TANANA

a small Athabascan-speaking tribe of North American Indians that lived along the headwaters of the Tanana River in central Alaska. They were nomadic hunters, relying chiefly on caribou, moose, and mountain sheep for both food and clothing, and lived in skin-covered domed lodges in winter and in bark or brush lean-tos or huts in summer. In social organization they were divided into several loosely led clans that changed often in composition because of mergers, divisions, and migrations. The potlatch was a means of ostentatiously distributing gifts and increasing personal prestige. Although the central person in Tanana religious life was the shaman, the religion was highly individualized; each person developed his own beliefs, practices, amulets, and taboos.