Mary King, 1919-2009

By Heather Lende

Last respects were paid to Mary Edna (Jackson) King in Haines Tuesday at the Raven House and the ANB Hall.

The elder from the Frog House in Klukwan was credited with the return of valuable artifacts sold to a Canadian art dealer 33 years ago.

Mary King died April 21 at Mount Edgecumbe Hospital in Sitka of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 89.

“Mary believed that it was wrong for some of the people to sell what was in the Frog House,” attorney Linn Asper told the crowd at the ANB Hall, and King’s testimony was “the rock that I built the case on,” he said.

King was an unlikely heroine. Quiet, poor, uneducated, and a Tlingit speaker with a limited grasp of English, she told an interviewer in 1991 that the only time she was in a school was after a fire when she was hired to clean up. “I can’t talk good English, but I try my best,” she said.

Sally Burratin said her mother’s strength was her cultural literacy. “She knew how to speak Tlingit, knew the history of all of it, that’s why they listened, and she chose to fight to get the artifacts back.”

The deal that returned the Frog House house posts to Alaska was struck just as a trial over the pieces was to begin. Asper said: “I had my eye on Mary. If she didn’t agree, it wasn’t going to work.”

Although King was the person most responsible for returning the pieces, she didn’t bask in victory, Asper said. “Mary was one who needed no lifting up. She was one of the most centered persons I’ve ever met.”

The house posts are currently displayed in the Alaska State Museum in Juneau but will be housed in Klukwan’s Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Heritage Center on its completion.

Born June 15, 1919 in a Tlingit fish camp in Tee Harbor, Mary Edna was the daughter of James Jackson of Killisnoo and Alcora Jackson of Klukwan. The family lived at Tee Harbor and they worked in the cannery there until it burned in 1935.

 She was taught traditional ways from her Klukwan mother and grandmother, including weaving baskets and blankets and hunting and fishing. “Her knowledge of medicinal herbs and plants was astounding,” Wayne Price said.

King had eight children and was married three times. Her first husband was killed at Pearl Harbor. Her second, Carl A. Baker, taught her English. Richard King was a childhood sweetheart from Klukwan whom she was supposed to marry in a traditional Tlingit marriage arranged by their families. The plan was disrupted when he was sent off to boarding school.

Years later, in 1969, they married. Mary King spent her entire life between Klukwan and Juneau. Family members said the Kings had more than 100 grandchildren.

King was in the Salvation Army Home League, was a lifetime member of Klukwan ANS Camp #8 and volunteered at the Chilkoot Culture Camp.

 ANS Chaplain Lani Hotch compared King to biblical martyrs  Abraham, Moses, and Noah. “We have our own example in the life of Mary King. Her kind and gentle spirit personified the Christ she followed.”

King’s husbands and two sons, Carl A. Baker Jr., and Jay Baker, preceded her in death. She is survived by children Sally Burratin and Ed Baker of the Chilkat Valley, as well as Cora Netzel, Jeanette Delfay, Joe Baker and Jerry Baker. She was buried at Jones Point.