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" There was less wind there, no Taku hitting there," said Walter Soboleff, a Tlingit elder and cultural leader. " And the nice sandy beach at Auk Bay was conducive to canoe landing and storage."

In the summer, Auks moved to several fish camp sites.

" Gold Creek (Dzantik'i Heeni, " where the flatfish gather" ) was their summer home," Soboleff said. " They caught salmon and did their berry picking and went up the canyon for mountain goat meat."

In summer, wind was a good thing - something to keep insects at bay and to dry the racks of fish and meat.

Other fish camp sites included what are now called Salmon Creek and Thane, Soboleff said.

Only 130 years ago, life at Auk Village went on as it had for hundreds of years. This was brought home to Soboleff when he visited the site with one of its last residents, Frank Shorty.

" He stepped off so many feet where his house was located. He said, " Here, Walter, I give this to you.' "

In 1867, the United States purchased the vast Alaska territory from Russia. But, with the exception of Sitka, which some called " Paris of the North," little had changed in Southeast Alaska. The occasional steamship from Seattle or San Francisco passed on its way to somewhere else.

Mostly, ravens cawed, rain fell, mists rose and people moved from camp to camp. Tlingits came and went to resources their grandparents and parents had told them about - rich places where fern roots could be dug for roasting, or where there were trees suitable for plank houses.

Songs, dances, regalia, house posts, totem poles and oral legends recorded the people's intricate web of dealings with the landscape and its important nonhuman inhabitants such as bears, blackfish (killer whales) and halibut.

For hundreds of years, what later became Juneau was Auk territory. What later became Douglas was Taku territory. They valued land for its yield, its harvest. Slowly the way of life changed as western settlers with different notions of property values came into the country. Miners, loggers, commercial fishermen and homesteaders arrived. They drove stakes, drew maps, kept records, built fences, shifted rocks, exchanged coins.

What happened to Henry Denny, interviewed at Saxman near Ketchikan in 1946, is typical of what happened to Tlingits all over Southeast Alaska:

" I have used that area (at the mouth of the Unuk River) all my life, and before me, my father and uncles hunted and trapped and fished in that area. Now, however, it is closed to me because there are homesteaders in there. This homesteader tells me he has wolf traps out, and makes me go away."

In the Juneau area, many places had traditional uses, buildings or associations, according to " Haa Aani, Our Land," (Sealaska Heritage Foundation, 1998) by Walter Goldschmidt and Theodore Haas.

For example, the Auk used Berners Bay as a fishing ground and hunting place as well as a source of berries, particularly blueberries. Other harvests here were huckleberries, nagoonberries, cohos and dog salmon. There were smokehouses and men would pole up the river to cabins used as bases for hunting goats and trapping mink, lynx and wolverine.

Eagle River was a source of salmon, cranberries, mountain goat and black bear. The people called Tee Harbor Wooshdeix'alatye - a place to fish and smoke fish that later was used by whites as the site of a cannery and saltery.

Lincoln, Shelter and other neighboring islands were hunting and trapping grounds and camps for halibut fishermen. Seaweed and shellfish were gathered here, while the people lived in cedar bark shelters. Stockaded forts were built on the north end of Shelter and on Lincoln Island. This was an area claimed by the Wooshkeetaan clan.

Other evidence of traditional use included smokehouses on Sheep Creek and a cemetery at Auke Bay. Duck Creek was called Te'cuns, and there was a big smokehouse. The area was rich in cranberries and wild rice.

Just north of Lemon Creek was a small creek called Eix'gulheen - a good spot for late run dog salmon.

Gold Creek was called Dzantik'i Heeni. Tlingits considered it " the biggest salmon creek of all." Here they harvested dog salmon, humpies and cohos, and steelhead after the first fall freeze. There were two smokehouses here in the 1870s.

The subsistence pattern also led to Salmon Creek or Til'heeni, and to Sheep Creek, just below Thane - a good stream for dog salmon and humpies. There were also smokehouses, and once a potlatch was held here.

At the close of the decade, the pattern of traditional life began to change. In the summer of 1879, Presbyterian minister S. Hall Young and naturalist/writer John Muir explored much of Southeast Alaska by Tlingit dugout canoe. Young came to the conclusion there was an urgent need to establish a mission among the Takus near the present site of Juneau.

Muir observed there was promising mineralization along Gastineau Channel. That same year, Auks gave ore samples to officers of the USS Jamestown and Tlingit Chief named Kowee carried ore samples from the area to a mining engineer, George Pilz of Sitka. The die was cast.