Our Elders

Lott Egoak was born in Akiak in 1910. Liz came here to live in 1932 and they got married. During the month of April, they would go to spring camp near the mountains; they would come home in June. At spring camp they would hunt for birds and other kinds of animals. To trap they would use the number two traps. They trapped mostly for muskrats. One time they caught fifteen muskrats in one night. They called forty-two muskrats or fifty-two mountain squirrels a coat. Sometimes they would sell the muskrats and the mountain squirrels to the stores for money. Other times they traded for supplies.

Lott Egoak had the first motor in Akiak, he thinks he was a teenager. It was a two horse motor. They used wooden boats, but they didn't use plywood like today. They had a sawmill , but they couldn't saw planks longer than twenty-five feet.

They stored their fish and meat in a fish cache after they dried it. It took a lot of work and a long time to dry the fish. Some people would dig a hole in the ground to store the meat or fish.

Lott and his family hunted everywhere. They would go hunting by dogsled because there were no snowmachines or boats. They only hunted caribou, beaver, otter, porcupine, and mink. Lott and his dad would go the whole way to Tigchick Lake to hunt, but everybody else only went as far as the Kilbuck Mountains.

Lott was taught to look at the sky to tell the weather. He would look at the sun, and if the sun had a ring around it and sundogs, it meant that bad weather is coming. Lott's father told him that the sun had put on its parka hood and mittens.

The people in Akiak stopped dancing in 1932, because the preacher thought that the people would get too crazy. Lott said that he always did what his father said, even when he was a man. He told us that we will have good lives if we listen to the elders, our parents, and our teachers.

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