Fur Trade
Further information: Battle of SitkaIn 1852 Chilkat Tlingit warriors attacked and burned Fort Selkirk, Yukon, the Hudson's Bay Company post at the juncture of the Yukon and Pelly Rivers.
In 1855 an alliance of Tongass Tlingit (Stikines) and Haida raided Puget Sound on a slaving expedition. They were confronted at Port Gamble, Washington Territory by the USS Massachusetts and other naval vessels and suffered casualties, including a prominent Haida chief. A return expedition by the alliance the following year was punitive in character, with Isaac N. Ebey chosen at random as a high-ranking white man whose death would avenge the death of one of the raiding chiefs the year before. The territorial government pressed the colonial government of Vancouver Island to apprehend the killer, but the British had insufficient military capacity to take on the allied Haida and Tlingit and the killer was never identified or caught.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Tlingit
Famous quotes containing the words fur and/or trade:
“I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the “hot bread and sweet cakes;” and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)