When talking about migration,  American history traditionally emphasizes “westward movement.” But for hundreds of generations in North America the frontier moved southward and eastward. Unlike the image as America’s “Last Frontier,” during the Pleistocene Alaska was an access point rather than a final destination. Indeed, Alaska was nothing less than a gateway through which people entered into the western hemisphere. 

Paleo-anthropologists generally agree that the first inhabitants of Alaska came from Asia. These hunter-gatherers followed migrating game out of the inhospitable environment of Siberia, across Beringia, and to Alaska in search of more reliable food sources. Over thousand of years Asians became Americans. Group numbers remained low and traveled usually no more than 10 miles in a lifetime. Hundreds of generations passed before these nomads reached the Pacific Northwest. Eventually this migration brought people to the tip of South America and the Eastern Seaboard. 

It is important to remember that most Native Americans have their own creation stories about their continental origins, recalling how people not only came into the world but acquired their identity and emerged into history. Western science is paying closer attention to oral histories that explain early migration into and out of Alaska. Instead of dismissing origin stories as myth, archeologists, anthropologist, and geologists are now attempting to ‘ground truth’ many of the oral historical data provided by Native informants. Today the blending of science and traditional knowledge is shedding new light on the peopling of Alaska, a story that extends back 15,000-22,000 years.