William Duncan (missionary)

[4] By the end of the summer in 1862 several hundred more joined the community; Metlakatla was officially established that year[2] within what was by then the Colony of British Columbia.

When the 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic killed 500 in Lax Kw'alaams but only five in Metlakatla, Duncan had no qualms in convincing his flock that this was divine providence.

In Metlakatla, Duncan exerted his own brand of low church Anglicanism, which involved a set of rules for Christian living and, controversially, eschewing the sacrament of communion so as not to whet the cannibalistic appetites[6] of a people who he worried might be beholden to the anthropophagous rites of their "secret societies".

Such doctrinal differences, plus Duncan's insistence on total control over his parishioners' lives, led to a split with the Church of England.

Eventually, he decided to found a second utopian community on Annette Island, Alaska,[7] on the territory of the Tongass tribe of Tlingit.

The religious orientation of New Metlakatla became a nondenominational form of low-church Anglicanism, quite evangelical, and under the strict doctrinal control of Duncan himself.

Marsden even assisted in the establishment of a rival, Presbyterian Tsimshian community at nearby Port Gravina (1892–1904) and, later, campaigned tirelessly and with some success for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to oust Duncan from his position, partly on grounds that Duncan had too much authority in the community and opposed any Native self-betterment through education and individual economic self-sufficiency if it put parishioners out of his personal control.

Duncan died at the age of 86 on 30 August 1918,[6] in "New" Metlakatla, Alaska after a months-long decline associated with a bronchial infection apparently resulting from a fall.