Troubled Waters: The Store That Sold Out Wrangell

This is part of our ongoing research into the Wrangell Institute.

He came to Alaska looking for gold, but he found something far more priceless.

Walter C. Waters would redefine Wrangell and sell it to the world.

Immigrant in a New Land

Walter Charles Waters was born August 6, 1874 in Ontario, Canada. His parents, Walter Sr. and Mary Waters, were both from England. In 1898, the trio came to Alaska for the Klondike Gold Rush and settled in Wrangell. The Waters family was part of a wave of newcomers that changed Wrangell forever. For the first time, the White population began to outnumber the Native population.

In 1902, at the age of 26 he married 16 year-old Mabel Beilby of Ontario, Canada.

Waters worked many different jobs to support his growing family, such as carving letters into headstones, mining in a marble quarry, and managing a saltery. He operated two vessels, the Glenora and the Princess Pat. He tried selling men’s and women’s clothing. In 1907, he advertised groceries, meats, paints and oils, window glass, sign painting, and ended with the bold letters “ANYTHING.”

Walter C. Waters is quoted in the March 3, 1929 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“I suppose I have done everything that a man does in the North. For years I was mail carrier and contractor, traveling by sailboat from one trading post to another, covering approximately twenty-five thousand miles per annum... In winter time I trapped furs and brought the skins down to my storeroom in Wrangell, selling them to buyers from the States and foreign countries.”

Just as the Russians and British had done a century before, Waters traded with Indigenous hunters for furs. But unlike the past, Waters did not have to export his furs. Tourists regularly arrived at Wrangell’s wharf eager to snatch up souvenirs. Waters’ trade quickly moved beyond fur. Walter C. Waters continued:

“As I traveled from village to village I picked up little things that took my fancy—beads, Indian-made baskets, moccasins, quaint jewelry and totems. I soon learned there was much history attached to the native curios and for a pastime took up the study of Indian and Eskimo antiques.”

The Bear Totem Store

1922 was a politically fraught year for the Tlingit. Ancestral salmon streams were taken over by cannery fish traps. Segregated schools sent Indigenous teens out of Alaska to boarding schools. Civil and religious leaders put pressure on the Tlingit to fully sever tribal and clan affiliations and to embrace a Christian way of life and an American identity.

The Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood mobilized to turn out the vote, but Tlingit men George Mason and Charlie Jones were denied the right to vote for not acting White enough. Jones had recently become Shakes VII following the 1916 death of Shakes VI, Gush Tlein. But in a landmark ruling, a court denied Charlie Jones access to any of the Shakes regalia, Shakes Island, or any sacred artifacts (called at.óow in Tlingit). Instead, the court awarded all of that as the personal property of the late Shakes’ widow, Mary Shakes. Without at.óow, Charlie Jones was Shakes in name only.

Into this swirling maelstrom, Walter C. Waters opened the Bear Totem Store in June 1922. The Wrangell Sentinel wrote:

“The attractive new curio store of Walter Waters was opened this week. The stock will consist of a line of goods that will be sure to attract the attention of the tourists. As a business sign, Mr. Waters has set up two bear totems which are excellent specimens of the work of the Indians of a past generation. The totems were brought to Wrangell by Mr. Waters from the west coast of Prince of Wales Island.”

In 1927, Waters added two more totems from Prince of Wales Island to the storefront. He quickly needed more floorspace for all his merchandise, and in 1929, Waters opened a second storefront in the Matheson Building, but two years later he relocated that store to the Healy Building, across the street from the original Bear Totem Store.

Waters’ eye-catching storefront stood out against the sleepy, wood-planked boardwalk of Front Street. Tourists mingled among the totems and had their pictures taken. Postcards of the Bear Totem Store were popular and widely circulated. Waters reportedly restored old totems and hired Tlingit carver Charlie Tacook to do work, as well. It added to Wrangell’s reputation as “Totem Town” or “Land of the Totems.”

Displaying totems this way totally broke from tradition, but tourists love it. Waters clustered the totems of different clans together in an easy to access spot. There were many other totems in Wrangell, but they were spread out and aging. Waters made the tourist’s life easier, and they rewarded him for it.

By the end of the 1930s, the federal government authorized a New Deal program to construct six “totem parks” along southeast Alaska’s tourist route, copying Waters’ approach. Where totems once specified a power of place, totem parks favored neat, accessible arrangements for the public.

Questions always dogged Waters about how he acquired these totems. Whether he got the totems by honest or dishonest means is unclear, but so long as the law allowed individuals to claim clan community property as personal property to be sold, enterprising collectors like Walter C. Waters could acquire it, for a price.

Photo of Walter C. Waters in his store courtesy Greg McCormack.

