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The origin of the name Alaska is found in the Yupik work Alyeska which means great land. It is important to note that the Yupik people, who are related to the Inuit (Eskimo) People, are distributed across not only Alaska, but into Siberia as well. The earliest Russian adventurers that explored Alaska approached it from Siberia and it is understandable that they would have adopted the terminology that they heard in Siberia before launching their ships for Alaska. We Americans picked the word up when we bought Alaska in 1867 or more probably when we started hunting whales in Arctic waters a few decades earlier or perhaps while we were trading with the Russia-America Company out of California, Oregon and Washington. This museum's collection spans all of the relevant historical periods of Alaska's history including both native cultures and the Russian period.
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