s through the 1950s, though interviewees did not make reference to these vehicles
(Callaway pers. comm. 2007). However, residents of Kokhanok did refer to the occasional use of these vehicles. Danny Roehl discussed the arrival of trucks and other wheeled vehicles in the 1940s:
“ [in the old days] the village had trucks here…Yeah, way back ah. One of my cousins…Willie [Rickteroff], he was…chief here in the village and they had a truck…There have been trucks here…I seen [an] old Model A and ah a Model T on the lake…that was I think in the 40s, early 40s there, they had a couple of vehicles on the lake here then. I don’t know where they drove to in Iliamna but when they got the road there I mean you know, FAA, when the Army was, came in there then they had the road up to the airstrip and stuff, 1942, I think around there, got that strip and finished it, Iliamna strip” (Roehl 1997).
Military Jeeps were especially popular for this use. Jeeps and other military surplus army equipment were used for hauling materials within the village, pulling boats from the water, and also to visit hunting and fishing sites (Nielsen 1999).
“And not only just Jeeps too, there were also two-wheel drive cars that they used. Back when the first cars in Newhalen, Fennie Andrew owned but he didn’t drive it, Willie Rickteroff drove it for him. And that was back in the, I don’t know, ‘40s I guess, ‘50s...I’m not sure. But, technology was embraced rather readily” (Nielsen 1999).
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, some families had begun to replace sled dogs with introduced, military surplus vehicles for hunting and other backcountry pursuits:
“in the late ‘50s or ‘50s to ‘60s a lot of people already had given up on dogs and they’d went to Jeeps, military surplus Jeeps… Here on the lake,
Iliamna Lake, there were people running Jeeps on the lake, and I guess back inland. I don’t know how far back they went…here in the village, there was a couple of army surplus weapons carriers that were surplus for the village and Willie Rickteroff made good use of them. He pulled a lot of the old dog team trails and walking trails back up here in the hills and up in the mountains as far as you could possibly go. And they were good machines, solid four-wheel drives, where all four wheels pulled and if they got stuck it had a big heavy duty winch on it, he carried an anchor, so if he
20

got stuck he’d just anchor it and jerk it out of its hole…anything that was easier was used” (Nielsen 1999).
Certainly, information on the timing and extent of military vehicle use remains somewhat unclear. Gabby Gregory (1999), for example, indicates that he was not aware of the use of old trucks and jeeps for hunting in Kokhanok prior to the mid-1960s and 1970s:
“[wheeled vehicles arrived] around middle part of ‘60s to 70s. After 70s, uh threewheeler and stuff come...and...what else? Lot more airplanes” (Gregory 1999). Danny
Roehl (1997) alludes to the specialized use of automobiles (probably trucks) for moving goods, apparently prior to the arrival of ATVs, but does not suggest that these were permanently based at Kokhanok. Interview content also suggests that only a small number of individuals used these military surplus vehicles: speaking of the 1950s and
1960s, John Nelson, Jr. recalls, “it was pretty hard when I was growing up. We didn’t have Hondas, we didn’t have um airplanes, stuff like that. Only thing...I grew up [with] was dog team” (Nelson 1999). Garith Nielsen recalls “up until I was...I don’t know...six, five or six [in 1965 or 1966] the only way we ever traveled was by boat or dogs and occasionally airplane (Nielsen 1999). He notes, though, that by the late 1960s and early
1970s, the old “M38” weapon carriers were especially popular for subsistence hunting, a time when people used to “Hop in ‘em and go hunt just like a four-wheeler” (Nielsen
1999). The extent to which such vehicles were used in what is today Katmai National
Preserve is also unclear based on available interview transcripts.
Snowmobiles appear to have arrived somewhat later in the region than simple outboard motors, trucks and tractors. The first snowmobile design in the United States was patented in 1916; limited mass marketing and production of snowmobiles began in the
1930s, but it was not until the mid-1950s that convenient, single-rider snowmobiles
21

became widespread nationally. Soon thereafter, these machines began to appear in
Igiugig and Kokhanok.
Igiugig interviewees recalled that “Sno-Gos,” the snow machines of the mid-20 th
century, arrived by the early 1960s. According to Mary Olympic, they arrived,
“In 1960. I think ‘62, I remember my uncle was driving first Snow-Go… I got [my] first snow machine 1965…I wanted one, I want to go. That’s why I get 12 horse from Iliamna, only cost me $600. 12-horse machine”
(Olympic 2002: 5).
Olympic reports that these Sno-Gos were used to access trapping and hunting sites, and were also used to haul meat from hunting caches. Some of these activities apparently occurred within what is today the Preserve:
“We used to follow that dog team trail to Kukaklek, even Snow-Go, we follow the trail. We used to before 1970, used to trap 1960 to 1970, we used to trapping beaver and stuff like that… In the old days that’s the way it used to be” (Olympic 2002: 4-5).
Igiugig interviewees’ accounts might be interpreted to mean that this was the first widespread use of motorized land transportation in the community.
18
Kokhanok residents discussed the arrival of snowmachines in considerably greater detail.
Their accounts suggest that snowmachines first appeared in the late 1950s, somewhat earlier than was the case in Igiugig, but that they did not become well established until the early- to mid-1960s. Gabby Gregory, for example, recalls seeing his first snowmachine “almost end of ‘50s, ‘bout ‘58...’58 or ‘59…my uncle Nick…had first snowmachine I know of…Old Ski-doo maybe” (Gregory 1999). Gabby, in turn, bought his own first snowmobile “around middle part of ‘60s, ‘65 or so...somewhere” (Gregory
1999). Gregory Andrew recalled obtaining his first snowmachine, a 10-horsepower Ski-
Doo, in 1961 or 1962 (Gregory 1999).
19
Simultaneously, Garith Nielsen tentatively provides a slightly later date for his first encounter with snowmachines:
22

“the first time I remember seeing a snowmachine was a beautiful spring day and my mom my sister and I were walking from the house to the soda water spring, which was about, I don’t know, three quarters of a mile from the house I guess at Reindeer Bay. We heard this sound, this reverberating sound coming through the timber we kept looking for an airplane, but there was no damn airplane, so we got spooked. Swear it was a flying saucer, started heading for the house. Just made it to the house and around the corner comes [Simmy Zachar] and Willy [Rickteroff] on a snowmachine. First snowmachine I had ever seen. Had no idea what it was. [laughs] That was in ‘65 or ‘66, I don’t remember... I remember seeing that thing and oh man, didn’t know what to make of it… We heard of ‘em, but never seen ‘em. (Nielsen 1999).
20
Nielsen’s family was later in adopting this technology than other families in the community. Speaking of his father’s use of snowmobiles, Garith Nielsen (1999) recalls
“He was stubborn and didn’t get one until…after we moved to Kokhanok. ‘60 or ‘69 I think is when he finally broke down and bought one. Bought a Ski-Doo, ten horse.”
From their first introduction, snowmobiles were cheap and widely accessible: “We almost went through a snowmachine per season…They were very cheap. They were only eight hundred dollars for a brand new snow-go” (G. Andrew 1999). Dog teams, interviewees indicate, were increasingly seen as an inferior form of transportation, with limited mobility and very high costs. “Fuel is cheaper than a dog team, anytime”
(Nielsen 1999).
21
As Garith Nielsen suggests, “The only advantage I see of a dog team over a snowmachine is that the dogs can pull themselves out of a hole and up a hill, and snowmachines won’t” (Nielsen 1999). The use of dog teams was increasingly tied to non-subsistence uses, such as participation in dogsled races:
“Dad kept dogs well into the ‘70s before he finally went strictly to snowmachines. That’s when sprint...sprint mushing kept out in the area too and he had a number one sprint team. That’s mostly what he kept the dogs for during that time. But with the snowmachines you could go anywhere” (Nielsen 1999).
While snowmachines were largely used in the wintertime, certain families retrofitted snowmobiles with wheels so that they could be used year-round. This was apparently
23

done prior to the arrival of three-wheel ATVs. Gregory Andrew (1999) recalled, “I even made wheels for the front of my snow-go to use in the summertime for that before the
Hondas came up… that was around 1962, ‘63, ‘65...somewhere around there.”
22
Kokhanok interviewees suggested that, while early snowmachines were not as reliable as those manufactured today, they provided unprecedented ease of access to the surrounding countryside:
“The quality of the machines then...aren’t as good, as good as they are now. I remember [my dad] and Willy [Rickteroff], they’d the only one ones that had snowmachines here then at that time. They walked home a few times but it sure opened up the country though...much more accessible…[they] made the area more accessible… You can make the snowmachine go where you wanted it to. Not like dogs where if they didn’t want to go there, they didn’t go there. And…you go further. Dogs, you gotta pack food for the dogs plus yourself, plus camping gear, which didn’t make for too many long trips. In a snowmachine you go twice as far in a day and back...most of the time.” (Nielsen 1999).
These snowmachines generally increased the mobility of residents and increased opportunities for trapping and hunting: “I caught a lot of beaver and a lot of wolverine and a lot of lynx with that thing. I could go out more…set more traps” (G. Andrew 1999).
Accordingly, Danny Roehl suggests that the arrival of snowmachines, presumably in the
1960s, marked the first significant motorized hunting in the community (Roehl 1997).
This brought a growing number of residents to lands now within Katmai National
Preserve, as they increasingly used historical subsistence areas that were distant from
Kokhanok. Garith Nielsen suggests of the Preserve that many descendants of Katmai residents “rediscovered the area with snowmachines” in the 1960s and 1970s, as they experienced unprecedented mobility:
“There were people that used it from this area, but not a lot. In fact…going back to the transition between dog teams and snowmachines, when my father first started exploring the country with his snowmachines, him and...one of my uncles was trying to find the pass over to Kamishak
River...and they tried several times to get through the mountains but they kept getting lost or hitting dead end canyons and they couldn’t make it
24

through. So there was an old man still living here then, he was still alive.
His name was Mike [Nenaka]. And he was blind then, so they go down to talk to him and Greg Andrew would interpret and ask him you know how do you find your way through the mountains to Kamishak? And how far is it?...They followed his directions and made it there no sweat. And this a guy from years ago, used to travel that whole country, hunting. And they were just rediscovering it with snowmachines” (Nielsen 1999).
Wheeled ATVs arrived in the region roughly a decade after snowmobiles. A non-random survey by Gasbarro and Utermohle (1974), conducted in 1973-74, concluded that there were no three-wheel ATVs owned by Igiugig or Kokhanok residents, but that three wheel
ATVs were already established in nearby communities with ties to these two communities. In this survey, ATVs were reported in Iliamna (owned by 22% of residents), King Salmon (27% of residents), Levelock (6% of residents), North Naknek
(11% of residents) and South Naknek (12% of residents). It is possible but unclear whether other ORV technologies, such as Jiger or Argo ATVs, were used at this time.
Beyond the Gasbarro and Utermohle study, three additional survey research projects from the mid-70s to the mid-90s (Gasbarro 1974, Morris 1984 and Endter-Wada 1994) asked specific questions about ATV ownership and use in the study area. Their work documents a rapid expansion in the use of three-wheel ATVs in these communities between 1975 and 1982.
23
By the time of Morris’ research in 1983, ATVs were owned by a majority of households in both communities. Writing in 1978, Behnke notes that the communities adjacent to the proposed Katmai National Park and Preserve expansion used a number of vehicles, which he included in his inclusive definition of “all terrain vehicles”:
24
“All terrain vehicles (ATV’s) of various kinds are owned by a number of residents. These range from old surplus tracked “weasels”, which have been in use for twenty or thirty years, to newer models of tracked and wheeled ATV’s, such as “Rangers”, “Coots”, and so forth. Some residents have also purchased new Honda “dunebuggy” rigs. Honda three-wheelers are extremely popular in all the communities of the area and they are used
25

for visiting, recreation, and hunting, fishing, and trapping” (Behnke 1978:
139).
Interviewees from Igiugig report the general use of three-wheel ATVs for hunting in the study area by residents of the area as early as 1970. Because these ATVs were not widespread, they appear to have sometimes been loaned out and used by multiple people, within and between communities.
25
Randy Alvarez recalls using one of the first threewheel ATVs at around this time to access areas apparently within what is today the
Preserve:
“I think it was about 1970, Eddie Clark and I, his dad had a lodge right across the Kvichak, lodge across the river over there and we used to come up here in the fall time and…borrow Hermie [Herman]’s three-wheelers and drive them around, looking for caribou and stuff.
“And then -- I didn’t have to move up there because I had my own, but we drive up most of the time was in the wintertime up to the Preserve area when there was…no snow for a snow machine…we would go up there and drive around with…the three-wheelers, and then come down this way on the ridge. You know, just looking around. And me and George
Wilson” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 17-18).
Similarly, Mary Olympic reports that the first ATVs that she recalls being used for trapping and hunting in the area were three-wheeled and appeared around 1971 (Olympic
2002: 8 ff.).
Igiugig residents apparently approached Katmai on these early ATV trips up the “north trail,” running from south of Igiugig to Rocky Point at Kukaklek Lake. During these early trips, people reportedly traveled by three-wheeler ATVs into the vicinity of the Preserve and then, if successful in their hunting, doubled back for a second trip with a trailer to recover the game: “no trailer…unless you got something and had to haul it back, and then you brought a trailer back with you” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 19).
People especially hunted for subsistence:
“caribou. And once in awhile moose. Go up there looking for moose in
December. If there’s no snow, we’ll drive up… But mostly caribou. You know, caribou are all around up there…And that’s mostly snow machine
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when we go up in there…I trapped up there, too. Quite a bit around
[Kukaklek] lake” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 22-23).
Randy Alvarez mentioned Gabby Gregory, who formerly lived in Igiugig and now lives in Kokhanok, apparently using both ATVs and snow machines to access areas in what is today the Preserve during this same general period:
“Gabby [Gregory], his wife’s uncle used to… go all over the place. He would be up there for days on his…ATV. You could see his tracks. It goes over the snow, he had a snow machine…he would be so far away he must have been up there for days travelling around… he lives in Kokhanok now” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 20).
Michael Andrew, who was a child at this time, remembers seeing three-wheel Honda 90
ATVs in the period from 1976-1978, when young people were starting to readily adopt this technology:
“And we thought we was pretty cool, there was all them kids driving all over the place, and get back there, and that was the main transport all around here” (Andrew 2002: 2).
At roughly this time, he suggests, three-wheel ATVs had already become a “big” part of the subsistence hunt, often being used in tandem with sleds or trailers:
“Oh, big. That’s the only way you would get anything, no way to haul it back. You know, now -- you know, back then you would have Hondas and trailers, and that’s the only way you would haul the meat back there, or you know, when you went after them. You know, when I was younger, you know, that was toward the end of the dog teams then” (Andrew 2002:
4).
Other interviewees’ accounts could be interpreted as supporting an early 1970s date for the arrival of ATVs, with one clear exception: George Wilson, Jr. reports that he recalls the earliest three-wheel ATVs arriving in Igiugig during the early 1980s.
“It had to have been the early -- early ‘80s, like ‘82, ‘83. I remember having a…Honda 70 three-wheeler… that was a lot of fun. Had a lot of
27

little scrapes and stuff with it, but it got me an education on being able to travel and how to handle a vehicle. And I [learned] how to operate those along with skiffs before I even knew how to drive a truck and got a license, for that matter” (Wilson 2002: 2-3).
Interviewer Don Callaway reports that Wilson was confused in his response to this question, and may have been alluding to four-wheel ATVs.
26
Kokhanok residents discussed the use of both motorcycles and three-wheel ATVs during the same general period. Motorcycles provided limited transportation for subsistence tasks, allowing for great mobility but limited carrying capacity. Also, the use of motorcycles was limited somewhat by their limited capacity for climbing steep slopes, and by a relatively limited geographical range apparently attributable to their small gas tank. Yet, for some residents, motorcycles were the first vehicles to allow for summertime travel, effectively creating – for the first time in the community’s history - year-round options for motorized land transportation. They could also be used occasionally in the winter: “the motorcycles too, we used around winter when the snow was packed it was really good going” (Nielsen 1999). Cumulatively, the range of travel options was greater than it had ever been for Kokhanok residents:
“everyone was getting the four-wheelers from the ‘80s and talking about going up the mountain and you know being the first ones up there, but we were...we’d already been up there [on motorcycles]” (Nielsen 1999).
Motorcycles apparently arrived in the late 1960s or early 1970s:
“The first motorcycle here was…in [the] late ‘60s or early ‘70s, I’m not really sure when. It was an old Bridgestone, I think it was a 70 CC.
Probably get broken down or caught on fire somewhere, I think it just quit working. That was the first one, then...one of the teachers had a small mini-bike ah just for local area between here and fish camp. In ‘71 I got a
Honda 50, Trail 50. Well, Rickteroff’s had one though so... With those things you could through Gibraltar… Had to push ‘em up the hills, but ya still made it. And then from then on, I think in ‘73 maybe, I know Greg
Andrews had a motorcycle and I had a motorcycle. I think Rickteroffs might of had a motorcycle also. But Greg Andrew used his quite a bit”
(Nielsen 1999).
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Gregory Andrew recalls buying his son a two-wheel “mini-bike” motorcycle a few years later. This motorcycle was a 1975 model, and presumably purchased new. These smaller motorcycles appear to have been used in the community from the early 1970s (G.
Andrew 1999).
Three-wheeled ATVs appear to have arrived in Kokhanok no later than 1974, though the date of first arrival may have been sooner. Two interviewees point toward a date of roughly 1974:
“I think the first three-wheeler here was...my aunt bought one for my cousin, Rolin to keep here. He used to spend quite a bit of time with us...[a] Trail 90 and I think that was in ‘74” (Nielsen 1999).
Likewise, Gabby Gregory recalls obtaining his own ATV in the mid-1970s: “First one I had is around seventy some...’75 or ‘74 maybe, first four-wheeler I had” (Gregory 1999).
While he speaks of a “four-wheeler,” he appears to have been referring to a threewheeled ATV in the interview.
Two other interviewees are ambiguous as to the exact date, but allude to residents of
Kokhanok obtaining three-wheel ATVs between 1970 and 1977. Specifically, Gregory
Andrew indicated that he obtained his first three-wheel Honda in 1970, but later in the same interview he indicates that he may have not had a three-wheel ATV until the mid-
1970s (G. Andrew 1999). Danny Roehl recalled seeing three-wheelers being used in
Anchorage as early as 1967, while he suggests that these machines arrived in the
Kokhanok area in the 1970s:
“the first…three-wheelers I seen in 1967, I think…not in Kokhanok, that was in Anchorage…they had three-wheelers back then [in Alaska] but there was no three-wheelers [in Kokhanok], then there were just mostly snowmachines. But then in ah, 70, 77…one of the first three-wheelers come to Kokhanok. That was the year I…move to Kokhanok, the village
29

