As winter approaches, shells fall on Alaska Native villages, and then sailors come ashore and burn down the remains of their homes, food stores, and canoes. In the months that followed, the situation became so dire that the elders sacrificed their lives to secure food for their surviving children.
It was October 26, 1882, in Angoon, a Tlingit village of about 420 people in Southeast Alaska’s panhandle. Now, 142 years later, the perpetrator of the shelling, the U.S. Navy, has apologized.
Rear Adm. Mark Scato, commander of the Navy’s Northwest Region, issued the apology during a sometimes emotional ceremony Saturday, the anniversary of the atrocity.
“The Navy recognizes the pain and suffering inflicted on the Tlingit people and acknowledges that these wrongful acts have resulted in loss of life, loss of resources, loss of culture, and created and inflicted intergenerational trauma on these clans. “I am aware of the fact that this has happened,” he said. The ceremony was livestreamed from Angoon. “The Navy takes the significance of this action very seriously and knows that an apology is long overdue.”
The rebuilt Angoon received $90,000 in a settlement with the Interior Department in 1973, but village leaders have also been demanding an apology for decades, and at the beginning of each year’s memorial service, “No one from the Navy comes to apologize.” Are you there?” I asked three times.
“You can imagine that the generations of people who have died since 1882 are wondering what happened, why it happened, and they want some sort of apology,” Daniel Johnson Jr. said. Because in our hearts, we have done nothing wrong.” ., tribal leader of Angoon.
The attack was one of a series of conflicts between U.S. forces and Alaska Natives in the years after the United States purchased the territory from Russia in 1867. Last month, the U.S. Navy issued an apology for destroying the nearby village of Kake in 1869. The Army has indicated it plans to apologize for shelling Wrangell, also in southeast Alaska, that year, but no date has been set.
Chief Mass Communications Task Force Chair Gretchen Albrecht/U.S. Navy, via AP
Navy Civilian Spokesman Julian Leinenweber said in an email prior to the event that the Navy acknowledges that the actions it took or ordered in Angoon and Kake resulted in deaths, loss of resources and trauma for generations. .
“An apology is not only well-deserved, but 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, within the nation’s largest Tongass National Forest, accessible by ferry and seaplane. Brown bears far outnumber the residents, and the village has been working to foster an ecotourism industry in recent years. Bald eagles and humpback whales abound, and salmon and halibut fishing is excellent.
There are various theories as to what triggered the destruction, but it generally begins with the accidental death of Tlingit shaman Tis Crane. Mr. Crane was killed when a harpoon gun exploded on board a whaling vessel owned by his employer, the North West Trading Company.
The Navy said tribe members forced the ship to shore, possibly taking hostages, and demanded 200 blankets as compensation, as is customary.
The company refused to provide blankets and ordered the Tlingit and others to return to work. Instead, they smeared their faces with coal tar and tallow in their grief. The company’s employees saw this as a prelude to rebellion. The company director then asked the naval commander for help. E.C. Merriman, the U.S. official in Alaska, said the Tlingit insurgency threatens the lives and property of white residents.
The Tlingit version claims that the ship’s crew, including Tlingit members, remained on board, presumably out of respect, and planned to attend the funeral, and that no hostages were taken. Johnson said the tribe would never have demanded compensation so soon after death.
Mr. Merriman arrived on October 25 and insisted that the tribe provide 400 blankets by noon the next day as punishment for their disobedience. When the Tlingit defected at only 81 years old, Merriman attacked and destroyed 12 clan homes, cottages, canoes, and the village’s grocery store.
Johnson said six children died in the attack and “countless elderly people and young children died that winter from both cold, exposure and starvation.”
Tis Crane’s nephew, Billy Jones, was 13 years old when Angoon was destroyed. Around 1950, he recorded two interviews, and his testimony was subsequently published in a booklet prepared for the 1982 centenary of the atomic bombing.
“They made us homeless on the beach,” Jones said.
Rosita World, director of the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, explains how some older people “went into the woods” that winter, so the younger people could get more food. He explained that he sacrificed himself and died.
Even though the Navy’s documented history contradicts the Tlingit oral tradition, the Navy “respects the long-lasting impact these tragic events had on the affected clans.” We respect the tribe’s explanation, Navy spokesman Leinenweber said.
Johnson said Tlingit leaders were so stunned that no one spoke for five minutes when a Navy official told them on a Zoom call in May that “an apology would finally be issued.” It is said that
Juneau resident Eunice James, a descendant of Tis Crane, said she hopes the apology will help the family and the community as a whole heal. She expects him to attend the ceremony.
“Not only his spirit will remain there, but also the spirits of many of our ancestors, because we have lost so many,” she said.
