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Russian Interactions With
Alaska Natives
Two causes led to the discovery of the region now called Alaska; the first
was the search for the Northwest passage, the second was the quest of
fur-bearing animals. As early as 1648, the Russian Cossack navigator, Semyon
Deshnef, hearing that a tribe far to the eastward on the Polar Ocean had plenty
of ivory, sailed along the northern coast of Siberia, rounded Asia, and reached
the Chukchi peninsula by the body of water now called Bering Strait. He was the
first to discover the walrus in these waters. The first authentic mention
of the American Continent was made by Peter I. Popof, who, in 1711, learned from
the wild Chukchi Indians that beyond the islands off Siberia lay a great land
with broad rivers and inhabited by people who had tusks growing out of their
cheeks, and tails like dogs. This evidently referred to the labrets worn in the
face, and the wolf or dog tails attached to their parkas behind.
The Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, interested in everything that concerned
science and discovery, shortly before his death in 1725, wrote out instructions
for his Chief Admiral, Count Feodor Apraksin, to cause to be built at Kamchatka,
or some other convenient place, one or more decked vessels to explore the
northerly coasts and endeavor to discover whether they were contiguous with
America, submitting exact notes of whatever discoveries they should make. Vitus
Bering, a Dane, who had shown capacity in the wars with Sweden, was
appointed to take charge of the expedition. After extreme hardships in crossing
Siberia by land, he and his followers reached Kamchatka, and in boats there
launched they sailed along the eastern coast of the peninsula, and in 1728
discovered and named St. Lawrence Island. They passed through Bering Strait and
proved that America and Asia were separate countries.
Ivan Fedorov and
Mikhail Gvozdev sailed in August of 1732 in the St.
Gabriel-from the mouth of the Kamchatka River
north toward the Anadyr River. They crossed
Bering Strait in its north part and found the Diomede Islands
where they were met with a hail of arrows shot
by Eskimos from the second island. In September they sailed further east toward Cape
Prince of Wales on Alaska's Seward Peninsula. When
they neared King island a Native from there came to
their ship by boat and gave them information about
the Alaska coast. The information they obtained was
known to scientists and geographers of their time.
Their information gave the correct orientation of
American coasts on the east side of Bering Strait
and this appeared on eighteenth century maps of the
world published in Russia and France. This
voyage also represents the first Russian contact
with the American mainland, and with Alaska
Native people.
The voyage to Alaska by adventurer Nikolas Gvosdef, in 1731, stimulated
to further explorations, and in 1733, Bering, under the patronage of the Empress
Anna Ivanovna, the niece of Peter the Great, was once more commissioned to take
charge of an expedition from Kamchatka. In September, 1740, Bering, in the ship "St. Peter," accompanied by the
"St. Paul " under command of Lieutenant Alexsei Chirikof, who had been with him in the
first voyage, set sail. They were soon beset by winter, and established
themselves at Avatcha, where they built a few houses and a church, naming the
settlement after the two ships, Petropavlovsk. Early in the following June, they
once more weighed anchor, but on the twentieth a gale separated the two ships.
Chirikof's went to the eastward, and on the fifteenth of July sighted land. He
sent ten men ashore, under command of Abraham Mikhailovich Dementief, a young
nobleman, who had volunteered for this
dangerous service. After they had been absent for five days, another boat was despatched [sic] with six men to look for the first party. Those left on the
ship soon observed a black smoke rising above the point of land behind which the
boats had disembarked.
The next morning, the anxious company on board were gladdened by the sight of
what they thought were the two boats approaching. Their joy was turned to horror
when it was seen that the two boats were filled with savages. These turned about
at the sight of the ship, and shouting "Agai! Agai!" made for the shore. A gale
blew up, and Chirikof was obliged to put out into the open sea. When the storm
had subsided, he returned to his former anchorage, but had no means of reaching
land. The fate of the missing men was never determined but it can be easily
surmised. Chirikof, crippled as he was, was compelled to return to Kamchatka.
His men suffered terrible hardships; their provisions and water were exhausted,
all on board were ill with scurvy, and they lost altogether twenty-one men.
