The first academic and literary history of the Chilkat Valley’s Tlingit people and their eventual contact with Europeans and Russians will be released this month.
Dan Henry’s book “Across the Shaman’s River: John Muir, the Tlingit Stronghold, and the Opening of the North” tells the story of Muir’s contact with and conversion of the Tlingit.
Henry said his book, more than a decade in the making, started when he wrote his master’s thesis on the rhetorical history of American land-use conflict.
“I got the idea and I started looking through Native American histories and different histories,” Henry said. “Most Native American histories are histories of battles between the U.S. and the Indians. I wanted to write a rhetorical history about negotiation.”
While he was working on his thesis, he read John Muir’s account of when he met the Tlingit people and converted them to Christianity.
Henry was surprised that Tlingit people, who had a fierce reputation, were influenced by a pacifist.
“The white people who came up here were aware of that reputation,” Henry said. “They were very cautious when they came up here. There was always the threat of violence or uprising that kept the white people out. My big question was: how did John Muir convert 300 people on the spot?”
Henry writes about Muir’s three-minute speech to a group of Tlingits about brotherhood and unity after a several days’ long tent revival. Henry said the Tlingits appreciated his speaking style and “self-effacing” and “bashful” style of communication.
They were curious about his study of the natural history of the area. Henry also explores the irony of Muir’s Tlingit conversion, which eventually helped open the area to gold miners.
“The father of American environmentalism promoting, opening up territory, acting as an agent of manifest destiny; that’s another thing that bothered me,” Henry said. “The more I dug into it the more amazing it was. One could say very honestly that Muir was the person who first publicized the Chilkoot trail and the Chilkoot Pass and invited people to come and prospect.”
Henry drew on 25 oral histories he collected over a period of 15 years. He also drew on unpublished portions of Muir’s journals documenting his travels in the area.
“I got into his journals and looked at his sketches,” Henry said. “One was made from 2,500 feet up Ripinski from behind the airport. It’s looking up the valley and you can see glaciers coming into the valley. The Kicking Horse Glacier is coming into the river.”
Henry’s book ends around the year 1880. He’s working on a second book that picks up where “Shaman’s River” leaves off and explores the life of Louis Shotridge, a controversial figure who sold Tlingit cultural items to a museum in Philadelphia.