Tanana woman returning from the hunt, 1882. Source: AKDC
Browsing in the Alaska Digital Archives I found an interesting photo album documenting a prospecting trip up the Yukon River by the Schieffelin Brothers, Ed and Al, who just a few years earlier had founded the famous desert mining town of Tombstone, Arizona. Two pictures from this album struck me as particularly interesting, though the whole thing is worth browsing.
The first of these is the remarkable picture above, showing a Tanana woman with a long-gun, powder horn, and a couple of large rabbits. While anthropologists and archaeologists have grudgingly revised their “Man the Hunter” stereotypes in recent years, it is nonetheless rare to see such a frank portrait of a competent woman with her prey. I’ll be using this one in class, starting next week.
Northwest Coast Archaeology 
