Most of Yakutat's 350 Indigenous residents identify as Tlingit while recognizing multiple strands of ancestry resulting from migrations to Yakutat fiord by Prince William Sound Eyak in about 900 CE, Copper River Ahtna in about 1500 CE, and southeast Alaska Tlingit in about 1700 CE (Crowell, 2024). Social organization is matrilineal with division into Raven and Eagle moieties and five principal clans (naa): Kwáashk'i Kwáan (Raven), L'uknax.ádi (Raven), Galyáx Kaagwaantaan (Eagle), Teikweidí (Eagle), and Shankukeidí (Eagle). Matrilineal clans are divided into houses (hít) whose members traditionally occupied one or several large winter dwellings together with affinal relatives from clans of the opposite moiety and who cooperated in food production. Traditional society was additionally structured by rank, with a privileged elite including house and clan leaders (“chiefs”) and their close relatives, commoners, and enslaved people. The Kwáashk'i Kwáan, of Ahtna origin, are the traditional owners of Yakutat fiord and the seal rookery, which they acquired from the Eyak in exchange for ceremonial crest shields made of native copper (De Laguna, 1972; Crowell, 2022, 2024).

Yakutat fiord is surrounded by mountains of the St. Elias Range and includes outer Yakutat Bay (in Tlingit, Laaxaayík) and inner Disenchantment Bay (in Tlingit, At'éik). Hubbard and Malaspina glaciers advanced and retreated several times during the Pleistocene and Holocene, receding to their modern positions over the last 800 years (Barclay et al., 2001; Elmore et al., 2015). Large quantities of glacial meltwater flow into the fiord in summer, carrying mineral nutrients that support a flourishing food web of phytoplankton, zooplankton, invertebrates, fish, seabirds, and marine mammals (Arimitsu et al., 2016).

In Disenchantment Bay, ice floes calved from Hubbard Glacier (in Tlingit, Sít Tlein, “big glacier”) and Turner Glacier provide floating platforms for female harbor seals to give birth and raise their pups in safety from bears, killer whales, and sharks (Figure 2). Parturition begins in early May, with peak numbers of pups observed on the ice by mid to late June (Jansen et al., 2014). Pups are weaned and independent of their mothers in 4–6 weeks (Pitcher and Calkins, 1979). Male, female, and young-of-the-year (YOY) seals reside at the rookery until early August, then disperse. The number of seals at the rookery, today about 2,100, may have been five times or more higher prior to a major Gulf of Alaska population crash in the 1960s (Jansen et al., 2014; Crowell, 2020), although no pre-crash aerial survey data are available.

Harbor seals are non-migratory and the Gulf of Alaska-Bering Sea metapopulation includes 12 genetically distinct stocks (O'Corry-Crowe et al., 2003). Yakutat harbor seals are part of the Prince William Sound stock that extends from Cape Elizabeth on the Kenai Peninsula to Cape Fairweather southeast of Yakutat, with an estimated population of about 45,000 out of a total Alaskan harbor seal population of over 240,000 (Young et al., 2023).

The Yakutat ice floe rookery has likely been in existence since glacial ice began to retreat from the mouth of Yakutat Bay around 1200 CE. Oral narratives and archaeological evidence indicate that as Eyak, Ahtna, and Tlingit groups migrated to the emerging fiord they established settlements and hunting camps near the receding ice edge (De Laguna et al., 1964; De Laguna, 1972; Crowell, 2024). Archaeofaunal evidence from the Eyak site of Diyaaguna.éit, established on the Yakutat foreland by 774 (933) 1025 cal. CE, indicates hunting of harbor seals combined with fishing and forest hunting (Davis, 1996). Probable Eyak sites including Spoon Lake 3, 1045 (1257) 1406 cal. CE, Spoon Lake 2 1180 (1397) 1605 cal. CE, Canoe Pass (undated), and Dolgoi Island (undated) were founded on the shores of Yakutat Bay as the glaciers receded, with a possible focus on sealing although faunal evidence is lacking and only Spoon Lake 3 has been substantially excavated (Crowell, 2024, p. 85–111). After emigrating from the Copper River, the Ahtna constructed Tlákw.aan in 1454 (1509) 1631 cal. CE on Knight Island near the 16th century ice edge and conducted rookery sealing from the site (De Laguna et al., 1964; Crowell, 2022, 2024). In oral traditions recounted by Yakutat elder George Ramos, Sr., sealers of this era employed dugout spruce canoes fitted with a skin-wrapped bow bumper to push aside ice floes and hunted with hand-thrown, bone-tipped harpoons attached to sealskin floats (G. Ramos, 11 June 2011, IN-3; Ramos, 2020) (Figure 3).

