Russian explorers vs frigid arctic storms! Furs worth more than a pile
of solid gold! And an Orthodox religious tradition that lives on to this day!
The untold truth of Russian Alaska is anything but frozen.
As the Russian Empire drove East across Siberia and towards the Pacific Ocean,
it encountered a group of tribes collectively known as the Chukchi, who today continue to live
in the Russian Far East alongside the Bering Strait. The Chukchi, per their folktales,
were familiar with the other side of the Bering Strait. Chukchi folktales share numerous motifs,
symbols, and myths with Alaska natives. One story, the tale about the Flying Shaman,
includes a character that traveled from Alaska, suggesting trans-Bering contacts
between the Chukchi and other Siberian tribes in Asia and the native peoples of Alaska.
Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev rounded the Chukotka Peninsula in 1648.
"This desolate region, covered in permafrost,
is the closest Russian territory to the United States."
At some point, he was told of the existence of two great islands to
the west inhabited by "big-toothed people."
One of these "islands" referred to the Alaska Peninsula, which includes the Aleutian Islands.
Equipped with this knowledge, Dezhnev's successors pushed further East toward
America to learn more about this mysterious land and the resources that might lay there.
By 1711, Russian maps had begun depicting a land east of Siberia. Curiously, the maps
claimed the inhabitants had "tusks growing out of their cheeks and tails like dogs."
Explorer Dmitri Gvozdev confirmed the existence of Alaska in 1731, though there were no signs of
any walrus-like people. In 1740, the Great Northern Expedition under Danish commander
and explorer Vitus Bering made the first European landfall in Alaska under the worst of conditions.
The original scope of the Bering expedition was to find out if the Russian Far East was
connected to America via a land bridge. After setting sail from Kamchatka with two ships,
Bering's small party was separated during a storm that blew his ship towards a mysterious island
against the magnificent backdrop of snow-capped mountains. He had landed on Alaska's Kayak Island.
On Kayak, Bering's party found a series of abandoned huts, suggesting the presence of
human habitation in the surrounding region. So his party explored the length of what
today are the Aleutian Islands, where they encountered the Aleuts. After a gift exchange,
Bering's party turned back to Kamchatka. They spent a miserable winter on Bering Island,
tormented by the local arctic foxes that stole their food and belongings.
The crew survived on sea otters and sea cows and managed to return to Kamchatka. Bering, however,
did not live to report his discovery. He died on December 8, 1741, along with half of his crew.
Following the Second Kamchatka Expedition's Alaska landing in 1741,
Russia began to gradually settle Alaska beginning with the Aleutian Islands. The first to make the
jump were Siberian serfs. These men operated as independent traders and trappers, sometimes by
coercing Aleuts and other natives to trap for them and then selling their furs for a profit.
The fur trade operated much like the later gold rushes of American history. One Russian trapper
went to Alaska and returned to Kamchatka with a load of otter pelts, which he sold at an enormous
profit. The subsequent "fur rush" brought a wave of traders to Alaska. Some stayed behind,
making local Aleut trapping and business partners. But, the disorganized nature of
the trade led the Russian government to bring some order through the creation of a colonial company.
In 1799, the Russian-American Company, a joint-stock company resulting from a merger
of several smaller trading enterprises, received a monopoly on the Alaskan and North Pacific fur
trade. It subsumed independent traders, which became its employees, and a booming organized
Alaskan fur trade was born. The Chinese elite became the principal and most lucrative market
for Alaskan fur. But the profits soon attracted the attention of American, British, and French
trappers, who saw thinly-settled Russian America as an enticing business and colonial opportunity.
Russian America never had more than 800 permanent settlers at one time and that was at the colony's
peak. But Russia still hoped to hold on to Alaska and expand its influence along the Pacific
Northwest Coast. Meanwhile, American and European settlers and explorers were moving northwest, too.