The inside of the store was frequently described as like a museum, and there was no charge to get in. Every inch of the walls were covered, every shelf lined, and every glass case stuffed with items for sale. The clustered feeling added to sensation of being inside Aladdin’s cave of treasures.

But it was all a fantasy.

The Falling House of Shakes

If a tourist walked further down the boardwalk, they could see the literal effect of Waters’ business on Shakes Island. The Tlingit called the century-old home X’atgu Hít, or Mud Shark House, and it was falling into utter disrepair. Rotting totems teetered at odd angles, and the ground gave way to shrubbery. It was still a destination for tourists, but they saw a version of Tlingit life that was fading from existence.

Writing in Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits, Chip Colwell describes how this happened:

“...When Chief Shakes VI died in 1916, his wife, Mary Shakes, not only inherited the clan house on the island, but also all of the clan at.óow. Even just days after his death, Mary’s family was negotiating for the sale of the chief’s war canoe. It is unclear if she was motivated by need or greed, or despair about the Tlingit’s future or a genuine rejection of Tlingit matrilineal tradition. In any case, most of the prized pieces were sold to Axel Rasmussen and Walter C. Waters, a curio shop owner in Wrangell.”

As Shakes Island suffered, Waters’ prestige and wealth grew. His family owned their own home and had live-in servants. In 1936, a reporter for Utah’s Deseret News observed the partition of Shakes house in Waters’ store and wrote:

“The curio shop contained many of Chief Shakes’ costumes and implements... Besides curios, baskets and the like, the store contained some magnificent polar bear hides. The Store of the Bear Totems is one of the most important in the Alaskan country, I am told. Certainly it is worth visiting as a museum if one is not interested in buying.”

Waters even robbed graves on camera. In May 1939, artist Wolfgang Paalen visited Wrangell to study Indigenous art and is said to have witnessed, and filmed, Walter C. Waters robbing a grave. In Paalen: Life and Work Vol. 2, Wolfgang Paalen describes Waters looting a grave:

“Waters and his sons are amazed, as they know of another grave nearby that has long been plundered. This grave is completely intact. Must be well over 100 years old... The Waters family attack the tomb without apparent hesitation, from above and below at the same time. The old man has quickly managed to climb all the way in and his children divide up the booty, which he hands them through a hole he has made from below...”

The Shakes collection became a famous piece of Waters’ repertoire. He could truly claim to have the best Indian relics, and he fed off the attention. But not every tourist could afford a one-of-a-kind Tlingit masterpiece. Waters made space on his shelves for cheap trinkets, as well.

To find that, Waters turned to the Wrangell Institute.

The Wrangell Institute

On Tuesday, October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit the stock market, kicking off the Great Depression. The Roaring 20s were over, and Wrangell looked for a lifeline. The federal Bureau of Education announced a competition for an industrial boarding school for southeast Alaska’s Indigenous teens.

Walter C. Waters sprung into the competition. Waters was one of the leaders who pitched Wrangell to the government and beat out several other southeast Alaskan towns to win the Wrangell Institute.

As the school was under construction, Waters drove out the road to a spot just before the school, where a creek came down the hill. He parked his car and walked into the brush, climbed the hill, and searched for something he hadn’t seen since he first came to Wrangell in 1898: Rainbow Falls. Waters organized Wrangell behind a public trail through the woods to see it, a route still popular today.

Three young men work on a totem pole at the Wrangell Institute. (credit: Alaska State Library)

As an industrial school, Wrangell Institute students learned skills to make an income, and that included Indian art. Near the end of the 1930s, E.L. Keithahn became head of the school’s Arts & Crafts program. Like Waters, Keithahn was a White man who moved to Alaska and earned a reputation as an Indian expert.

Keithahn’s students showed their talent by producing replicas of local Wrangell totems. But Keithahn also arranged with Walter C. Waters for students to mass produce Indian crafts to sell to tourists. In 1939, the Wrangell Sentinel described the Wrangell Institute’s carving shop:

“Piled against the walls of the room were lengths of yellow cedar for smaller totems which the boys sell to W.C. Waters, proprietor of the Bear Totem stores. The carving is under the supervision of E.L. Keithahn, instructor in native arts and crafts. Twenty-five to thirty boys are usually at work there evenings, carving and painting the totems, which afford them their spending money.”

William Paul reacted in shock when he discovered how many totem poles Keithahn’s students produced. On November 20, 1940, the Alaska Native Brotherhood filed a complaint with the Office of Indian Affairs:

William Paul’s letter to the Office of Indian Affairs. (source: U.S. National Archives online)

“It did not help the reputation of your department any when our Convention heard Mr. George Barrett, of Wrangell Institute, say that his ‘boys’ had made over FOUR THOUSAND totem poles last year and sold them all.”