After Tlingit clans arrived in the early 18th century, they established villages on the Yakutat foreland and sealing camps close to the head of the fiord. Russian, Spanish, British, and American fur trading expeditions visited Yakutat in the 1780s−1790s and a Russian trade fort was built in 1795 but destroyed in 1805 by Tlingit residents (De Laguna, 1972: 107-176). Commercial trade focused on sea otters and fur seals, and although some harbor seal skins were requisitioned by the Russian-American Company there was no external market for harbor seal products (Crowell, 2017).

The Alaska Commercial Company took over former Russian trading posts in 1867 and encouraged Alaska Natives to produce seal skins and oil extracted from seal blubber in exchange for guns, clothing, metal tools, glass beads, and other factory-made goods (Petroff, 1884; Crowell, 2017). Disenchantment Bay became known as “the greatest hair [harbor] sealing ground on the coast” (Burroughs et al., 1901: 161) where hundreds of Yakutat residents and visitors from other Tlingit communities conducted annual communal hunts. They paddled dugout canoes and shot seals with breech-loading rifles, employing harpoons to secure and retrieve shot seals. The main hunting camp, Keik'uliyáa, is discussed below. Commercial harbor seal hide production in the southern Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska (including Yakutat and other coastal communities) reached 51,921 in 1904–1907, almost 13,000 per year (Figure 4) (Crowell, 2020). This level of hunting may have depressed the overall population; as reported in 1898, “the common hair seal [harbor and spotted seals] and the sea lion have decreased in numbers to such an extent that their pursuit no longer occupies a place among the industries of the country, and they supply a wholly local demand” (Morris et al., 1898). However, there is no direct evidence that the local harbor seal population at Yakutat diminished and commercial sealing at the rookery continued until about 1915, ending when market demand for oil and skins declined.

In the mid-20th century, high market prices for seal skins—up to $60 for a large hide in good condition—and seal bounties paid by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Alaska Department of Fish and Game led to renewed, intensive commercial hunting by Alaska Natives, peaking at 155,000 seals in the 1964–1967 period (Figure 4). The standing harbor seal population in the 1960s is unknown, but increased hunting evidently exceeded the sustainable threshold, tipping off a severe crash estimated at up to 90% for some stocks (Pitcher, 1990; Mathews and Womble, 1997; Jemison et al., 2006; Womble et al., 2010; Hoover-Miller et al., 2011). Yakutat sealing in this period was pursued by individual hunters or small groups who used Woogaani Yé and other sealing camps in Disenchantment Bay, taking large numbers of seals each season (De Laguna, 1972, p. 373–374; Crowell, 2020, p. 65–83). Elaine Abraham recalled that “…seal hunters would go up there [to Disenchantment Bay] and they'd come down with 600 seals, 300 seals, 1,200 seals” (E. Abraham, 27 June 2013, IN-28). These totals far exceeded subsistence needs and most of the meat is reported to have been wasted (De Laguna, 1972:373-374; G. Johnson, 27 May 2014, IN-41; T. Vale, 12 June 2011, IN-7). Bounties and commercial sealing were ended by the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972.

