It was 1869 and smoke filled the winter air. Cannon balls ripped through Tlingit homes while U.S. Army shells shrieked across the sky. The same type of artillery used against the Confederates just four years prior was now turned on the Tlingit people of Wrangell, in their homeland which they called Ḵaachx̱aana.áakʼw.
One hundred and fifty-five years later, the U.S. Army is apologizing. The apology is scheduled to take place in Wrangell on Jan. 11, 2025. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Army representatives will be in town to participate in the ceremony.
This is the third apology the U.S. military has issued to Southeast Alaska communities in recent months. In September, Navy officers apologized to the Kake community for the 1869 bombardment of its Indigenous village. In October, the Navy again apologized, this time to the residents of Angoon for an 1882 bombardment that killed six children.
See also:
• A long time coming: U.S. Navy apologizes for destroying Alaska Native village of Kake in 1869
• Angoon accepts U.S. Navy apology for bombardment that destroyed village 142 years ago
The upcoming apology to Wrangell serves as a rare admission of guilt from the Army, something Wrangell Cooperative Association Tribal Administrator Esther Aaltséen Reese calls “the first step in being able to provide closure and healing.”
Though long overdue, organizing the actual apology has been a five-year process, one that involved three branches of the military, hours and hours of grassroots organizing, and support from Alaska’s congressional delegation.
In early 2020, representatives from Angoon, Wrangell’s WCA and the Organized Village of Kake traveled to Juneau to meet with Gen. Thomas Bussiere of the U.S. Air Force to discuss formal apologies for all three communities. But the COVID-19 pandemic brought any progress to a halt. Reese said talks did not resume between the three communities and the military until the past 12 months.
The U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners in 1870 prepared a report for the president on the U.S. Army bombardment of Wrangell in 1869. The report included sections submitted by the Secretary of War and Secretary of the Interior, giving their versions of the attack and the village.
For Kake and Angoon — which were dealing with the Navy — their apology requests were quickly approved, and tentative dates were set. For Wrangell, however — which was dealing with the Army — the formal process was more drawn out. Reese said the Army initially informed her that it lacked the funding for the apology process in its $165.6 billion budget.
“The Army was slower to react than the Navy was,” she said.
Murkowski corroborated Reese’s experience.
“The Army was just harder to make some headway with,” the senator said Monday. “It was frustrating. We didn’t have the same level of engagement at higher levels.”
In October, Reese met with Murkowski in Anchorage at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference. She expressed her concern to the senator that Wrangell might be left out of the bombardment apologies.
Two days later, the Army informed WCA that it had approved the apology to Wrangell.
Murkowski referred to the process as “a matter of political persuasion.”
“It was a combined effort to just keep pressure on,” she said. “There was a great injustice visited upon these people 150 years ago, and it needs to be acknowledged.”
In its formal requests to the Army, WCA asked for four things: a ceremonial meal; reimbursement for the carving of a replica totem pole; a grave marker for Shx’atoo, a Tlingit man the Army killed; and the funds to construct a bombardment museum that would resemble a traditional Tlingit clan house. In the end, the Army agreed to the first three requests.
The pole that the Army agreed to replicate is adorned with the carving of Gunakadeit, a sea monster whose sighting is said to spur good fortune, according to Tlingit tradition.
The original pole, which WCA was already working to replicate, once stood in front of Chief Shakes House beside the Bear of the Mountain totem. In photographs of Shakes Island before 1869, both poles stood side by side. In photos taken after the bombardment, the Gunakadeit pole was gone. Historians surmise it was a casualty of the canon fire.
Now 155 years later, the Army will pay WCA for the replication of the pole.
“It will be appropriate to bring back some balance,” Reese said. “It will be a full circle kind of thing.”
The completed totem pole will be on display at the Nolan Center during the Jan. 11 ceremony.
As for the structure of the event, U.S. Army spokesman Matt Ahearn said the Army wants it to be a collaborative process.
“U.S. Army Pacific Command and U.S. Army Alaska are actively working with Wrangell Cooperative Association leaders to finalize the details of the event, including attendees,” he said.
