Ka-Ta-Ta

In a case remarkably similar to the execution of Kot-Ko-Wat three years earlier, Ka-Ta-Ta was as Alaska Native implicated in the deaths of two white men, in this case two miners.

The story that emerged was that a small party of prospectors sailed north out of Sitka to French Harbor. Once they reached their location, they hired some Alaskan Natives – including Ka-Ta-Ta – to assist them in their explorations of the interior. On that trip, Ka-Ta-Ta is said to have killed Thomas Maloney and Kerin Canby.

Arrested and transported to Portland for trial, Ka-Ta-Ta was tried before Judge Deady in the US District Court for the District of Oregon in March 1882, convicted, and sentenced to hang.

Ka-Ta-Ta was hanged in Portland on March 28, 1882.

As with -Kot-Ko-Wat, this case raises all the same legal questions of how a defendant was transferred from one jurisdiction to another to stand trial; the answers to which are likely related to the absence of an Alaskan court system that could reliably produce the conviction of a Native in cases involving white victims and the deeper racism underlying the treatment of Native populations (see the newspaper item below).