Present residents of Yakutat harvest about 120 different subsistence foods, totaling close to 300 kg per household in 2015 (Sill et al., 2017). Harbor seals, now taken solely for subsistence use, comprised about 20% of total community harvest weight. A survey in 2008 found that 57% of Yakutat Native households engaged in subsistence sealing and 100% consumed seal products; annual consumption (0.3 seals per person) was the highest in Southeast Alaska and the second highest in the state (Wolfe et al., 2009). The combined annual harvest for the Prince William Sound stock, including the Yakutat take, was 387 seals in 2014—well below the PBR for this stock (1,342)—indicating a sustainable modern level of hunting.

Possessory rights to land and resources have been proposed as a necessary precondition for Indigenous conservation (Smith and Wishnie, 2000). At Yakutat, matrilineal clans owned bounded territories and maintained exclusive control over resources on those lands (De Laguna, 1972; Goldschmidt and Haas, 1998). George Ramos, Sr. emphasized that, “One thing about the Tlingit culture is land ownership is one of the first laws. Nobody comes into your land, until you give them permission” (G. Ramos, 13 June 2011, IN-8). Clan leaders “took care of the land” (De Laguna, 1972: 361) and “made the regulations” (T. Valle, 12 June 2011, IN-7). According to community members interviewed by De Laguna:

Elaine Abraham said that “Yaa Xooda Keit [a Kwáashk'i Kwáan clan leader in the 1880s] would say, ‘These families can go. And they can take this many seals”' (E. Abraham, 27 June 2013, IN-28). Leaders managed resources in cooperation with other clans; for example, permission given to the Teikweidí and L'uknax.ádi by the Kwáashk'i Kwáan to hunt at the seal rookery was reciprocated by access to eulachon and salmon fishing sites owned by those clans on the Yakutat foreland (E. Abraham, 17 June 2012, IN-13B).

The Kwáashk'i Kwáan leader also determined the starting date of the rookery hunt. During the Russian colonial period when Tlingit hunters had little access to firearms and sealing was carried out using harpoons, he would authorize the hunt to begin in May as soon as the first newborn pups were visible on the ice floes (De Laguna, 1972, p. 374–375; G. Ramos, 11 June 2011, IN-3). As we discuss below, the proportion of unweaned harbor seal pups in the Tlákw.aan archaeofaunal assemblage suggests that this practice originated in the pre-contact period. After rifles came into use, the start of the hunt was delayed until mid or late June after the majority of pups had been born, although earlier hunting with harpoons was allowed (De Laguna, 1972, p. 360).

Yakutat community members interpret historical delay of the hunt until June as a conservation measure to protect the new generation of seals, allowing the pups time to become independent of their mothers and “to fend for themselves,” meaning they are weaned, able to catch their own food, and strong enough to escape hunters (E. Abraham, 27 June 2013, IN-28; D. Ramos, 10 June 2011, IN-1; G. Ramos, 18 June 2012, IN-15). However, because many seals are not born until early June and need to nurse for up to 6 weeks, relatively few would have survived if their mothers were killed at any point in June or even July. Kwáashk'i Kwáan elder Maggy Harry offered an alternative explanation—if hunting began too early in the season the herd would be frightened away by the noise of the guns, but once the pups were born the females would remain with them, even under hunting pressure (De Laguna, 1972, p. 373–376). This interpretation is consistent with the allowance of earlier harpoon-only hunting, which could be conducted in silence. We suggest that the delayed use of rifles ensured successful hunting but also had a conservation effect because it anchored the herd and prevented the mass abandonment of pups, decreasing incidental mortality of this age class.

