They are the original inhabitants of the Tanana River (in Tanana languages Tth'itu', literally 'straight water,' in Koyukon language Tene No', literally 'trail water') drainage basin in east-central Alaska Interior, United States and a little part (White River First Nation) lived in Yukon, Canada.

Traditional Athabaskan land use includes fall hunting of moose, caribou, Dall sheep, and small terrestrial animals, as well as trapping.

Tanana Athabaskans were strictly territorial and used hunting and gathering practices in their semi-nomadic way of life and dispersed habitation patterns.

The regional band might meet again at a predetermined place and time in mid-winter for a gathering ceremony called a potlatch and then split up again for beaver and muskrat trapping.

Interior Alaska's icefree status during the last glacial period provided a corridor connecting the Bering Land Bridge and northeastern Asia (West Beringia/Siberia) to North America.

The earliest cultural remains in interior Alaska, as on the coast, are chipped stone blade complexes about 10,000 years old, with close relationships to Siberian materials.

[26][27] Many Nenana Complex archaeological sites are located in the Tanana Valley: Broken Mammoth, Chugwater, Donnelly Ridge, Healy Lake, Mead, and Swan Point.

Douglas D. Anderson[33][34] originally defined the Northern Archaic Tradition to specifically address notched point-bearing stratigraphic horizons that did not contain microblades at the Onion Portage site (Onion Portage Archeological District of Kobuk Malimiut tribes of Inupiat people region)[35] in northern Alaska.

Notched point assemblages occur in many sites in Interior Alaska, including over one dozen on the U.S. Army's Fort Wainwright lands.

[37] The Athabaskan Tradition includes late prehistoric and proto-historic cultures generally believed to be the ancestors of Athabascan tribes who currently inhabit Interior Alaska.

Athabascan settlement patterns depended greatly on the availability of subsistence resources, and Interior bands lived a nomadic lifestyle.

[19] Ernest S. Burch (1980) defined a four-period scheme reflecting the major historical events and their impact on the Alaska Natives (Alaskan Eskimos and Athabaskan peoples):[38] Russian fur traders (and promyshlenniki [According to American historian and ethnologist Hubert Howe Bancroft, the Cossacks themselves were a light troop, but they were preceded by a still lighter flying advance guard called the promyshleniki, a kind of Russian coureurs des bois.

[43] With the beginning of Euro-American contact in Interior Alaska in the early 19th century, trade influences and influxes of new populations began to change life in the region.

As Euro-American traders (merchants), miners, missionaries, and explorers moved into the Tanana Valley, the traditional life ways of local Athabaskan groups were disrupted.

[7] The homeland of Tanana Athabaskans is the Dfc climate type subarctic boreal forest of the Nearctic realm called Interior Alaska-Yukon lowland taiga.

Their lands are located in different two ecoregions:[46] Tanana Athabaskans were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers who moved seasonally throughout the year within a reasonably well-defined territory to harvest fish, bird, mammal, berry and other renewable resources.

It was the most important food animal in the Upper Tanana before the coming of the non-natives and the resultant disintegration of the original nomadic patterns.

Not only does the animal constitute the source of food for the natives and their dogs, but it also supplies the material for their clothing, shelters, and boats, as well as netting for their snowshoes and babiche and sinew for their snares, cords, and lashings.

Caribou hunting during the fall migration involved the use of fence, corral, and snare complexes and was a seasonal activity critical to the survival of the Tanana people.

[6] The Mansfeld-Kechumstuk band of Tanacross employed several methods to hunt Dall sheep (in Alaskan English simply sheep, Lower Tanana deba, Tanacross demee, Upper Tanana dibee) in late summer and early fall in local mountainous areas or as far south as the Mentasta Mountains.

[6] Migratory waterfowl (ducks, geese, and swans) and upland game birds (ptarmigans and grouse) were a valued source of fresh meat.

Both fresh and dried fish were cooked in water boiled by placing heated stones into a birch bark basket.

[11] Beginning in late spring and continuing throughout the summer and early fall months, both adults and children gathered a variety of plants and vegetative materials.

Their society was and still is composed of eight or nine matrilineal clans that are arranged in exogamous moieties named Raven (or Crow) and Sea Gull (or Wolf).

In addition to adhering to a code of behavior, people observed a variety of taboos designed to prevent misfortune or bad luck.

The heads of caribou, moose, and Dall sheep may not be fed to the dogs; to do so would bring the hunter poor luck.

[57] Hudson Stuck, the Archdeacon of the Yukon, regularly visited the settlement, part of the 250,000 square-acre territory of the Interior he administered.

The several regional bands attending a potlatch might have spoken slightly different dialects, which were nonetheless close enough to each other to be mutually intelligible.

One recipe for Indian ice cream consisted of dried and pulverized tenderloin that was blended with moose grease in a birch bark container until the mixture was light and fluffy.

When non-Native fur traders and explorers first traveled the Yukon River and other interior regions in the mid-19th century, they also observed that a few Athabascan groups, including the Koyukon, Deg Hit'an, and Holikachuk, used dog sleds.