Uknavik

Uknavik in Detail.

on right bank of Kuskokwim River, between Lower Kalskag and Tuklak, 40 mi. SE of Russian Mission, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

Although it is difficult to correlate names of the Eskimo villages along the Kuskokwim River on the early small-scale maps, this place appears to have been the same as the "Oogovigamute," popullation 206, listed in Petroff's 1880 Census. It is probable that E. W. Nelson, U.S. Signal Service, obtained the name for Petroff in January 1879. The 1890 Census listed "Ugavigamiut," population 57. W. S. Post, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), on his 1898 fieldsheet recorded "Oknavigamut" with a note "from Kilbuck" (Reverend J. H. Kilbuck, Moravian missionary); he also showed a Moravian Mission school located there. The mission, called "Ougavik," was established about 1893 (Schwalbe, 1951, p. 46) and abandoned about 1906 (p. 94), because of a declining population caused "by a shifting river bed." In his diary in 1930, Hrdlivka (1943, p. 317) wrote, "Oogovik, a place abandoned some years ago. A large fine site * * * twenty hollows from igloos." See Akahamut and Nak.