To solve territorial disputes and ensure that they did not spill into conflict,
Russia offered the United States a deal in 1824. The Russo-American Convention between
Alexander I and James Monroe was an agreement that mutually recognized American and Russian
navigation rights along the Northwest Coast and Alaska, while forbidding them to do any business
with each others' settlements without the express permission of the local governor. The boundary
between the two spheres was set at the 54th parallel, which both states agreed to respect.
The most important aspect of the convention for Russian Alaska, however, concerned trade with
natives. The treaty's fourth and fifth articles allowed American ships to engage in trade with
natives both along the coast and in the interior. Goods such as firearms, spirits, and other war
munitions were the exception. While these articles were meant to resolve tensions and prevent
conflict, they also undercut the Russian-American Company's authority in the Pacific Northwest and
Alaska. Russia had effectively surrendered its Alaskan monopoly by allowing foreign
merchants into its lands, eventually leading to the territory's sale to the United States.
Russian colonists and frontiersmen encountered new groups of people native to Alaska, from
Aleuts to Tlingits. But these rough-and-tumble frontiersmen were not particularly well-disposed
to the native population. Russian traders frequently enslaved natives and killed those
that refused to cooperate with them, leading to a cycle of massacres and counter-massacres.
To add to the hardships of first contact, native Alaskans had no immunity to Old World diseases
such as smallpox, which devastated the native communities, taking the lives of over half the
population in some villages. Smallpox vaccination through a system of Russian hospitals slowed the
devastation, but many natives refused it out of distrust and fell victim to the disease.
And for others, it was already too late. Facing depopulation, the Russian colonial
authorities relocated surviving natives to larger villages and concentrated manpower.
In response, at least one tribe, the Tlingit, fought back.
The Tlingit elected a warlord to lead a united Tlingit resistance against a Russian settlement
which is today called Sitka. The Tlingit captured the town, fortified their positions,
and defeated a Russian counterattack at the 1804 Battle of Sitka. The conflict ended with
an 1822 settlement that allowed the Tlingits to rebuild their settlements next to Russian Sitka,
but relations between the two sides remained tense until Russia left Alaska in 1867.
The tsarist government under Catherine II was appalled at the rough treatment of the natives
and ordered the Russian traders to treat the natives as "their new brethren." Instead, the
Russian-American Company requested eight monks to evangelize the natives into subservience in 1794.
But the monks had other ideas. They had come to win souls, not to serve RAC policy.
Before setting out, the monks were told to behave themselves as guests in a foreign land.
In practice, they were to respect Alaskan natives and their cultures while evangelizing.
The result was a harmonization of native languages and cultures, particularly Aleut,
with Orthodoxy. The monks also defended the natives against Company abuses, slavery,
and indentured servitude and the Aleut repaid them with their trust and souls.
Apart from the faith, the Orthodox Church's most important contribution to the Aleuts,
and other natives, was an alphabet to write their languages so they could learn prayers, catechesis,
and create their own works. St. Innocent of Alaska, one of Russian Alaska's most
prolific writers, learned Aleut and subsequently wrote the "Indication of the Pathway to Heaven."
"In addition to making converts, he put his
energy into further educating people already in the faith."
In addition, he translated the Gospel of Matthew among several other readings,
sermons, and prayers. The mission capped its achievements with an Aleut translation of the
Orthodox Divine Liturgy, evidence of the Russian Orthodox Church's commitment to its new flock.
Alaska has produced many Orthodox saints, most famously its patron St. Herman,
"Wonderworker of all America." According to the St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church,
Herman was among the eight missionaries sent to Kodiak to evangelize the locals,
embracing conversion over coercion despite colonial authorities' misgivings. But it worked,
netting nearly 7,000 Aleut conversions within the first year of his mission.
Herman became a respected figure among the Aleuts,
who flocked to him to hear his sermons. But his principal focus was on Aleut children. For them,
he founded a bilingual school and an orphanage and even baked cookies for them out of kindness and
affection for his pupils. Inspired by his faith, the Aleuts became ardent defenders of Orthodoxy.
