This knowledge and these skills, once developed, would have been transmitted from generation to generation — one of the most important forms of cultural knowledge in a maritime society.

The existence of watercraft among the founding coastal people is implied by their geographic distribution.

The archaeological evidence for early human occupation on islands throughout the Alexander Archipelago — not just on Prince of Wales Island but on other islands of the archipelago — indicates that people were moving between islands, which requires boats.

The presence of marine resources in the diet of people on these islands indicates that they were harvesting resources not just from the intertidal zone but from the water itself, which requires watercraft for fishing and marine mammal hunting at any significant distance from shore.

The implication is that the founding coastal people who colonized the Alexander Archipelago after the deglaciation were already a maritime people — already possessed of the watercraft technology and maritime knowledge needed to move through the complex island and waterway geography of the archipelago.