Bering, on the sixteenth of July, caught sight of the magnificent snow-clad
mountain range, of which St. Elias, rising to a height of 18,000 feet above the
sea, is the crown. George Wilhelm Steller, a German naturalist, who accompanied
the expedition and left an excellent account of what he saw, claimed to have
discovered land on the day preceding, but his claim was ridiculed by his
companions. A landing was made on what is now known as Kayak Island. After
delaying several days, and finding a number of unoccupied huts built of logs and
bark and thatched with coarse grasses, together with dried salmon, copper
implements, and other indications of former occupancy, Bering, without
attempting to proceed farther, turned about. On his voyage back, he discovered
and named a number of the Aleutian Islands, where they found friendly natives,
with whom they exchanged gifts. The name Aleutian is supposed to have been
suggested by Cape Alintorsky in Siberia, which, according to native tradition,
was continued into a chain of islands stretching away toward the east. The ships
were buffeted by terrific tempests, and so many of the crew perished of illness
and deprivations that the survivors had difficulty in navigating their ships
back to the Asiatic coast. There they had the misfortune to be wrecked on a
small island, which now bears the name of their famous commander. Here, on the
eighth of December, in a hut so exposed to the elements that it hardly deserved
to be called a shelter, Bering died of scurvy, after suffering unutterable
agonies. His companions, after spending the winter in holes dug in the sand
dunes and roofed with canvas, their only food sea-otters and seals, constructed
a boat from the wreck of the "St. Peter," and managed to reach the mainland.
The result of the discoveries of Bering and Chirikof was that many
expeditions were fitted out for fishing and hunting along the American coast.
These traders were called "promui'shleniki," the word signifying traders or
adventurers. They pushed farther and farther eastward. Such were Emelian Basof,
who made four consecutive voyages; one of Bering's companions named Nevodchikof;
and Aleksei Belaief, who, in 1745, inveigled fifteen of the gentle Aleuts into a
quarrel for the express purpose of killing them, maltreating their wives, and
robbing them of their furs. Similar outrages were perpetrated by many others of
these irresponsible and brutal adventurers. In 1759, a promui'shleniki named
Glottof discovered the large island of Umnak, and subsequently skirted the
extensive group of islands including Unalaska. On account of the foxes abounding
there, he called this archipelago, the Fox Islands. Glottof is reputed to have
been the first to baptize the natives; he also furnished his government with the
first Russian map of that region. Glottof reached the island of Kadiak in the
autumn of 1762, and took up his quarters there for the winter. The natives, who
had at first been very gentle and patient under the outrageous demands of the
traders, had begun to rebel. They attacked Glottof's settlement, but were
repulsed by the Russians; after that they kept aloof and refused to trade. Later
in the winter, discovering that the invaders were weakened by disease, they
renewed their attacks and almost exterminated them. Glottof escaped only with
the greatest difficulty. The same year, a merchant, Druzhinin, arrived at
Unalaska, with one hundred and fifty men, and was attacked by the natives, who,
at a signal, arose and killed all of his followers but four, who happened to be
absent, and were protected by a kindly Aleut.
In 1783, the Russian
merchant Grigorii Shelikhov equipped three vessels
for a voyage to the Aleutian Islands, hoping to gain
a monopoly on the fur trade of the region. In 1784,
when the ships arrived at Kodiak Island, they were
met by a force of 4,000 Koniag Natives who demanded
that the Russians leave immediately. After
negotiations failed, the Russians fired cannons on
Koniag homes, destroying them. By subduing the
Alaska Natives with fire power, Russian control grew
stronger. Shelikhov extended his authority by
setting up political districts in the Kodiak region,
and by a building a fur-harvesting labor force of
Alaska Natives. His methods were sometimes so brutal
that the Russian government actually conducted an
inquiry, although Shelikhov was never charged with
any crime.
In 1784,
Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov arrived in
Three Saints Bay on
Kodiak Island.
Shelikhov and his men killed hundreds of indigenous
Koniag, then founded the first permanent Russian
settlement in Alaska on the island's Three Saints
Bay. By 1788 a number of Russian settlements had
been established by Shelikhov and others over a
large region, including the mainland areas around
Cook Inlet.
The
Alutiiq Eskimos of the Kodiak area, Cook Inlet, and
Prince William Sound also suffered. The Kodiak
Island Native population was estimated to be about
5,000 to 8,000 in 1784 when the Russians first
arrived. Six years later, in 1790, only 3,000 Kodiak
Natives survived. Of the 3,000, only 500 were
capable of working or hunting.
At the height of
Russian America, the Russian population reached 700.
Although the
mid–19th century was not a good time for Russians
in Alaska, conditions improved for the coastal
Alaska Natives who had survived contact. The Tlingits were never conquered and continued to wage
war on the Russians into the 1850s. The Aleuts,
though faced with a decreasing population in the
1840s, ultimately rebounded.
