The Tanana is the largest tributary of the Yukon. It is over 600 miles
in length, and in its breadth, though not in its volume, it appears
to equal, if not to exceed, the Yukon at their junction. The first
white men to see the mouth of the Tanana were the Russian traders
(about 1860), followed before long by the employees of the Hudson Bay
Co. Dall says that it has long been noted on the old maps of Russian
America, under the name of the River of the Mountain Men, while the
Hudson Bay men called it the Gens-des-Buttes River. (Alaska and Its
Resources, 281-282.) Dall mapped the junction of the river with the
Yukon. The first who descended a part of its course were two traders,
Harper and Bates, who reached the river higher up, sometime in the late
seventies. The name of Harper is preserved by having been given to
the big bend of the stream, 12 miles above its mouth. Its scientific
exploration begins only in 1885, with the passage down nearly its
entire length of Lieut. Henry T. Allen, United States Army;[5] the main
work concerning the geography and geology of the river being done in
1898 by A. H. Brooks.[6]