Kaasteen: the Tlingit story of a woman, a glacier and the Glacier Bay homeland

Long before western science documented Glacier Bay's geological history, the story of Kaasteen, a Chookaneidí Clan woman of the Eagle moiety, was kept in oral tradition, mournful song and formline art. The National Park Service page behind this one retells it and says how the Huna Tlingit honor her today. Where versions differ, the page says so, and this page does the same.

Who she was

Nobody knows when Kaasteen was born, but she lived in the mid-1700s in one of the villages of L'eiwshaayí (Sand Dune Country), in S'e Shuyee (End of the Glacial Silt), now Glacier Bay. The page guesses at her days (fishing, smoking and drying fish, tanning hides, perhaps weaving spruce root baskets or a robe of mountain goat wool) and says plainly that the details of her daily life are obscure. Her place in Tlingit history is profound. She is honored not only by the Huna Tlingit, for whom Glacier Bay is homeland, but by Tlingit nations across Southeast Alaska. Her sacrifice claimed what is now Glacier Bay proper for the Chookaneidí Clan, and her name is passed to Chookaneidí girls today. In a world where men serve as leaders, she reminds the Tlingit of the power of Tlingit women, ancestrally and today.

L'éiwshaayí, a glacial outwash plain from before the Little Ice Age, near present-day Bartlett Cove, supplied the Huna clans for centuries. NPS image.

The glacier

Tlingit oral tradition and geological data both describe S'e Shuyee as a glacial outwash plain with a distant glacier at its head. For several hundred years the Huna clans lived in villages and fish camps along small rivers on the valley floor, a time Tlingit tradition remembers as peaceful and rich. Life changed dramatically when the Little Ice Age reached its climax in the 1750s.

The Native account of the glacier's advance is famous among Tlingit nations and has become synonymous with Glacier Bay itself, usually called "The Glacier Bay Story." There are different versions. One Chookaneidí leader says that telling the history strengthens the people, and a culture bearer says the lessons matter far more than the details.

In many versions, a young girl, Kaasteen, was confined during her first menstruation. Bored and lonely, she called out to the distant glacier, and the glacier, which had lain quiet for centuries, responded by rumbling toward the villages, since a young woman in transition has great power. The clans packed their canoes to flee, knowing someone had to stay to appease the glacier's spirit. In many versions the young Chookaneidí girl stayed; other respected elders say her grandmother took her place, trading her own life for the girl's; still others say both stayed, comforting each other as the glacier crushed the clan houses. An elder's account, the page notes, says the Raven clans did not leave carelessly: they brought food, warm skins and robes to the one who stayed, calling out that these were for Kaasteen.

Two mournful songs were composed and sung as the canoes left. The clans went south and settled nearby places less rich than their sacred homeland, and endured the Little Ice Age there. When the glacier retreated, about fifty years later according to science, the Huna clans returned to their "remembered landscape" and named it Sít' Eeti Geiyí (Bay in Place of the Glacier). The Chookaneidí claim as crests the glaciers and icebergs that entombed their ancestor, which cost them her life. The page says Kaasteen, captured in the ice, continues to help travelers through ice-choked waters, and returning clan members feed and care for her.

Ceremony today

In recent years the National Park Service has partnered with the Hoonah Indian Association, the Huna Heritage Foundation and Hoonah City Schools to carry community members to the face of Margerie Glacier, an active tidewater glacier, to be with Kaasteen and pass the story and songs to Huna youth. The ceremony is long and solemn, and the mourning songs still bring the Chookaneidí to tears. The Raven clans hold up their arms, figuratively shielding them from pain. Salmon, seaweed and tobacco are lowered into the water, recreating the moment the fleeing clans gathered furs and food for her. The page quotes an elder who says that only once an offering has gone to Kaasteen does it become spiritual medicine, a balm that makes spirits strong.

Raven clan leaders offer words of comfort and bring out blankets, vests and other crest images to show support. Sometimes Kaasteen answers: a glacier calves, a distant song is heard, or the ice changes color, and the mood lightens. Finally the Kaasteen blanket, a handcrafted Tlingit button blanket showing the glacial ice and Kaasteen, is held up and the Chookaneidí gather for a photograph in front of the glacier.

Today the Chookaneidí speak of Kaasteen with sorrow, pride and reverence. She stands for a woman's power to move glaciers, for the resilience of Huna clans who have adapted over and over, and for the sacrifice each generation makes for those to come. Above all she ties the Huna Tlingit to a homeland that holds ancestral spirits, hers and many others', long before it was a national monument and then a park. A culture bearer quoted by the page says the stories still bind people to the land and water: tobacco still goes into the water and the ceremonies still recall the clan's first ku.eex, the first calling of Kaasteen's name and feeding of her, and the first time grandparents laid out their most precious belongings knowing the glacier's spirit would cover them.

The photographs, carvings and formline art on the original page are not reproduced here.

Sources

• National Park Service, Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, "Kaasteen", https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/kaasteen.htm, which draws on accounts recorded by Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer in Haa Shuká, Our Ancestors (University of Washington Press, 1987); rewritten in hubnx's own words.