Henry T. Allen

Lieut. Henry T. Allen explored the Copper River in 1885 on behalf of the American Army. He had $2000 and he outfitted himself, Private Frederick W. Fickett, and Sergeant Cady Robertson. John Pederson, a trader, joined the party at Nuchek, Alaska. They started on 29 March and in a month reached, Taral, an Ahtna village two miles south of the confluence of the Copper and Chitina rivers. Taral had two houses and one was occupied by a prospector, John Bremner. Bremner joined them and they went upriver to the camp of Nicolai, an Ahtna chief, who shared his food with them. He guided Allen back down the Chitina River and up the Copper River to the end of his territory. On 5 June, the party crossed the Suslota Pass into the Tanana River valley. They travelled down to the Yukon River to the Koyukuk River and investigated that river to a point above the Arctic Circle. They reached St. Michael by the end of August. They mapped the Copper, Tanana, and Koyukuk rivers and successfully ascended the Copper River to cross into interior Alaska.((Joan M. Antonson and William S. Hanable, //Alaska's Heritage: Unit 4 - Human History: 1867 to Present.// Alaska Historical Commission Studies in History No. 133. The Alaska Historical Society. 1992: 237-9.))
          
Allen documented the Upper Tanana trading at Fort Reliance and suggests that the Ahtna of the Copper River may have also traded with the Hän. His assistant, Private Fickett, made some notes in the original manuscript at the University of Alaska at Anchorage.((Donald W.  Clark. //Fort Reliance, Yukon: An Archaeological Assessment.// Mercury Series Archaeological Survey of Canada.  Paper 150. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1995: 20.))