[and myself] for the kids to finish school. And that’s when the track vehicles start coming in and ah three-wheelers” (Roehl 1997).
Three-wheeled ATVs quickly caught on for a diverse range of uses, “mostly hunting and gather wood or...haul your stuff around” (Gregory 1999). They became extremely popular for tasks within villages that had formerly required heavy lifting and physical exertion:
“those three-wheelers. They were the best thing that hit this place, I think.
We didn’t have no trucks or nothing...when I had my store I used to use a wheelbarrow from the airport and push a wheelbarrow and have some of my kids tie a rope on their front and help me pull along. Or whole bunch of us would take it box by box and go up to my store. [With a] threewheeler I could put a board up and make shift a little cart and pile a whole bunch of stuff up and...easy… I had a 110, Honda 110 three-wheeler. I bought it for my kids, but I got the most use out of it [laughs]” (G. Andrew
1999).
Three-wheel ATVs also quickly became popular for subsistence uses. They were especially popular for subsistence tasks undertaken during the summertime, when snowmobiles were not suitable:
“we used it mostly for hunting, hauling groceries, and making a quick trip... But we go fishing and boy it made it easy for hunting when we could go through the snow… we already had snowmachines for that…
But…Hondas were mostly for the summertime” (G. Andrew 1999).
Initially, some residents continued using motorcycles for certain tasks, because of threewheelers’ limited power. ATVs began to eclipse motorcycles, however, as their technology rapidly evolved and new models became available:
[The original Honda 90s] were so gutless. You could use ‘em, actually we wound up using ‘em quite a bit just because of the packing capacity, much more than a motorcycle. We all switched to the three-wheelers. But they weren’t near as efficient as a motorcycle. Uncomfortable riding. Then they got the 110s two years later and that was a lot of power…those cover a lot especially in the winter when the snow was hard, you could go all over the
30

place. In the falltime when the water was low, and they couldn’t ford very deep water but if you couldn’t ford ‘em you could walk ‘em across ‘cause they could float… So we used ‘em quite a bit that way...that was with the
110s. And with my 110, I went up to the top of the mountains with it.
Easier to come down than a motorcycle” (Nielsen 1999).
The 110s were said to be unreliable, compared to modern ATVs: “when you traveled you had to carry extra parts for your chain and a pocket full of tools and extra parts...wires, snares, anything to keep ‘em together” (Nielsen 1999). In the years ahead, however, the
200 and 250 series models became available, expanding the use of these machines considerably.
27
The axle-drive 250 series ATVs, released by Honda in 1981, were especially powerful and reliable. These allowed for more regular access to the Preserve:
“That’s when we started really penetrating to the other side” (Nielsen 1999).
By the late 1970s, many households in both Igiugig and Kokhanok arguably employed a hybrid approach, utilizing multiple available transportation technologies as costs and weather dictated. Accordingly, Dissler (1980: 52) noted “Trucks were observed at
Iliamna, Igiugig, Kokhanok and in the Bristol Bay Borough. A number of families in these villages also had dog teams or snowmobiles.” A few readily abandoned older modes of transportation. A growing number of residents in both communities especially began to give up their dogsleds:
“I liked the [ATV’s] easy running, don’t have to feed ‘em… I used to cook for maybe 20 dogs every day. That’s how many dogs we had I guess between three families, four families. Last I drive dogs was maybe around
‘67, ‘67 last time we drive dogs” (Gregory 1999).
Some also began to reduce their snowmobile use. Gabby Gregory, for example, reports that he largely abandoned snowmachines for ATVs: “after I quit trapping I don’t use them no more. Only three-wheelers and [later] four-wheelers” (Gregory 1999).
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Beginning in the early 1980s, four-wheel ATVs provided an answer to many of the shortcomings of three-wheel ATVs. Four-wheel ATVs quickly became universal in
Igiugig, so that 100% of households reported owning an ATV in 1994, while some 81% of households in Kokhanok reported owning an ATV in the same year. By this time, there was little need for borrowing of ATVs between communities.
28
While the “hybrid” patterns of transportation technology use persisted, the use of ATVs became proportionately dominant during the last two decades of the 20 th
century (Table 5).
29
Igiugig
(n = 10)
Transportation used for subsistence
Kokhanok
(n = 31)
% who own % who own
All Communities
(n = 41)
% who own
Snow machine
Dog Team
Commercial Fishing Boat
70%
10%
40%
35%
7%
16%
44%
7%
22%
Source: Endter-Wada, et al. 1994, as compiled by Callaway 1999
Igiugig interviewees consistently described the arrival of four-wheel ATVs in the early
1980s, along with the growing proliferation of these machines in the 1980s and 1990s.
30
The use of four-wheel ATVs quickly eclipsed the use of three-wheel models. For example, Randy Alvarez reports that he obtained a four-wheel ATV in the mid-1980s, soon after the manufacture of three-wheel models ceased: “I got my first four-wheeler
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when they outlawed -- they quit making three-wheelers” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and
Alvarez 2002: 20). He goes on to explain the nature of this transition:
“I didn’t really like a four-wheeler, but I think I like a four-wheeler better now than I liked a three-wheeler back then. Just, you know, once people…get used to something, they don’t like to change, and I didn’t think a four-wheeler would be better, but I think it’s better…You can haul more. You get better control. And you don’t flip over easy. You can go -- because you’ve got four-wheel drive instead of two-wheel drive. And it goes through the snow better because you’re only leaving two sets of tracks instead of three sets of tracks” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and
Alvarez 2002: 20).
Residents of Kokhanok describe a similar transition. Many Kokhanok residents immediately adopted the four-wheeled ATVs when they arrived in the mid-1980s. “They made it a lot easier. We could go a lot faster” (G. Andrew 1999). As John Nelson, Jr. recalls,
“Before we didn’t have four-wheelers then three-wheelers then...then one of the first four-wheelers came out and [the use of ATVs] jumped up considerably here in the village because of the transport...easier to hunt…Easier and maneuverable and a load that it can carry” (Nelson
1999).
Others hesitated to adopt them originally as they were “underpowered” compared to the
200 and 250 series three-wheelers:
“[We] used the Big Reds up until Honda got sued too much and… quit making Big Red three-wheelers. And they started developing the fourwheelers that...when the four-wheelers first came out they only had twowheel drives and they were almost as worthless as the 90s because they were underpowered, so everybody still preferred the Big Reds, the threewheelers. Until they came out with the four-wheel drive in uh, I don’t know what year it was, and we all switched to the four wheel drive fourwheelers. They could really go” (Nielsen 1999).
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Once these higher-powered four-wheel-drive ATVs were widely available, beginning in
1986, four wheeled ATVs abruptly replaced their three-wheeled counterparts. These new four-wheeled ATVs provided unprecedented power and mobility:
“you could almost knock a four inch tree down and not hurt the fourwheeler. You could...go over small brush four feet high. If you were excited want to get to or if you afraid a moose gonna get away and…go where a guy wouldn’t go [otherwise]... go through brush…[a person can almost stay] on top of the brush with a four-wheeler…but you gotta have a certain knack for doing that...gotta know how or you’ll hurt yourself” (G.
Andrew 1999).
The conversion of four-wheel drive ATVs from two- wheel to four-wheel-drive improved their reliability off trail, in snow or on boggy terrain: “that just made it so we could go in deeper snow…where we didn’t get stuck” (G. Andrew 1999). These four-wheel-drive models were also much safer than prior models, being less prone to flipping than threewheelers and less prone to getting stuck in remote locations than either the three-wheelers or the two-wheel-drive four-wheelers. According to Garith Nielsen, the difference between the four-wheel drive and the two-wheel drive versions of the four-wheeled
ATVs was
“like the difference between biplanes and jets. About the same. Twowheel drive on the three-wheeler and on the two-wheel drive fourwheelers about 15 to 25 percent of your time you were pushing…to get where you wanted to go. The four-wheelers you pushed on rare occasions, the four-wheel drives. And if you’re stuck, you know it…allowed to get us there better with less work” (Nielsen 1999).
As his comments suggest, these new four-wheel drive machines allowed people to travel off-trail with much greater ease. Those who did not upgrade were relegated to trails and had to use higher speeds in steep or boggy locations to avoid stalling:
“this one I got is only two wheel drive its hard to drive it without trail.
Gotta have a trail already made then you can make it” (Gregory 1999).
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People also have to drive faster with these two-wheel drive machines to avoid getting bogged down or stalling when on a steep ascent.”
By 1988, Honda released the 300 series four-wheel ATVs, which had the capacity to travel long distances and carry unprecedented loads. People were not necessarily traveling to unprecedented hunting, fishing and trapping areas with these machines:
“The places that we go with our four-wheelers are the places we’ve gone with the three-wheelers before anyway. Just that [it] wasn’t as much work and a little bit more comfortable…Just made it more efficient. Less expension of energy” (Nielsen 1999).
Yet, by this time, significantly, ATVs had such speed and fuel capacity that people could decide “whether or not you wanna be home that night” when going out hunting (Nielsen
1999). Increasingly, the use of hunting cabins was optional. The options afforded by
ATVs appear to have rendered most earlier forms of transportation obsolete in the view of Kokhanok residents. By the early 1990s, the conversion to four-wheelers was largely complete:
“Basically the four-wheeler here in our village is for subsistence, woodgetting, pleasure...it [is] the everything machine. I’ve always classed it [as] the everything machine...pleasure riding, berry picking, hunting, fishing, wood getting. I’ve always classed using the Honda into those five categories” (Nelson 1999).
With the growing popularity of four-wheeled ATVs, other types of vehicles began falling into disuse. Many people dispensed with their three-wheelers: “Gave ‘em all away…When the four-wheelers came, the four-wheelers were so much better I just got rid of ‘em all” (Nielsen 1999). While dogsleds continued to decline in popularity, a small number of households continued to keep dogs as a matter of personal preference or for racing; dogs are also said to still be better than four-wheel ATVs in “muskeg and… swampy areas where dogs could make their way over it” (Nielsen 1999).
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R
O
S
A
Igiugig interviewees report that a wide variety of resources has been obtained in what is today Katmai. Foremost among these resources are the big game – caribou and moose.
Interviewees report that they have especially hunted caribou within the Preserve:
“[I] couldn’t even think how many I’ve got. Just every year you catch probably three, four back there a year” (Wilson 2002: 7).
“the majority of our use of that area is to get subsistence activities, feed the houses, and of course, with the elders in the village, it’s their traditional food” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 43).
The Kukaklek Lake area was especially mentioned as a favored place for caribou hunting
(Wilson 2002: 7). While caribou populations are said to fluctuate widely on the Alaska
Peninsula, some suggest that the Preserve provides dependable, if sometimes diffuse, hunting opportunities and can be visited in times when game is scarce elsewhere:
“even when there isn’t a lot of caribou around, once you go back there travelling, you know…you’re going to run into something. And always -- always game back there” (Wilson 2002: 7-8).
Moose hunting is said to be especially good along the rivers of the area, including the
Nonvianuk, but they are also hunted along the timberline and lake margins, in and around the Preserve (Andrew 2002: 40). Caribou, by contrast, can be found in open areas such as bluffs and plains. The wintertime moose hunts are reported to be generally more successful than those conducted earlier in the year:
“I didn’t get one in the fall hunt, and I always get one in the December hunt. They are a lot easier to get in December. There are a lot less people out and you can use a snow machine or a four-wheeler” (Wilson 2002:
23).
36

Moose hunting in the area appears to have been negligible until relatively recent times.
This is in part because moose are limited in number and are relatively recent arrivals in the region,
31
but also because they can be threatening to hunters traveling by foot, due to their size and aggressiveness:
“I didn’t shoot any moose by myself because I know how big they are.
You know. You can’t be walking around” (Andrew 2002: 13).
Moreover, the size of the moose is imposing to hunters trying to bring moose home without motorized transportation:
“I’ve gotten moose back there before. I’ve only got a couple back there. It takes quite awhile to get it all back home… I generally try and catch one a little closer to town, so you can get it all home in one day…I had one experience back in ‘90 -- ‘96 I think or ‘97…it took me two days, and the second day when I got back, a wolf ate half of what I left. I was -- I was a little disappointed” (Wilson 2002: 7).
In the past, people have started hunting big game in the fall, as the ground freezes and snow falls. Historically, snowpack facilitated the use of dogsleds and, more recently, has allowed the use of snowmobiles. Likewise, as is discussed elsewhere in this report, ATVs are seldom used for hunting in the study area when the ground is not frozen, so that the wheels do not get bogged down in wet areas. More recently, a later freeze-up, coupled with changes in the movement of game and changes in permitted hunting times has reduced hunting in the fall in favor of a winter hunt.
In addition to big game hunting, some Igiugig interviewees mentioned hunting birds and small game in and in the vicinity of the Preserve. A number of waterfowl were mentioned as being hunted in the general area, though it is unclear if they are hunted in the Preserve. They include mallards, pintails, geese, tundra swans, and sandhill cranes
(Wilson 2002: 26-27).
Interviewees also mentioned hunting ptarmigans and “rabbits” in the area (Wilson 2002:
7, 24). Wolverine hunting was also mentioned in reference to the Preserve. Bear was also
37

mentioned in the course of interviews, but primarily in the context of their predation on moose in the Kukaklek and Nonvianuk Lake areas (e. G., Andrew 2002: 26).
For Kokhanok residents, the Preserve also represents a portion of the land visited each year for hunting and trapping. The Kukaklek Lake area, in particular is mentioned as a center of hunting and trapping activity – especially popular for hunting caribou. Use of the Preserve is seasonal:
“We don’t use it all the time, the only time we use it is that time like
August, September.
32
There is two months there for caribou only, back there. Sometime maybe bear, if you want bear. Of course we don’t hunt...there’s no moose back there much. Gotta be on the timber side to catch moose” (Gregory 1999).
Interestingly, these late summer hunts do not conform to the general pattern described by other interviewees, which focuses on winter hunting facilitated by frozen ground that allows easy ATV access.
During his interview, John Nelson Jr. noted that his most recent caribou was taken while on a four-wheel ATV in the Preserve:
“My last catch was in the preserve...we ended up taking three of ‘em. I caught one, Johnny [Mike] caught one, and Gary [Nielsen] got one. That would was probably right... inside the boundary…before Funnel Creek”
(Nelson 1999).
Caribou hunting has often required long-distance travel for Kokhanok residents to places such as the Preserve, interviews note. This tradition is rooted in the displacement of game by the Katmai eruption (and presumably other volcanic events):
“the caribou came through here [the Kokhanok area] in the ‘80s. That’s the first time that caribou had been through here in human memory. But the old stories say that there was caribou here long time ago, way before the eruption. Just that before the eruption all the game left and didn’t come back...I heard it in different stories around here where they said before the eruption that the game was disappearing and nobody really knew why
38

because the there was no explanation for it then the eruption happened and buried everything they made, figured out that’s why the game left”
(Nielsen 1999).
33
The mobility of caribou herds still significantly shapes the geography of Kokhanok hunting patterns from year to year. In part because of the mobility of caribou and other game species, people often obtain information on animal movements from people who fly airplanes over the vicinity of Kokhanok (Nelson 1999). Some travel by ATV to places such as the Katmai area, just to scope out game for future hunting “up on the mountains looking around… Just scoping out for game and stuff” (Nielsen 1999).
The most popular moose hunting territories for Kokhanok are generally located closer to the village, in part due to the difficulty of transporting moose over long distances.
34
Moose hunting areas outside of the Preserve are diffuse: “at the Cottonwoods, the Dennis
Creek Cottonwoods, up the bay here and into the bay over here from Tommy Point all the way around” (Nelson 1999). Like caribou, moose populations only became robust after the modern non-resident hunt was becoming established in the region:
“it was in the ‘30s I guess when there was no moose around, still after the eruption. They were gone, all the game was gone for, I don’t know, couple of decades I guess. The main meat animal was bear. Everybody hunted bear. Not much moose up until, from what I gather, the ‘40s they started showing back up. And by the late fifties there was a few around. There was a period, oh just in my lifetime here during the ‘80s when the hunting pressure by the outside guides was so great that you couldn’t find a moose within the village area here to save your life. They were all wiped out or chased away, until the Native corporation got control of the land, we took control of our lands and well, its building back up again within the area around the village” (Nielsen 1999).
35
Moose has been hunted within the Preserve, especially in the Kukaklek Lake area; see the maps in the Appendix for more detail.
Historically, Kokhanok residents hunted bear for its meat, but also used its fat as a food condiment or to make oil for lanterns and other uses (Gregory 1999). A number of
39

people noted that bears were relatively rare in their youth (e.g., Roehl 1997; Gregory
1999). Bear was apparently hunted in what is now the Preserve, in part
“Because there hardly any bears around those days around this area
[Kokhanok]…there were hardly any bear at my time when I were younger...hard to catch bear. Gotta go quite a ways to get bear those days”
(Gregory 1999).
Bear is still sometimes hunted and eaten today, especially by and for older members of the community:
“Oh, quite a few [still eat bear]. The older people like me, guess the guys who born with it. The young ones I don’t think they eat ‘em. They live on chicken…[laughs]” (Gregory 1999).
Wolves were said to be relatively scarce during the 1930s or 1940s, in part due to the
Katmai eruption’s effect on game, and possibly too due to bounties. “When the moose got heavier and stuff, then the wolves and stuff started coming back in again. But before that they were hardly anything” (Roehl 1997). No Kokhanok interviewee mentioned hunting or trapping wolf.
Kokhanok residents have trapped beaver, or sometimes hunted beaver with a light-gauge rifle in the spring for its meat; the beaver meat is considered especially desirable at that time of year (Gregory 1999). Beaver hunting or trapping has apparently been done in what is now the Preserve. People are said to generally hunt “beaver, sometime porcupine, rabbits, spruce hen, ptarmigan” as supplementary game while pursuing larger game
(Gregory 1999). Muskrat was also mentioned as a small game species, while Danny
Roehl mentioned hunting squirrels for meat and to manufacture parkas from their skins
(Roehl 1997).
Some mention hunting mallards and geese, but not typically within the Preserve. Garith
Nielsen, for example, reports hunting
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“Geese and ducks in the spring only. Mostly right in the area here [in the
Kokhanok area]... In the falltime I’ve gone over the mountains [toward the
Preserve], look for birds. And there are some up there, but not a lot. I’ve never been really lucky” (Nielsen 1999).
Some Kokhanok residents also collect bird eggs, probably from ducks and geese, in the spring.
In addition to hunting and trapping, Igiugig interviewees spoke of fishing in the Preserve,
Alagnak River, and probably within what is today the Park. Some spoke of fishing that appears to date from the first half of the 20 th
century. The extent to which subsistence fishing or fishing camp use has continued in the Preserve is unclear based on project interview transcripts, but it is clear that fishing was an important activity there in the recent historical past. Speaking of her parents, Mary Olympic recalls:
“my dad and mom used to pick up at fish camp, to fall red fish, get some
Battle Lake area…Remember my folks used to be leave for until after middle of this month [September], to move to go get some red fish. They dry them outside, when you dry. Then go back again. You go back to red fish camp, from fish camp you go back to winter camp” (Olympic 2002:
12-13)
George Wilson, Sr. also recalled his family arriving in what is now Katmai to fish for red fish:
“Long time ago we used to go in, you know, before there ever was a park…our ancestors lived up in there and hunted and put up fish up…
There was a big village up inside the park area up there, Savonoski, that’s up inside the Naknek Lakes there, way up in Brooks Camp and around there. When I was a young boy I went up in there and put up fish for the fall. Red fish, you know? Spawned out fish, bring ‘em home. I’d dry ‘em.”
(G. Wilson in Wilson and Wilson 1995).
Michael Andrew, Jr. (2002: 26) mentioned that people formerly fished for whitefish, apparently within the Preserve, but that the numbers of these fish had declined
41

significantly; he did not mention specific fishing locations.
36
Others concurred with his assessment of the fishery’s decline:
“this last…five years it’s dropped dramatically. Not only the salmon, but the trout, as well…[and whitefish] dropped considerably. I remember years back when you used to put out a net and you used to have it out and fish it for just a couple of days and, you know, you’ve got probably 200.
Now I’ve got to do it for a month to get, oh, 60, 70” (Wilson 2002: 23-24).
Kukaklek Lake is apparently a fishing location of some significance (Behnke 1978: 150).
Igiugig residents also fished in the Reindeer Lake area, apparently just outside of the northwestern boundary of the Preserve.
37
This practice appears to have continued into the recent past:
“They just go fish. Sometimes we fish pike here. Pike fish. We got lots of, all kinds of fish in there. They got eel and they got silver salmon here.
Silver salmon, trout, sucker…and pike…This place here, Reindeer Lake”
(Olympic 2002: 26).
The commercial harvest of salmon in this region of Alaska has declined significantly in recent years, but a modest subsistence fishery persists (Andrew 2002: 21-22). Some use their ATVs to access the Alagnak (Branch) River fishing camps, where they harvest silver salmon in the late summer, or fish camps upstream where sockeye are more readily caught (Andrew 2002: 14). Due to the obstacles to summertime travel, there is generally little or no summertime fishing in the Preserve; one possible exception are those fish camps that can be accessed by jet boat from elsewhere, such as along the Alagnak River
(Andrew 2002: 32).
As noted elsewhere in this document, Kokhanok depends on salmon and other fish for a considerably larger proportion of the subsistence diet (some 66% of subsistence harvests) than is the case in Igiugig (with all fish representing 38% of subsistence harvests).
Kokhanok residents suggest that this difference is attributable to the results of the Katmai eruption of 1912. The Katmai eruption was said to drive game out of the area for decades, resulting in a proportional increase in Kokhanok’s reliance on fish: “there was no big game or no moose, no caribou or nothing like that… They could hunt moose for a
42

