Pre-Contact through Russian and Euroamerican Era Timeline

1000-1741 Late Prehistoric Era [1]

200 AD Fort occupied near Outer Point, Douglas Island.

~500 AD Settlements shift to more defensible sites with good views.
Fort occupied on point near Auk Nu Creek — This site used as well in early historic times.

1400 AD Fish trap buried by flooding on Montana Creek.

1550 AD In oral tradition, arrival of Dipper House at Auke Bay, origin of Áak’w Kwáan. (Taku retreat stories fit better with mid-1700s.)

1741-1867 Russian and Euroamerican Era

1750 Taku Glacier dams Inlet. T’aakú Kwáan isolated from coast.

1765 Climax of Little Ice Age. Trader-imperialists arrive before warming climate enhances subsistence opportunities.

1779 Spanish explore outer coast—probable vectors of smallpox to the inner Archipelago. Tlingit already using iron tools
.
1794 Whidbey cartographic survey in 3 rowboats, probably first Europeans to encounter Áak’w people, on 2 separate sorties from Vancouver voyage: in July, then August. Áak’w paddlers were fired upon and probably killed.

1799 Yankee trader Richard Cleveland’s vessel Caroline traverses Stephens Passage. Goes aground, probably in Áak’w territory, but re-floats before discovery. Russians establish a trading post at Sitka on the outside of Baranof Island, which later becomes their capital city for Russian America.

1834 Russians & British settle at Wrangell. Measles and smallpox epidemics reduce Southeast Native population from 10,000 to 4,500. Disease probably reaches Áak’w territory; Russian Orthodox missionary Ivan Veniaminov’s census of 1834 counts only 100 Áak’w.

1839 James Douglas census, Hudson Bay Co., counts 203 Áak’w (including 4 slaves), and 493 T’aakú (119 slaves).

1840 – 1843 Hudson Bay Company sent James Douglas to explore the Taku River area for potential fur trade opportunities. Douglas built Fort Durham at Taku Harbor in 1840, but business proved unprofitable with local Tlingit people and the fort was closed in 1843.[2]

1854 Dutch whaler Backenhousen trapped in Gastineau Channel 6 weeks by ice bergs from Taku Inlet.

Footnotes

[1] http://juneaunature.discoverysoutheast.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/peopleontheland-lowres.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Durham