Yakutat community members recognize spiritual agency in seal conservation, including the traditional belief that the male spirit of Sít Tlein glacier “protects the seals” by packing the ice floes together to deny access by canoe until the pups are ready, then letting the pack be broken open by tidal currents to expose the herd (E. Abraham, 11 June 2011, IN-2; K. Monture, 29 July 2013, IN-32; D. Ramos, 10 June 2011, IN-1; G. Ramos 11 June 2011, IN-3). Prayers, offerings, and ritual proscriptions (for example, the prohibition of fires before the start of the hunt) demonstrate respect for Sít Tlein and elicit his cooperation (E. Abraham, 10 June 2011, IN-1; G. Ramos, 12 June 2011, IN-10; 18 June 2012, IN-15; 19 June 2012, IN-20). The seals themselves are believed to play a role; one elder of an earlier generation said, “How is it that the hair [harbor] seals make the ice gather together and block Disenchantment Bay when they are having their young?” (De Laguna, 1972, p. 374). Thus, the human decision about when to start the hunt was influenced by physical factors (currents and breakup of the ice pack), close observation and knowledge of seal behavior, the type of hunting weapons to be used, and relationships with animals and natural forces that are defined in spiritual terms.

Proscriptions against waste play an important role in seal conservation at Yakutat. The cultural value placed on using all parts of a seal is related to the concept of inter-conscious, reciprocal relationships among people and animals, including that seals willingly give themselves to hunters. Wasting this gift would be offensive and disrespectful, causing the seals to move away (R. Sensmeier, 12 June 2011, IN-6; G. Ramos, 18 June 2012, IN-15). Oral accounts describe the conservative use of resources at Keik'uliyáa, where seal meat, blubber, oil, organs, and flippers were cooked and eaten on site or cured with smoke and packed in barrels and bentwood boxes for winter consumption (Crowell, 2024, p. 80–81). The trade-off between surplus production for the market and avoiding food waste may have been a consideration in how clan leaders managed the hunt, although the large harvests of the commercial period likely exceeded what could be fully utilized.

Tlákw.aan (“old town”), an Ahtna-Eyak village site on the south shore of Knight Island in Yakutat Bay, includes remains of seven rectangular lineage houses, food storage caches, and mounds of cultural midden containing charcoal, fire-cracked rock, well-preserved faunal remains, and stone, bone, and copper artifacts (Figure 5). Frederica de Laguna excavated House 1, the largest dwelling (15 × 15 m), in 1949–1952 along with parts of the adjacent midden (Mound B) (De Laguna et al., 1964). We excavated a 1 x 4 m trench in Mound B on the north side of House 1 in 2014 to obtain an AMS radiocarbon date sequence and a complete faunal sample (Etnier, 2017; Crowell, 2024, p. 116–136). Freed and Lane's analysis of fauna from another area of Mound B provides comparative data, although the sample was discarded in the field by the investigators and could not be reexamined (Freed and Lane, 1964).

Tightly clustered AMS dates from the 2014 trench (Kováčik and Cummings, 2015) indicate that the cultural levels (Strata 2, 3, and 4) of Mound B (Figure 6) were deposited between 1454 (1509) 1631 cal. CE and 1461 (1561) 1635 cal. CE., a median 52-year period with a 95.4% confidence interval (2 SD) of 181 years (Table 2). The dates are on charcoal from long-lived species—spruce (Picea) up to 500 years and balsam poplar (Populus) up to 200 years—that pose the potential problem of significant age variation between inner and outer growth rings, yet the narrow spread of the AMS dates suggests that the wood samples were from young trees only recently established on post-glacial terrain. Knight Island was uncovered by glacial retreat in the mid-15th century (Barclay et al., 2001) and oral traditions describe a recently deglaciated landscape at the time of settlement (Crowell, 2022). No Russian trade items have been found at the site, consistent with its abandonment before 1780. Site occupation overlapped with the coldest interval of the Little Ice Age (1400–1530 CE) when seals were likely to have been abundant (Wiles et al., 2014; Crowell and Arimitsu, 2023). Hubbard Glacier was < 20 km from the site during occupation and it is recorded in oral tradition that men of the village hunted “at the seals' home” near the glacier (Swanton, 1909:347–368). Tlákw.aan artifacts related to sealing include barbed bone harpoon points, pecked stone oil lamps, semilunar slate knives, copper-edged flensing knives, and cobble spalls for cutting and scraping hides.

