Metallurgy of the Tlingit, Dene, and Eskimo

Tlingit ethnographic collections include large numbers of copper objects in many types, most of them made from the commercial copper of Europe. Early accounts from the trade in sea otter fur record that vast quantities of commercial metals were carried to the Tlingit by Russian and American ships. Indian tradition insists that copperworking was known in prehistoric times and that the metal had been brought from the interior. The Tlingit monopolized local commerce, serving as middlemen between the coast and the far interior in a trade reinforced by marriages of Tlingit men to Dene Indian women. It has been assumed, however, that the Tlingit source of native copper was through trade with the nearby Eyak and Ahtena Indians of the Copper River Basin to the north.