NewsTracker Answers for week of Oct. 28, 2024

Q: The U.S. Navy formally apologized Saturday in Angoon, Alaska, for shelling and burning the Tlingit village in the southeastern Alaska panhandle 142 years ago. The attack left the villagers facing winter without food and shelter. Where is Alaska?

Circle the area on this map


Q: For thousands of years, the Tlingit people made have their home in what is now the Alaskan panhandle and what bordering area of Canada?

A. Alberta

B. British Columbia

C. Northwest Territories

D. Nunavut Territory


B. The Tlingit people are native to the panhandle as well as parts of what is now British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. The 1882 shelling of Angoon was triggered by the death of a Tlingit on a whaling ship and other Tlingit crewmen refusing to work. The shipowner told the Navy the Tlingits were threatening White property and lives.


Q: The attack was one of a series of conflicts between the American military and Alaska Natives in the years after the United States bought the territory in 1867 from which nation?

A. Britain

B. Canada

C. Japan

D. Russia


D. Russian ships began arriving in Alaska in 1732, and the Russians founded the first European settlement in 1784. The Russians never fully colonized Alaska and sold their claim to the territory to the United States for $7.2 million.


Q: Before the arrival of Europeans, it has been estimated that as many 5 million Native Americans lived in what is now the United States. By 1890, the number of Native Americans had dropped to an estimated low of ...

A. 1 million

B. 500,000

C. 250,000

D. 125,000


C. Much of the drastic population decline has been blamed on Eurasian diseases like influenza, cholera, and smallpox. But, Native Americans also fell to conflicts, massacres, forced removal, enslavement, imprisonment, and warfare with Europeans.


Q: Where did the discovery of gold lead to mass deaths of Native Americans?

A. California

B. Georgia

C. South Dakota

D. All of the above


D. The 1828 discovery of gold in Georgia led to the Trail of Tears, which killed thousands of Native Americans during their forced removal from the southeastern U.S. The 1848 California Gold Rush led to a “genocide” that cut the state’s indigenous population from an estimated 150,000 to 16,000 by 1900. The 1870s discovery of gold on Sioux land in what is now South Dakota led to a devastating U.S. war on the Sioux.