The 2014 archaeofaunal assemblage (NISP=10,638) included shellfish, fish (almost entirely salmon), land mammals (beaver, porcupine, black-tailed deer, dog, bear), and sea mammals (harbor seal, Northern fur seal, harbor porpoise), with harbor seal as the dominant mammalian species (NISP=1,044) (Etnier, 2017). Complete harbor seal bones from the 2014 archaeological sample were measured and aged using methods presented in Etnier (2002) and Ericson and Storå (1999) and measurements were compared with growth curves generated from 41 known-age reference skeletons collected in Puget Sound, Washington State.

To create growth curves, measurements for 32 young-of-the-year (YOY) seals in the Washington sample were plotted against age in tenths of a year. The graph for midline femur length (Figure 7) shows a typical degree of metric separation between newborns, transitional, and weaned animals. Based on where the Tlákw.aan specimens plotted relative to the known-age specimens, and whether or not they represented YOYs or older seals with more fully fused epiphyses, they were categorized as newborn pups, transitional pups, weaned pups, sub-adults, or adults. Subjective assignments to the categories of newborn, young-of-the-year, juvenile, and adult were made for Tlákw.aan specimens that could not easily be measured, based on the degree of osteological development, fusion state of the epiphyses, and size relative to known-age reference skeletons. Age estimates were made for a total of 173 Tlákw.aan harbor seal specimens, with 145 metrically determined (Table 3) and 28 subjectively determined (Table 4). Newborn pups made up 16% (n = 28); transitional pups 16% (n = 27); weaned pups 16% (n = 27); sub-adults 30% (n = 52); and adults 23% (n = 39) of the assemblage.

The combined proportion of newborn and transitional pups (32%) is an unmistakable signal of ice floe rookery hunting beginning in May when the first pups were born, as reported for the early post-contact period. The proportional representation of skeletal elements in all ages of seals suggests that hunters accessed the rookery by canoe from Tlákw.aan and brought back entire carcasses to the village, as Freed and Lane (1964) also concluded.

Harbor seal consumption rates at Tlákw.aan can be approximated based on the minimum number of individuals (MNI). The most numerous element from the 2014 trench in Mound B for which body side can be determined is the humerus, with 19 left-side and 13 right-side specimens, suggesting an MNI of 19. Further consideration of the anatomical position (proximal vs. distal), ontogenetic stage of development, and chronostratigraphic provenience of the specimens confirms this estimate. Accumulation of these 19 harbor seals in the 4 m² trench occurred over at least 52 years based on median radiocarbon dates and up to 181 years at 2 SD. If we use the median span of 52 years and consider the total area of Mound B (~150 m²) and assume similar dating and stratigraphy over that area, then the total MNI for Mound B and its two households (Houses 1 and 2) would be 712 seals (150 m/4 m × 19), or 712/52 = 14 seals per year. This may be compared to results from the Freed and Lane sample from a 200 ft.²/18.6 m² trench in a different area of Mound 1, which yielded 51 left side and 41 right-side harbor seal humeri for an approximate MNI of 51. The projected MNI for all of Mound B based on this sample would be 411 seals (150 m/18.6 m × 51), or 411/52 = 8 seals per year (Freed and Lane, 1964, p. 77–84). This lower MNI is likely due to rapid excavation and failure to record many of the bones; whereas we recovered 261 harbor seal bones per m² of excavation (1,044 NISP/4 m²) Freed and Lane reported only 33 per m² of excavation in midden of similar depth (627 NISP/18.6 m²).

Our MNI calculation of 14 seals per year for Mound B and previous estimate that House 1 and House 2 had a combined occupancy of 50 people (Crowell, 2022) yield a harbor seal consumption rate of 0.3 seals/person/yr., similar to modern subsistence consumption.