week and never get any” (Roehl 1997). This depression of game numbers, Danny Roehl suggests, was still somewhat apparent at the time of his youth.
Still, Kokhanok interviewees made few references to fishing in the Preserve. Gabby
Gregory reports that his family has had fish camps on Kukaklek Lake. Between the
1920s and 1940s, their camp was located at Narrow Point; after that period, they relocated to another camp site nearby (Gregory 1999). Some apparently express an interest in maintaining fish camps in the Preserve, but note that the old cabins and smokehouses often have fallen into disuse and disrepair. Some have expressed an interest in refurbishing these cabins and have petitioned the NPS to allow such activities
(Gregory 1999). Danny Roehl (1997) ice fished for rainbow and brook trout while his father trapped, possibly within what is today Katmai National Park and Preserve – there was apparently a bounty on these fish at this time, just as there were bounties on wolves, coyotes, seals, and other animals.
Most residents of Kokhanok, however, largely discuss subsistence fishing on Gibraltar
River, Pedro Bay, and a constellation of other sites north of the Preserve, such as Tommy
Creek, Belinda Creek, and many others. John Nelson (1999) for example, reports that his family ordinarily takes around 1,200 sockeye salmon from their principal subsistence fishing site on Gibraltar River to feed them each year.
38
Interviewees from Kokhanok note that ATVs are used extensively in their modern fishing practices, such as for hauling fishing nets and pulling them from the water; ATVs are sometimes transported to fishing sites on skiffs for this purpose (Nielsen 1999).
The per capita take of fish may have reduced in some instances, in part due to the declining demand for dog food, as people replaced dogsleds with ATVs:
“in my young days they used to catch lots [of fish] enough to feed the dogs for a whole winter and today we only catch around two three hundred fish to put away for eating...that’s all...or freeze ‘em” (Gregory
1999).
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“put up a lot of fish -- over late August and September, you start feeding them dry fish then…We would cook mostly the heads and stuff” (Roehl
1997).
Kokhanok interviewees spoke of the community’s participation in the commercial fishery. They also noted that fish populations in the area are highly variable, affecting commercial and subsistence fishing alike:
“fish are kinda going down, like salmon. Sometime they have hard times where they had poor years for a couple years…They told me sometime they used to be like that during my dad’s time, sometimes seasons are poor for fishing. Sometimes its up and down for fishing sockeyes….Red salmon, when they come up, they put ‘em up, put away for the winter”
(Gregory 1999).
Some Igiugig interviewees alluded to berry picking, apparently both in and around the
Preserve. While the exact species of berries were often omitted from their discussion, it is likely that these berries include some combination of salmonberries, blueberries, lowbush cranberries, and blackberries. Michael Andrew, Jr. alluded to a berry patch of some consequence within perhaps 10 miles of Rocky Point on Kukaklek Lake:
“we used to go up toward the berry patch and Rocky Point. I suppose
Rocky Point’s maybe 10 miles from there, you go along the beach all the way up, go up toward the berry patch. And back here as you ride back toward Muskrat Lake, but that’s really -- you really can’t go back any further because it’s swamp and lakes back there” (Andrew 2002: 3).
George Wilson, Jr. depicted the exact geography of berry picking as variable from year to year, but suggested that it largely occurred outside of the Park and Preserve:
“I wouldn’t say they go back as far as the -- the park, but a lot of it, it depends on what season it is and what berries that you’re -- you’re trying to get. The salmonberries you’ve got to get up in the swampy areas. And there’s countless places people like to go to get to their favorite spot…blackberries and blueberries, they both bloom about the same time,
44

or get ripe about the same time…And it’s about four or five miles out of -- out of town here, up near the lake” (Wilson 2002: 20).
Timbered areas appear to be associated with berry picking, generally: “that’s just primarily caribou and berries, berry in the fall” (Wilson 2002: 21). Mary Olympic made references to berry picking, without identifying specific locations or berry species; her account suggests that berry picking may have sometimes been ancillary to hunting or fishing in the Kukaklek area.
The Preserve, and possibly the Park, has apparently been the focal point of specialized firewood gathering as well. Mary Olympic reports she travels by four-wheel ATV to the vicinity of the Preserve
“For my -- my wood. For [mak’q]
39
– [mak’q]wood. I got [mak’q] wood, steam bath every night…Yeah. Like much. You have to go do it. Until I get old, real old, I will usually do that. I’m stacking wood. I like to get wood since I start job in winter still. I still do…I’ve got sleigh going there.
If I go with Snow-Go, I tow the sleigh. If I go with the Honda, I use my trailer. That’s the only [way -] long time ago before we use machine, we used to pack wood…work hard. Get some wood back and forth…That’s the only way, no machine…You have to pack” (Olympic 2002: 17).
Clearly, this suggests gathering wood at quite a distance from home. It is possible that the wood in this area has special properties, either physical or symbolic, that make it appealing for this use; it may be, too, that it is simply convenient to gather wood opportunistically while visiting this area for other purposes.
Kokhanok residents discussed plant gathering briefly in the course of their interviews, but made few direct references to Katmai as a plant gathering area. Some noted that “We always put up picked berries” gathered in the course of subsistence hunting and fishing
(Roehl 1997). Others mentioned the value of ATVs in berry-gathering, though without direct reference to Katmai:
“these four-wheelers made it a lot easier for us and the women…We still pick berries...and lots of ‘em. And we eat a lot of salmon berries and they
45

