Language Information

The Tlingit Indians live in the Alaskan Panhandle—in and around the cities of Juneau, Sitka, and Ketchikan, as well as on a number of islands in the Alexander Archipelago. Their language shows a number of similarities with those of the Athapascan family, but its exact linguistic classification remains uncertain. There are about 1,000 speakers.

Family: North American Indian
Subgroup: Athapaskan

Writing Sample

Translation

The Tlingit tribe is one of the Athapascan tribes. It is told in some of the Tlingit legends that during Noah's flood the Athapascan tribe, as the waters subsided, landed in the area of the Arctic Circle. The theory of many writers is that the Athapascans came across the Bering Ice Bridge. This doesn't stand to reason. Why should a family or group of people—men, women, children, and older people—go up North? Just to cross an Ice Bridge that they did not know existed? It was a cold, desolate, uninhabited place, dark during part of the year, without much variety of food and with no protection. This is not to say that a group of people could not land at such a place by accident. But to go there willfully, at great discomfort to the whole group, is not reasonable.