The Author’s Grandmother’s Gravestone on Peratrovich Island, Alaska
Pandemics haunted the writing of this novel. My grandmother Teew was born and raised in Heenya Kwáan (Klawock, Alaska), but her origins come from the Kóon Hít (Flicker House) of the Naasteidi Kooyu Kwáan on the eagle/wolf side of the Tlingit Nation—the Alaskan Native tribe knowledgeable readers will recognize as the basis for the Aaní in The Door on the Sea. Teew is the daughter of Kwaatk’wa (Josephine Peratrovich Smith), who’s the daughter of Mary Skan, who’s the daughter of Kaat’eich (Catherine “Kitty” Snook Skan Collins). As a young woman, Kaat’eich survived the scourge of smallpox that nearly destroyed Lingít Aaní, or southeast Alaska, in the 1860s.
Kaat’eich’s entire village, Kooyu Kwáan, on what is now Tebenkof Bay on Kuiu Island, all perished except for 14 or 15 people, mostly children. The longhouses of Kooyu Kwáan, including the Flicker House, were torched in a futile attempt to prevent the spread of the disease. As her family and relatives lay dying, Kaat’eich escaped in a canoe with her brother and a handful of other survivors. It’s difficult for me to imagine looking at your home for the last time, but Kaat’eich must have watched Kooyu Kwáan and its smoldering longhouses disappear as she paddled away.
The survivors canoed long miles to the village of Klawock on present day Prince of Wales Island, but the Klawock Tlingits refused them entry—they wanted no smallpox refugees sickening their village. So, Kaat’eich and her young crew paddled to a river not far from Klawock where they camped for weeks. I don’t know how they survived.
Eventually, the Klawock Tlingits took them in. Kaat’eich lived the rest of her life in Klawock, a very long life indeed: she walked into the forest, as Tlingits say, in 1941 near the age of 105. She never returned to Kuiu Island, though she told her story to her daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters. My family’s knowledge of our history begins with Kaat’eich. We know of nothing before her. Smallpox erased the stories of Flicker House. I wish I knew those stories.
I wrote the novel to inspire new stories about the Flicker House.