only grow in certain places, certain time of the year. They don’t last very long. Gotta get ‘em while they’re there” (G. Andrew 1999).
Gregory Andrew mentioned that some individuals use “herbs and medicines” from the land, but provided little detail on their gathering or use:
“I wish I knew what the herbs and medicines were. But we got to know some of that…from the old-timers that live out there...they still use those”
(G. Andrew 1999).
Wood gathering was also mentioned, possibly in reference to the Preserve. Some mentioned gathering smokehouse wood, but the location of this gathering was unclear
(e.g., Roehl 1997). Living in modern homes, other Kokhanok residents report that they have stopped gathering or using firewood altogether, expect for that wood used in steam baths (Gregory 1999).
Some interviewees mentioned trapping in the study area, especially prior to the creation or expansion of Katmai National Park and Preserve. Mary Olympic recalled trapping lynx, mink, otter, fox and beaver in or near what is today the Preserve. Lynx, muskrat, wolverine, and possibly wolf may have also been trapped in the area (Wilson 2002: 3,
38).
40
Trapping in the area is said to have declined significantly, due to a decline in demand and prices paid for furs, as well as the expansion of the Preserve (Andrew 2002:
20). Still, some individuals continue to trap in the vicinity of the Preserve despite the absence of a viable fur market:
“It was a real enjoyable pastime. You can’t do it…commercially to make any money. But…I get the furs primarily for my mother. She likes sewing and making things out of them” (Wilson 2002: 39).
More recently, some recall using ATVs when trapping in what is now the Preserve, and possibly the Park:
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“I used to trap over out in Nonvianuk, but that was even before Monument was there…I trapped in American Creek, which is down here towards
[Grosvenor], and before…that was…even in the…Monument. It was outside of the Monument, but then they moved [the boundary], and now you can’t trap in there anymore. And I trapped with Richard Wilson, my cousin, we stayed at Idavain’s cabin at the mouth of the lake and trapped around Nonvianuk in ‘78” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002:
32).
More recent studies have confirmed the continuation of this practice: “numerous trappers mentioned using Katmai Preserve as one of their trapping areas” (Katmai Research
Project 4: 39).
41
Kokhanok residents described similar practices of trapping, but did not make similarly detailed references to trapping locations within the Preserve. Some families, like Gabby
Gregory’s, had cabins in and around what is today the Preserve, and trapped there in the early to mid-20 th
century. Gabby Gregory reported that the family trapped
“down Igiugig area, around down there. Kukaklek, Pecks Creek area, that’s where I usually trapped after...and right here, behind Big
Mountain…We don’t trap after price went down [ca. late 1970s]. In those days [pre-1950s], my folks they only live on trapping and...fishing and trapping, hunting. Course, there were no kind of jobs in the villages”
(Gregory 1999).
Other Kokhanok residents generally trapped close to home when they could. Danny
Roehl, for example, recalls that his father trapped near their home and was generally home at night when trapping.
42
Yet, in recent decades, pressure on fur-bearing animals proximate to the village appears to have sometimes contributed to increased trapping pressure on the Preserve. John Nelson, Jr.’s trapping areas, for example, usually include
“the east end of Dennis Creek…and up at the Cottonwoods. I’m beginning to go further and further and further back into the actually the south which is going into the preserve because, [to] scout for a new area” (Nelson
1999).
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When he traps there it is winter and he typically travels by snowmachine:
“Only time I use four-wheelers is probably mid-winter. [by] the first part of spring: that’s when the snow gets compact and really hard so...so for the duration of that I just use, mainly travel by snowmachine” (Nelson 1999).
Some note that trapping historically provided access to cash which, in turn, provided access to food resources not available on the Alaskan landscape. By the 1930s, purchased foods were a significant part of the diet “the main thing was just get the flour and sugar and rice and beans and after you get them you go over and get the meat and fish”
(Andrew 1999). Gabby Gregory recalls that this reliance on introduced foods especially intensified in the late 20 th
century, likely fueled by proceeds from both trapping and commercial fishing:
“after ‘60s, their life got a little bit easier…to get food from store. Those days the only place to get from there or down Naknek area to buy like food...like sugar and flour...crackers, beans. They always buy enough for sometime, for to last all winter, those days...when after they go fishing down in the Bay” (Gregory 1999).
Trapping, interviewees note, has declined generally, following the overall decline of the fur market. This decline has allowed for a rebound in certain wildlife populations close to Kokhanok, they suggest. Danny Roehl (1997), for example, noted a significant increase in beaver populations in the absence of trapping – possibly to levels that he views as undesirable.
Families from Igiugig formerly used lands in the Preserve, and possibly the Park, for reindeer herding as well (Olympic 2002). Some of the cabins reported in Katmai apparently date from the period when reindeer were grazed in this area. A reindeer station was based at Kokhanok, but interviewees from that community did not discuss reindeer herding in detail. Kokhanok residents note that they continued to hunt reindeer, apparently from feral herds, into the 1960s and 1970s, sometimes using sled dogs and sometimes using early ATVs (Gregory 1999).
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In addition to the meat, fish, and berries gathered in and around the Preserve, interviewees made reference to other objectives for visiting Katmai that warrant mention here.
Some Igiugig residents seem to return to the Preserve in large part to visit places of personal or group importance, such as cabins and other sites used by their family historically. Mary Olympic reported in 2002 that she still traveled to the Kukaklek Lake area once a year by four-wheel ATV simply to visit her family’s cabin at Reindeer
Station, and apparently other places of personal importance: “Just go up there and see my home” (Olympic 2002: 19). This house is located near her aunt’s former cabin, as well as
Gabby Gregory’s cabin. Mary Olympic also alluded to visiting separate cabins or other structures that her family had in the Kukaklek Lake area for fishing and hunting
(Olympic 2002: 24).
43
George Wilson also mentioned cabin visits as an integral part of his routine in the study area:
“when I generally go out, I would go to Gabby’s cabin, which is up on the middle of the lake…Just go in, checking on his cabin or something. Do some hunting up in there” (Wilson 2002: 6-7).
Some accounts seem to suggest a h istorical village site was located in the study area, apparently at the outlet of Kukaklek Lake, and this may also be visited for reflective purposes (Andrew 2002: 31).
In this light, it may be worthwhile to note that, in the course of her interview, Mary
Olympic shared stories and traditional environmental knowledge tied to lands in the
Preserve. Mary Olympic discussed stories her family told of “Big Pike Lake” near Battle
Lake:
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“Old story, got a long time ago story that when you cross, the caribou, fall caribou when you cross this way, get bit by big one. That’s why they call them [Native word] we call them, Big Pike Lake. Eat them all. And my dad says reindeer, too, here, this one, when he get up for red fish up here…Up by Battle Lake. Three reindeer swim across this way from here to this site. Big fish ate them all, three of them. Monster fish…All no more. Whew. That’s why tell us not to go in the middle when we go paddle, we have to follow the beach” (Olympic 2002: 26).
She speculated that this story was told to children so that they would exercise caution in this dangerous place:
“Because they have to let us know when we was small. We could, like, die, you know, young one, let us know from us, the story, passing to young generation. That’s why” (Olympic 2002: 26-27).
Such information hints at an enduring association between the Igiugig community and this area, and suggests a range of cultural experiences tied to this landscape that may not be adequately addressed in studies of subsistence practices alone. ATV technologies thus are employed for purposes other than just subsistence.
Subsistence hunting also provides the opportunity for some families to pass on cultural and historical knowledge between generations – a significant if intangible benefit of the hunt. Likewise, some still practice the traditional sharing of subsistence resources that provides security to elderly and infirm members of the community, while reinforcing community ties:
“First and foremost, you know, you give and give it out to the elderly people or the widow or something. But everybody knows… someone may need some meat, you know, you give them a hind quarter or some ribs or something. Everybody tries to make sure that everyone gets some fresh meat. Especially the first ones. Everybody likes the…first harvest”
(Wilson 2002: 26).
Existing data suggest that 100% of Igiugig households share game resources with other households, and 100% of households sometimes receive game from others (ADF&G
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1992a) In light of the apparent ubiquity of food sharing in the community of Igiugig, it is reasonable to assume that such sharing is done with resources obtained within Katmai.
Sharing also occurs between communities, in a way that helps to minimize the impacts of geographically localized resources scarcity:
“they share whatever they have in their village when they come down here. Then they’ll give us whatever that we don’t get down here” (M.
Wilson in Wilson and Wilson 1995).
Interviews with Kokhanok residents also suggest that visits to Katmai serve functions that are not strictly utilitarian. Some Kokhanok interviewees note that hunting, both in the
Preserve and elsewhere, provides opportunities for transmission of cultural knowledge between generations. Before hunting, for example, hunters sometimes talk to elders about places to find animals or other details (Nelson 1999). Often, older people participate in subsistence treks, participating while conveying cultural information to younger people.
Important skills and cultural lessons are transmitted in these exchanges. For example,
John Nelson, Jr. notes that each individual or family has their own methods of trapping, likely tied to the particular conditions and species they encountered: “I was taught by…the late Gregory Wasallie, that’s how I learned his techniques by using snares and chopping holes through the ice and that’s how I learned (Nelson 1999). Ethical lessons are also conveyed through these exchanges; Danny Roehl, for example, recalls that as a child
“we were taught not to shoot anything that we couldn’t use…you respected the animals and stuff…you don’t take too many animals… when you catch so many fox, you quit…I mean, that’s just the way we were brought up” (Roehl 1997).
Significantly for the people of Kokhanok, whose families have dispersed to multiple villages in the region, the Preserve has served as a place where families dispersed between different villages reconvene to share in subsistence tasks (Nielsen 1999).
44
Use
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of the Preserve, as well as ATV use to access the Preserve, thus seems to be depicted by some as part of a larger pattern of cultural persistence:
“[extensive use of the Preserve is] not new, it’s just there was a period of time where there was nobody used it, because of the schools, government forcing everybody to stay in the village to stay in the village to stay in schools. Before that it was a semi-nomadic way of life. Nobody stayed in a village. Maybe for a few months in the winter, during the cold months, but then they’d all disperse to their own camps. Each family had their own area that they went to. Some would go to [Neakas Creek], some of ‘em
Dennis Creek, others would go to the coast, someone go up in the mountains, some to Tommy Point…they went all over. The worst thing they did was made us, made ‘em stay in the village. Destroyed the way of life. But now, we’re just now rediscovering the traveling, the past twenty years, now they say we can’t. [laughs] But these trails we’re following or the passes we go through its nothing new I mean that’s the way they’ve always got ‘em, we’re just using a different mechanism of transportation.
It’s nothing new” (Nielsen 1999).
Kokhanok interviewees spoke frequently of the sharing of game and other resources within the community. Certainly, the redistribution of meat and fish by subsistence hunters has its roots not only in social and ceremonial ties to the larger community, but also in the practical realities of subsistence hunting historically:
“before we had these here freezers, and electric and telephone and TVs and everything like that and telephone you just had to keep the meat you could eat before it spoil. So whenever we got, use to get a moose we give it to the village people you know and we still do that. The people that can’t get out and go hunting, got no four-wheeler or no snowmachine, we still can get meat and give it to them, we don’t keep it all for ourselves” (Roehl
1997).
The practice of sharing game is a practice of considerable antiquity. As Gregory Andrew recalled of traditional practices for this community, “When they got a moose, everybody ate. Sometimes when they caught a fish or two or maybe a little bit more than they could use, they shared that” (G. Andrew 1999). These practices appear to still be important for
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cultural and sustenance purposes today. Speaking of the moose he had caught most recently, John Nelson, Jr. reports
“I shared a majority with the village and the people that hunted with me,
‘cause we, we’ve always shared...my tradition is always shared every time you catch big game...it’s cut up right at the site and… if it’s packable, we pack everything down to the boat and we just take everything home and then...once we get back home we disperse it out. Most of it, dispersement goes out to the elders of the village” (Nelson 1999).
Similarly, Gregory Andrew (1999) recalls, “most of the time we enjoy giving the best parts to the old folks.”
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F
S
U
Interviewees depict the use of Katmai National Preserve as a modest component of
Igiugig’s overall pattern of subsistence harvest and ATV use, geographically and quantitatively. Residents note that “the ATV use is pretty minimal from Igiugig for people using the Park and the Preserve” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002:
28). As ATVs are, by far, the principal means of transportation for hunting access, what is said of ATV hunting applies to hunting generally. Still, ORV hunting is depicted as an enduring and “historic use” of the Preserve by some, and of continuing importance to residents of Igiugig, especially in light of the fluctuation in resource availability in other portions of their conventional hunting territory (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez
2002: 28).
The number of individuals from Igiugig who regularly visit Katmai for subsistence purposes is reported to be small, “just probably four or five guys” by George Wilson, Jr’s estimate (Wilson 2002: 21). Yet, in a community as small as Igiugig, this represents a relatively large proportion – perhaps 8-9% of the community, or 13-17% of the adult population, if Wilson’s estimate is correct. And, at least some of these individuals appear to visit Katmai frequently over the course of certain years, with as many as 40 visits per year being reported by Wilson (2002: 18). The natural products obtained in the course of these visits appear to be shared widely in the community, suggesting that – while the total number of hunters visiting Katmai is small – a significant proportion of the community has some interest in resource use within Katmai.
The use of lands and resources in Katmai is reported to vary considerably from year to year. The use of the area might be described as secondary, in the sense that Igiugig residents appear to prefer using locations closer to the village, but will commonly visit
Katmai especially when nearby resources are insufficient to meet community needs.
Interviewees describe the prioritization of hunting areas close to their home village, simply as a matter of convenience. In the event that these areas close to the village do not
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provide adequate opportunities for hunting, individuals fan out to secondary locations farther afield, including Katmai:
“the village, of course, uses extensively the area closest to your… community [which] is the most efficient…if [the caribou] are right in the village, well, we are not going to go back there in pursuit of them. If tomorrow they are back up in Battle Lake, [for example] that’s where we’re going to go get them” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 5,
37).
This pattern of hunting has resulted in longer-distance hunting trips in recent years, as caribou are said to have become scarcer close to Igiugig:
45
“nowadays, few years there ain’t hardly been no caribou around…
I remember years past, there would be caribou all over. They would be all over right down by the house there, right by mom and them…So caribou coming up, they were easy, you know, there were so many of them”
(Andrew 2002: 11-12).
When local hunting opportunities are insufficient, people report “ranging around” between a range of potential hunting sites, including sites within Katmai National
Preserve, to find good hunting opportunities. This results in visitation of a wide range of potential sites, inside and outside of Katmai, rather than following a predetermined circuit: “we’re not just making a loop like that, we’re ranging around” (Dan Salmon in
Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 12-13). These flexible hunting patterns apparently help to insure the success of subsistence hunting; George Wilson Jr., who describes an especially wide geographical range of hunting areas reports:
“there’s some several years where, you know, I may have a difficult season trying to catch four or five caribou, and there’s years where, you know, I…could have got that many in one day. It just depends on where the herds are going. But I’ve never had any problem not catching them every year” (Wilson 2002: 23).
Moreover, as discussed elsewhere in this document, weather conditions and snowpack also have a significant impact on the accessibility of the area using snowmobiles and
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wheeled ATVs, which also influences the frequency of Katmai visitation by Igiugig residents. Thus, interviewees report that the frequency of Igiugig resident use of the
Kukaklek Lake area and other portions of the Park and Preserve is dependent on a number of variables:
“depending on the season and what’s back there, some seasons I haven’t been there at all, and other seasons, I don’t know, a dozen times, maybe more. It depends [on] the traveling conditions, the weather, the time of the year that it’s frozen” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 16).
“on an average winter, you probably go back there thirty, forty times, probably at least that. Maybe more. Depends on…the conditions also. I mean, a few years back… I probably went back there four or five times.
That was the least amount. And during the summer, you know, you might go back there once -- once every couple of years…[every] two or three years” (Wilson 2002: 18).
The seasonality of use is affected significantly by weather and snowpack.
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ATVs generally require a firm driving surface and therefore ATV use increases significantly after the first hard freeze of the year, around October:
“[with] The ATV, in October, you know, you get first freeze-up, then you can go all the way back to Coffee Lake… all the swamps freeze over like
October, middle of October, end of October. You get the first, you know,
3, 4 inches, you know, you get the lake’s over, there’s no snow yet, the ground is starting to freeze over, and then you go over the ones, ATVs, you know, you go all the way back there, you know, Kukaklek and all the places, up on the ridges” (Andrew 2002: 3, 7).
When possible, ATV users will drive on snow instead of bare ground: “You don’t like to drive on rocks and stuff because it’s kind of hard on your equipment” (Randy Alvarez in
Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 30).
Interviewees generally agree that the timing of freeze-up, and therefore increased ATV and snowmachine use, is difficult to predict. For example, George Wilson, Jr. notes,
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“Last, oh, six, seven years it’s been real hard to predict…the travel along the creeks and stuff…you’re able to travel by January in years…and the lake is generally frozen by then. But just a couple of years ago the lake didn’t freeze at all. It froze like three times, but the wind would come up and break up the ice, and so you were able to travel by skiff if you wanted.
But I’d say at least by January it would be frozen up enough where people can travel. I’ve gone in December and traveled a lot, but you’ve got to be real observant of the…conditions of the ice… You had good snow in
November before and was able to travel. You couldn’t go onto any of the larger lakes, but a foot, foot and a half of snow. But some years it doesn’t snow real good until end of December” (Wilson 2002: 29-30).
Especially for places as distant as Katmai, interviewees seem to agree that “you can’t really get back with the ATVs until that first freeze-up” (Andrew 2002: 16). As shall be discussed elsewhere in this document, changes in the date of first freeze-up have apparently delayed the onset of peak ATV use. Interviewees also note that the freeze-up and the presence of snowpack is not as long-lived in Igiugig as it is in Kokhanok – this is said to result in a smaller window for ORV use generally, as well as a tendency to use
ATVs in lieu of snowmobiles for a greater proportion of the year, within the community of Igiugig.
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By the time that winter is well underway, in late November or December, the ground is sufficiently frozen that ATV access is seldom limited by ground conditions. When snows accumulate to a sufficient depth, snowmobiles replace ATVs as the vehicle of choice. (In certain years with good snowpack, snowmobiles may be used until April [Olympic 2002:
15]). Thus, interviewees suggest that in the wintertime ground transportation access to the Preserve is essentially unlimited: “you could go just about anywhere back there in the park in January” (Wilson 2002: 6).
ATV travel is generally difficult during the summertime: “it’s hard to get back…toward
Kukaklek because all these lakes and swamps” (Andrew 2002: 29). North of Peck’s
Creek, and thus well outside of Katmai, limited ATV use continues through the summer:
“As long as you know the terrain, it’s not that bad of a ride. But it -- it gets pretty rough out there in certain areas, and a lot of swamp. Stick next to
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the timber and the high ridges…But I like it. You go out there and you don’t see anybody. I just enjoy the ride and take in the scenery” (Wilson
2002: 11).
Summertime travel has actually become more difficult as ATVs have become larger.
Formerly, three-wheel ATVs had large enough tires and were of such light weight, that they could sometimes be floated across shallow waterways (Andrew 2002: 34). Rivers and lakes without imposing, marshy margins are still sometimes crossed by loading
ATVs onto boats and ferrying them across in the summertime. As shall be discussed below, these methods generally do not facilitate ATV access into Katmai in the summertime.
Some interviewees describe the shoulder seasons – spring and fall – as especially appealing times to visit Katmai. In part, this reflects the fact that, at these times, the ground may still be frozen enough to permit travel while the days are long enough to allow single-day hunting trips from Igiugig:
“Of course, if it’s nice in the spring and days are longer, you can spend more time up there before dark and get home. Or I’ve holed up in the pass in some of the -- those cabins up in that area. The one down on Nonvianuk
Lake, the one at Mary [Olympic]’s allotment, stayed there in that cabin.
Stayed up at a shelter there at Battle Lake one time in a snowstorm. So I...
Generally try to get home [in one day], if I can…That’s probably the most typical” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 16).
Interviewees generally agreed that single-day trips were preferable to multi-day trips, even if they had the option of staying in cabins:
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“you’re driving up there, you know, as far as you can in one day and do some hunting and come back” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez
2002: 30).
Interviewees’ comments suggest that it is the availability of ORVs that allow these single-day trips, a luxury that was not available in the era of dogsled use.
49
When it is not possible to make the trip in a single day, individuals generally prefer to stay in one of the
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numerous hunting cabins in and around Katmai; tents are also used when cabins are not available (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 30).
“Oh, it varied… a lot of times you would just be back within the day. But if I wanted, I would go out and spend either a night at Gabby’s, but the cabin was quite small. And I got a cousin, he’s got a cabin over in
Nonvianuk… it’s fairly new. It’s got oil heat so you don’t have to wake up in the night and stoke the fire” (Wilson 2002: 8).
Cabins that have been used in the past, mentioned by interviewees, included those at the
“mouth” (probably the outlet) of Nonvianuk Lake, a “recreation cabin” at American
Creek, Mary Olympic’s cabin, and Gabby Gregory’s cabin near Kukaklek Lake. George
Wilson, Jr. mentioned visiting another cabin, belonging to his cousin, Richard Wilson of
Naknek. Mentions of Gabby Gregory’s cabin were especially frequent, apparently reflecting its continued and regular use by residents of Igiugig.
The topic of frequency and seasonality of use did not receive equal attention in interviews with Kokhanok residents. It is clear that August and September are times when some residents hunt within the Preserve, although wintertime hunting and trapping also appears to be carried out, subject to the transportation limitations generally discussed in reference to Igiugig. As will be discussed below, times of peak flow on the Gibraltar River also likely restrict use. Non-resident hunting and other forms of non-resident visitation in the summer and fall may be displacing some use of the Preserve into the wintertime.
As discussed elsewhere in this document, there are two main trail routes used by
Kokhanok residents to access the Preserve. The route chosen to access the Preserve is said to depend on the weather and is seasonally determined:
“Come springtime and falltime it’s pretty hard over here on the
