There’s a worn and mossy stone obelisk at the edge of a bluff overlooking Kootznahoo Inlet near Angoon.
It’s the final resting place of Chief Dick Yeilnaawu of the Raven House. He died in 1916. He led the community when the U.S. Navy bombarded it in 1882, and was crucial in the effort to rebuild after the deadly attack.
If Yeilnaawu was still alive on Oct 27, a foggy Sunday morning, he would have been in the perfect spot to see Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist lead nine women down a boat ramp toward the inlet.
It’s cold, but the marine layer burned off quicker than the sage and seagrass Hasselquist used for a smudging ceremony. So the sun is shining by the time the women wade into the 48-degree water singing a song in Tlingít that means “you are precious.”
“It’s a practice of intention,” Hasselquist said. “It’s not like a polar plunge. We don’t do it quickly.”
The slow descent is to rid the body of toxins and any kind of burdens or heaviness that we might be carrying with us,” Hasselquist said. “We receive strength from the water and the land and our ancestors. Our ancestors are with us today as we stand here.”
And, it’s not just Yeilnaawu’s final resting place, this entire waterfront is a cemetery to Hasselquist. That’s because more than a century ago when the Navy destroyed the area, under the command of Edgar C. Merriman and Michael A. Healy, on Oct. 26, 1882, six children died during the bombardment. Countless others – elders and children – died due to exposure the following winter.
The death of a Shaman.
The story of Angoon’s bombardment has been repeated for more than a century. But it changes depending on who is telling it.
According to U.S. Navy records, Tlingít people in Angoon allegedly took hostages and property from the North West Trading Company, a fur trader. Under Merriman and Healy’s command, a naval force of 50 sailors and 20 Marines were dispatched to rescue the hostages and recover the property. Merriman demanded 400 blankets from the village as a “punishment and guarantee of future good behavior.” He gave them until noon on Oct. 26, 1882, but the tribe could only collect 81 blankets. Merriman responded by shelling them, deploying the Marines to destroy houses, 40 canoes, and food stores.
But Tlingít stories dispute that version of events.
Shgendootan George is the housemaster of the Killer Whale Tooth House and a retired teacher turned education consultant. She said on Oct. 22, 1882, an ixht’ or local shaman, was working as a harpoon gunner on a whaling boat. His name has been spelled a number of ways over time – like Tith Klane – but more recently it has been spelled T’iex Klein.
At the time, George said, explosives were attached to the end of the harpoons.
“They would shoot the harpoon. It would hit the whale, and it would explode.” On Oct. 22, Klein went to shoot a whale. “And before it launched, it exploded,” George said.
George believes the whalers were near Danger Point, north of Angoon along the west side of Admiralty island.
“They say that they came into the inlet and that he did not die right away. That they took him to shore,” George said. There, Klein died on the beach.
She went on to explain that when someone dies in Tlingít culture, it is customary for everyone to pause and be quiet, especially when someone was as important as Klein, an ixht’.
“Boats were put ashore. Tools were put away, and everyone stopped working.” The mourning period began immediately, George said.
They painted their faces.
“Because of this, the other men that worked for the North West Trading Company, who were in the boat that [Klein] was in, could not leave on the boat,” she said. “Because it was our custom that you put the boats on the beach and you leave them there.”
Those men were not prisoners, she said.
George said word got back to the company “that the Indians were causing trouble in Angoon because their shaman died. They reported that they were painting their faces for war and revenge.”
George read the details of what followed inside the Angoon High School gymnasium during a ku.éex’ on Oct. 26. It was filled with leaders and members of the Angoon Community Association, visitors which included U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, State Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, President of Sealaska Heritage Institute Rosita Worl, Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Navy Karnig H. Ohannessian and Navy Region Northwest Commander Rear Admiral Mark Sucato.
The response from the Navy was swift.
“They loaded guns and ammo, ……. They immediately left Sitka and made their way to Angoon,” George said.
When they arrived, Commander Merriman and his men took nine prisoners from Angoon and took control of canoes. He gave them one day to come up with 400 blankets. “Or he would shell our summer village and Angoon,” George said.
USS Corwin Ship’s Log.
Then, she started to read from the USS Corwin’s ship’s log – on the day of the bombardment.
- Calm until 4 a.m. – gentle breeze from northeast with heavy rain squalls.
- 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. – gentle northeast to north-northeast breeze with heavy squalls of wind and rain.
- 8 a.m. to meridian – gentle to light breeze from north-northeast, overcast and raining. Made preparations for shelling of Indian Village.
- Meridian to 4 p.m. – light breeze to light airs from northeast and cloudy. Indians bringing but 81 blankets. Burned their summer houses and destroyed 40 canoes. At 1:15 p.m. got underway and stood out of lagoon followed by other vessels. At 2 p.m. off to Kootznahoo village and shelled it. Landed Marines and sailors from Corwin and Favorite under cover of guns and fired the village.
George wept, but continued to read.
