US Navy apologizes 142 years after Alaska Native village was shelled and burned into oblivion

Anchorage, Alaska
AP
—

As winter approached, shells fell on an Alaska Native village, and then the sailors came ashore and burned what was left of the houses, food caches, and canoes. In the following months, conditions became so dire that the elders sacrificed their lives to preserve food for the surviving children.

It was October 26, 1882 in Angoon, a Tlingit village of about 420 people in southeast Alaska. Now, 142 years later, the culprit behind the bombing, the US Navy, has apologized.

Rear Adm. Mark Sucato, commander of the Navy’s northwest region, apologized during a sometimes emotional ceremony Saturday, the anniversary of the atrocity.

“The Navy recognizes the pain and suffering caused to the Tlingit people, and we recognize that these wrongful acts have resulted in loss of life, loss of resources, loss of culture, and have created and caused intergenerational trauma among these clans,” he said. He. during the ceremony, which was broadcast live from Angoon. “The Navy takes the significance of this action very, very seriously and knows that an apology is long overdue.”

While the restored Angoon received US$90,000 as part of an agreement with the Department of the Interior in 1973, village leaders have also demanded an apology for decades, beginning each annual commemoration with a three-fold question: “Is there anyone from the Navy here?” strength to apologize?

“You can imagine generations of people who died after 1882 wondering what happened, why it happened, and wanting some kind of apology because in our opinion we didn’t do anything wrong,” said Daniel Johnson. younger. ., head of a tribe in Angoon.

The attack was one of a series of conflicts between the U.S. military and Alaska Native peoples in the years after the U.S. purchased the territory from Russia in 1867. Last month, the U.S. Navy apologized for the destruction of the nearby village of Kake in 1869, and the Army said it plans to apologize for the shelling of Wrangel, also in southeast Alaska, this year, although no date has been set.

The Navy acknowledges that the actions it took or ordered to take place at Angoon and Kaka resulted in loss of life, loss of resources and generations of trauma, Navy civilian spokeswoman Julianne Leinenweber said in an email before the event.

“An apology is not only warranted, but it is long overdue,” she said.

Today, Angoon remains a quaint village of about 420 people, with colorful old houses and totem poles clustered on the west side of Admiralty Island, accessible by ferry or seaplane, in the Tongass National Forest, the largest in the country. The population greatly outnumbers brown bears, and in recent years the village has sought to develop an ecotourism industry. Bald eagles and humpback whales are found here, and the salmon and halibut fishing is excellent.

Accounts of what caused its destruction vary, but usually begin with the accidental death of the Tlingit shaman Titus Klein. Klein was killed when a harpoon gun exploded on a whaling ship owned by his employer, North West Trading Co.

According to the Navy, the tribe members forced the ship to land, possibly took hostages and, in accordance with their customs, demanded 200 blankets as compensation.

The company refused to provide blankets and ordered the Tlingits to return to work. Instead, in sadness, they painted their faces with coal tar and grease – company employees took this as a harbinger of rebellion. The Company Superintendent then approached the Navy Commander for assistance. E.K. Merriman, the top U.S. official in Alaska, said the Tlingit uprising threatened the lives and property of white residents.

The Tlingit version states that the boat’s crew, which included Tlingits, likely remained on the vessel out of respect and planned to attend the funeral, and that no hostages were taken. Johnson said the tribe would never have sought compensation so soon after a death.

Merriman arrived on October 25 and insisted that the tribe provide 400 blankets by noon the next day as punishment for disobedience. With only 81 Tlingit dead, Merriman attacked, destroying 12 clan houses, small houses, canoes, and village food stores.

The attack killed six children, and “countless numbers of elderly people and infants died that winter from cold, exposure and hunger,” Johnson said.

Billy Jones, Titus Klein’s nephew, was 13 years old when Angoon was destroyed. He recorded two interviews around 1950, and his story was later included in a booklet prepared for the 100th anniversary of the bombing in 1982.

“They left us homeless on the beach,” Jones said.

Rosita Worl, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, described how some older people that winter “went into the woods”—that is, died, sacrificing themselves so that younger people would have more food.

Even though the Navy’s written history conflicts with Tlingit oral tradition, the Navy trusts the tribe’s stories “out of respect for the long-term effects these tragic incidents had on the affected clans,” said Leinenweber, the Navy spokesman.

Tlingit leaders were so stunned when Navy officials told them on a Zoom call in May that the apology would finally be forthcoming that no one spoke for five minutes, Johnson said.

Eunice James of Juneau, a descendant of Titus Klein, said she hopes the apology will help her family and the community heal. She expects his presence at the ceremony.

“Not only will his spirit be there, but the spirit of many of our ancestors will be there because we have lost so many,” she said.