This area is shaped like two backward 'C's or claws, centering on Norton Sound, an arm of the Bering Sea, and on Kotzebue Sound, an arm of the Chuckchi Sea. It also includes a large island, Saint Lawrence, due west of Norton Sound. The north part of the northern claw is part of the western end of the Brooks Range. Heights reach over 2,500 meters on the east edge of the Northwest Arctic Borough. The Noatak and Kobuk Rivers drain between ranges. The part shared by the two claws is the Seward Peninsula. The south part of the southern claw is the delta formed by the Yukon River. Low mountains are found running through the center of the Seward Peninsula, and running northeast from the head of Norton Sound.
Less than 25 thousand people are scattered over more than 200 thousand square miles. More than eight in ten of them speak dialects of Yupik(1): Chapalino(2) on Saint Lawrence Island and Central Yupik on the mainland. The rest speak English, and probably most Yupik speakers learn it.
Everyone is a Christian.
There are only two settlements with as many as one thousand people, each with about two thousand.
Twenty thousand or so years ago, speakers of Amerindian languages(3) migrated across the Bering Strait and passed through this area on their way to populate the Americas(4).
About seven to ten thousand years ago(5), speakers of Na-Dene languages migrated the same way on their way to other parts of North America.
Starting about 3,000 years ago and continuing until 700 to 1000 years ago, Eskimo-Aleuts, including the Yupik, entered America. Some Chapalino dialect speakers remain on the Russian side of the strait. A few Yupik speakers migrated south within Alaska. The other Eskimo-Aleuts continued on to other parts of northern North America.
Europeans arrived starting in the late 18th century.
north, east and south
west of the Yukon Delta, and along Norton Sound's shores
west of the Seward Peninsula
west of Northwest Arctic Borough
(1) It is sometimes called Aleut, although that is another language.
(2) Also called Ungazik.
(3) This group has been hypotehsized by Joseph Greenberg. Others say it was never a single group in America.
(4) Some have hypothesized alternate paths for some of the colonists.
(5) Some put it at three to eight thousand years ago.