Stikine River
| Stikine River | |
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The Stikine River near Telegraph Creek
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The Stikine River (highlighted in orange) and British Columbia
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| Country | Canada, United States |
| Basin features | |
| Main source | Spatsizi Plateau |
| River mouth | Eastern Passage, City and Borough of Wrangell, Alaska |
| Basin size | 52,000 km2 (20,000 sq mi) |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Length | 539 km (335 mi) |
| Discharge |
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The Stikine River /stɪˈkiːn/ (Tlingit: Shtax'héen) is a river, historically also the Stickeen River, approximately 610 km (379 mi) long, in northwestern British Columbia in Canada and in southeast Alaska in the United States.
Its Grand Canyon represents, at this time, the top grade in difficulty for a kayak descent. Considered one of the last truly wild major rivers in British Columbia, it drains a rugged, largely pristine, area east of the Coast Mountains, cutting a fast-flowing course through the mountains in deep glacier-lined gorges to empty into Eastern Passage, just north of the city of Wrangell, which is situated at the north end of Wrangell Island in the Alexander Archipelago.
Two indigenous accounts of the name of the river comes from Tlingit name Shtax' Héen, meaning "cloudy river (with the milt of spawning salmon)", or alternately "bitter waters (from the tidal estuaries at its mouth)". Second meaning is in Smalgyax-Tsimshian and is "Stik'iin" and is a name for the Tahltan people who live up in the rivers interior. They, Tsimshian-Nisga named the river after the people who lived on it. The BC Names branch, however, say its Tlingit meaning is "great river" or "the definitive, or great river" as reported by Captain Rowan of the Boston trader Eliza in 1799. Its Russian name, first reported in Russian was Ryka Stahkin, in 1848, changed to its current form in 1869 after the Alaska Purchase in 1869. In the wording of that a letter to Secretary Seward, "Purchase of the Russian Possessions in North America by the U.S.A.", a letter from a Mr. Collins, dated 4 April 1867, New York, was St. Francis River. It has also been known as Pelly's River, and variously spelled Shikene, Stachine, Stachin, Stah-Keena, Stahkin, Stakeen, Stickeen, Stickienes, Stikeen, Stikin, Sucheen.
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