Cottonwoods side to try to climb up because of the steep terrain. It’s more easier to go up on this other mountain [a.k.a. “Fish Camp Mountain]…to climb up to here to get into the Preserve” (Nelson 1999).
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Interviewees from Igiugig indicated that there is little or no summertime use of Katmai due to imposing physical barriers to transportation. Most significantly, interviewees reported that the residents of Igiugig do not hunt in the Kukaklek Lake area, or other portions of Katmai, during the summertime due to the barrier posed by Peck’s Creek:
“I would say that’s not used. Pecks Creek is a substantial barrier and the swamps involved to get there. So to my knowledge, I haven’t seen a fourwheeler up there in the summertime. I would hunt with a four-wheeler right up to Pecks Creek, but I have not myself crossed it in the summertime. To my knowledge, since I’ve lived here, nobody’s ever done that… I’ve never seen one up there in the summer” (Dan Salmon in
Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 9, 21).
Randy Alvarez independently confirmed that Peck’s Creek was a significant barrier – and perhaps one of the most imposing physical barriers to ATV travel in the entire area – during the frost-free period. When asked to identify “bad spots in terms of travel conditions,” Alvarez replied:
“getting across the creek, Pecks Creek. That’s the spot …[if] you flew, that would be the only way you would go up there [to Kukaklek Lake in the early fall]” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 21).
Michael Andrew, Jr. suggested that the residents of Igiugig might opt to use the Preserve year-round, but that Peck’s Creek effectively restricted use to the time of freeze-up:
“if you had access in the summertime, you probably use it year around.
But you can’t get back there, like I said, summertime. You ain’t gonna make it” (Andrew 2002: 17).
Likewise, Mary Olympic reported:
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“…got no trail for summer. Only wintertime… Summer the Honda can’t go up there, you can’t cross the Pecks Creek. You could get stuck Pecks
Creek… So only wintertime” (Olympic 2002: 25-26).
George Wilson, Jr. seems to suggest that the challenges of creek crossings have even restricted ATV use in favor of snowmobiles during freeze-up in times past:
“we would use snow machines primarily in the winter to get through [to] the Kukaklek, because in the summer and fall, it would be too difficult to get -- get across a couple of the creeks back there… That was just too labor intensive to hike it back to get back there. Most of the travelling to
Kukaklek was done in the winter with a snow machine” (Wilson 2002: 4).
Of the five project interviewees, only George Wilson, Jr. indicated that he might use the
Preserve in the summertime, and then just as a last resort when game is not available elsewhere. Again, this occurs infrequently, once every “two or three years” according to
Wilson (2002: 18). This requires the construction of a temporary bridge over Peck’s
Creek. When Wilson does visit the Preserve in summertime, it takes a lot of extra time due to the time required for bridge construction and travel along upland areas:
“It would depend on if I wasn’t able to catch something closer, I would go back [to Kukaklek], but only as a last resort, you know…if you’re going to go out that far… you’ve got to spend at least a day or two there… It depends on my success in hunting during the summertime, whether I was catching anything. And if you can’t find something here close by, then you’ve just got to go up farther” (Wilson 2002: 17-19).
Yet even George Wilson Jr. noted that, while there is a chance of getting across Peck’s
Creek, there is considerable risk in getting stuck this far from home.
“Pecks Creek is the main -- the biggest barrier… if you just look around there enough, you should be able to find a shallow spot in the creek where you could go across, or if you follow it up far enough where it becomes swamp and you can go across the swampy area, but you’ve got a chance of getting stuck in that, too” (Wilson 2002: 18).
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George Wilson, Jr. describes how temporary bridges are constructed over certain creeks, apparently including Peck’s Creek:
“You can get across them, but you need to build a small bridge that’s got to span probably five feet, six feet across. I’ve done it a few times…Just cut down just a bunch of pines and some birch…get them all tied together.
They only got to be about three and a half foot wide…And just find a nice little spot where you can get down to the -- next to the…creek bank, and you can see across to the other side where you’ll be able to navigate back up off onto the ridge again…[I carry] Just a small little handsaw… And a hatchet. Trim the branches off. And I always got rope on the… bowler”
(Wilson 2002: 12-13).
This process is reported to take “at least a couple hours” (Wilson 2002: 18).
Dan Salmon noted that some people might create temporary trail improvements to pass over small marshy areas, but his account also suggests that the marshy area around
Peck’s Creek was of such as scale that this would only be done there during the shoulder season, when it would be largely frozen over (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002:
22). Other interviewees mentioned past efforts to build enduring bridges over Peck’s
Creek, as well as the prospect for building such a bridge in the future:
“We’ve tried putting up small little bridges, but during the fall and the early season, they would just wash out” (Wilson 2002: 4).
“You know, they were talking about putting a bridge in, but you know, it’s kind of in the planning stages … If you had a bridge, you could get up there [to the Preserve] from here” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez
2002: 21).
When conditions are marginal, ATV users sometimes ride along the north bank of the creek until they find a point that can be crossed:
“You just find a spot where you find like two banks are real close together, and you’re able to get down to it. And you’ve got a lot of brush in the swampy area on the lake and along the creek. Once you get across you find a spot to climb back out of the creek bottom” (Wilson 2002: 37).
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Interestingly, interviewees noted that the Peck’s Creek barrier resulted in a different seasonality of use for the Kukaklek Lake area between the communities of Igiugig and
Kokhanok:
“they are under a little bit different situation [in Kokhanok] because they can access it earlier because they don’t have this creek down here to go across (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 27).
Boats are sometimes used to access parts of Katmai, allowing limited summertime access:
50
“I’ve taken skiffs down around and up the [A]lagnak and up into both
Kukaklek and Nonvianuk. But I haven’t gone up there in two or three years now” (Wilson 2002: 21-22).
Despite the options of bridge-building or skiff access, the evidence still suggests that there is very little use of lands and resources proximate to Katmai by Igiugig residents in the summertime, when Peck’s Creek defines a southern boundary to most ORV travel for the community.
Meanwhile, for residents of Kokhanok, Gibraltar River apparently provides a minor seasonal barrier that is intermittent, and apparently not as imposing as that of Peck’s
Creek. Unlike Peck’s Creek, the obstacle here is simply high water, instead of marshy riparian areas:
“the high water [- access depends on the] water level...but, I think it’s been preserved because we can’t get there sometimes...we can’t get in there any old time we want unless we walk across…we could walk across by foot, but we can’t get the machine over there and we can’t get too far on foot”
(G. Andrew 1999).
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At certain times, in certain years, water levels in this river may almost preclude use of the
Preserve:
“last year we, I don’t think, none of us hardly gone up there [to the
Preserve] because of the high water… “if the water is high up here then we’re no going to be able to cross the river to be able to go up there”
(Nelson 1999).
In response to this barrier, certain individuals have constructed fords at points along
Gibraltar River. The exact nature of these fords is unclear, except that they provide easy
ATV trail access to the water and presumably have bridges or partially submerged materials that allow ATVs to cross:
“it’s not too difficult now with a four-wheeler. Couple of guys made place, three places to cross...the hard part was going up on the other side where these guys took a little work to make a trail for you to go up and down.
The high banks and thick timber...and now that there’s a trail” (G. Andrew
1999).
Skiffs are also sometimes used to cross the river, when available:
“Gibraltar River is our main obstacle here and if you don’t have a skiff to cross the river, you’re not going to cross it. There are a few ford[s] up on the river that you can cross it with but boy, it’s hard on the machines”
(Nielsen 1999).
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G
P
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Interviewees from both communities, Igiugig in particular, described a constellation of subsistence hunting areas that are sometimes visited in the study area. As discussed previously, the geographical distribution of hunting is influenced by many combined variables, including conventions within the community, the effects of weather, available forms of transportation, the available distribution of game species, and the like. While places visited for hunting and other subsistence functions are arguably “historical” in the sense that they were used prior to the advent of motorized vehicles, the accessibility of remote places within Katmai from the modern communities of Igiugig and Kokhanok has only increased with the proliferation of modern vehicles. As noted in the Katmai
Research Project reports (4: 11), in recent times “ATVs and snowmobiles have enabled harvesters to access more distant locations with greater ease, often resulting in increased dispersal of harvest efforts.”
Again, use of Katmai is somewhat variable, in light of intervening hunting, fishing, and gathering options closer to Igiugig and Kokhanok. Thus, interviewees did not typically mention regular circuits that they might take while hunting in the Preserve, but did list various locations that may be visited for resource gathering purposes. The locations that interviewees mentioned in and around Katmai were many. For example, in Igiugig, Dan
Salmon noted:
“We have a lot of the area between…what we call the hills behind the village, both sides leading towards the Kukaklek area and in between the village. We use up the lake up to Grant’s Lagoon, the bluff area, downriver to Kastinek, the bottom of the flats, Pecks Creek, Holy Creek, those areas are, of course, all used extensively.
Many travel down to the Branch using the river in the summer and the over-winter trails during the winter and access the areas in the forks of the Branch River where it goes to Nonvianuk and Kukaklek. Big
Mountain area’s used very heavily, especially in the wintertime, fall time moose, et cetera” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 5-6).
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Especially with snow machines, relatively remote and inaccessible places can be accessed. Dan Salmon, for example, alluded to visits to the Funnel/Moraine Creek area,
Battle Lake,
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and the nearby pass from Igiugig, as well as the forks of the Alagnak and
Nonvianuk Rivers, the Big Mountain area, Reindeer Lake, Holy Creek, Peck’s Creek, and a number of intervening hills by snow machine. Other sources (e.g., Behnke 1978) allude to the use of Paul’s Creek, King Salmon Creek, and American Creek as trapping areas. The speed and mobility of snow machines allows for long circuits of travel, he notes, so that he might travel,
“the south, southeast shore of Kukaklek all the way to the outlet, dropped down into Nonvianuk, stayed out of the Monument area there, stayed in the Preserve pretty much for any activities on the lake, quite a bit along the edge, and back up that trail that Mary [Olympic] had identified as an old dog team trail, back up to the outlet of Kukaklek and home” (Dan
Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 9).
Other interviewees mention many of the same locations. Places such as Kukaklek Lake and Battle Lake are mentioned especially often as hunting areas, and were addressed in each of the 2002 interviews conducted by Callaway and Schneider. In the wintertime, the
Kukaklek Lake area is an especially popular destination:
“I’ve been on a four-wheeler right across the Kukaklek Lake up into the -- what we call Little Kukaklek, a river. I believe you’ve got it listed as
Nanuktuk. We call that, some of us call Little Kukaklek. Or Little Ku.
And I’ve been all the way up through there, along the side of those hills down to heading east to the entrance of …the Narrow Cove that you have got listed to around the rim of the lake, the Funnel Moraine Creek, and back to the winter trail and home, and including the outlet, and then cross the outlet on them” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 9).
The mountains south and east of Kukaklek Lake, apparently including those between
Reindeer Lake and Kukaklek Lake, are often hunted by ORV as well:
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“I’ve hunted kind of this range…This is the kind of the pattern we go. But we drive up in here. It just depends on…what the game’s doing. This is all easy riding up here” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 12).
Nonvianuk Lake and the Alagnak River also received frequent mention, the former as a hunting area, the latter principally in reference to fishing.
Big Mountain also received frequent mention by interviewees (Andrew 2002; Wilson
2002). Speaking of the Big Mountain area, George Wilson, Jr. recalls
My dad just has a small trap line, there’s an…old trail up in here that he used to catch a lot of lynx out of it. But the rabbit population went down, and so did the lynx. And we just go up there to see if there’s any fur animals around. There’s not a whole lot of caribou in near the brush, but you’ll definitely see a lot of moose when the brush is real thick. So it will take some time to catch a moose if you want to get one in there” (Wilson
2002: 44).
The Moraine Creek area was said to be a good place for wolverine and moose (Wilson
2002: 38-39). Reindeer Bay was mentioned as being in the vicinity of one of Gabby
Gregory’s cabins, and was said to be used frequently at different times of the year
(Andrew 2002: 44-45). Upper and Lower Talarik Creeks, Kaskanak Creek, Grant’s
Lagoons Andrew Lake and Rainey Lake were also mentioned in interviews as places encountered by ORV and/or hunted for subsistence purposes (Andrew 2002, Wilson
2002).
Some individuals appear to expand the geographical range of their travels over time.
Recalling his childhood experiences with early ATVs, George Wilson, Jr. recalled that he drove only in Igiugig at first:
“That was just right down here in town with a 70 or something, and then the first four-wheeler I got was a little 125 Suzuki. And I would venture out just to the -- where the Preserve starts there on the other side of Pecks
Creek… And as I got older, I would -- I would ride out with my father with his snow machine in the winter. And he’s got a trap line that goes all
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the way out to Gabby’s cabin there, right next to [Kukaklek] lake”
(Wilson 2002: 10-11).
As mentioned previously, interviewees alluded to the use of no fewer than four cabins in the study area, including one at the mouth of Nonvianuk Lake, a “recreation cabin” at
American Creek, Gabby Gregory’s cabin near Kukaklek Lake, and a cabin belonging to
Rick Wilson with no location indicated. Dan Salmon also makes reference to a cabin belonging to Mary Olympic.
A map depicting “Kokhanok and Igiugig Historic Moose and Caribou Use Areas,” compiled by Don Callaway and Jeff Bennett on the basis of maps produced by Judith
Morris on the basis of her 1980s interviews in these communities, is included in the
Appendix of the current report. This map is provided in this report for illustrative purposes only, as the data included in this map are incomplete (excluding Igiugig caribou use) and are not tied to a specified transportation technology. The map reflects the recollections of specific interviewees from the 1980s, and reflects places recalled as subsistence hunting areas by those interviewees for the period preceding these interviews.
This map shows areas within the Park and Preserve that have been used for hunting in the living memory of Igiugig interviewees and may be of some use in inferring the broader geography of 20 th
century resource use. Maps of subsistence use areas for Igiugig are available in certain NPS and Alaska Department of Fish and Game technical reports, and these might be consulted to assess the extent of these areas for different species and at different times (Behnke 1978: 141; Alaska Department of Fish and Game 1985: 431-32;
Morris 1986: 59; Holen et al. 2005). Cumulatively, these documents indicate that
Katmai, minimally the Preserve, has been a part of the subsistence use areas of these communities from the 1970s through the early 2000s. Maps from Morris (1986) are included here as an example (see Appendix Maps 3, 4).
Kokhanok residents also depict a pattern of resource use that is, by necessity, adaptable and opportunistic. Hunting and trapping areas are depicted as somewhat dynamic:”we’re always scouting for new areas” (Nelson 1999). For example, residents of Kokhanok catch moose
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“wherever you happen to see it. Caught anywhere from Nonvianuk to
Tommy Point, Squirrel Village, anywhere in between, McNeil
River…Anywhere in between, where they happen to be” (Nielsen 1999).
Despite this, certain areas are recurring centers of hunting and trapping activities. The northern Preserve boundary area is said to be a popular area for hunting, especially for caribou:
“in August and September, that’s...that’s the best time to hunt them back there. There’s [hardly] snow, you could see ‘em. Then they go over there and hunt ‘em right there. We usually hunt [moose] around here too”
(Gregory 1999).
“I normally take caribou in the preserve. Majority of my traps is in the preserve. Then during the wintertime we can go further beyond into the preserve, which is the Kukaklek area we go down to all the way down to
Igiugig and beyond Igiugig and over to over here to Grants Lagoon and sometimes we go over to Lower Talarik Creek… Or to Upper Talarik
Creek, sometimes right at the village of Newhalen, below Newhalen”
(Nelson 1999).
Gregory Andrew discussed people hunting caribou in the Preserve. “mostly caribou... cause they don’t hardly ever come down here [toward Kokhanok]” (G. Andrew 1999).
The Funnel Creek and Mirror Lake areas were mentioned as hunting areas that were visited recently for caribou, and possibly bear.
Moose can be found in brushy areas on the lower part of Kukaklek Lake, Mirror Lake,
Moraine Lake and may be hunted there occasionally, but are apparently not often taken in these places. People prefer to take moose close to the village when possible, but also near the timberline in places closer to Kokhanok such as Dennis Creek or on the far side of Big Mountain (Gregory 1999). The size of moose, and the resulting challenges in transporting them, contributes to this preference for hunting sites closer to Kokhanok.
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Trapping has also been carried out in the Preserve. Gabby Gregory, for example, used to trap in a number of locations in what is now the Preserve with his father. They trapped and hunted around the south side of Kukaklek Lake, on the northern shoreline of
Nonvianuk Lake, in the Alagnak River area, and the Battle Lake area. Kukaklek Lake was especially a center of trapping:
“Oh, those days we catch beaver, when beaver season [on], mink season
[on], hunt mink in those creeks there, below somewhere that little creek there. Mink and otter...no wolf. [And] sometime he go Nonvianuk when its frozen with the dogs, go trap lynx or wolverine” (Gregory 1999).
They also sometimes trapped and hunted in the McNeil River area. The family trapped these areas in the 1920s and 1930s, and possibly later. The use of trapping sites within what is now the Preserve appears to have fluctuated over the years as a result of several factors, such as the availability of target species closer to home, the market for particular species, and the general abundance of a species due to changing regulations or natural fluctuations.
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Interviewees from Igiugig indicated that, prior to the arrival of motorized vehicles, there had been a single, primary dogsled trail that connected Igiugig with the Kukaklek Lake area. In addition, Mary Olympic alluded to a walking trail between these two places that was separate from the dogsled trail, but followed a similar course (Olympic 2002: 23-24).
As these trails were known to the community and clear of brush, they became the principal routes of access to the Katmai area for early ORV travelers, especially the dogsled trail: “Usually have to follow that dog team trail” (Olympic 2002: 7). The trail is said to progress directly from Igiugig over Peck’s Creek to the Preserve:
“cross Pecks Creek and you go on -- then you take -- you’re on top of the ridge to the first hill back here, then you go over and drop over that and you’re right toward Nonvianuk Lake” (Andrew 2002: 17).
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This trail apparently leads travelers to the Rocky Point area. Especially south of Peck’s
Creek, this trail is said to be smooth and is a pleasant ride for ORV travelers:
“Once you get past Pecks Creek out here, it’s about five miles out, it’s real good going. You get up here in the base of hills and it’s real smooth. And the terrain isn’t as hard or as bumpy. And there’s just a couple of little creeks that you’ve got to cross that they are all frozen over. It’s a nice trip”
(Wilson 2002: 5).
This trail allows rapid access from Igiugig into the vicinity of Katmai: “Half an hour to the base of the hill back here, a little over five miles away…I would say an hour and a half [to Kukaklek]” (Wilson 2002: 6). Some accounts might be interpreted to mean that there is a less used secondary branch of this trail south of Peck’s Creek.
This former dogsled trail between Igiugig and Kukaklek Lake continues to be the principal route of access for some, if not all, of the Igiugig residents who visit Katmai
(Olympic 2002). Mary Olympic indicates that she still uses this route “Over the same trail follow the dog team trail to Kukaklek” (Olympic 2002: 29). Likewise, Michael
Andrew, Jr. reports,
“you have only one impact. You have one main trail and that’s what everybody follows. There’s no different trails going by. If you want to go back to Kukaklek, there’s one main winter trail. And pretty much everybody stays on that…[there is] one main trail and you stay on it and you get off, and if people want to get berries and whatever, you know, it’s just one main winter trail. Everybody follows the same trail. And you get into it, fall, you know right what trail it is. It’s not a combination of different trails” (Andrew 2002: 15, 27-28).
At least some members of the community conceive of the trail as a “traditional trail”:
“since mom and them were living back, living up at Kukaklek and Igiugig, their dog team trail lead to it… you can see and where they’ve been through, you can…see some trees, they been through a lot of brush, but you know, once you clear them all off, you still got that same original trail… when they were using it, then it’s all these trails are traditional trails” (Andrew 2002: 27).
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The transition of this main trail from dogsleds to ATVs was facilitated in part by the fact that the footprint of the dogsled trails was the right width to accommodate ATVs:
“[They became] the ATV trails because you’ve got the same width… it’s easy to get back to these trails, you know, you fit right inside of them… they ain’t 8 foot wide or anything like that, they fit most of these trails”
(Andrew 2002:28).
While these dogsled and pedestrian trails were clearly the paths of least resistance for early ORV users, and already known to ORV travelers, Mary Olympic suggests that there was a larger conservation ethic influencing this choice. She indicates that Igiugig residents followed these routes
“Because we don’t want to ruin the ground…That’s why… even snow machine. These days now, you tell the kids and young ones, same reason, don’t run into anyplace because the snow machine or Honda ruin the ground. And it will ruin the berries. That’s why. It’s important for us still”
(Olympic 2002: 7-8).
When the principal trail is not available, such as when the ground is not frozen and
Peck’s Creek is impassable, those few individuals accessing Katmai do so along routes that appear to be diffuse:
“During the winter there’s only one primary trail everyone tried to follow, and it’s an old dog team trail that went all the way back to Kukaklek there.
But in the summertime you can’t travel it because it goes across… lakes in the swamp.
So I usually go up -- up in the lake for about five miles and cut across to Pecks Creek. And there’s a lot of old trails there, but there’s no -- no definite one that everybody uses all the time (Wilson 2002: 13-14).
George Wilson, Jr. also described a series of less developed trails that essentially follow ridgelines and other high areas that allow people to avoid swampy lowlands when the ground is not frozen (Wilson 2002: 14).
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Traveling is very slow along this route:
“on top of those knolls and stuff, there’s rocks and stuff so you’ve got to kind of pick your way” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 30).
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Water bodies are especially popular for wintertime travel, as they provide largely unimpeded movement when frozen:
“Of course, the ponds are the easiest to drive on, and the water bodies, if they are frozen, they are real fast to travel across, so people generally kind of aim for those areas, you know, get on and move accordingly” (Dan
Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 15).
Accordingly, Kukaklek Lake becomes a travel corridor in the winter, when the lake freezes:
“[Kukaklek Lake] freezes before Iliamna Lake. It’s a higher elevation, so that one it’s froze quite a bit earlier and stays frozen quite a bit later.
Again, you know, we may come straight across the lake. It just depends on where you want to go. If the caribou are on the other side of the lake, rather than going around the rim if it’s froze substantial, we’ll just cut right across the middle and get there. Otherwise, kind of following a range of these hills [on the north side of the lake]. I’ve been all over these hunting caribou. …And almost invariably, I would go home Rocky Point”
(Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 10-11).
The ORV routes in the Kukaklek Lake area also appear to be diffuse. Some resource areas in the Kukaklek Lake area appear to sometimes be accessed from a trail locally known as “Mary’s trail,” a reference to Mary Olympic, and then follow the southern shore of the lake. This may be the same trail, mentioned by Dan Salmon, that passes from Rocky Point to Mary’s cabin. The shoreline of Kukaklek Lake, including the gravel beaches and adjacent rocky uplands, appears to serve as a de facto wintertime ATV and snowmobile trail - as it apparently served as a dogsled trail historically (Olympic 2002:
