Chinook, coho, sockeye, pink, chum — five species of Pacific salmon return from the open ocean to the freshwater streams of their birth, providing a concentrated, predictable, and massively abundant food source that shapes the ecology and the human economy of the entire coast.

The salmon runs of Prince of Wales Island and the broader Alexander Archipelago have been a central economic resource for the peoples of the coast across the entirety of the period we are discussing.

The isotopic evidence from Shuká Káa’s bones includes the signature of salmon consumption — salmon are a marine-derived food that carries the specific isotopic signature of marine protein, and their consumption is reflected in the bone chemistry of the people who depend on them.

The salmon that Shuká Káa ate 10,300 years ago were the same species as the salmon that the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples harvest today — the same Pacific salmon species that return to the same rivers and streams that they have been returning to for the duration of the post-glacial period.