Being and Place among the Tlingit

3. What’s In a Name?: Place and Cognition

63 map 2.1. Selected sites in Herman Kitka Sr.’s place-name inventory (Thornton 1997b) and Dauenhauer 1987:245–92), Kaakeix’wtí and his group moved with the Kaagwaantaan to Lulxágu (Fireweed Pebble Beach), where they built several large houses and a fort (Kax’noowú, “Female Grouse Fort”) and sponsored lavish potlatches with their newfound wealth from the interior trade. Timbers for one of these houses were damaged by fire, and, consequently, the dwelling earned the name Kaawagaani Hít, or “Charred House.” It is for this house that the Kaagwaantaan are named. Afterward some of the Kaagwaantaan moved to Sitka. As Deikeenaak’w (Swanton’s consultant [1909:346]) put it, emphasizing ancestral ties to the landscape: “Because we are their descendants we [the Sitka Kaagwaantaan ] are here also. They continue to be here because we occupy their places.” As Herman Kitka puts it, working backward, “Some of us came to Sitka, but we all stem from Glacier Bay.” The journey of Kaakeix’wtí is Kaagwaantaan history. Because Herman Kitka draws his identity from these events, he knows this geography , even where he has not set foot in the territory. But the man who killed his sleep is also hero to the L’uknax.ádi, Herman Kitka’s father’s people (see also Swanton 1909:154–65).10 The Kaagwaantaan, it is said, were the wives of the L’uknax.ádi (161) and vice versa. They lived together at Glacier Bay and later at Sitka. The L’uknax.ádi, too, gained wealth through favorable trade with the Athabascans, including native copper through the Copper River trade corridor. According to oral tradition (160), in the spring after they hosted the Athabascans, the L’uknax .ádi traveled to the mouth of the Copper River (Eekhéeni), where they established a village, Kus’eixka. Swanton’s other consultant, Kadashan, notes: “All along where they went they gave names. A certain creek was called [Nagukhéen (Rolling Water, at Cape Spencer)], and they came to a lake which they named [Ltu.áa (Inside the Point Lake, Lituya Bay)]” (160). Also named were the two tallest mountains of northern Southeast Alaska: Mount Fairweather (Tsalxaan, “Land of the Ground Squirrels”) and Mount Saint Elias (Waa’eit’ashaa, “Mountain Inland of Waas’ei Yík” [known in English as Icy Bay]). Because Herman Kitka’s father was L’uknax.ádi, with ties to the famous Dry Bay village of Gus’eix, where the first Sleep House was built in honor of these events, he also knows these places from the stories told by his paternal relatives. Although Kaawagaani Hít and Kax’noowú have long been aban64 Know Your Place doned, they remain sacred. As sacred places, they are remembered, honored , and frequently utilized as potent symbols to achieve important social objectives. In potlatches and other ceremonies in northern Tlingit country, Kaagwaantaan orators still use the phrase Ch’a Tleix’ Kax’nuwkweidí (We who are still one People of Grouse Fort) to achieve at least three ends: (1) to promote solidarity and communitas among the now dispersed Kax’noowú clans; (2) to reiterate their inextricable ties to this historic, collective dwelling place; and (3) to metaphorically transport the listeners to this sacred landscape so that they may be reunited with their ancestors, who likewise may be summoned forth by name.11 In short, Kax’noowú serves not only as a chronotope, a place where time and space merge and cannot be understood without reference to each other, but also as a place that is “brought forth to recon- firm” (gágiwdul.aat; cf. Nyman and Leer 1993) shagóon, Tlingit being in the world. The Coho clans possess their own phrase of sociogeographic solidarity: Ch’a Tleix’ L’uknax.ádi (We who are still one People of L’ukanax). The original L’ukanax (literally Coho Community) may have been at Deep Bay in Peril Strait north of Sitka, where Herman Kitka maintains his father’s subsistence camp to this day (cf. de Laguna 1972, 1:226). Mr. Kitka can trace his family’s presence there back at least eight generations. In oratory, the phrase Tleix’ L’uknax.ádi is also used to refer to Dundas Bay, Lituya Bay, and Dry Bay on the west coast of Glacier Bay National Park. Dry Bay and Lituya Bay are famous as birthplaces of new Coho clans. As one L’uknax.ádi, the late Paul Henry, remarked, “From Lituya Bay we migrated away from each other.” He added jokingly...