ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Shells fell on the Alaska Native village as winter approached, and then the sailors landed and burned what was left of the houses, food stores, and canoes. Conditions grew so dire in the following months that elders sacrificed their own lives to save food for the surviving children.

It was October 26, 1882, in Angoon, a Tlingit village of about 420 people in southeast Alaska. Now, 142 years later, the perpetrator of the bombing – the US Navy – will say it is sorry.

Rear Admiral Mark Sucato, commander of the Navy’s Northwest Region, will issue the apology in a ceremony on Saturday, the anniversary of the atrocity. While the rebuilt Angoon received $90,000 in a settlement with the Department of the Interior in 1973, village leaders have also sought apologies for decades, beginning each annual commemoration by asking three times, “Is there anyone here from the Navy to apologize?”

“You can imagine the generations of people who have died since 1882, wondering what happened, why it happened, and wanting an apology, because in our minds, we did nothing wrong,” Daniel Johnson Jr. said. ., a tribal chief in Angoon.

The attack was one of a series of conflicts between the U.S. military and Alaska Natives in the years after the U.S. bought the territory from Russia in 1867. The U.S. Navy apologized last month for destroying the nearby village of Kake in 1869, and the Army indicated that he intended to apologize for the bombing of Wrangell, also in southeast Alaska, that year, although no date was set.

The Navy acknowledges that the actions it took or ordered in Angoon and Kake caused deaths, a loss of resources and multigenerational trauma, Navy civilian spokeswoman Julianne Leinenveber said in an email.

“An apology is not only warranted, but long overdue,” she said.

Today, Angoon remains a quaint village of about 420 people, with colorful old houses and totem poles clustered on the west side of Admiralty Island, accessible by ferry or seaplane, in the country’s largest Tongass National Forest. The residents are greatly outnumbered by the brown bears, and the village has struggled in recent years to promote its ecotourism industry. Bald eagles and humpback whales abound, and salmon and halibut fishing is excellent.

Accounts vary as to what caused its destruction, but 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 that the tribesmen forced the ship ashore, possibly took hostages and, in accordance with their custom, demanded 200 blankets as compensation.

The company refused to provide the blankets and ordered the Tlingits back to work. Instead, grieving, they painted their faces with coal tar and tallow—something company employees saw as a precursor to an insurrection. The company superintendent then requested help 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 claims that the boat’s crew, which included Tlingit members, probably stayed with 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 a 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 were only 81 years old, Merriman attacked, destroying 12 clan houses, smaller houses, canoes and the village’s grocery stores.

Six children died in the attack, and “there are untold numbers of old people and infants who died that winter of such cold, exposure and hunger,” Johnson said.

Billy Jones, grandson of Tith Klane, was 13 years old when Angoon was destroyed. Around 1950, he recorded two interviews, and his account was later included in a booklet prepared for 100 years the 1982 bombing.

“They left us homeless on the beach,” Jones said.

Rosita Worl, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, described how some old men that winter “went into the woods,” meaning they died, sacrificing themselves so the young would have more food.

Even though the Navy’s written history conflicts with Tlingit oral tradition, the Navy approaches the tribe’s account “out of respect for the long-lasting impact these tragic incidents have had on the affected clans,” said Leinenveber, the spokesman for Navy.

Tlingit leaders were so stunned when Navy officials told them during a Zoom call in May that the apology would finally come 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 entire community heal. She awaits his presence at the ceremony.

“Not only will his spirit be there, but so will the spirits of many of our ancestors, because we’ve lost so many,” she said.