25). People sometimes follow the “trails to the west” along the lake. Also, the margins of timbered areas are said to become de facto ORV trails during suboptimal driving conditions, such as when the snowpack is inadequate for snowmobile use or insufficiently frozen for ATV use:
“if it’s cold and dry, [the snow] blows at all into the brush and into the timber, and it makes harder travelling out in the open. You’ve got to
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stick…near the brush lines and the timber lines where the majority of the snow is. Just for comfort. You know. No one wants to be getting all beat up over frozen terrain” (Wilson 2002: 30-31).
Likewise, in the shadow of the trees, these snow accumulations may be later to melt at the end of the freeze.
From certain points along Kukaklek Lake, such as Mary Olympic’s cabin, the routes of access fan out in a pattern that is so diffuse that there are apparently no permanent trails:
“From [Mary’s cabin], typically, once…you’ve beaten through the timber, the other side of the timber line into the barren hills, traffic splays out in all directions to pursue the different, oh, activities people are going for.
Caribou.
I’ve done a lot of ptarmigan hunting. They school up there in the wintertime, in the early spring, thousands of them. So I go up there, taking my kids up there ptarmigan hunting… The tops of these ridges, everybody’s all at the top of these and down the sides. This is where we were ptarmigan hunting all last year” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez
2002: 13).
Again, trails are loosely defined outside of the principal travel corridors and travel might best be described as “opportunistic,” passing where the terrain and vegetation is simply open enough to allow travel:
“everybody goes every which way, so it kind of peters out. There’s no real trail. It goes down to the lake, you know, you can see trails that go down to the lake. But everybody…once they get up on into the timber and stuff down here, they kind of go wherever they want to go, so there’s no wellestablished trail from there out” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez
2002: 19).
“it’s just there’s no particular trail. Everybody is just -- they are very easy going, you just pick a route and go. If the lake’s frozen, I’ll head straight -- you know, get out to the flat land of [Kukaklek] lake and look back to the hills and see glass or get on top of that steep ridge to the…southwest and view the whole area to see if any game can be seen. And then pursue it accordingly” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 14).
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A map in the Appendix (Map 3) represents a distillation of interviewees’ comments regarding regular routes taken by ATV users accessing Katmai National Park and
Preserve, as well as routes indicated on maps during the course of interviews with Don
Callaway and Bill Schneider. The completeness and accuracy of this map is unclear, and principal trails are not differentiated from secondary ones, but the map does suggest certain regular patterns of movement and is provided for illustrative purposes here.
Interviewees from Kokhanok consistently indicate that there are two main trails leading to the Preserve. Garith Neilsen reports, for example,
“There are two...right now there are two main ways to penetrate into the preserve. I say there’s two main ways, because right now they’re the easiest. But if they were blocked, there’s other ways… if you go up and over the mountains, once you hit the preserve where the game is…the trail disperses, it fans out...there really isn’t a trail once you’re into the preserve, it just disperses. And it goes down to the lower side of Kukaklek all the way over toward Kamishak area, and back toward Battle Lake”
(Nielsen 1999).
These diffuse trails within the Preserve are said to leave little visible imprint. Likewise,
John Nelson describes a similar pattern with definite trails leading to a point in or near the Preserve that then “pretty much…disperses out to...’cause you can go any direction”
(Nelson 1999):
“we can go two routes, I usually go up to Kokhanok to Gibraltar then cut across alongside the mountain line here or utilize the old dog team trail that which goes up to the Cottonwoods…But, majority of my times I just use…the old dog team trail that...goes up there” (Nelson 1999).
As in the case of Igiugig’s trails, both of these trails used by Kokhanok residents were originally dogsled trails:
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“the trail from Kokhanok to Gibraltar that’s the old original dog team trail…the trail that’s going to the Cottonwoods, that was a dog team trail too, that was going down to Big Mountain” (Nelson 1999).
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Kokhanok interviewees note that when dog teams were being replaced by snowmachines and early ATVs, the general routes of dog trails were followed, but the trails had to be adjusted slightly to accommodate the new technology:
“we knew the trail was there, but it wasn’t good enough for the new ATVs and snowmachines we had so we had to kinda change it little bit… [it’s] easier to go through like a creek or somewhere not too deep or to go across a clearing where its pretty clear where a dog team can go right through the trees, most of the time. And then uh they climb a hill where a snowmachine or a Honda couldn’t go. They went out so they had to find a place where it wasn’t too hilly or like coming out of a creek in a big bank.
The dog teams would go almost straight up, but a snowmachine and a
Honda can’t do that. So, we had to kinda change it around, the best we know how” (G. Andrew 1999).
Later ATVs became more powerful and could climb some of the hills that the dogsled trails had traversed but the early ATV trails had not:
“those Honda trails still exist today, the ones we made when the first
Hondas came in. They haven’t gone off...they’ve gone off the trail a few time that you can see. Even I do that. But the original trail still sticks, they’re still there yet” (G. Andrew 1999).
Kokhanok interviewees noted that, generally, the rapid shift between different transportation technologies has facilitated an elaboration of the pre-existing trail network, reflecting the capabilities of each successive type of vehicle:
“Sometime, you might see two trails you know going kind of side by side…that other trail was found afterwards…[people first use the area with] a snowmachine or whatever and find out there’s a better way to go with the four-wheelers” (Roehl 1997).
Still, Danny Roehl (1997) noted that people tend to stick to known trails, in part because the terrain off the trails is often much rougher:
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“[people] start falling in those holes and stuff and you can’t go there with a 4 by because you get stuck all the time so…that’s why the people stay in these trails all the time because you know, there somebody travel it, it’s a good trail to travel” (Roehl 1997).
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T
C
C
Interviewees consistently mention the apparent warming trend in the region, resulting in hotter, drier summers, increased glacial melt and vegetation growth, and a longer snow- and ice-free period (Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 3-5). Some suggest that these changes have affected the seasonality of certain transportation methods, and especially an increase in ATV use.
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There is also a possibility that these changes may affect the routes utilized to access subsistence resources, but this point was not explored in the course of project interviews.
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Accounts of climatological changes in the region appear to be consistent among the interviewees. Michael Andrew, Jr., for example, notes that in recent years
“you rarely get snow…last year, it was the first time I remember there being good snow for snow machine. Usually five or six years before that there was hardly any snow. It would be just like…right now you might have a light dusting of white, but other than that, there ain’t much…I remember when I was a kid [in the 1970s and early 1980s], there was a lot of snow. You couldn’t even walk down this road there would be so much snow.
“And it would be cold, colder winters when I was a kid growing up. From October all the way until April, it was cold winters. Now it’s you’re really hardly getting winters now. You’re lucky to get two weeks of 20 below, and the rest of the time it’s pretty mild.
“The changes I remember as being a kid, going to school walking in two to three feet of snow all the time. And if you look at it now, if you have a snow machine, if you’re looking for right conditions, you’re lucky to put any miles on it” (Andrew 2002: 8-10).
Some interviewees noted that the east winds tend to melt away the snow, and these winds have blown more regularly in recent years (Andrew 2002, Olympic 2002). Others note that the temperatures are often right at the margin of freezing, so that snowpack does not stay for long:
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“we would get a lot of wet snow, but it would be so warm that just a couple of days of 30 degrees, it would -- it would all melt” (Wilson 2002:
5).
By interviewees’ accounts, these changes have significantly impacted the transportation options used by the community. Recently, interviewees suggest, the snow has not been sufficient until well into December to allow snowmobile use. Using snowmobiles without adequate snow can cause damage to these machines:
“if there ain’t no snow, you burn up your slides. There’s a lot of times in a lot of years there was hardly any snow. You know, I mean the way you travel is with ATVs (Andrew 2002: 8).
Especially during the shoulder seasons, at the beginning and ending of the snowbound season, this climatological change has reportedly resulted in a shift from snow machines to other forms of transportation, principally ATVs: “if you don’t have the snow… snow machines, of course, don’t work, you have to go to other means” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 5). The seasonality of transportation options has thus shifted, and the period three- and four-wheel ATV use has apparently expanded as a result:
“in periods of no freeze-up, of course, it’s real difficult. Some of us have used our airplanes to move people to different spots in times before it’s frozen. If there’s no snow and the ground’s frozen, then it’s strictly fourwheeler access. And I would say the four-wheeler is probably useful in this region now 11 months plus out of the year. Before, years ago, I think historically it would have been only probably like 8 months a year… the factor here is a function of no snow and difficulty using snow machines, or in the old days dog teams, it’s bare ground here now” (Dan Salmon in
Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 7).
“It’s getting funny. Really change… Most the time wheels [now]…we use three-wheeler, four-wheeler, Honda…After when the first snow, we used to have Snow-Go, no more snow” (Olympic 2002: 13-14).
At least one interviewee attributed the increase in ATV use to Katmai through the 1980s and 1990s as a response to these climatological changes. Randy Alvarez notes
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“ in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it didn’t seem we had much snow most of the time.
That’s why we started using ATVs to run up there. Because there was the snow conditions… it was froze, but there was no snow…We had some years where there was hardly any snow at all until late… until springtime…And by then it’s too late to do anything with a snow machine.
That’s why everybody was travelling around with the ATVs” (Randy
Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 24).
Some attribute the diversity of modes of transportation used today – the ATVs, snowmobiles, skiffs, and various other vehicle types owned by so many area residents – as a response to these climatological changes:
“different modes of transportation are used probably more now than have been any time, you know, in the past and increase just because of the problems of getting to historical areas”(Dan Salmon in Salmon and
Alvarez 2002: 7).
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has apparently adjusted hunting seasons for the region in response to climatological limitations on these modes of transportation:
“We were having problems with freeze-up…sometimes we didn’t have it until the middle of December, and by then… the moose season is half over with. So we got the Board of Game to move our winter moose season back two weeks, so it was in the last half of December and the first half of
January. So it makes it easier” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez
2002: 5).
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During the 1997 and 1999 interviews with Kokhanok residents, climate was not as central to the interviewers’ questioning and, perhaps as a result, the topic received relatively little attention by Kokhanok residents.
58
Interviewees did note that “it’s getting warmer and warmer” (Roehl 1997). Some provided additional detail:
“wind is kinda getting more and... when I was growing up, it used to freeze this time of year [November]. Now it been freezing since...January, they start freezing the lake. It used the freeze around this time, middle of it, when I was young. Everybody run around out there on the ice. Not today… Look, seems to be more snow… when I was younger sometimes we get lots of snow and sometimes hardly any all winter” (Gregory 1999).
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Interviewees mentioned changes in the distribution of game in recent years, possibly associated with climate changes:
“especially on this side there’s hardly any caribou around, but lots of moose, lots of bears and...lots of ptarmigan...ptarmigans and rabbits around here too. But caribou, they...when there’s lots of snow they move way towards Iguigig area or other side” (Gregory 1999).
This clearly has implications for the distribution of hunters and of ATV use generally within the large territory utilized by Kokhanok residents for subsistence. Danny Roehl also noted a growing threat of falling through the ice during unusual times in the season, a threat that is related to ATV use and likely influences modern transportation choices:
“you do because you are travelling much faster… The dogs would see it right away. Like our dogs, our leader would never let you go out onto that ice. He wouldn’t go out onto that ice” (Roehl 1997).
Trapping, some note, can be prohibited by diverse climatological factors, including barriers to transportation (e.g., inadequate snow) or physical barriers to trapping (e.g., ice becoming so thick that snare holes cannot be chopped through) (Nelson 1999). As the climate has become less predictable, these barriers have increasingly undermined trapping activities.
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M
T
O
:
ATV
.
S
Many interviewees spoke about the advantages and disadvantages of ATVs relative to other forms of transportation – especially snowmobiles. Both snowmobiles and wheeled
ATVs are described as reasonably affordable. Both can last at least a decade if properly maintained, and individuals can often do all of their own mechanical work on both of these machines. Yet, the differences between these two forms of transportation are substantial.
Igiugig residents note that snow machines are preferred to ATVs when there is adequate snow, due to their range and speed. Some consultants implied that, if winter weather would facilitate their use, they might use snow machines for more of their hunting, and their ATVs for less (Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 30). There are also certain mountainous areas that are apparently only accessible by snow machine, when snows have accumulated to a suitable depth, but cannot be reached by ATV under most circumstances due to the ruggedness of the exposed rock or soil surface.
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When asked whether he preferred snowmobiles to ATVs, George Wilson, Jr. replied
“the snow machine is a lot quicker and it’s a lot nicer ride…you don’t get jarred around as much…Oh, yeah. And you can go a lot further. A lot further. I’ve gone like 140 miles in one day on a snowmobile before. And it takes you, you know, about a week to do that in the summertime with an
ATV…[and] it’s warmer. You’ve got the cowling and the windshield in front of you. You can put a windshield on a four-wheeler, but you sort of get wind that blows by underneath it and it hits you right in your… abdomen, and that gets kind of uncomfortable after a while…[and] you get stuck a lot less with the snow machine. You can go through deeper snow.
Snow conditions is what limits you with the four-wheeler. It’s got to be cold enough where you can ride on top of the snow here” (Wilson 2002: 9,
31-32).
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Some places, such as Nonvianuk Lake, are depicted as being simply beyond the comfortable range of ATVs, while being comfortably within the range of snowmobiles.
Speaking of Nonvianuk Lake, George Wilson, Jr. reports,
“I’ve gone there with a snow machine and with a skiff, but I wouldn’t venture that far with a four-wheeler. It would take probably a good day, day and a half to get there” (Wilson 2002: 41).
This presumably affects the seasonality of use for certain portions of the Preserve, with periods of greater snowfall correlating with greater community access to remote areas, such as Nonvianuk Lake: “The longer travel that we have around here would be done in the winter with the snowmobile” (Wilson 2002: 5).
When snowpack is negligible or absent, ATVs are clearly preferred to other modes of transportation due to their low cost, their fuel efficiency, their suitability for a wider range of weather conditions, and their convenience. Even when snow is present in trace amounts, there is often not enough snow to lubricate the skids or accommodate the water cooling systems of many snow machines. For this reason, ATVs are often seen as superior to snowmobiles
“Because you don’t get stuck. Because a Snow-Go can’t go without snow, unless you’re on wheel. Faster. A lot faster than dog team…[and can be used] When no more snowfall. Especially when the ice freeze the lake, you go back and forth on ice… Kokhanok, Newhalen, Nondalton… with the carnival going on, we like to go…Even though we’re still on the other side” (Olympic 2002: 9-10).
The fuel efficiency of four-wheel ATVs is also said to greatly exceed that of snowmobiles, one of the trade-offs for the reduced speed and range of ATVs (Wilson
2002: 9).
The preference for ATVs was perhaps not as strong in the days of three-wheeled ATVs, however. Even when snowpack was marginal, some suggest that snow machines were preferred to the three-wheel ATVs for winter travel, in part because the range of three-
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wheelers was limited and they were uncomfortable for long trips in cold weather. Hunters traveling to the north edge of the Preserve apparently watched the weather closely and alternated between the two modes of transportation during the early days of ATV use, using the snowmobiles whenever possible:
“you know, it all depends on the conditions, what sort of snow we have.
Most of the time there was snow so we would use snow machine but then we would go a lot farther because it’s a lot easier to go on a snow machine than a three-wheeler, faster. Cover more ground so you have got more time to get home. Up there and back” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and
Alvarez 2002: 18).
Significantly, then, interviewees’ accounts suggest that the Katmai area might have been more of snowmobile destination in the past, due to the combined effects of transportation barriers (i.e., Peck’s Creek) and the distances that must be covered to hunt there. Randy
Alvarez, for example, recalled that levels of use at Katmai have tended to be “very small with ATV, but snow machine not necessarily” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez
2002: 28). Dan Salmon noted that “We use that heavily in snow machine[s]” (Dan
Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 29).
However, today the proliferation of ATVs and the reduction in the depth and persistence of annual snowpack have strongly favored ATV use. Moreover, a preference for ATVs has limited the use or purchase of new snow machines by certain communities, which arguably further reinforces ATV use:
“if you go to the village like Kokhanok, most people have ATVs. But not everybody has a snow machine. So you know, they do, if they have to, they will drive their ATV up to the Park and Preserve, you know, because that’s all they have. For transportation” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and
Alvarez 2002: 43).
Many families apparently have used a hybrid approach to transportation, alternating between snow machines and ATVs as the weather and snow accumulations dictate.
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Some appear to have both snowmobile and ATV, and some have more than one of each
(Wilson 2002: 50-51).
Kokhanok residents note almost identical patterns. In the wintertime, after heavy snow, only snowmachines will do: “it’s hard to get by, there’s too much snow, with a threewheeler or four-wheeler of mine. It’s only the snow-go that can make it…” (Gregory
1999). However, if the snow becomes icy, then the options are reversed:
“if the snow is hard you use a four-wheeler. If it’s icy then a snowmachine is useless, pretty much…wears out the under carriage…When conditions are icy, use the four-wheeler, when the conditions are soft use the snowmachine” (Nielsen 1999).
Some places apparently are still so rugged that they are only accessed by snowmachines, but not ATVs, in part because the snow creates a more even surface for travel.
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These patterns were apparently well-established in the era of three-wheeled ATVs:
“we’d have to…kind of go with the seasons. Three-wheeler when we could go when there wasn’t too much snow, like on the glare ice and stuff we go use the three-wheeler when it get started” (G. Andrew 1999).
Three wheel ATVs were also said to be relatively unstable, though four-wheel models have largely overcome this problem:
“you wouldn’t want to go where we went with a three-wheeler. Threewheelers were hard and tricky to ride on the tundra. Tip over and flip so easy. But snowmachines are stable, they don’t tip over as much” (G.
Andrew 1999).
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Snowmobiles and ATVs, while providing comfortable and effective transportation for human passengers, are often too small to carry game, supplies, and other cargo. For this reason, ORV users often pull a sled or trailer for emergency supplies, as well as carrying game. In part, this is done as a safety precaution:
“especially when I go by myself, I take everything. If I break down, that way if I have to spend a couple of days, if people are looking for me, I can have everything I need. Because it’s too far away to walk home” (Randy
Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 33).
Also, trailers allow hunters to transport game home – a single trailer can be sufficient to carry a full adult moose or multiple caribou. Some interviewees suggest that sleds are preferred when there is snow, usually when driving a snowmobile:
“That’s a lot more convenient and you can get up there and back easier without getting stuck there. A trailer, it’s too cumbersome… Just pulling wheels with a heavy load like that, even if it’s wood, they fall into holes and you get stuck and then you do more damage to the -- to the tundra”
(Wilson 2002: 33-34).
Though conditions seldom allow for the combined use of wheeled ATVs and sleds, ATV users often pull wheeled trailers behind ATVs for similar reasons (Wilson 2002: 33).
People traveling to Katmai by ATV generally bring along a single can of extra fuel; it is possible to travel to and from the Preserve on little more than a single tank of gas, but this extra fuel is occasionally needed to return home (Wilson: 2002: 9). The risk of getting stuck some distance from Igiugig, late in the hunting trip and during the winter season, warrants this extra caution. Some individuals also leave fuel cached in certain locations for use by ATVs, snowmobiles, airplanes or other vehicles; it was not clear if this was done within lands now encompassed in Katmai National Park and Preserve.
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Kokhanok residents had relatively little to say on this point. Some noted that moose hunters must often take two trips with their snowmobiles or ATVs to bring home an entire moose. Hunting parties used to be larger historically, due to the need for carriers while, today, subsistence hunters still ordinarily travel in twos for safety’s sake (Nielsen
1999).
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R
E
C
ORV U
The accounts of Igiugig and Kokhanok residents make it clear that these are communities undergoing social and economic transformation. The communities have experienced economic challenges, as reduced employment in the fishing industry and the declining price of furs have contributed to a shift into unconventional sources of wage employment.
In addition, steadily rising energy costs are making it increasingly difficult for residents to meet their heating, electrical and fuel needs.
Igiugig residents note that the village of Igiugig now has its own construction company, and residents also cater to tourists, providing alternative sources of income and reducing dependence on commercial fishing, trapping, and other primary resource industries.
These kinds of changes have, in turn, altered the relationship of Igiugig to lands and resources within Katmai. In particular, the scheduling demands of these new sources of wage employment compete with hunting, trapping, and other activities, even as subsistence harvests remain significant and the income from these activities allows
Igiugig residents to purchase new and improved ORVs. In some cases, increased tourist exposure to this region may also bring with it increased pressure on subsistence resources.
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Kokhanok noted similar kinds of processes at play in their own community. Still, despite the myriad economic changes experienced by the community, Kokhanok has one of the highest levels of subsistence resource consumption in Alaska. Residents suggest that the community’s future is based
“Probably through subsistence activities…there was only few jobs, and we’re always still dependent on subsistence today...it’s subsistence always played a big part in our lifestyle” (Nelson 1999).
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Simultaneously, Kokhanok residents note resource depletion in some of their prime subsistence fishing and hunting sites, apparently due to both resident and non-resident pressures on resources, and possibly natural fluctuations as well. Resource depletion of
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this kind has the potential to displace subsistence activities to locations, such as the
Preserve, that will require greater reliance on ATVs and other transportation technologies:
“the population is getting so big that I don’t think Gibraltar is going to be able sustain what we take out of it for too many more years. And...I would say within ten to fifteen years you’ll see people heading for Moraine to pick up red fish in the fall. So, it’s gonna happen” (Nielsen 1999).
