THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF CONTINUITY: A YELLOW CEDAR BARK STRIPPING SITE ON PLEASANT ISLAND, ICY STRAIT, SOUTHEAST ALASKA

Yellow Cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis (D. Don) Örsted ex D.P. Little) grows as a mixed stand of trees some greater than 600 years old on Pleasant Island in Southeast Alaska. The Tlingit stripped large sections of bark from the cedar for twining of cordage and ropes, weaving and medicinal and recreational uses, including as a component in a form of snus. The trees were not killed as a result of the stripping and this sustainable practice spanned the last three centuries.

Nineteen increment cores were sampled from 14 scars on trees and dated using dendrochronology to determine the calendar year of scarring. A number of trees lack tool marks and others show evidence of metal tool marks made by someone wielding a small adze with overhand strokes. Seventy cores from 42 trees were assembled into a ring-width dating chronology that spans 689 years from 1324 to 2012. The earliest stripping began in 1675 C.E. and continued sporadically throughout the 1700s, 1800s and into the mid-1900s.

The bark stripping dates show continuity of cultural use that spans two significant upheavals in Hoonah Tlingit culture history: the Little Ice Age glacial advance of ca. 1740-1770 C.E., which destroyed the winter village and impacted much of food producing landscape in Ice Strait, and the arrival of Europeans beginning in 1790 C.E., which brought wholesale changes to Tlingit technology, economics and demographics. The Pleasant Island bark stripping adapted new technologies while maintaining the practice and use of this resource for almost 300 years.