The Sheldon Jackson Museum of Sitka Alaska has recently returned a Raven helmet – a sacred piece of cultural patrimony, called at.oow, a living object – to the Kiks.ádi clan of Lingit people. Its transit into and back out of the collection of that Presbyterian institution, named after the missionary tasked with “winning the West for Christ”, is partly documented in the PC(USA)'s national archives.
Both the Sheldon Jackson Papers – digitized completely and available in Pearl – and the records of the UPCUSA Department of Health, Education and Welfare help tell the story of a long-running, Presbyterian-supported traffic in looted cultural artifacts. In this case, the records were put to good purpose: resetting the living artifact among its people, for continued use.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum organized itself in 1887 with the aim “to collect and preserve information in regards to the arts, history, language, religion, and folk-lore of the native population of Alaska,” with a board of directors drawn from Sitka residents and “officers of the military naval and civil services of the United States.” (The latter were corresponding members, and were to pay $5.00 annually for the privilege.) From inception, the Museum united military and white civilian authority, and Jackson himself was routinely in conversation with US government authorities, particularly regarding traffic in Alaskan objects.
Records of Jackson serving as a procurer for individual clients are available. This 1875-1878 notebook of Jackson’s has a section titled “curios ordered” – including four white fox skins for William Hamilton, a white bear skin for W. C. Gray, and an “Eagle Skin Robe” for G. L. Spinning.
Many East Coast anthropological and ethnographic collections were peopled with Sheldon Jackson’s Alaskan artifacts. Hundreds of objects were sent to the Smithsonian Institution, including these Inupiaq snow goggles. Many objects were sent to Princeton Theological Seminary, initially for the purpose of building a “missionary cabinet” on “the needs of Pagan lands.” The Seminary quickly ran out of space and delivered most of its objects to Princeton University. The majority of what Jackson gathered, however, remained in Sitka.
A 1910 issue of the newspaper The Thlinget describes the Sheldon Jackson Museum’s early collecting practice: “Dr. Jackson during his long tours to the Arctic in establishing government schools and in introducing the reindeer made very extensive collections that came into the Museum, which in a short time could no longer accommodate the growing collection and in 1895 Dr. Jackson caused to be erected the large concrete building known as the Sheldon Jackson Museum in which the whole collection was placed.”
Description of the collection only began in October 1910. Board of National Missions correspondence shows that inventorying was still ongoing in 1932. What looks like the first complete inventory is produced in 1942. The building was rebuilt in the late 1920s owing to collapse of the concrete floor. The images in the 1910 issue of The Thlinget give some sense of the Museum's scattershot approach to exhibiting and collecting.
Above an image of a museum display marked “Anchor, sleds, totems, etc.,” The Thlinget remarks on its recent acquisitions, including “relics of early Russian days. Another, the minerals of the Sitkan region, a third, a collection of Alaskan shells. The last is the most interesting as it will contain not only a large number of baskets but also basket material in the rough, dye, the plants from which these are made and many other articles relating to basketry.”
Combining recent history, anthropology, and natural sciences in the acquisitions process instrumentalized the museum to situate non-Anglo people in a distant past, and to foreclose on their communion with their own artifacts, legitimizing plunder. Even so-called “relics of ancient Russian days,” contemporaneous objects – Russian colonization of Alaska only formally ended 20 years before the museum’s establishment – are reconstructed as artifacts when they end up in the museum.
The habits of extraction and traffic of artifacts eastward were evidently inculcated in the students of Sheldon Jackson School. In the summer of 1931, six schoolboys camping on Kruzof Island were “sent on a treasure hunt” by their adult chaperones. While exploring a cave, one of them, Frederick Swanson, found a small hole and started digging. He and his cohorts unearthed a carved wooden box, containing human bones, and a human head, wrapped in a blanket. Returning home with it, their chaperones gave each of them a dollar for retrieving the item. Staff of the school shipped the box and its contents to the Department of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History in New York; AMNH later paid the School $125 for the find, which was shared among the boys, who were “quite happy.”
Writing a thank-you letter to Dr. Clark Wissler of AMNH, Swanson said “It was a hideous sight and I shall never forget it. Our matron put the things back in the box and we washed our hands in disinfectant. That night I couldn’t sleep and I was pretty scared.” His mate Wesley Jones wrote, “When we found the treasure I could not sleep that night. I was very hot every time I would think of that man’s head. I would get scared.”
AMNH holds a blanket, identified as “Tlingit, Kruzof Island, Alaska,” with a 1932 catalog number. The bones and human head are not visible in the AMNH online collections.
Traces of the Raven helmet itself are spread out. Wikimedia shows a University of Washington photograph of the helmet in the Sheldon Jackson Museum collection: Raven helmet of K'alyaan in the Sheldon Jackson Museum, Sitka, circa 1906. Transfer documentation is not published, but the photograph’s description reads: “The helmet was brought to the Sheldon Jackson Museum in 1905 following the last Potlatch of 1904, by the man who also has the name K'alyaan and several other clan men. He handed the helmet to Gov. John G. Brady saying this was a symbol of ‘giving up the ol time.’”
Contemporary Lingit sources agree that Governor Brady gave the helmet to the Sheldon Jackson Museum, but dispute that the men who gave it to Brady had any right to do so. They also do not affirm that its handover was to commemorate “giving up the ol’ time.”
The Raven helmet is pictured in a 1933 guidebook to the Museum, and its significance to the Battle of Sitka was known. The Museum’s description reads: “An interesting relic is the war helmet of Katlean worn by the chief of the Sitka people in the battle of 1804 when Baranoff and his Aleuts drove the Thlingets from their stronghold and established the head quarters of the Russian American Co. on the site of their village. The natives retreated in the night, making their way over the mountain to their canoes and embarking for a new settlement. All impedimenta was dispensed with, but the old helmet was preserved at all hazards and remains in the museum by the will of the last of the Katleans who decreed that such should be its final resting place.”
In 2024, clan member Lduteen Jerrick Hope-Lang contacted the PC(USA) Center for the Repair of Historic Harms for support in the Kiks.ádi’s appeal to the State of Alaska. And the Center came to its archives for context.
The story of the Battle of Sitka and the Kiks.ádi Survival March has been told with different slants by different Lingit people over time. At a 1987 Alaska Native Brotherhood / Alaska Native Sisterhood gathering, a small group of Lingit women rose to publicly apologize for the alleged killings of Russian infants during the 1804 battle.
The Kiks.ádi Herb Hope responded to their attempt at repairing relations: “When we speak of our history we must speak with pride, for only we know the true story of our participation in the War of 1804. We do not need to quote anything the Russians had to say about the battle.
“The story you have just told sounds like the story only a very disapproving Presbyterian Minister would tell.”
Learn more
Remembering Kiks.ádi Warriors, KCAW (2018)
RG 301.8, box 18, folder 22. Sheldon Jackson Museum, 1895-1932.
RG 239. Sheldon Jackson Papers, 1855-1909.
Constitution of the Sheldon Jackson Museum, via Princeton Theological Seminary https://archive.org/details/sheldonjacksonpa00unse/mode/2up
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