Totem poles are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually made from large trees, mostly western red cedar, by First Nations and Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia.
Ketchikan is a city in and the borough seat of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough of Alaska. It is the state's southeasternmost major settlement. Downtown Ketchikan is a National Historic District.
Klawock is a city in Prince of Wales–Hyder Census Area, in the U.S. state of Alaska, on the west coast of Prince of Wales Island, on Klawock Inlet, across from Klawock Island. The population was 755 at the 2010 census, down from 854 in 2000. It is located 90 kilometres (56 mi) from Ketchikan, 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) from Craig, and 39 kilometres (24 mi) from Hollis.
The City and Borough of Wrangell is a borough in Alaska, United States. As of the 2020 census the population was 2,127, down from 2,369 in 2010.
The Stikine River is a major river in northern British Columbia (BC), Canada and southeastern Alaska in the United States. It drains a large, remote upland area known as the Stikine Country east of the Coast Mountains. Flowing west and south for 610 kilometres (379 mi), it empties into various straits of the Inside Passage near Wrangell, Alaska. About 90 percent of the river's length and 95 percent of its drainage basin are in Canada. Considered one of the last truly wild large rivers in BC, the Stikine flows through a variety of landscapes including boreal forest, steep canyons and wide glacial valleys.
Sitka National Historical Park is a national historical park in Sitka in the U.S. state of Alaska. It was redesignated as a national historical park from its previous status as national monument on October 18, 1972. The park in its various forms has sought to commemorate the Tlingit and Russian experiences in Alaska.
William Lewis Paul was an American attorney, legislator, and political activist from the Tlingit Nation in Southeast Alaska. He was known as a leader in the Alaska Native Brotherhood, and became the first Native attorney and first Native legislator in Alaskan history.
George Hunt (Tlingit) was a Canadian and a consultant to the American anthropologist Franz Boas; through his contributions, he is considered a linguist and ethnologist in his own right. He was Tlingit-English by birth and learned both those languages. Growing up with his parents at Fort Rupert, British Columbia in Kwakwaka'wakw territory, he learned their language and culture as well. Through marriage and adoption he became an expert on the traditions of the Kwakwaka'wakw of coastal British Columbia.
The history of the Tlingit includes pre- and post-contact events and stories. Tradition-based history involved creation stories, the Raven Cycle and other tangentially-related events during the mythic age when spirits transformed back and forth from animal to human and back, the migration story of arrival at Tlingit lands, and individual clan histories. More recent tales describe events near the time of the first contact with Europeans. European and American historical records come into play at that point; although modern Tlingit have access to those historical records, however, they maintain their own record of ancestors and events important to them against the background of a changing world.
Fort Durham, also known as Fort Taku, Taku, Taco, and Tacouw, is an archaeological site near Taku Harbor, Alaska, within the limits of Juneau City and Borough and Tongass National Forest. It was one of three Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) posts set up in Russian America. The Fort Durham Site was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1978.
Cape Fox Village is a locality in Southeast Alaska near present-day Ketchikan. It is the site of a former village called Gaash of the Cape Fox people of the Tlingit. The location of the village is on the east side of Revillagigedo Channel, four miles south of Boca de Quadra. The name was recorded in 1880 by Ivan Petroff during the 10th Census, who reported 100 Tlingit still living there. During the Harriman Expedition of Alaska that took place in 1899 several native artifacts that were important to the neighboring populations of Cape Fox were removed and relocated to several academic institutions across the United States, including the Field Museum in Chicago, and Cornell University. The expedition saw the artifacts as inanimate objects from a deserted village. To the Tlingit living nearby, the artifacts were a sacred part of their identity. This event is referred as the "Looting of Cape Fox." Since the looting, several artifacts have been returned to Tlingit communities near Cape Fox in an effort to return stolen artifacts to the ancestors of who created them.
Tongass Island, historically also spelled Tongas Island, is an island in the southern Alaska Panhandle, near the marine boundary with Canada at 54–40 N. It was the site of Fort Tongass, which was established shortly after the Alaska Purchase as a customs port for travelers bound from British Columbian waters to the Stikine River, which was one of the main routes of access to the Cassiar Gold Rush of the 1870s. It lies west of Port Tongass in Nakat Bay, adjacent to the Dixon Entrance and is 0.8 miles in length. Its Native Alaskan name "Kut-tuk-wah" was published in 1869 by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey; its current name was first published in 1891.
Tongass Passage is a strait on the Canada–United States border between Alaska and British Columbia, located on the southwest side of Wales Island. Wales Island, and Pearse Island, to its northeast, were claimed by the United States prior to the settlement of the Alaska boundary dispute in 1903. Prior to that time, numerous American-owned canneries lined its shores. Canadian claims to the islands were affirmed in the Alaska Boundary Settlement of 1903, in which Tongass Passage, Pearse Canal and the Portland Canal were defined as comprising "Portland Channel", a term first used in the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825 as part of the marine boundary between Russian America and British claims in the region, but which remained undefined until the boundary settlement.
Fort Stikine was a fur trade post and fortification in what is now the Alaska Panhandle, at the site of the present-day of Wrangell, Alaska. Originally built as the Redoubt San Dionisio or Redoubt Saint Dionysius in 1834, the site was transferred to the British-owned Hudson's Bay Company as part of a lease signed in the region in 1838, and renamed Fort Stikine when turned into a Hudson's Bay Company post in 1839. The post was closed and decommissioned by 1843 but the name remained for the large village of the Stikine people which had grown around it, becoming known as Shakesville in reference to its ruling Chief Shakes by the 1860s. With the Alaska Purchase of 1867, the fortification became occupied by the US Army and was renamed Fort Wrangel, a reference to Baron von Wrangel, who had been Governor of Russian America when the fort was founded. The site today is now part of the city of Wrangell.
Stikine, meaning "great river" in the Tlingit language, may refer to:
The Totem Heritage Center is a historical and cultural museum founded in 1976 and located in Ketchikan, Alaska. The center is operated by the city of Ketchikan.
Saxman Totem Park is a public park in the city of Saxman, Alaska, just south of Ketchikan in southeastern Alaska. The park is home to a collection of totem poles, some of which are old poles relocated to this place from unoccupied Tlingit villages in the region, or were reconstructed by skilled Tlingit carvers under the auspices of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The poles originated in the communities of Old Tongass, Cat Island, Village Island, Pennock Island, and Fox Village. One of the carved items recovered from unoccupied villages is a marble statue of a grizzly bear. The park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The Wrangell Bombardment was the bombardment of the Stikine village of Old Wrangell by the United States Army in 1869. The army issued an ultimatum to the villagers, demanding they deliver a Stikine named Scutd-doo to justice following the retribution murder of Leon Smith by Scutd-doo. Scutd-doo's son, Lowan, had earlier been killed by soldiers following an altercation in which he bit off a finger of the wife of the quartermaster of Fort Wrangell.
The Angoon Bombardment was the destruction of the Tlingit village of Angoon, Alaska, by US Naval forces under Commander Edgar C. Merriman and Michael A. Healy in October 1882.
The Pioneer Square totem pole, also referred to as the Seattle totem pole and historically as the Chief-of-All-Women pole, is a Tlingit totem pole located in Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, Washington.
