Shells fell on the Alaska Native village as winter approached, then sailors came ashore and burned what remained of the homes, food caches and canoes. Conditions became so dire over the next few months that elders sacrificed their lives to give food to the surviving children.
It was October 26, 1882, in Angoon, a Tlingit village of about 420 people located in the panhandle of southeast Alaska. Now, 142 years later, the perpetrator of the bombing – the US Navy – has apologized.
Rear Adm. Mark Sucato, commander of the Navy’s Northwest Region, apologized in a sometimes emotional ceremony Saturday, the anniversary of the atrocity.
“The Navy recognizes the pain and suffering inflicted on the Tlingit people, and we recognize that these unjust actions have resulted in loss of life, loss of resources, loss of culture and have created and inflicted intergenerational trauma on these clans” , he declared. during the ceremony, broadcast live from Angoon. “The Navy takes the significance of this action very, very seriously and knows that an apology is long overdue.”
While the rebuilt Angoon received $90,000 as part of a deal with the Interior Ministry in 1973, village leaders have also sought an apology for decades, beginning each annual commemoration by asking three times: ” Is there anyone from the Navy here to apologize?
“You can imagine the generations of people who have died since 1882 who have wondered what happened, why it happened, and who wanted an apology, because in our minds we did nothing wrong,” said Daniel Johnson Jr., tribal leader in Angoon.
The attack was part of a series of conflicts between the U.S. military and Alaska Natives in the years after the United States purchased the territory from Russia in 1867. The U.S. Navy presented its apology last month for the destruction of the nearby village of Kake in 1869, and the Army indicated it plans to apologize for the bombardment of Wrangell, also in southeast Alaska, this year there, although no date has been set.
SPC Mass Communications Chief. Gretchen Albrecht/US Navy via AP
The Navy recognizes that the actions it took or ordered at Angoon and Kake caused deaths, loss of resources and multigenerational trauma, Navy civilian spokesperson Julianne Leinenveber said in an email before the event.
“An apology is not only warranted, but long overdue,” she said.
Today, Angoon remains a quaint village of about 420 residents, with colorful old houses and totem poles clustered on the west side of Admiralty Island, accessible by ferry or seaplane, in the Tongass National Forest, the largest in the country. The residents are vastly outnumbered by brown bears, and the village has worked in recent years to promote its ecotourism industry. Bald eagles and humpback whales abound, and fishing for salmon and halibut is excellent.
Accounts vary as to what prompted its destruction, but they generally begin with the accidental death of a Tlingit shaman, Tith Klane. Klane was killed when a harpoon gun exploded on a whaling ship owned by his employer, the North West Trading Co.
The Navy’s version says the tribesmen forced the ship to dock, possibly took hostages and, in keeping with their customs, demanded 200 blankets as compensation.
The company refused to provide the blankets and ordered the Tlingits to return to work. Instead, as a sign of sadness, they painted their faces with coal tar and tallow – which company employees took as a harbinger of insurrection. The company superintendent then requested assistance from Naval Cmdr. EC Merriman, the top U.S. official in Alaska, said a Tlingit uprising threatened the lives and property of white residents.
The Tlingit version states that the boat’s crew, which included Tlingit members, likely remained on board the ship out of respect, planning to attend the funeral, and that no hostages were taken. Johnson said the tribe would never have sought compensation so soon after the death.
Merriman arrived on October 25 and insisted that the tribe provide 400 blankets by noon the next day as punishment for disobedience. When the Tlingits surrendered only 81, Merriman attacked, destroying 12 clan houses, smaller houses, canoes, and the village’s food stores.
Six children died in the attack, and “countless numbers of elderly people and infants died that winter from cold, cold and hunger,” Johnson said.
Billy Jones, Tith Klane’s nephew, was 13 when Angoon was destroyed. Around 1950 he recorded two interviews and his account was later included in a booklet prepared for the 100th anniversary of the bombing in 1982.
“They left us homeless on the beach,” Jones said.
Rosita Worl, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, described how some elders “went into the forest” that winter, meaning they died, sacrificing themselves so the younger ones would have more food.
Even though the Navy’s written history conflicts with Tlingit oral tradition, the Navy defers to the tribe’s narrative “out of respect for the long-term impacts these tragic incidents have had on the clans involved.” , said Leinenveber, spokesperson for the Navy.
Tlingit leaders were so stunned when Navy officials told them during a Zoom call in May that the apology would finally be delivered that no one spoke for five minutes, Johnson said.
Eunice James of Juneau, a descendant of Tith Klane, said she hopes the apology will help her family and the broader community heal. She awaits his presence at the ceremony.
“Not only will his spirit be there, but so will many of our ancestors, because we lost a lot of them,” she said.
