-By Diane Tillion-

    In the beginning there was water over all the earth, and it was very cold; the water was covered with ice, and there were no people.
    Then the ice ground together, making long ridges and hummocks.

    At this time came a man from the far side of the great water and stopped on the ice hills near where Pikmiktalik now is, taking for his wife a she-wolf. By and by he had many children, which were always born in pairs - a boy and a girl. Each pair spoke a tongue of their own, different from that of their parents and different from any spoken by their brothers and sisters.

    As soon as they were large enough each pair was sent out in a different direction from the others, and thus the family spread far and near from the ice hills, which now became snow-covered mountains. As the snow melted it ran down the hillsides, scooping out ravines and river beds, and so making the earth with its streams.

    The twins peopled the earth with their children, and as each pair spoke a language different from the others, the various tongues found on the earth were established and continue until this day.

    This Bering Sea Eskimo Legend was recorded by Edward Nelson in 1899, and is believed to mirror the current scientific belief that the peoples of Alaska originally came over the Bering Sea land bridge approximately 11,000 years ago.

    It is also consistent with the linguistic history of Alaska. In Seldovia the natives speak an Aleutiiq language known as Sugpiaq. It is closely related to the Eskimo peoples, and common to the coastal people of Southcenteral Alaska.

    Through all known history there has been an extensive network in the Seldovia Bay area, with a strong exchange of both goods and ideas. Evidence indicates that the Chugachmiut Eskimo of Prince William Sound, Tanaina-Kenaitze Dena'ina Indians of Cook Inlet, and the Koniagmiut of Kodiak Island, as well as peoples from Kamchatka, Japan, and the Northwestern coast of America, influenced the culture of this region.

    The peoples of Seldovia have no written formal history of the thousands of years they spent prior to contact with the Russians in the mid-1600s. A Russian book written in 1844 refers to a settlement named Seldovia, and Ivan Petroff's 1880 census of the area lists the combined populations of Seldovia and unknown village identified as Ostrovki as seventy-four.

    By 1883, Berlin Museum artifact collector J.A. Jacobsen wrote that the Western Fur Company had recently closed a trading post in village of Akedaknak in Seldovia Bay. In 1884 a Russian Orthodox priest, Father Nikita wrote that influenza had killed nearly every child under the age of two in Seldovia.

    The influx of Euro-American trade dramatically shifted the mix of the population in the late 1800s. A census conducted by Priest John Bortnovsky in July 1896 listed 110, including seven newborn babies. The Bureau of Indian Affairs reported 36 Seldovia households in 1936, twenty-one of which included non-Native men. The diversity of gained from Scandinavians and other Europeans attracted by the growing fishing industry was embraced by Native women who raised their children in tribal traditions.

    The Seldovia Native Association was incorporated in 1972 as a village corporation under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act by Congress.

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