What Is Wassillie Trefon Dena’ina Fish Cache?
This is the last, best surviving example of a traditional Denai’ina storage structure for fish!
What Makes It Historical?
Salmon have always been essential for the Denai’ina people living on the Katmai Peninsula, and keeping a stable supply of it between seasonal runs was crucial for their survival (and that of their dogs)! The ancestors of the Denai’ina would dry their fish, tie the filets into bundles of 40, then store the meat underground in bark-lined caches to protect it from the elements and bears, but after the arrival of the Russians in the late 1700s to early 1800s, new steel tools and notching techniques transformed these traditional caches into aboveground structures that resembled Siberian ones, even Spanish horreos, using wood from the white spruce (ch’vala) for its rot-resistant qualities!
This particular cache was built in 1920 at Miller Creek, about eleven miles north of where it is now. Its designer was master woodworker, Wassillie Trefon of the Lake Clark Band of Denai’ina, whose family had a summer hunting camp there. After he died tragically in a commercial fishing accident in 1958, Mr. Trefon’s family disassembled the cache, considered the utmost display of traditional Denai’ina woodworking skill, and reassembled it in their year-round home in Nondalton. It remained there, protected by a sheet aluminum roof, until 2004, when it was loaded onto a barge, shipped across Lake Clark to Port Alsworth, and painstakingly restored by Steve Hobson, Jr. to its 1920 form. Using photographs, The Ethnography of the Tanaina by Cornelius Osgood, and the advice of elder Andrew Balluta, Mr. Hobson removed the aluminum and replaced it with spruce and sod, replaced two of the 26 original logs, and added new support posts, as the cache had rested on 55-gallon steel drums in Nondalton. Today, the Wassillie Trefon fish cache is preserved as an example for future generations who wish to study and continue traditional Denai’ina woodworking techniques!
How Can I #HelpTheHelpers?
- Volunteer with the Friends of Dick Proenneke and Lake Clark National Park!
- Donate to Lake Clark National Park and Preserve!
- Be a responsible visitor! Please respect the signs and pathways, and treat all structures and artifacts with respect. They’ve endured a lot to survive into the present. They’ll need our help to make it into the future!
How Do I Get There?
NE of the intersection of Alder Road and Spuce Road
Port Alsworth, AK 99653
(Take Me There!)
When Should I Visit?
Whenever the mood strikes you!