The ancient coastal people of the Alexander Archipelago — the community of which Shuká Káa was a member — were a small population by any measure relevant to modern understanding of population size.

The archaeological and genetic evidence for the early Holocene coast suggests a founding coastal population that was demographically thin relative to the biological richness of the environment.

This apparent paradox — rich environment, sparse population — is characteristic of founding populations in newly available habitats.

When people first colonize a new environment, even a highly productive one, they begin with small founding groups that then grow as they exploit the available resources and as cultural and technological adaptations specific to the new environment are developed.

The early Holocene coastal population of the Northwest Coast was, in this sense, a founding population in the process of expanding into a newly available and highly productive ecological niche.