The
Russian-American Company sought to use Natives to
meet the demand for workers but disease and the
Russians' harsh treatment of Natives, particularly
Aleuts, caused the Native population to drop
sharply. The Aleut population, estimated to have
been 16 to 20 thousand in the early 1700s had
dropped to 7,000 in 1836. Four years later there
were only 4,000 Aleuts. The rest had died from
disease, chiefly smallpox that had spread to Alaska
from California, the dangers of sea otter hunts, and
starvation in their villages. An observer attributed
the dramatic decline to ill-treatment by the
Russians, new lifestyles forced on the Natives by
the Russians, and new diseases transmitted to the
Natives by the Russians. The sea otter hunts, which
took Alutiiq Eskimos and Aleuts on long sea voyages
in their baidarkas, often in violent storms, caused
many deaths. In one incident in 1799, over 100
Natives on a hunting trip died from eating poisonous
shell fish.
At Kukak, a village opposite Kodiak on
the Alaska Peninsula, only 40 of 1,000 men remained
in 1805. Over the 10 years before that the Russians
had taken the rest of the men to Sitka to hunt sea
otters. Also in 1805 Native women and children
starved on Kodiak Island because Alexander Baranov,
chief manager for the Russian-American Company, had
taken their husbands and fathers to Sitka to hunt
sea otters. Because they were away, the husbands and
fathers could not hunt food for their families.
The
Russians also caused hardships by moving Natives
from smaller villages into a few larger villages to
make it easier to discipline and to supply them. The
Natives had no natural immunities to diseases they
contracted from Russians and other Euroamericans.
This meant their bodies could not fight the diseases
and they often died. The Russians did establish
hospitals at Sitka, Kodiak, Unalaska, and Atka
between 1817 and 1821. These offered free treatment
to the Natives. The Russians also vaccinated some
Natives against smallpox. The hospitals and
vaccines, however, did not prevent unfamiliar
diseases from having catastrophic effects on the
Natives.
The
Aleuts and Alutiiq Eskimos were the most affected by
the Russians' presence in Alaska. Athabaskans of
Cook Inlet shared the hardships of Aleuts and
Alutiiq Eskimos to some extent. Other Athabascans,
Tlingits, Haidas, Inupiaq and Yupik Eskimos felt
less of an impact from the Russians. All, however,
felt Russian influence in other ways.
On some islands and
parts of the Alaskan peninsula, groups of traders
had been capable of relatively peaceful coexistence
with the local inhabitants. Other groups could not
manage the tensions and perpetrated exactions.
Hostages were taken, individuals were enslaved,
families were split up, and other individuals were
forced to leave their villages and settle elsewhere.
In addition, eighty percent of the Aleut population
was destroyed by
Old World
diseases, against which they had no
immunity, during the first two generations of
Russian contact.
The treatment of the natives by the adventurers hardly corresponded to the
wishes of the Empress Catharine II., who, in expressing her satisfaction at the
reported subjection of the six new Aleutian Islands by the Cossack Vasiutin and
his followers, said in her ukase to the Governor of Siberia: — "You must urge
the promui'shleniki to treat the natives with kindness, and to avoid all
oppression or ill treatment of their new brethren." She also urged the governor
to glean all possible information regarding the country. In response to this
wish, the Admiralty College selected two Russian Navy captains, Peter Krenitsin
and Mikhail Levashef, who sailed from Kamchatka in 1768, and attempted to make
explorations and gather scientific details about the land and the people. But
they had difficulty with the natives, and, after losing a third of their forces through scurvy and the arrows of their enemies, they returned to Siberia. The profits of the trading and hunting expeditions were very great, and
there are records of more than sixty such enterprises. The profits were
generally divided equally between the owners of the vessels and the
crews; each sailor had one share, and the navigator and commanders had
two each. A tenth of the whole was exacted as a tax by the
government.
The natives who fell into the hands of their oppressors were compelled
to do the hunting and to turn over their booty, receiving as a reward a few
cheap trinkets, or a bit of tobacco. They thus became practically slaves. The
horrors of their condition form the dark background of Alaskan history.
The story of the revenge wreaked by the cruel Ivan Soloviof for the slaughter of such
Russians as were killed by the natives, when they at last were goaded
into rebellion, is only one chapter of this tale of violence.
Source: Our Northern Domain: Alaska Picturesque, Historic, and Commercial.
Dana Estes & Company: Boston, 1910
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