St. Herman had a young Aleut disciple named Peter, who in 1812, traveled with a Russian expedition to
California. There, Spanish authorities captured and tortured them to renounce
Orthodoxy for Catholicism. Peter refused and died a martyr. Upon hearing of his pupil's death,
St. Herman crossed himself and invoked Peter to pray for him and all sinners.
The martyred youth eventually became St. Peter the Aleut.
By the 1850s, the Russian-American Company had a manpower shortage. The fur trade was no longer
profitable as otter populations were depleted. No one wanted to move to Alaska anymore, and the
colony became a financial drain. The geopolitical situation in 1860 did not favor Russia, either.
Russia had suffered a humiliating defeat against a rival Franco-British coalition in the Crimean War,
and Britain even had a plan to partition Russia. Meanwhile, the British also were looking to
partition Russia's only major friend and ally, the United States, by recognizing the Confederacy.
The British had designs on Alaska too. So Tsar Alexander II decided to sell it to the United
States and leave it in friendly hands. An 1859 Russian offer was postponed as the
Buchanan and Lincoln administrations grappled with secession and the Civil War. But after the war,
Russo-American relations were at a high point following cooperation during the American
Civil War, and so negotiations went forward. Russia initially asked for $5 million. However,
upon seeing Andrew Johnson's Secretary of State William Seward's enthusiasm for purchasing Alaska,
the parties agreed upon $7.2 million, a bargain price of 2 cents per acre. Russia pulled out
of the Last Frontier, leaving its subjects to navigate their new American sovereigns alone.
The sale of Alaska was not received enthusiastically among the partly-Russified
Alaska natives and the Alaskan creole class. While the latter group, per the Treaty of Purchase,
were given U.S. citizenship, the former were not, falling into the category of "uncivilized tribes."
Once gold was discovered in Alaska in 1896, American prospectors rushed
to the territory leaving former Russian subjects outnumbered in their own lands.
For the natives, the Alaska Purchase brought nothing but problems.
Russia's old Tlingit enemies in particular clashed with American settlers and missionaries
attempting to convert them to Protestantism. The Tlingit, despite their problems with Russia,
had never faced attempts to eradicate their culture. American missionaries, on the other hand,
banned the Tlingit language and culture in their schools to quote, "kill the Indian ... save
the man." In comparison, the Russian Orthodox Church preserved Alaskan culture and language.
In response, the Tlingit rallied around the Russian Orthodox Church,
which they turned into their own institution. The Tlingit combined native traditions,
Russian spirituality, and the Tlingit language into their Orthodox niche.
Even with the material benefits of assimilation, the Tlingit chose Orthodoxy for its compatibility
with their native spirituality and worship styles. The result was a collection of Tlingit hymns,
prayers, and Russo-Tlingit religious brotherhoods to reinforce Tlingit Orthodoxy.
Although Alaska's surviving Russian influence is mostly spiritual, one modern Russian stronghold
post-dating the colonial era survives. A group called Old Believers separated
from the Orthodox Church in 1666 after the then-Patriarch made a series of corrections to
the liturgy and changed some other traditions, including how the Sign of the Cross was made.
Objectors were told to fall in line or be persecuted, and the Old Believers
chose the latter. They fled to Siberia and other fringe areas of the Russian Empire,
where they lived until Communist persecution forced them to flee again.
"With the arrival of Communisim, at first it was fine. But then they just
started coming to the huts and taking everything."
The group eventually established the village of Nikolaevsk in 1968 after a sojourn in Brazil.
This village, located on the Kenai Peninsula, is almost like a time capsule, comparable to Amish
or Mennonite towns. Women wear head coverings and long skirts, men don beards, and Russian has
traditionally been the chosen language. In some stricter Old Believer villages outside Nikolaevsk,
outsiders are not permitted to enter for fear that they will corrupt the lifestyle.
Despite attempts to shut out the world, Nikolaevsk's current head priest has noted
the community has increasingly shifted to English. Many of the town's youth operate
principally in English rather than Russian, and many children don't speak it at all. Thus, it
seems that Nikolaevsk's Old Believers have become more open to the world, even if reluctantly.