Of these several tribes the Chilkat-kwan has been the most prominent since our acquaintance with Alaska. The relative importance of a primitive people measured by an abundant food supply, natural resources and geographic position as to favorable trade conditions was fully satisfied in their case. In their country about the head of Lynn Canal, with its two river systems flowing from lakes, the spawning beds of countless salmon furnished a nutritious and limitless staple food which was augmented by various other sea fish and seal in the inlets; bear, goat, and smaller mammals on the land; and exhaustless berry patches on the mountain sides. Their commanding position at the head of the inland channels controlling the mountain passes to the interior, gave them the monopoly of the fur trade of the upper Yukon Valley, and the placer copper fields of the White River region. These products, unknown to the coastal area, were economically important in primitive days, and after the advent of Europeans the increased demand for furs, and their greater value, made this trade even more lucrative. That they fully realized its value is demonstrated by their determination to retain control of it, for when the Hudson's Bay Company established the factory of Fort Selkirk at the mouth of the Pelly River in 1852, a war party under the celebrated Chief Chartrich, trailed in some three hundred miles, surprised, captured, and burned the post, and warned the occupants against any further encroachment upon their established zone of trade, and they continued to enjoy these rights until the discovery of the Klondike gold fields, when the influx of whites over-ran the country and destroyed their industries. The earliest mention of this people occurs in a report of the Russian Pilot Ismailof who, when visiting Yakutat in 1788, notes the presence of a large body of Chilkat. In 1794 a boat expedition from Vancouver's vessels, while exploring the head of Lynn Canal, met with a hostile reception from a considerable number of natives and only averted trouble by a hasty retreat. Lieutenant Whitby, the commander of the party, was told of eight chiefs of great consequence who had their homes on and about the Chilkat River, indicating an extensive population. [Illustration: Fig. 2. An Old House, Kluckwan.] Under the Russian regime, beyond the mere claim of sovereignty, no jurisdiction was exercised over this people except the distribution of national flags and Imperial medals. All trading was guardedly carried on from the decks of armed vessels, and long after the American occupation they were permitted to live unmolested, until their country became the highway of travel to the interior.