Keik'uliyáa was a large sealing camp on the east side of Disenchantment Bay used during the early commercial sealing era (1867–1915) (De Laguna, 1972; Crowell, 2024, p. 153–177). It was a “family camp” where women flensed and cut up seal carcasses, scraped and stretched seal hides, rendered oil from blubber, and prepared seal meat for winter consumption, reserving a large portion of the hides and oil for trade with the Alaska Commercial Company (Crowell, 2017). The men stayed overnight at hunting camps close to the rookery and returned to Keik'uliyáa with their catch. Almost the entire Yakutat population occupied the Disenchantment Bay camps from mid-June through early August.

On June 21, 1899, the Harriman Alaska Expedition photographed the main encampment at the mouth of Indian Camp Creek, which included a row of 18 canvas tents and a parallel row of six bark-covered smokehouses (Figure 8); a second, smaller encampment with eight tents and one smokehouse east of Aquadulce Creek (Figure 9); and a third location with six tents and one smokehouse at the mouth of Aquadulce Creek. The Harriman observers estimated that the population at all three subcamps was 300–400 people including Yakutat residents and visiting hunting parties from Juneau and Sitka.

Clusters of sleeping tents at the three subcamps, each associated with a smokehouse for processing meat, skins, and blubber, mirrored the socio-spatial arrangement of Tlingit winter villages. Kwáashk'i Kwáan, Teikweidí, and Galyáx Kaagwaantaan houses (hít) from Khantaak village at the mouth of the fiord, L'uknax.ádi houses from Situk River Village on the Yakutat foreland and visiting lineages from Juneau and Sitka each appear to have established their own smokehouses and associated living areas at Keik'uliyáa, although we were unable to learn the distribution of the different clans in 1899. The layout of the camp reflected sealing of this period as a large-scale, cooperative enterprise of socially linked matrilineal households, structurally comparable to sealing at pre-contact Tlákw.aan.

In September 1899 a series of strong earthquakes raised the land level of Keik'uliyáa by 3–3.5 m, and in subsequent seasons the camp was established along the post-earthquake shoreline. A central section of the uplifted and abandoned 1899 camp, including undisturbed rock outlines of the tents, was archaeologically preserved (Figure 10). Excavations of three tent outlines (Structures 1, 2, and 3) and a blubber-rendering hearth (Feature 1) yielded commercially-produced goods (glass beads, metal tools and fasteners, expended brass rifle cartridges, lead shot and primers, glass and ceramic vessel fragments, food cans, clothing, and personal items) dating from the 1870s to 1890s, reflecting hunting, domestic life, and trade with the Alaska Commercial Company.

Rifle cartridges were from the 1892 .25-20 Winchester, the 1884 .30 Springfield military rifle, the 1886 .32-40 Winchester, the 1895 .35 Winchester lever-action rifle, and the 1884 .44 caliber Colt Lightening magazine rifle, all of higher caliber than weapons used by seal hunters today (Barnes, 2012). A 12-gauge brass shell was also found, probably for the Winchester Model 1887 shotgun (Kirkland, 2007). These weapons were significantly louder than modern guns; even from shore, “the crack of the Winchesters of the men could be heard out among the ice” (Burroughs et al., 1901, p. 60). However, seals remained at the rookery due to the presence of dependent pups (see “Conservation Practices” above).

Archaeofaunal remains were poorly preserved at Keik'uliyáa (NISP = 10 including harbor seal humeri, tarsal, femur, vertebrae) but an estimate of seals killed annually at Keik'uliyáa can be reconstructed from historical reports. The Harriman Alaska Expedition recorded about 1,000 seal skins drying on stretchers at the camp on June 21, near the start of the hunting season (Burroughs et al., 1901, p. 165), and the total by the end of the season would likely have been at least two to three times higher. In 1886, it was reported that 1,500 seals were killed at Disenchantment Bay in just 3 days (Seton Karr, 1887, p. 71). We suggest 2,000–3,000 seals per year as a conservative estimate of the rookery harvest in the 1880s, consistent with the volume of Yakutat skins received by the Alaska Commercial Company (Crowell, 2017). This would have been up to 10 seals per person, more than 30 times higher than subsistence consumption at pre-contact Tlákw.aan, demonstrating the large surplus generated for the skin and oil trade.

