In his blog and quoted in the Nov. 11 issue of Chilkat Valley News , Tom Morphet states: “In the early 1900s, Natives approved transfer of land at the site [currently Tlingit Park] to the Presbyterian Church so the church could educate Native children at the Haines Mission.”
To think that Tlingit people living on this land approved transfer of land, or that they were even asked for the opportunity to take possession of land for any purpose, is fantastic. We are addressing the collision of two disparate world views.
To avoid revisionist history, we must sweep away the mythology that the rooted Tlingit and the advancing miners, preachers, military personnel or fishery tycoons had reasonable exchanges about land ownership.
Sheldon Jackson, an ambitious missionary responsible for the settlement of Presbyterian missions throughout Southeast Alaska, turned lobbyist in the late 1880s. He successfully lobbied Congress to adopt the Organic Act of 1884, which entitled Christian missions operating in Alaska to 640 acres of land each.
Part of the acreage granted to the Presbyterian Church by the federal government (which “owned” the land because it bought it from Russia in 1867) for the purpose of promoting Christianity and exerting control over Native people locally encompassed most of the southern shoreline of Portage Cove and extended west along what is now Main Street and a parallel boundary aligning close to Cemetery Hill, ending approximately where the State DOT station is now.
The mission was established in 1887 whether the Tlingit people wanted it or not.
Debra Schnabel