JUNEAU – Russ Vanderlugt presents Allen among the Ahtna: Encounters along Alaska’s Copper River, 1885, on Thursday, May 16, at 5:30 pm in the lecture hall at the Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff State Library, Archives, and Museum, at 395 Whittier Street. Popularly known as the “Lewis and Clark of Alaska,” Lieutenant Henry T. Allen’s expedition of 1885 provides a unique storybook of humankind, illustrating the evolution of cultural and geographic knowledge in Alaska’s interior through interactions between Indigenous inhabitants and Army personnel. The expedition’s field journals document Indigenous place names, trails, villages, and cultural encounters, and various oral sources provide insights to Indigenous perspectives of the expedition.
This presentation is a report on interdisciplinary fieldwork accomplished by Vanderlugt along the Lower Copper River in April 2018 involving a collaborative effort with Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Bureau of Land Management – Glennallen, the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology, Ahtna Incorporated, Chitina Native Corporation, Gulkana Village Council and U.S. Army Alaska. The research was accomplished during the exact time of year when the 1885 Allen expedition ascended the lower Copper River on ice, mapping the landscape and recording Indigenous encounters and sites along the route from Cordova to McCarthy and from Chitina to Glennallen.
Russ Vanderlugt is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Arctic and Northern Studies. His research has drawn from collections around the state, including the Henry T. Allen papers (MS 76) at the Alaska State Library’s Historical Collections.
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