This level of hunting would have extirpated the present-day rookery, but harbor seals were almost certainly far more abundant during the 1840–1923 cold PDO phase, supported by Seton Karr's observation of “large numbers in the sea” at Yakutat in 1886 (Seton Karr, 1887, p. 71). Although harbor seal stocks in the Gulf of Alaska reportedly declined by the end of the 19th century (Morris et al., 1898), market sealing was conducted at Keik'uliyáa for almost five decades without local depletion of the resource, suggesting that the quotas set by Kwáashk'i Kwáan clan leaders were effectively adjusted to prevailing conditions.

Woogaani Yé, located in Disenchantment Bay just north of Keik'uliyáa (Figure 1), was the site of a Teikweidí stone-walled fort and sealing camp, abandoned after a L'uknax.ádi attack in about 1805 (De Laguna, 1972:67–68). In the mid-20^th century, it was a small camp used by Tlingit sealers and bear hunters (E. Abraham, 16 June 2012, IN-13A).

While no remains of the earlier occupation were found, the modern camp was rediscovered in 2013 on a beach terrace behind the storm berm (Figure 11). Surface features included a charcoal-filled hearth ring (Feature 1); four tent rings (Features 2, 6, 7, and 8), a rock pavement (Feature 3), a meat cache (Feature 5), other rock groupings (Features 4, 9, and 10), and a collapsed wooden cabin. Rifle cartridges found on the surface and in Feature 7 were of mid-20th century vintage including small rounds for seals (0.22 Magnum, 0.22 Hornet, 0.222 Remington) and larger rounds suitable for bear (0.32 Remington, 0.30-30 Remington UMC, 0.44 Remington Magnum) (Barnes, 2012). Wire nails, machine-molded bottle glass, a 1976 U. S. Bicentennial Mason jar, and a 1959 State of Alaska license plate were found. Six harbor seal bones (a vertebra, humerus, tarsal, femur, and unidentifiable fragments) were recovered from Feature 7.

Mid-20th century hunters used flat-bottomed canvas-covered canoes with small outboard motors to enter leads in the ice pack, shooting seals with quiet, small-bore rifles that could scarcely be heard above the sounds of moving ice. They killed groups of seals one by one after first “picking off the watchman”, a male sentinel that scanned for danger while others slept on the ice floes (T. Valle, 12 June 2011, IN-7; G. Ramos, 11 June 2011, IN-3).

The site is consistent with orally attested patterns of small family units staying briefly at Keik'uliyáa, Woogaani Yé, Daak Léin, and other camps in Disenchantment Bay for spring subsistence sealing from the 1930s through 1970s (E. Abraham, 27 June 2013, IN-28) and of individuals or small groups of men who undertook high production commercial sealing using the same camps during the price boom of the 1960s (G. Ramos, 18 June 2012, IN-15). These patterns contrast socially with the months-long, clan-structured community effort at 19th century Keik'uliyáa, and technically with earlier sealing because of superior weapons and motorized canoes and skiffs that enabled rapid transport to and from Yakutat village, eliminating the need for the whole community to relocate to Disenchantment Bay.

As discussed above, traditional conservation measures were not observed during this period. Commercial hunters shot hundreds of seals and took the fleshed skins and seal noses or faces—used to claim state bounties—back to Yakutat, leaving most of the meat behind to waste. They typically hunted in April and May before the salmon fishing season began (De Laguna, 1972, p. 374), resulting in the killing of female seals with unborn young.