Americans generally characterized the Tlingit legal framework as based on "revenge"; in actuality, it was more complex and involved "peace ceremonies" which included compensation in either goods or human lives.

Upon hearing of the incident, Davis sent a small detachment to the nearby Sitka village to "bring in the Chilkat chief dead or alive".

The detachment then retreated as the Tlingit outnumbered them, and Davis proceeded to place Sitka under siege by gunship and fort artillery, demanding the surrender of Colchika.

[1][2] A report by secretary of the Board of Indian Commissioners Vincent Colyer and Sitka Mayor William S. Dodge from 1870 attributes the initial altercation in part to serving alcohol to natives, saying Colchika was inebriated at the time with whiskey.

[2] A Landing party from the Saginaw entered the small Fossil Bluffs Village, found it deserted, and the next day set it alight.

The next day the Saginaw sailed for Hamilton Bay, the site of present-day Kake and at the time a large village named Town Where No One Sleeps.

[2] According to Kake oral history, recorded in a 1979 interview, one elderly woman stayed in Fossil Bluffs Village and was burned to death.

[1][7] An unexploded Parrott rifle shell was discovered in the 1940s by a Kake resident embedded in a tree stump and kept as a family heirloom for many years before being defused in 2011 and placed on display in the Sealaska Heritage Institute.