A number of Igiugig interviewees mentioned the challenges resulting from scheduling constraints. Randy Alvarez, for example, formerly trapped extensively in the vicinity of
Kukaklek Lake,
“But beings as the price has been pretty poor… and fishing has been pretty poor, so I’ve been working. I’ve been gone the last couple of years working most of the time. I don’t get a chance to trap as much as I used to.
And the price is so poor now… I don’t spend as much time here as I used to, you know… And I work construction, so I’m gone away from home quite a bit at a time” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 22-23).
Michael Andrew also spoke of increased scheduling constraints on hunting in recent years:
“last year has been so busy working I haven’t really never had much time,
I don’t really get a chance to go out hunting, you know” (Andrew 2002:
11).
Arguably, this transition has been underway for decades.
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Accordingly, Mary Olympic noted that she largely ceased her trapping in the study area between 1968 and 1970, as she took a job as a janitor and could not get away for very long (Olympic 2002: 16). She commented on how the pace of life in Igiugig had changed so much in recent decades:
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“Long time ago, slow. Seemed like -- I remember what it looked like we had long winter, long spring, long summer, long fall. Seemed like long time” (Olympic 2002: 12).
She suggests that the ORVs were part of that transition, allowing people to go faster when traveling between tasks, including subsistence hunting and trapping.
Scheduling constraints also emerge in the form of temporary relocations away from
Igiugig. Residents still participate in subsistence activities in and around Katmai, even if they have had to temporarily leave Igiugig for work or schooling – a common facet of life in such a small community. When families relocate, some retain a strong preference for game foods, for reasons economic and personal: “I really enjoy the game and prefer it over beef or going to McDonalds every day” (Wilson 2002: 28-29). George Wilson, Jr. explains,
“We put away fish…this summer, whether it be smoked fish or frozen filets. We came out here to do some moose hunting, and I’ll bring that back also with caribou. I love all the game you can get out here. I enjoy duck hunting in the fall. And we were here about three, four weeks ago and we got several gallon of berries, all good to have that in the winter”
(Wilson 2002: 24).
Goods obtained in this way are often put in cold storage and flown out of the area.
George Wilson, Jr. estimates that his family ships roughly 500-600 pounds of subsistence meat, fish, and berries to Anchorage, where his wife was attending university.
With so many other competing demands for time, historical modes of transportation, such as dogsleds and travel by foot, are depicted as largely impractical. ORVs generally, and
ATVs specifically, are now depicted as essential – not only to subsistence – but to all kinds of activities that require transportation:
“You look at… the beach down here… [for] subsistence, everybody uses them. You know, trailer up to their nets and put their fish in there. It’s the main transport out here. You know, you look every house, everybody got
ATVs…I think it’s key for out here because that’s the only way to get
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around. It’s the main transportation. You take that away, what do these people have? Ain’t no trucks or anything else to replace that, you know, it’s more or less a way of life out here, to get around” (Andrew 2002: 10-
11, 27).
In this light, one might infer that ATVs have become emblematic of not only mobility, but of security – economic and dietary – within the community of Igiugig. Today, the use of ATVs is well established in these communities and newcomers are advised to obtain ATVs for their principal mode of transportation:
“If anybody comes, school teachers here now, and they have got to buy one vehicle, that’s what we tell them to get. It gives you the most options to get the most places the most amount of time in a given year” (Dan
Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 8).
Kokhanok interviewees speak to similar issues related to scheduling constraints.
These issues have faced the residents of Kokhanok for generations, though their character has changed with the dynamic economic fortunes of the region. Gregory Andrew (1999) recalls a cycle of annual events in the early- to mid-20 th
century that involved months of trapping: “we would spend a month and a half, two months in a beaver camp” (G.
Andrew 1999). This was followed by subsistence fishing, which was followed in turn by entire families relocating to Bristol Bay to participate in commercial fishing. With time, the competition became increasingly severe as Native Alaskans entered the work force in larger numbers and expanded capacities. Thus, today, commercial fishing clearly competes with subsistence tasks for residents’ time and energies. Speaking of subsistence fishing, Garith Nielsen notes:
“If we have time, we do the salt fish at the end of the [commercial harvest], just because it’s more convenient. By the time we get back home here, after the season the fish are pretty skinny and there’s not much fat content, difficult to smoke then because it’s raining and blowing and hard to dry ‘em up here. The good months are June and July, when were gone”
(Nielsen 1999).
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As in Igiugig, Kokhanok interviewees note that the increased speed of ATVs has had a number of advantages in overcoming the scheduling constraints on subsistence tasks.
“We could get it more quick and bring it home quick...lot easier to get one… Easier to see ‘em, spot ‘em, catch ‘em and shoot ‘em” (G. Andrew 1999). Not only was the speed greater, but the number of individuals required to work together at any one time declined as well in the wake of ATV use, as there were no longer the same arduous tasks associated with packing gear and game. Traditionally, hunting groups were larger than today, involving groups of people who packed out meat, with each member having specific duties:
“we usually go into big groups. First of all, the hunting group used to be small…I used to be the runner, I guess, the water getter or cook or fire maker, I can recall that...[today] its different to when I was growing up.
Before we used to walk out there and pack up our pack…back home versus today...you go out there and bring it back one shot as compared to twenty years ago, one piece at a time” (Nelson 1999).
Likewise, Gregory Andrew recalls,
“when we had dog teams we had most of the time had to get another two or three dog teams to get the moose back. The other wild game was plentiful then...like the wolverine. If you left one out overnight, then when you go back and find no more…moose. [The wolverine] come and get it right now. They clean out the whole thing” (G. Andrew 1999).
Similarly, Gabby Gregory recalls that, in his parents’ time, people would kill a caribou or moose and
“Pack the whole thing out. Take them about a week, couple of weeks to bring the whole meat back, everything, skin and all. Those days, today we just leave the skin, the guts, and the heads...take the meat” (Gregory
1999).
Today, even the largest moose can be taken back in the course of a day:
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“A small moose, one four-wheeler can haul it. A big moose, it’ll take at least two. And I’ve seen moose over there that took four four-wheelers, a single moose, it’s so big. It just all depends on the size” (Nielsen 1999).
It is important to note that scheduling constraints also limit some Native Alaskan participation in the growing tourist-based economic activities. For example, John
Nelson, Jr. noted that he was not able to interact with the staff of area lodges
“because I participate in commercial fisheries. I leave here end of May then I don’t come back ‘til first part of August or mid-August so...those three months are the busiest time for the lodges” (Nelson 1999).
Igiugig interviewees attributed the decline in caribou populations in the Igiugig area to an increasing amount of competition from non-resident hunters. These hunters appear to include both recreational hunters and men who have become unemployed from the fishing industry in nearby communities and thus have increased their reliance on local subsistence resources (e.g., Andrew 2002: 18).
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Speaking of caribou hunts in 2002, Dan
Salmon noted,
“we had a lot of hunting activity here, Soldotna, Kenai, Anchorage, a lot of that same-day aerial hunting of caribou, ourselves included on snow machines and four-wheelers” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez
2002: 6).
Visitor impacts were said to be especially significant on the Branch (Alagnak) River:
“right now it’s hard to get a moose on Branch River because of so much traffic and so many bears, you know, you’ve got a combination of the two.
And moose, they just don’t like all that traffic, and then the bears, there’s so many bears eating the dead salmon that…the moose just don’t want to be there” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 45).
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Likewise, George Wilson, Jr. suggests that there is increased hunting pressure from
Naknek on hunting areas along the major rivers in the area. Some of these hunters, he suggests, are unemployed or underemployed commercial fishermen hunting for subsistence, while others are resident hunters who have been displaced by more intensive hunting closer to Naknek. In turn, this has displaced Wilson and possibly others into the
Kukaklek Lake area, so that he can “go and spend a few days out hunting without having to run into someone” (Wilson 2002: 16). It appears likely that these kinds of pressures from non-residents may be creating modest increases in Igiugig residents’ harvest of resources in less accessible places, including Katmai.
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Kokhanok residents had quite a lot more to say about the impact of non-residents. Nonresident hunters based at lodges, they report, have become a regular feature of the life in the Kokhanok area, in the Preserve, and elsewhere:
“Like springtime you got what is it...moose [season]. Well, springtime you got fishing and falltime you got hunting then falltime then you got every four years right now there’s bear hunting. Then from August to end of
March or first part of April is caribou season...basically, I seen a whole lot of activity within the season” (Nelson 1999).
Creation of the Preserve is said to have changed life for residents especially in the introduction of more and different people than what were there before. Gabby Gregory, for example, reports encounters with non-resident hunters, apparently in the Moraine
Creek, Funnel Creek, Mirror Lake, Emerald Lake, and Spectacle Lake areas – areas that are hunted, incidentally by the park’s two hunting concessionaires (M. McBurney pers. comm. 2008).
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Others mentioned lodge operators bringing hunters or fishermen to
Nonvianuk Lake, and airplanes dropping off hunters in the Preserve along some of the principal trails used by Native Alaskan residents (G. Andrew 1999). Occasionally, the presence of so many visitors has created economic opportunities for residents.
67
Gregory
Andrew, for example, notes that:
“they used to hire my boat to haul their moose horns over to their big airport to get ‘em out. Sometimes I made two…trips in moose horn...antlers and caribou antlers” (G. Andrew 1999).
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Yet, interactions with these non-residents generally are not described in positive terms:
“People...like hunters maybe out there. Hunters like white man hunters they complain when they see us up there trying to catch a caribou or something…Oh, the lodge owners they sometime see people...they don’t scare us, they tell us...tell park service people about it, I guess” (Gregory
1999).
“Lodges, outfitters, those damn guys from the Kenai who think this is their backyard playground when it isn’t…Just coming across the inlet. It used to be pretty bad until we started chasing them off the Native corporation land…I mean they were camping literally in our backyards up here and...harassing our game” (Nielsen 1999).
Some interviewees suggest that the number of people in and near the Preserve has adversely affected the subsistence hunt, through crowding, the introduction of new hazards associated with gun use, and the like:
“I’ve gone up over the hills [i.e., near or in the Preserve] looking for moose, and there’s moose up there but, there’s just so damn many bears and so many people around that I [never shoot one]…the last time I was up there I ran into so many hunters I just turned around and came back. I figured it wasn’t even worth looking...because the hunting pressure has been too great. And I didn’t feel like getting shot anyway” (Nielsen 1999).
“can’t get [a moose] the day you got out there anymore. Takes a while, takes a little work, takes a little planning...takes a looking. When we used to go not far from here, not even an hour it’d be time to come back already. Got the moose, maybe even two. But the airplanes and lodges, I think they made a big difference...it [is] harder” (G. Andrew 1999).
In turn, the number of non-resident visitors appears to affect the seasonality of resource procurement within the Preserve, as people avoid hunting during peak non-resident hunting and visitation.
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Speaking of moose hunting, Garith Nielsen reports,
“I usually wait until winter when the going is...when I have more access to more country. A lot of times, I’ll hunt in the fall but the chances of getting
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one in the fall is pretty slim, again because the hunting pressure...The winter season there’s not as much pressure from outside sources” (Nielsen
1999).
Increased competition for game, inside and outside the Preserve, also displaces
Kokhanok hunters to other geographical locations. In turn, some suggest, this has intensified dependence on ATVs to access relatively remote locations in a manner similar to that found among Igiugig hunters:
“with all these here sport hunters and stuff coming in and driving all our game away way back in the hills and stuff… we got to get back there somehow to get them cause we don’t have any airplanes to fly in there and bring them out…and that’s the only way you can get them out is if you go to four-wheeler you got some way to bring your meat out but if you walk in there, you’ll never get it out before it spoil” (Roehl 1997).
Sometimes these secondary hunting sites lie within the Preserve:
“I [have] personally gone fairly deep into the Preserve, not really deep.
The furthest I’ve ever got a caribou with a four-wheeler was in the mid-
’80s and that wasn’t when the preserve was here. First we went to Big
Mountain, or just this side of Big Mountain. Didn’t find any game, we came back. Loaded the Hondas in the skiff, went to the other side of Big
Mountain up Windy Creek, spent three days there, didn’t find anything.
Traveled to Igiugig by the four-wheelers, didn’t find anything. Crossed
Kvichak River and traveled not quite to Lower Talarik before we ran into,
I think, six caribou...and got four and we brought ‘em all the way back.
That’s... just shows you to the extent we will go to find meat. And there was...four or five of us in that group at the time” (Nielsen 1999).
Based on such accounts, it is clear that the residents of both Igiugig and Kokhanok cover considerable geographical ranges in the course of hunting. Hunting territories are malleable and adaptable by necessity, reflecting the mobility of prey species, the historical impacts of volcanic eruptions, and a host of other factors. The arrival of a growing number of competing hunters affects traditional hunting practices in a manner that is reminiscent of these other variables. Residents of these communities must expand their hunting territories as necessary to find game, and as an outcome of this, Katmai
National Preserve, Alagnak Wild River and, to a much lesser extent, Katmai National
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Park continue to play a role in these communities’ hunting traditions. With the diverse effects of prey mobility, recent population changes in caribou and moose herds, climate change, and changing patterns of non-resident hunting, access to Katmai appears to provide a modest amount of stability to a hunting tradition that is in rapid flux.
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E
ORV
L
R
Interviewees from both communities sometimes noted that the use of ORVs in the study area has had negligible impacts upon the landscape. Still, traces of human activities can be seen. Outside of Katmai, the main ORV trail from Igiugig area to near the Preserve boundary is said to have some visible impact by some motorized traffic (Dan Salmon in
Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 15). Inside Katmai, according to Igiugig residents, these physical traces of ORV use are more difficult to detect:
“I’m Igiugig land use officer. I watch their lands very closely, of course.
I’m at the Kukaklek area frequently. And I’ve flown the edge of that lake many, many, many times, and my personal observation is there has been no impact by any form of motorized technology that I can see other than the trail from Rocky Point directly back to what I call Mary[ Olympic]’s cabin… The only trails that I can see are those that have been developed by caribou migrations over the past years. I’ve seen no evidence of three or four-wheeler or snow machine damage to any of that property up there.
There’s a lot of gravel that you’re on when it’s barren frozen… the only trails I can see firmly embedded in that tundra are caribou” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 13, 15).
To some degree, interviewees suggest, the lack of visible impact may be attributed to
1) the fact that ORV travel seldom occurs when the ground has completely thawed, 2) the small number of individuals that visit Katmai, and 3) the diffuse patterns of movement described by interviewees in areas where terrain or vegetation do not concentrate ORVs along specific routes (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 14-15; Andrew 2002:
16).
Of these three factors, interviewees most consistently stressed the first. For example,
Michael Andrew, Jr. noted that
“Because everything is frozen over and going right over all them tundra and everything be solid, and when it’s all melted out, you see no trails or anything like that over them. Just a winter trail where you’re going back to it, you know” (Andrew 2002: 16).
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George Wilson, Jr. also spoke of this phenomenon:
“I definitely approve of the winter use of [the Katmai area] with both summer [ORV] or four-wheelers because the frozen terrain and the impact on the ground itself is very minimal. I’ve been going back there for many years, and I’ve never seen any -- any – [impact]” (Wilson 2002: 47).
Interviewees note that Peck’s Creek shields the Preserve from the more damaging impacts of summertime ATV use. As noted elsewhere, Katmai is largely inaccessible during the summer:
“that far back, the impact is very minimal and all because very few people use it as far as going back in the summer on an ATV, it takes a lot to get
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there” (Wilson 2002: 48).
A minority of interviewees from Igiugig have spoken critically of the impacts of ATVs on lands and resources. Most of this has focused on the impacts of ATVs on berry picking areas. As Mary Wilson suggested, in reference to ATV damage on village corporation lands,
“There’s a lot of ground that’s beat up from Hondas going back and forth, just really fast. See, when we go berry picking, we just go on one path.
Everybody goes on one path and you get off and then you walk and pick your berries, instead of just going off with your Honda just any old place.
So that way the berries will grow again the following years. But across the rivers they don’t do that anymore. There’s been a lot of tundra that’s been torn up, on, due to four-wheelers, across them lagoon, or the lodges over here…if you go, if somebody’s leading the pack on three or four people, you just follow whoever is ahead of you. And when he or she gets off then we could all get off and look around for berries. So that way the tundra doesn’t get all torn up for the following year.” (A. Wilson in Wilson and
Wilson 1995).
Likewise, in her 2002 interview, Mary Olympic briefly addressed how traditional environmental ethics in her community might relate to modern ORV use – while viewing
ORV use as essential for the community, she nonetheless stressed that young people
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visiting Katmai by ORV should follow the principal trails and “don’t run into anyplace because the snow machine or Honda ruin the ground. And it will ruin the berries. That’s why. It’s important for us still” (Olympic 2002: 7-8).
Some attribute these impacts in part to ATV traffic generated by lodges in the area:
“These lodges that they got all kinds of people coming in, and some just want to just go out for a ride. And they just do it any old time of the year.
They don’t respect the land the way a Native really does, you know, when he’s out using that land” (G. Wilson in Wilson and Wilson 1995).
Residents of Kokhanok made similar observations regarding the impacts of ATVs on the landscape. Interviewees generally agreed that motorized vehicles have made an imprint on the land, but also suggest that the imprint is very subtle:
“the one time you’ll see a trail is when there’s a lot of repeated use over in one certain area, then you’ll see a trail. But, I can guarantee you right now that if you went up there and you got into cloud or fog trying to come back or go over, and if you tried to find the trail to follow...you’re not. You’re gonna have to sit and wait for the cloud or the fog to go away. Either that or go off a cliff somewhere” (Nielsen 1999).
The main trails are visible, some suggest, including the routes to the Preserve, but areas of diffuse human use within the Preserve tend to have few visible impacts.
Kokhanok residents, especially Garith Nielsen, offered various observations on the mechanical causes of ATV impacts. For example, Nielsen noted that ATVs generally have less impact on the terrain in winter, when the ground is frozen or covered in snow, but there are exceptions to this general rule:
“In the winter, if you get stuck with the four-wheeler and you dig down to the ground, that scar is going to be there for a long time. Whereas if you go over it when it’s green, it won’t scar… The only time I notice damage being done to the tundra is when you’ve gone over it when it’s frozen with a Honda and you tear up the ground by spinning your tires or whatever, that scar is going to be there for a long time. But, if you go over when its green, its...you go back the next year and...you wouldn’t be able to tell you were there” (Nielsen 1999).
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He also notes that the air pressure in the tires of an ATV affects the degree to which the vehicle impacts the landscape:
“If it was rigs that could only go in there with so much tire pressure the impact would be minimal… It’s when you have your tires pumped up hard that you create damage” (Nielsen 1999).
People keep their air pressure high in their tires, he suggests, because it allows for faster travel and the carrying of heavy loads:
“it’s faster and you can pack a bigger load…A lot of times when I’ve been out hunting I carried a tire pump and ran low tire pressure up until I got my game, then I pump up the tires so it wouldn’t be riding on the rims coming back” (Nielsen 1999).
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S
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Katmai Research Project n.d. Katmai Research Project – Draft Final Report. Unpublished report in files of the National Park Service, Alaska Regional Office, Anchorage.
Krieg, Theodore, Molly Chythlook, Philippa Coiley-Kenner, Davin Holen, Kurt Kamletz and Hans Nicholson
2003. Freshwater Fish Harvest and Use in Communities of the Kvichak
Watershed. Technical Paper No. 297. Juneau: Alaska Department of Fish and
Game, Division of Subsistence.
Morris, Judith M.
1986. Subsistence Production and Exchange in the Iliamna Lake Region,
Southwest Alaska, 1982-1983. Technical Paper No. 136. Juneau: Alaska
Department of Fish and Game, Division of Subsistence.
Morris, Judith M.
1985. The Use of Fish and Wildlife Resources by Residents of the Bristol Bay
Borough, Alaska. Technical Paper No.123. Juneau: Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Subsistence Division.
Morris, Judith M.
1994. Revised Draft Community Histories: Igiugig, Kokhanok, Levelock and
South Naknek. Katmai Research Project, Project Files. Anchorage: National Park
Service, Alaska Regional Office.
Morris, Judith, Sean Keenan and Mathew Hanewald
1994. Community Ethnographic Summaries: Igiugig, Kokhanok, Levelock and
South Naknek. Katmai Research Project, Project Files. Anchorage: National Park
Service, Alaska Regional Office.
Nelson, John, Jr.
1999. Interview of John Nelsen, Jr. conducted by Don Callaway and Bill
Schneider, In Kokhanok, Alaska, November 2, 1999. Project Jukebox tape and transcript #H99-37-05. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Oral History Program.
Nielsen, Garith
1999. Interview of Garith Nielsen conducted by Don Callaway and Bill
Schneider, In Kokhanok, Alaska, November 2, 1999. Project Jukebox tape and transcript #H99-37-04. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Oral History Program.
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Olympic, Mary
2002. Interview of Mary Olympic conducted by Don Callaway and Bill
Schneider, In Igiugig, Alaska, September 12, 2002. Transcript by Carol McCue.
2601: 01-27. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Oral History Program.
Roehl, Danny
1997. Interview of Danny Roehl conducted by Judith Morris, In Kokhanok,
Alaska, August 7, 1997. Project Jukebox tape and transcript #H98-21-04.
Fairbanks: University of Alaska Oral History Program.
Salmon, Dan and Randy Alvarez
2002. Interview of Dan Salmon and Randy Alavarez, conducted by Don Callaway and Bill Schneider, In Igiugig, Alaska, September 12, 2002. Transcript by Carol
McCue. 2605: 01-10. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Oral History Program.
Stirling, Dale A.
1982. Historic Uses of the Alagnak River and Kukaklek and Nonvianuk Lakes.
Juneau: Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Subsistence.
United States Census Bureau
2000. Census 2000, Summary File 1. Generated by Douglas Deur using U.S.
Census Bureau American FactFinder; <http://factfinder.census.gov>; (07
November 2007).
Wilson, George Jr.
2002. Interview of George Wilson, Jr. conducted by Don Callaway and Bill
Schneider, In Igiugig, Alaska, September 11, 2002. Transcript by Carol McCue.
2607: 01-38. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Oral History Program.
Wilson, George Sr. and Anne Wilson
1995. Interview of George Wilson, Sr. and Anne Wilson, conducted by Don
Callaway and Bill Schneider, In Igiugig, Alaska, March 7, 1995. (Tape #H95-23-
3). Fairbanks: University of Alaska Oral History Program.
Wright, John M., Judith M. Morris and Robert Schroeder
1985. Bristol Bay Regional Subsistence Profile. Technical Paper No. 114.
Anchorage: Alaska Department of Fish and Game Division of Subsistence.
105

