Native Connections

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87585102791?pwd=dzl0cVl6dWoxdERDU05zWGROdkdwZz09

“Historical and Current Connections Between Central Whidbey 
and Tlingit People from the Island of Kake in SE Alaska”

Join us online (Zoom) for a presentation by Michael Ferri, Coupeville resident and president of the board of the Island County Historical Society.

While the dramatic story of the killing and beheading of Colonel Ebey by “northern Indians” has been widely told, people are less aware of the historical context. Michael Ferri, a history enthusiast and president of the Island County Historical Society Board, will share what he’s learned about the backstory of the “Battle of Port Gamble” in 1856 and the retributive killing of Colonel Isaac Ebey in 1857.

In 2014, 157 years later, Michael hosted Kake descendants when they visited Ebey’s Reserve. Across the generations, Kake oral history remembers the loss of family members to the US Navy at Port Gamble. As Michael Ferri remarked at the time, in an article in the Whidbey News Times, “it wasn’t just us suffering a murder of Col. Ebey. …They lost 27 members of their tribe and a head chief over there at Port Gamble. This was sadness and sorrow on each side of the divide.”