TANAINA

a North American Indian people, the only northern Athabascan-speaking Indians occupying extensive portions of the seacoast. They lived chiefly in the drainage areas of Cook Inlet and Clark Lake in southern Alaska. Tanaina, meaning people, was their own name for themselves; they have also been called Knaiakhotana (People of the Kenai Peninsula). The Tanaina depended mainly on salmon and other fish (as well as shellfish) but also hunted bear, mountain sheep and goat, moose, caribou, and other game for both skins and food. Their dwellings consisted of semisubterranean log-and-sod houses for winter use and a variety of huts for summer use during the salmon runs; the huts also served as smokehouses for drying the fish catch. For transportation they used the skin-covered kayak and umiak, as well as snowshoes and sleds. The Tanaina were divided into several tribes, or subgroups, each split into exogamous halves, or moieties, composed of clans. There were two social classesnobles and commonersand a village usually had a chief, who exercised a kind of fatherly guidance. Organized leadership, with real leaders and councils, usually developed only for warfare and raiding (their chief foes being the Eskimo). The Tanaina used the potlatch to increase their personal prestige through the ostentatious giving of gifts. In religion the Tanaina believed that all things in nature were animate and suffused with supernatural powers and that guardian spirits shadowed everyone. Taboos, tokens, and amulets were numerous. Shamans, the mediators with the spirit world, were very influential; some were chiefs.