A
:
M
106

107

MAP 2: Map by Don Callaway and Jeff Bennett, synthesizing maps by Judith Morris, based on first-hand recollections of village residents interviewed by Judith Morris (1986, 1983).
The period represented by this map is the aggregate of each interviewee’s period of use – from the first half of the 20 th
century to the 1980s.
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MAP 3: Compiled by Don Callaway on basis of 2002 interviews and field mapping by Don Callaway and Bill
Schneider. Routes indicated with question marks after names in the legend are approximate. Some of the routes depicted here are coincident with snowmachine routes.
109

From Morris 1986
110

From Morris 1986
111

N
1
Longtime NPS employee John Branson notes that, in some contexts, ATVs do leave a visible imprint after even a few passes on frozen ground or ground covered in shallow snow, due to its impact on vegetation.
2
Other community studies have noted this consolidation, as well as the results it has had on resource harvest distributions. Morris (1986: 37) for example, notes that,
“The community site was formally a portage point for a reindeer station established at Kukaklek Lake during the early 1900s… There were no viable communities on the Branch River or at Kaskanak in the mid-1980s, though Igiugig residents continued to use these locations for resource harvest.”
Don Callaway (pers. comm. 2007) notes that
“A key factor seldom recognized is that the consolidation in fixed settlements of what was previously a semi-sedentary seasonal round was in large part forced on households by state and federal bureaucracies who required parents to be sedentary and send their kids to school or face having their children taken away from them. The adoption of new technology in large part allowed them to be sedentary but at the same time participate in many (but not all) of their subsistence activities. Some species such as Dall sheep are rarely harvested now because formerly they could be accessed from a nearby seasonal camp but now the effort to obtain them from the sedentary community is prohibitive.”
By “semi-sedentary seasonal round,” this implies that individuals were no longer moving between a constellation of seasonal encampments, but were increasingly based at a single home, with seasonal resource activities involving temporary relocation from this home to harvest sites.
3
Likewise, writing in 1978, Behnke (1978: 148) comments that “The residents of
Levelock, Igiugig, and Kakhonak, are related socially and geographically…Frequent visiting and family movements occur between these places and considerable boat, snowmobile, and air travel connect them.”
To provide one example, 2002 interviewees note that the residents of Levelock are, in some instances, originally from Igiugig, and continue to use lands and resources within the Preserve by access points along the Alagnak River:
They utilize it -- they go up that way into from up Branch River, which comes in, you know, runs into these here. But they also come up to
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Igiugig, you know…some of the people from Levelock used to live here in
Igiugig a long time ago, and they used to utilize this area a lot” (Randy
Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 41).
Similarly, Morris (1986: 3) found that “whitefish harvested in the Kvichak River by residents of Igiugig were distributed to households located in Iliamna, Nondalton,
Newhalen, and Kokhanok. Similarly, households located in every community reported being given big game by others.”
4
Native employment and income data are employed here in part because non-Native employment figures are generally skewed by the hiring of non-resident teachers.
5
The origins of this dual pattern of cash and subsistence activities are rooted in the experiences of Igiugig residents a century ago, when canneries provided only seasonal employment. Writing in 1978, Behnke (1978: 134) notes: “Commercial fishing and associated cannery employment have been the major economic bases of the communities around [Katmai] since the early 1900’s, and have resulted in highly seasonal employment in the area.”
6
Consumed game weight figures provide a gross weight for every animal utilized, and thus accounts for portions of animals discarded or dehydrated in processing. These estimates are inherently problematic, of course, and are based on the assumption that the reported game harvests, as well as the average weight of those animals, is accurate. The average weight of some species tends to be overestimated, such as sea mammals and fish that are fried and tend to lose much weight in the process (Don Callaway, pers. comm.
2008). Nonetheless, these figures allow some meaningful comparison of community harvesting patterns. The confidence interval for total pounds harvested in these data sets is 33.915 pounds - therefore there is a 95% probability that the actual range is between
28.944 and 38.86 pounds.
7 If the gross subsistence harvest of Kokhanok is used as a point of reference, residents appear to consume more than three times the per capita consumption of fish, meat and poultry eaten by the average resident of the United States.
8
On Igiugig subsistence practices, Morris (1986: 66-69) reports,
“Edible resources taken by Igiugig residents amounted to a per capita harvest of 618 pounds…The community used a variety of resources, but freshwater fish and salmon made up 85 percent by weight of the total harvest. Freshwater resources harvested in Lake Iliamna, the Kvichak
River and nearby lakes and drainages included humpback whitefish, burbot, pike, rainbow trout, Dolly Varden, lake trout, and grayling as well as sockeye salmon. Seventy-three percent of the community’s harvest was made up of sockeye salmon, two percent of which was spawned out sockeye. Spawned out or “red or fall” sockeye salmon were not found in
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the vicinity of the community and were generally harvested further up
Lake Iliamna near Kokhanok. Igiugig residents depended on being able to harvest some type of fish throughout the year. Fish were taken with seine, set net, hook and line, or rod and reel gear.”
“Mammals used by residents of Igiugig included moose, caribou, beaver, porcupine, harbor seal, hare, and brown bear. Mammals constituted about ten percent by weight with moose providing the greatest amount (180 pounds per household). Although not taken in 1983, belukha was mentioned as a resource used by almost every household when available.
“All households reported gathering bird eggs in late spring or early summer from islands located in the Kaskanak Flats area. Tern and gull eggs were most commonly collected. Bird eggs comprised one tenth of a percent of the total harvest.
“Ducks, particularly pintails and mallards, were taken both in the spring and fall seasons. Ducks added 30 pounds to the mean edible resource harvest for those households contacted in the survey. Geese, were less abundant than ducks and were harvested in much smaller quantities. Few ptarmigan and no spruce grouse were taken. Total bird harvests made up one percent of the total harvest.
“Four types of berries (salmonberries, blueberries, lowbush cranberries, and blackberries) plus green plants were gathered by Igiugig residents. All totaled, they made up four percent of the total resource harvest.
Salmonberries were frequently picked while people were commercial fishing in Bristol Bay. Blackberries and lowbush cranberries were most abundant near the community, and were harvested in the greatest quantity.
The preferred method for preparing berries was in agutak. Green plants were picked in the spring and summer months and used immediately.
Occasionally some plants were dried for later use. Labador tea was picked and used as a drink. It was also boiled on top of a stove to add scented moisture to the air when a household member was suffering from a head or chest cold.
“Furbearers were trapped by a number of Igiugig households. Beaver were used not only for the pelts, but also for the meat, Fox, land otter, mink, lynx, wolverine, and wolf were successfully trapped in 1983.”
9
The one exception to this is ADF&G fish data, which are available for the study area.
There are various reasons to question the reliability of these data, but they still provide a general picture of subsistence harvests in this context (Don Callaway, pers. comm. 2008).
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10
Additional community and subsistence data may be forthcoming on these themes from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, but these were not yet available for inclusion in the current report (Don Callaway, pers. comm. 2008).
11 The 1999 and 1997 interview excerpts in this document are not accompanied by page numbers as no complete, paginated transcript of these interviews was available.
Interview excerpts were obtained from the Project Jukebox website at the University of
Alaska, Fairbanks. In contrast, the 2002 interviews were transcribed into paginated transcripts and excerpts from these interviews are cited with page numbers accordingly.
12
The origins of this dual pattern of cash and subsistence activities are rooted in the experiences of Igiugig residents a century ago, when canneries provided only seasonal employment. Writing in 1978, Behnke (1978: 134) notes: “Commercial fishing and associated cannery employment have been the major economic bases of the communities around [Katmai] since the early 1900’s, and have resulted in highly seasonal employment in the area.”
13 Again, as with Igiugig, consumed game weight figures provide a gross weight for every animal utilized, and thus accounts for portions of animals discarded or dehydrated in processing. These estimates are inherently problematic, of course, and are based on the assumption that the reported game harvests, as well as the average weight of those animals, is accurate.
14 Dan Salmon was killed in an airplane crash in February of 2008, during the completion of this report. He had provided valuable assistance not only in this project, but in others pertaining to resource management in Katmai National Park and Preserve and Alagnak
Wild River.
15
Recent mapping efforts by Stephen Braund may help to clarify some of these questions regarding the geographical dimensions of ATV use in and around Katmai, but this material was not yet available for inclusion in this report (Don Callaway, pers. comm.
2008).
16
First invented in the late 19 th
century, outboard gasoline boat motors became widely available in the 1910s and 1920s, through the marketing and mass production of such firms as the Johnson Motor Company and the Elto Outboard Motor Company (later being renamed the “Outboard Marine Corporation.”
17
Apparently speaking of the 1930s, Gregory Andrew recalls that his parents “did things the old folks did back home, back then… they traveled around with dog team mostly, or just walked... they were lucky if they got a boat ride somewhere” (Andrew 1999).
18
Some people in the community apparently viewed this form of motorized transportation, as well as the growing reliance on petroleum products, as a novelty in the early 1960s:
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“I like to laugh at him [my uncle], when he take and stopped, he pumped the gas, had a cache at the cabin for the gas can, that stopped him… Boys, back there used to laugh at him hard. Yes, when he said I seen Snow-Go”
(Olympic 2002: 5).
19
Danny Roehl, who was not living in Kokhanok during the 1960s, but recalled that snowmachines were well-established in the community by the time he returned in the mid-1970s:
“…the first snowmachine I seen was 1965. No, wait a minute, I might take that back, it might of been 63 when I first seen the first snowmachine… we moved over here in 76, when they already had [track] machines here, snowmachines” (Roehl 1997).
20
Garith Nielsen ultimately became a snowmobile user at the age of 12:
“I started traveling the country when one of my uncles was staying with us and he...bought a machine. He stayed with one winter and when he left, he left the snowmachine here and I got to use it. So I started running around that...probably in ‘72 maybe. I was twelve. [I used it] Just locally. Once in a while I’d follow down on his trapline. But when you followed, you were on your own. If you got stuck, you got out [laughs]. It was good learning, I guess...know what to do, and know what not to do on the machine. Same way it was with dogs” (Nielsen 1999).
21 It is apparent, at the time of this writing, with petroleum prices soaring, that the relative cost of fuel and dog teams may be in flux.
22
Gregory Andrew (1999) provided additional detail about these retrofit snowmachines:
“I kinda modified it cause I got tired of pushing a wheelbarrow down to airport to haul my groceries so uh there was some old tire around that nobody was using...I put a long bolt through... took the skis off in the spring and I put a long bolt through the ski legs. Boy, it worked good, except for a lot of noise on the track. If you did, if you did that and you ran on a rock you didn’t want to ruin your skis all the time, so I just put tires…we had to buy a track every year anyway. They were cheap then, they were only two hundred bucks a track. We went through a track a season.”
23
These studies also document attributes of ATV use that may be of value in interpreting the Igiugig case. In general, these studies suggest that households that own a wide variety of transportation technologies, including ATVs, sleds and snowmachines, harvest higher levels of wildlife resources and share these resources throughout the community.
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However, even households that harvest modest amounts of subsistence resources tend to own ATVs, as these vehicles are used in a variety of contexts, including transportation within the village.
24
The category of vehicles that Behnke alludes to as “all terrain vehicles” encompasses those vehicles that would now be termed “off highway vehicles” or “OHVs.” Some of these first appeared in the area as military surplus vehicles in the 1940s and 1950s.
25
The borrowing of vehicles, or minimally the use of vehicles to aid in the subsistence of those without vehicles, appears to have a considerable time depth. Dog teams apparently were used for less fortunate members of the communities in this way. Speaking of the period shortly after his marriage in the 1930s, Gregory Andrew recalled
“Well, we didn’t have much of anything. I went beaver trapping. We didn’t own nothing…I didn’t have a dog team… People were nice enough...the ones who had a dog team, you know… they used to pack around meat.”
After their first arrival in Kokhanok, snowmachines were also used to support those who did not yet own one:
“I had a partner... him and I would go out and …we caught a lot of moose but we shared it. ‘Cause I was the only one with the snow-go then and the meat went kind of fast…I was the only one with a snow-go. Everybody else had dog team” (G. Andrew 1999).
26
Evidence from the interview transcript is ambiguous on this point. Later in the interview Wilson reports getting his first four-wheel ATV in 1984 or 1985, and also indicates that he had been driving three-wheel ATVs prior to that time (Wilson 2002: 48).
27
Garith Nielsen provides an overview of some of the ATVs that were used in
Kokhanok:
“After the three [wheelers]...after the 110 we got the Big Red’s, uh the
250s...well, first it was the 200s then the 250s. Big improvement, but the
200s were still chain driven, same kind of problems with the 110s and the
90s. Then we got the axle drive 250s and boy, that...very little maintenance. They go all over the place” (Nielsen 1999).
28
In the 1990s, written sources suggest that Kokhanok and Levelock tended to share trailers, snow machines; sleds, and skiffs - this may reflect the existence of multiplehousehold subsistence task groups. These sources also report relatively greater
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transportation equipment ownership in Igiugig, and hence less need to rely on others for subsistence transportation (Callaway 1999; Endter-Wada, et al. 1994).
29
For reference, the same figures are available for the community of Levelock. These numbers are as follows:
Levelock
(n = 29)
Transportation used for subsistence % who own
ATV 83%
Trailer 31%
Vehicle 21%
Snow machine 62%
Sled 34%
Dog Team 7%
Commercial Fishing Boat 21%
Skiff 55%
Source: Callaway 1999, using data from Endter-Wada, et al. 1994
30
Michael Andrew recalled seeing a progression of three-wheel ATVs in the community, including the Honda 90, 110, TRX 200, and 185, followed by four-wheeled models including the Honda 300, 350, and 400. Interviewees note that the four-wheel models, in addition to being more stable, allowed for hauling larger and heavier loads. There was perhaps not a significant difference in the terrain that could be traveled, but there was a resulting difference in the kinds of uses for which a person might use an ATV.
31
The number of moose is said to still be limited in the area - the Native Corporations restrict non-resident hunting on Corporation lands as a result (Andrew 2002: 20). Some interviewees commented that moose are becoming increasingly scarce, sometimes necessitating longer-distance travel. This was attributed in part to a rebound in predator numbers, which was attributed in turn to changes in ADF&G policy such as the prohibition of aerial wolf hunting.
32
Generally, for residents of Kokhanok, hunting occurs “in the fall time if we get a chance we will go, but mostly after freeze-up [using] snow machines or four-wheelers or whatever” (Roehl 1997).
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33
Gregory Andrew also mentioned an interesting conservatism in packing water among the people of earlier generations, associated with the Katmai eruption:
“I remember my folks saying, “you gotta pack water, you might not be able to get water in the morning” on account of the Katmai [eruption] Ash falling down...and they couldn’t get any water. So pack your water in the evening before...you never know what’s going to happen in the nighttime”
(G. Andrew 1999).
34
Mary McBurney (pers. comm.. 2008) notes that “ Local folks hunt fall moose from boats whenever possible to reduce the effort of packing a carcasses. River corridors are especially popular hunting areas. The winter moose and caribou hunts are popular since hunters can use snowmachines to track animals and haul out meat.”
35 It is unclear on the basis of sources consulted whether moose were present in the area, but displaced by the Katmai eruption, or simply arrived de novo in the study area in recent times.
36
For a detailed discussion of recent freshwater fishing trends for the community of
Igiugig, see Krieg, et al. 2003. Fall et al. (1996: 76) note that
“The use of freshwater fish was well integrated into daily life at Igiugig.
Harvested on an unscheduled basis, whenever needed or desired, these fish added variety and protein to the local fare.”
Fall et al. (1996: 78-79) note that Igiugig’s freshwater fisheries include Arctic grayling, burbot, Dolly Varden, lake trout, northern pike, rainbow trout, smelt, and whitefish.
37
The context of this geographical reference in the interview might be interpreted to mean that the place now commonly called Reindeer Lake is in fact not the location being alluded to here. The exact location of Reindeer Lake, a colloquial name, was recorded on project maps by interviewers Don Callaway and Bill Schneider.
38
Danny Roehl spoke of the customary way of preserving fish:
“you always kept the backbone in there when they were smoking it, so it would never sour. It was complete - smoking it probably the middle of
August or something. And the next June you could go ahead and still eat that fish and it wouldn’t be spoiling… Just stored it in the smoke house”
(Roehl 1997).
39
The transcript provides this word as a phonetic term “amuky”– the actual pronunciation and appropriate spelling was unclear from available sources, but John
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Branson suggests that this term is probably “mak’q,” a likely reference to standing dead spruce wood.
40
Behnke (1978: 150-51) notes that
“Kukaklek Lake, Nonvianuk Lake, and American Creek are all areas trapped by a few residents of Levelock, Igiugig, Kakhonak, Naknek, and
South Naknek….The Kukaklek-Nonvianuk areas are said to have large beaver populations and a number of people from the villages trap beaver in these areas….The upper parts of Paul’s Creek, King Salmon Creek, and
American Creek…are utilized by a few trappers from these villages seeking beaver, lynx, fox, wolf, and wolverine.”
41
On the issue of trapping in the Preserve, the Katmai Research Project reports (4: 39-40) goes on to note,
“A number of trappers in Igiugig and Kokhanok who used to trap in the
American Creek area had to alter their trapping patterns after extensions to
Katmai National Park were made. Some of the activity has switched to the Nonvianuk Lake area. An Igiugig resident who is a very active trapper stated that during the 1960s and early 1970s he used to trap around
American Creek and other areas that are now part of the Park. One trapper in Kokhanok has had recurring problems negotiating where and how he can comply with regulations regarding his trapping cabin in the
Katmai Preserve, which was located at American Creek until President
Carter expanded the Park to include the creek.”
42
The family also went beaver trapping, especially in the Horseshoe Bend area, traveling by dogsled (Roehl 1997).
43
Don Callaway and Bill Schneider produced maps of these structures, as well as associated trails and resource use areas, in the course of their 2002 interview with Mary
Olympic (Olympic 2002).
44 Don Callaway (pers. comm. 2008) notes, “The impacts of forced sedentary living, whereby [Anglo-American] agents threatened parents with the removal of their children if they did not stay put and send their kids to school, cannot be underestimated. These constraints ended the traditional seasonal round and had as much impact of harvesting patterns, prior to the adoption of new transportation technologies, as any season and bag limit…[yet]traditional communities give up none of their rights to access, should they be forced by bureaucratic intervention, to [abandon] their traditional use areas.”
45
This change and its causes were not investigated for the purposes of this study.
However, interviewees offered some observations on the causes for this change:
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“just the influx of people coming in, I think. And I think a lot of it is related to the food, maybe they…went through most of their diet…because I don’t see them, a huge return like they used to” (Andrew
2002: 18).
As shall be discussed elsewhere in the document, hunting pressures from non-resident communities may contribute to this change. Others noted that game numbers were depressed after an increase in predators, such as wolves, in the absence of aerial hunting
(Salmon and Alvarez 2002).
46
The seasonal round of Iliamna region communities has been addressed in detail in existing reports and does not warrant detailed review here. For detailed accounts, see, e.g., Morris (1986: 52-57, 1985: 75-78), Behnke (1978), Wright, Morris and Schroeder
(1985), Alaska Department of Fish and Game (1985), and other Alaska Department of
Game Division of Subsistence reports.
47
Interviewees note that Kokhanok is at a higher elevation and is said to generally have a longer period of ATV or snow machine use than Igiugig as a result. Likewise, some interviewees note a subtle climatological difference between Igiugig and Kokhanok that apparently result in different transportation decisions in these two communities at certain times of the year. Igiugig is said to be surrounded by an area that is often snow-free, of seven or eight miles’ width:
“we’re, I think historically, a degree or two difference in a temperature here [in Igiugig], which is the difference between rain and snow.
Kokhanok, it’s large quantities of snow. It breaks right at Igiugig, making the first -- we call it the Banana Belt down here -- the first 7 to 8 miles access out of the village extremely barren and difficult to get around…
Typically once you get to the other side of the hills there by January, you’ve got snow. That early moose hunt is a lot of it, I would say the majority of it is done by four-wheeler because it’s just we haven’t got the snow by then. And that’s really the only -- that’s the most dependable means, I would say, to bring home -- home the meat.” (Dan Salmon in
Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 7).
Michael Andrew also mentioned this phenomenon, noting that Igiugig can go for entire winters without significant snowpack:
“you might get snow at Kokhanok or Levelock, and we might get half a foot up there, but we don’t get nothing. Or if we do get a little dusting, the east wind, it blows it all away. So you know, we don’t have much snow here” (Andrew 2002: 9).
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48
Sometimes, the local scarcity of caribou causes people to take extraordinarily long day trips by snow machine, when weather permits. Randy Alvarez describes one hunting trip by residents of Aleknagik that occurred shortly before his interview:
They put about 250 miles on… they left home at eight o’clock in the morning, got home at three o’clock in the morning, so they were gone almost around 20 hours” (Randy Alvarez in Salmon and Alvarez 2002:
36-37).
49
On the issue of trapping, the Katmai Research Project reports (4:36-37 ) note:
“In the years before the widespread availability of machines for transportation, people generally stayed out for long periods of times during the trapping season. Many people maintained trapping cabins in various locations, including fish camps, or used cabins belonging to other people. Trappers would stock these cabins before the trapping season began with enough supplies, including food for the dogs, to get them through the season. For many trappers, this pattern has changed since they acquired snowmachines and ATVs. These machines made it possible to travel farther in less time than was possible with dogsleds. Now it was possible to make a round trip from the village to check trap lines each day.
Several residents mentioned that today’s trappers like to come home to a warm bed each night. A few also mentioned the advantage of not having to stay away from their families for extended periods of time and being able to be a part of village life on a daily basis. Quite a few, though not all, trappers now make daily trips from the village to check their trap lines or stay out for only a few days.”
50
Behnke (1978: 150) notes of Igiugig that “Villagers occasionally ascend the Alagnak
River and go up into Nonvianuk and even Kukaklek Lake, pulling boats up through the falls”
51
Battle Lake was sometimes depicted as a terminal or outermost destination: “people go far as up to Battle Lake” (Andrew 2002: 31).
52
For example, Gabby Gregory compared modern beaver hunting and trapping with trapping as it existed in the era prior to the advent of ATVs,
“Those days we gotta hunt quite a ways for beaver...cause they were scarce. Today’s laws, nobody hunts ‘em no more. Lots of beaver all over.
‘Cause the price went down too...too much maybe that’s why nobody want
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to hunt them. Fur buyers don’t want to buy none either, some of ‘em”
(Gregory 1999).
53
The configuration of these alternative routes were mapped by Callaway and Schneider during their 2002 interview with George Wilson, Jr.
54
Simultaneously, Gabby Gregory provides an account that is somewhat ambiguous but seem to contradict the notion of a singular, fixed dogsled trail prior to the advent of
ATVs:
“I don’t think they had particular route they follow. Their trail, I guess, right over the mountain or something or sometime they use go up to upper.
They call it Place-Above-Kukaklek, Battle Lake or...” (Gregory 1999).
Gregory Anderson suggests that the behavior of dog teams contributed to the continuity of trail use prior to the arrival of motorized vehicles:
“the dogs know where to go. The old leaders know where to go. The leader...dog leaders that been around a long time, they just naturally went on the trail even if it was covered…they go right back to the same old trail. You can’t change an old dog’s way [laughs]. Y’know one time me and my cousin we felt we were lost going up and we kept bawlin’, he kept bawlin’ out his [lead dog]. He’d go up and lead off to another trail somewhere, but the dog kept on going up to that portage. So he finally said “I’m gonna let this dog go.” He took us right to the old portage, we never been there before. We went to a dog team trail...that old lead knew where the trail was, we thought he didn’t know...we thought he wanted to go somewhere else where he didn’t wanna go. But he knew the best route already in his mind, the dogs” (G. Andrew 1999).
55
While the focus of this discussion is ORVs, it is important to note that shipping and other forms of transportation are said to be affected by these changes. Dan Salmon, for example, notes:
“I think that has led to some of the earlier cycles of the lake and the river peaking in depth earlier in the season, that quick runoff in the spring, coupled with the retreating of the glaciers supplying the lake has made the lake peak more into the August month, beginning of September, versus the end of September into October. That’s kind of changed our barging season and whatnot… Two out of the last eight years we’ve had no barges able to make it up the Kvichak because of low water, years that we’ve had no snowfall to speak of” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 3-4).
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56
Changes in the freeze-up of lakes can significantly affect transportation options for
Igiugig residents, who often travel over lake ice in the wintertime: “if the lake doesn’t freeze, of course, that really limits the amount of access you have to subsistence resources” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 5).
57
Dan Salmon also discussed this change in hunting seasons, reflecting changes in climate that have, in turn, affected transportation options for subsistence hunters:
“This village was successful in getting the Board of Fish and Game to move the moose season a half a month later in the winter season because the early December we were finding we weren’t getting freeze-ups like we did historically and we couldn’t access moose by machines at all. So we changed the season later trying to get the ground frozen, the lakes and the creeks frozen so we could access some of our traditional areas for big game” (Dan Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 5).
58 By the 2002 interviews, Bill Schneider was conducting research on the topic of climate change in various parts of Alaska and Don Callaway was also becoming “increasing[ly aware] of the issue” (Callaway pers. comm. 2008).
59
For users of three-wheel ATV models especially, ease of travel varied considerably off of established trails (Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 19-20).
60
Bruin Bay, north of Katmai, is one such location: “Wintertime or springtime with snow-go. You can’t make it over there with a Honda...too rough. Snow-go. Dog team one time, pretty early...back in ‘60s maybe went to Bruin Bay, right there. Went over there for nothing, just go look…with dogs” (Gregory 1999).
61
Interviewees spoke of this paradoxical quality of tourist development, which has brought both economic stability and new pressures on subsistence resources:
“look at the all the tourism bringing in out-of-state money, and that’s a result to build this community… and what all the lodges pay to the corporation, it’s sustained to keep people here. I think you…try to do both… subsistence and you try and keep what you got here already”
(Andrew 2002: 23).
The economic changes discussed here compound earlier transformations within the community of Igiugig, such as the consolidation of the sedentary village from multiple, highly mobile communities perhaps a century ago. As is noted in the Katmai Research
Project (4:4):
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“regional residents used to travel a great deal in order to follow a seasonal round of resource harvesting. Today, it would appear that this is no longer the case because residents live in villages year-round. However, the seasonal round still exists; people still move from place to place to harvest different resources. The difference is that today they have ATVs and snowmobiles that allow them to access these areas with much more speed and ease, thereby allowing them to make trips of much shorter duration and to return to the village most nights. Resources are still harvested from traditionally used areas, only now it is done with greater efficiency.”
62
John Nelson, Jr. provided additional detail on this point:
“this village is a subsistence oriented village...’cause we depend on subsistence. But…I’ve seen a lot of changes. Store...offer[s] more food items, more mail. Before, we used to get mail once a week or once every two weeks before and now we’re getting mail three times a week….[Television] impacted the village very much. When I was growing up, we didn’t have TV, we didn’t have power, we didn’t water and sewer.
When I was going to school the radio was our clock… the radio was our main way of keeping up with the world and the time….Well, [now] you got satellite, VHS...videos. But...you know of all these changes...subsistence and hunting and fishing never change [in its importance]. I don’t think it’ll [ever] change…from my point of view it’s going on compared to when I was growing up compared to today, no different. Only thing different about it is modes of transportation, because of the improvement to the transportation” (Nelson 1999).
63
Alaska Department of Fish and Game (1985: 417 ff.) addresses scheduling constraints as an influence on subsistence hunting and fishing from at least as early as the first half of the 20 th
century.
64
Interviewees noted, however, that the community did have a certain amount of control over this non-resident pressure, especially in cases where the outfitters and charter pilots who bring visitors have ties to the Native corporations or function on corporation lands:
“because of the corporation, we usually do it, all the individuals, you kind of tell them up front what we expect because a lot of the corporation which owns the land around here anyway” (Andrew 2002: 19).
65
Interviewees commented on other impacts on wildlife, apparently brought about by non-resident visitation within the Preserve:
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“I’ve seen that in sports season, I saw a sow and two cubs dead on
Kukaklek a couple of years ago, been shot by a fisherman…I’ve seen over the years quite a few bears shot. This spring there was a bear wandering around, people saw it, it looked like it had been shot in the face, and I’m sure that was by a fisherman in the fall… that’s a definite increase” (Dan
Salmon in Salmon and Alvarez 2002: 16).
66
It is interesting to note that some Kokhanok interviewees describe some non-resident visitors “running away” when they encounter Native Alaskan subsistence hunters in the
Preserve (Gregory 1999).
“[outfitters] can only…legally drop off Alaskan residents in the preserve and non-residents require a guide. But, we don’t think that’s happening because we run into hunters up there that have been dropped off by outfitters that run away and hid from us, which leads us to believe that they’re not really legal” (Nielsen 1999).
“for that past three years every time we’re going up there [Mirror Lake]
I’ve always seen a lot of hunting activity up there and they don’t very much associate with the Natives. I don’t see why they don’t associate with the Native there, because they’re always trying to run away or fly away or something...hide. I’m not really sure. Maybe, maybe they think we’re rangers or something, but I’m not sure” (Nelson 1999).
67
Visitors do not generally pass through Kokhanok, though opinions vary on the longterm desirability of catering to non-residents:
“The village people don’t want them in here. The elders don’t want them here. Because…they were told that the people are going to come and take stuff away from them, they wouldn’t have it no more. Have control, if the people have control of the village, you bring tourists in, okay, you show them what you want to show them because they don’t know what they want to see. You have to show those people. You show them around and stuff, and then you get two generations learned. You know, the younger kids -- if you just stop and think that -- money, they will be -- outlive and they will be happy that they are staying with the people that’s in the village. The younger ones are finally waking up and realizing that they are going to have to do something” (Roehl 1997).
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68 Mary McBurney (pers. comm.. 2008) notes that “The Federal subsistence hunts generally have earlier seasons to give eligible local residents a head start over sport hunters and people hunting under the State’s subsistence regulations.”
69
On the point of summertime access, George Wilson, Jr. also commented
“The tundra is definitely a lot softer and it’s easier to be damaged… you can’t go as many places as you can when it’s winter. But, oh, I don’t know if you could say you do more damage because in the wintertime you can go just about anywhere. But you know, impact like the ground itself, but you run over trees and brush and things like that, but as far as I know, they are not endangered” (Wilson 2002: 12).
70
Another type of impact that may or may not occur within the Preserve apparently results from increased access to hunting sites by unaccompanied youths using ATVs.
Speaking of subsistence hunters, Danny Roehl notes
“we don’t never waste anything but some of these younger kids now…going out shooting stuff they shouldn’t be shooting because their parent are not training them, telling them, like, we were brought up. We were told a lot of time whatever you kill it you eat it you know. So you didn’t kill things that wasn’t edible and if you killed too much you still had to cook it up and eat it. Anyway, you know, instead of wasting, there was no waste back then and when you ate but nowadays I mean there is so much waste and stuff, that it’s pitiful” (Roehl 1997).
Recognizing the importance of cultural and historical knowledge for modern youths, John Nelson, Jr. made the only comment that could be clearly construed as a “recommendation for further research” by the National Park Service:
“I sure wish these younger generations would…maybe have a history of how the village began, how the people migrated to the village and stuff like that. Basically, the history of the village and subsistence and hunting and fishing lifestyles for each village” (Nelson 1999).
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