A portrait of Charlie Jones as Shakes VII.

Wrangell Potlatch, Inc.

Perhaps Keithahn and Waters’ biggest accomplishment together was the opening of Shakes Island in June 1940. This was the grand-unveiling of a a rebuilt Shakes clan house, in the traditional style. Tlingit carvers meticulously recreated old, worn away totems. This was a new life for Shakes Island.

To mark this grand celebration, Wrangell’s businessmen organized Wrangell Potlatch, Inc. They put E.L. Keithahn in charge, and they cast the gathering as a traditional potlatch with Charlie Jones, Shakes VII, in the center of it all. While Jones could accept the honor, he had no traditional regalia to wear. All of that had been denied to him two decades earlier.

The organizers made Walter C. Waters the Chairman of the Exhibits and Displays Committee, and he allowed Charlie Jones wear the regalia for the dedication day. Waters also lent a canoe and other items from his collection for the event, which was heralded as a great success. Just as Waters had a hand in Shakes Island’s decay, he played a role in its rebirth.

Death & Legacy

Walter C. Waters died of a heart attack at the age of 69 on May 15, 1943 in Seattle, Washington. He is buried in Lake Forest Park.

Waters outlived three of five children. His first, Alice, was born in 1903 and died after only a few weeks. His second, Charles, was born in 1906 and died in 1912 of bronchitis. His third child, James, was born in 1910 but died in 1930 in an automobile accident in California. Only his last two children, Glenora (born 1916) and Jack (born 1920) would outlive him into old age.

Waters’ death set off a flurry of speculation about what Waters’ widow children would do with his estate. Mabel Waters and their son, Jack, continued to the operate the business.

In 1946, Art historian Katharine Kuh visited Wrangell to investigate. She toured the shop and talked to Jack Waters. She published her findings in a report entitled Preservation of Indian Art in Southeastern Alaska:

“I advise immediate legal investigation of Waters Collection. There is always the possibility that this collection will be sold secretly and suddenly out of the Territory... In a fire proof vault behind the Bear Totem Shop a marvelous collection of Indian carvings, baskets, blankets etc. is stored...”

Before the end of the 1950s, Jack and Glenora, the Waters’ only surviving children, left Wrangell. On September 29, 1950, Mabel Waters ran an ad announcing the Bear Totem Store was closing:

“CLOSING! END OF NEXT WEEK. To accommodate those unable to shop in daytime the store will be open on Tuesday, Thursday, & Saturday nights 7 to 10 p.m. PRICES DRASTICALLY SLASHED!”

What began in broad daylight ended in the dark. Despite closing, the Waters family still physically possessed many Tlingit artifacts. All that came under threat on March 21, 1952, when a fire swept through Wrangell’s waterfront, destroying many buildings, valuables, and almost destroying the original Bear Totem Store building.

Just as the widow Mary Shakes had done decades earlier, the widow Mabel Waters announced she was selling the collection. The June 19, 1953 Wrangell Sentinel wrote:

“Purchase of a rare collection of Alaskan Indian art and cultural specimens collected by the late Walter Waters of Wrangell has been authorized by the University of Washington Board of Regents. The U.W. and the Denver, Colorado Art Museum will each contribute $10,000 toward the total price of $28,000... It was collected over a period of 30 years by Mr. Waters and contains more than 600 items ranging from full sized totem poles to horn spoons.”

This nearly two-hundred year old Tlingit mask is at the Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington today. The museum lists the provenance as Walter C. Waters. (image source: Wikipedia Commons)

Today, many of these artifacts are found throughout the world in the hands of private collectors and public institutions. The British Museum recognizes Waters as the “Field Collector” for a baton, a float, and two rattles. The Smithsonian has a berry basket and a totem pole. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a 200 year-old Tlingit mask. The Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington has many artifacts, including this basket. The Denver Art Museum has several items, including the partition of Shakes house, and has repeatedly declined requests to return items.

But recently, some institutions have begun to return artifacts to Wrangell. In May 2024, Gaalgé Kevin Callahan of the Naan.yaa.aayí clan told KSTK News about the importance of a repatriation:

“Right now we’re working with the Denver Art Museum who’s really not wanting to budge... They have multiple objects there. One of the biggest objects they have is the Mother Bear, also called Many Faces, which is the screen that sits in front of the Shakes House.”

In the final years of Waters’ life, Europe fell into World War II. The Monuments Men entered the fight to save Western Civilization’s greatest greatest artistic achievements. Even the Allies knew, a people need their culture to survive.

Tourists saw Walter C. Waters as a gateway to another world. But in fact, he was its gatekeeper.

Like a visionary, Waters saw what was good about Wrangell, and he knew how to sell it, until it all ran out.