On the tribal council’s side of things, Reese said much of the event’s organization is up to the clan mothers, who in the Tlingit matriarchal society often determine the appropriate structure for such ceremonial matters. However, she did confirm that a celebration of Wrangell’s veteran population will be included in the programming.
One idea is to structure the apology like a ku.éex’ — the celebration that takes place a year after the death of a clan member. A ku.éex’ is usually a multi-day event, beginning with a period of mourning and ending with a period of celebration.
Angoon’s October apology was organized in a similar fashion. The ceremony began as an opportunity for communal mourning, but once the Navy issued the apology (and clan members accepted it), the event turned festive.
Though the three separate bombardments of Southeast villages were not a coordinated effort by the Army and Navy, Reese said the military’s inability to comprehend Tlingit law led to all three attacks.
In Wrangell, the Dec. 26, 1869, bombardment was preceded by an Army Christmas party inside Fort Wrangel (the town was spelled with one “l” until 1902). Alcohol (illegally) flowed, and the Tlingit population was invited to attend.
The evening erupted in violence when a Tlingit man named Shawaan bit off the finger of an officer’s wife. While there are conflicting reports about what happened next, the most likely telling of the story is that soldiers immediately opened fire on Shaawan, killing him and mortally wounding his brother.
The story was pieced together from eyewitness accounts reported over the years and confirmed by a 2015 federal report on the incident.
Upon hearing the news, their father, Shx’atoo (Scutdoo), decided to seek justice. However, the Tlingit idea of justice differs from the soldiers’ understanding of the concept. According to Reese, Tlingit law revolves around balance. To restore this balance, Shx’atoo sought the life of a white man.
When he discovered Leon Smith, a white, ex-Confederate naval commander outside a storefront, Shx’atoo shot and killed the man.
From there, Shx’atoo went on the lam. The Army demanded of the Tlingit tribes that they hand him over by noon. If not, the military threatened to fire on the village of 500 people.
“I told them their village would be destroyed like the Kake village last winter,” Lt. Melville Loucks wrote in his official report.
As Reese pointed out, handing over the fugitive was an impossible ask. Not only were Shx’atoo’s whereabouts unknown to the Tlingit, but only Shx’atoo’s clan would be permitted give him up, not necessarily the tribal leaders to whom the Army made its demands.
“Each clan was its own separate entity,” she said. “One clan could not hand someone over from another clan.”
When Shx’atoo was not presented to the soldiers by noon, Lt. William Barrowe gave the orders to open fire on the village. According to Zachary Jones, an ethnohistorian at University of Alaska Fairbanks, the soldiers fired artillery rounds once every 10 minutes from 2 p.m. to when the sun set roughly an hour later.
The next morning, the soldiers attacked the village with shelling in place of the previous day’s cannon fire. The shelling, which Wrangell historian Ronan Rooney described as “basically flying bombs,” appeared to be the deciding factor for Shx’atoo. While casualties of the bombardment are unreported, the shelling caused significant damage to clan houses and other structures located within the village.
After nightfall on Dec. 27, 1869, Shx’atoo turned himself in. He was found guilty of Smith’s murder and was hanged two days later. According to Rooney, the hanging was the first U.S.-sanctioned execution in Alaska.
Before turning himself in, Shx’atoo emerged from the woods, entered the Tlingit village of Ḵaachx̱aana.áakʼw and said his goodbyes. Reports also indicate he sang a song in the minutes leading up to his death.
Reese said clan leaders are considering incorporating Shx’atoo’s final moments into the apology ceremony. The clans possess a recording of the same song he sang, though they are unsure whether it will be included in the Jan. 11 event. She also added that part of the ceremony may involve walking in Shx’atoo’s footsteps, though nothing has been decided.
Fort Wrangel — from where the shells and canons were fired — was located where the post office is today. The Tlingit village was on and around Shakes Island.
“This occurred where we walk every single day,” Reese said. “Trauma is passed down through generations and this wasn’t that long ago. As far as history goes, it’s actually quite recent.”
• This article was orginally published by the Wrangell Sentinel.
