Deer Rock

This Deer Rock was thus witness to peaceful settlement that saved countless members of the Raven and Eagle clans of the Tlingit tribe who would have otherwise died if the war had continued.

This caused intense indignation among the native Indian tribes since their ancestral graves were dug up and human skeletons of their exposed.

A strong protest agitation was organized by the native clans, led by Austin Hammond, objecting to this unwarranted destruction of their heritage and desecration of the revered graves of their ancestral people.

Eventually, about one month later, Austin Hammond, the headman of l’koot, held a traditional peace ceremony along with the people of the native Tlingits at Deer Rock and renewed the pledge for “maintaining brotherhood between Chilkat and Chilkoot people, and also with their white neighbors.” Thus, Deer Rock has become a symbol of a saga of amicable compromise.

The peace ceremony held at the Deer Rock was explained by the Clan leader Austin Hammond, in a film named Ha Shgaoon produced in 1980.

The script of the speech made by Austin on the occasion states: we are making only our requests that the peace rock or “Deer Rock” Guwakan teiyi, broken into pieces by road builders, be made whole; that the fish weir be removed, that our sacred burial grounds be protected so never again will be bones of our ancestors lay scattered and disturbed; and we ask that we may lawfully catch salmon for our subsistence in this river, a heritage denied to us that is rightfully ours.