- No resistance from the Indians. Expended one ax, lost overboard. Expended 15 cartridges and 15 loaded shells.
- 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. – light airs from Northeast and cloudy. At 4:18 p.m., boats return. Returned to vessel. Steamed down to Kootznahoo Harbor and anchored at 4:45 p.m. in 11 fathoms of water, 13 fathoms of chain on the starboard anchor and banked fires.
- 8 p.m. to midnight – calm and partly clear.
“Signed W. Reynolds, Third Lieutenant Navigator,” George finished.
The Navy Apologizes.
Those stories stood at odds with each other for more than 140 years. But then the Navy decided to apologize.
“Early on, the Navy decided that when we want to apologize, we want to do it in a culturally appropriate framework to those being apologized to,” said Rear Admiral Sucato.
Angoon wanted the apology to be traditional, according to Sucato. “We feel that’s important, because in order for an apology to be heartfelt and accepted it really needs to be framed within the recipient’s framework.”
Sucato said the ku.éex’ was powerful. “Preparing for [the ceremony] didn’t really convey the emotion… [the apology is important] for the intergenerational healing and [it’s important to admit] wrongful military use.”
Part of that ceremony included bringing community, state and federal leaders to mark the occasion.
Distinguished guests sat at a head table, their names carved into wooden placards.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy had a reserved seat but was not at the ceremony. According to a spokesperson, he did not receive an invitation. U.S. Representative Mary Peltola also had a reserved seat, but her spokesperson said she was scheduled to be elsewhere.
But for those who did attend, like Sullivan and Murkowski who wore regalia and gave speeches – the experience was powerful.
“I think for so many it’s been emotional. And I have described some of my own emotions, which feel like it’s just kind of a weight that is left off my shoulders and so I stopped to think about that,” Murkowski said.
Murkowski is adopted into the Deisheetaan clan. “I’m still an outsider, and I haven’t lived with generational trauma, these stories that have been shared over the generations of this travesty of justice that has not been addressed. And so if I’m feeling this emotion, I just can barely imagine what most people here in this gymnasium are feeling today, an extraordinary weight off their [shoulders], that perhaps now they can move forward. That the healing can begin and they can move forward,” she said.
Daniel Johnson Jr. is a Deisheetan House Master and from the Basket Bay House in Angoon. He helped organize the event. The ku.éex’ is normally between 30 and 40 hours, said Johnson. “We thought we had it down to seven hours. It was actually sixteen-and-a-half hours.”
Johnson said it turned out far better than he thought. “Even if it was shortened, we touched all the points that we wanted to.”
Johnson was pleased with the apology. “We didn’t do anything to provoke it, therefore, we did not deserve the shelling. And that’s right in the apology itself now,” he said.
It’s important, Johnson said, not only for him and his ancestors, but for future descendents in Angoon.
“Whatever we were going to do would be something that the children were going to be proud of when they grow up, and that they will be able to teach their children and their children’s children, because that’s an important part. The intergenerational trauma that day is something that our people have to deal with.”
He said now people can begin to heal.
When Sacuto finally took to the podium he said, “(The Navy) acknowledges that the Tlingit people of Angoon did not deserve nor provoke the bombardment and subsequent destruction of their village by the U.S. Naval forces.”
Angoon waited a long time for that apology, but Sucato said “it’s never too late to do the right thing.”
And after he spoke the words, the gym reverberated with the sound of hundreds of feet stomping on the bleachers and court floors. People shouted Gunalchéesh – the Tlingít word for ‘thank you’ – and cheered from the crowd.
Then the room fell quiet except for a whimper that could not be contained anymore.
The sole voice crescendoing into a roar. No one moved. No other sound was heard.
Hasselquist is Deisheetan from the Yéil S’aagi Hít (Raven’s Bones House) in Aangóon. She said she tries to be strong, but after the apology, she erupted. “They weren’t my cries. Those were the different cries of the generations and of my grandfather, of Billy Jones, of our people. It wasn’t just me. It felt really old. It felt like my ancestors’ pains that were being heard and released from my body. ”
Billy Jones was 13 when Angoon was attacked. He was T’iex Klein’s nephew and his recollection of that day, as a boy standing on the beach, helped to keep the story alive.
“I have direct lineage to (Tith Klane and Billy Jones),” Hasselquist said. There hasn’t been a moment when she hasn’t thought about the shelling. “I can’t remember a time where it wasn’t a part of the conversation in my house about what those people did to us, the way that it came across is what those people did to us, what happened to our village, and that we’ve never been apologized to.”
But after the apology and ku.éex’ Hasselquist left Angoon lighter and different and looking to the future.
“I also am not done holding on to a piece of that heaviness. Because I want to know what’s next. What are the reparations, what’s going to happen next? Are they just words? Because if they’re just words, then I think that there’s going to be more feelings that rise to the surface that are going to be unpleasant. And we heard that they talked about 40 canoes and seven lives. So how much are seven lives worth?”