CHAPTER II

SETTLEMENT

The sea-otter, a marine animal about four feet in length when fully grown, with soft, long black pelage of silky texture, is one of the most valued of the fur-bearers. It was found abundantly all the way along the Northwest Coast, and especially in the passages about Sitka. It is now nearly extinct.

The Russians had been gathering the skins of the sea-otter in the northern waters for years, ever since Chirikof made his voyage to Sitka, and they were truly an El Dorado, in fur, to the traders who plied their trade along the coasts. Captain Cook and his sailors, when on their voyage in these waters, bought skins for mere trifles, some for a handful of iron nails. These same skins sold for as much as sixty dollars each in China where they visited on their way home. The story of the furs went over the world and English, French and American traders thronged to these waters to sail their ships into the straits and barter for the rich pelts. To secure a profit of $50,000 on a voyage was not unusual. Ingraham, the lieutenant of Captain Gray whom we all know so well for his discovery of the great River of the West, sailed to near Sitka before his principal entered the river which he named for his ship, the Columbia. The French ship "Solide," in 1791, sailed from France to gather a portion of the harvest. Her captain, Étienne Marchand, anchored in Sitka Bay, and called it _Tchinkitinay_, as he declares it was known to the natives. To his ship flocked the painted and skin-clad natives with their peltries for barter. On their persons he saw articles of European manufacture, showing that other ships had visited there, and in the ears of one young savage were hanging pendant two copper coins of the colony of Massachusetts. His success in trade was not such as he might have wished, so he sailed way, remarking that, "The modern Hebrews would, perhaps, have little to teach to these people in the art of trade."

March 31st, 1799, the Yankee skipper, Cleveland, of the merchant ship "Caroline," sailed into the bay, dropped anchor and fired a cannon shot as a signal. He was one of those shrewd, lean traders, skilled in navigation, who sailed from Boston round the Horn, with their bucko mates, who could drive a tack with the prow of a ship, so to speak, and in those days there were no corners of the earth where they might not be found seeking for profit. He was wise to the ways of the sharp trading canoemen of these waters, and their aggressive proclivities, so he prepared his ship with regard for all the possibilities of the business. Around it as a bulwark he stretched a barrier of dry bull hides brought from the California coast. At the stern was a place prepared for the trading. Forward on the deck were planted cannon, shotted with shrapnel, trained so as to rake the afterdeck, and beside each was a gunner's match.

On the first day, for two hundred yards of broadcloth, he purchased a hundred prime sea-otter skins, worth $50 each in Canton. Barter was going merrily on, when a scream from amidships startled the crew. The Thlingits sprang to their boats. The squaws backed the canoes away from the ship's sides. Arrows were fitted to bowstrings, spears were poised and muskets primed. On the ships the sailors lighted the cannon matches and stood by ready to fire. A fight was hovering in the air when the cause of the disturbance was discovered. An inquisitive Thlingit pried between the bull hides opposite the cook's galley, and the cook had saluted him with a ladle of hot water. In his surprise he upset his canoe and his family were struggling in the sea. His baby was rescued by a seaman, amends were made to his injured feelings, and the barter proceeded as before.

The waters were filled with ships. In a stay of a month the "Caroline" spoke the ship "Hancock," the ship "Despatch," the ship "Ulysses," and the ship "Eliza," all of Boston; and the English ship "Cheerful," all trading for furs among the Sitkan Islands.

The Russians, in their colony on Kodiak Island, were jealous of the intruders on what they considered as their domain. Gregory Shelikof, a Siberian merchant, one of the wealthiest and most far seeing of the leaders among the Aleutian Islands, conceived the plan of combining the whole of the fur trade in one great monopoly. In pursuance of this policy he secured a charter from Emperor Paul in 1799, under the name of the Russian American Company, which gave the exclusive right to all profits to be derived from every form of resource in the Russian possessions in America for a period of twenty years. To the management of his business in the Colony he established on Kodiak Island he appointed Alexander Andreevich Baranof, a Siberian trader of great ability and experience. Baranof, the wise and far-seeing Russian ruler of the Russian American Company, at his factory in St. Paul's Harbor on Kodiak Island, had long planned the extension of his settlements to the southeast. The sea-otter catch of the Russians was made by brigades of Aleuts from the western islands, who went along the shores and to sea as far as 20 miles, in their wonderful skin boats called bidarkas, to hunt. When a sea-otter lifted its head from the water to breathe, within sight of a detachment of Aleut hunters, its fate was sealed, for it seldom escaped.

The passages between the islands about Sitka were called the "Straits" by the Russians, and in them the sea-otter skins were taken by the thousands. It was not unusual for a Russian hunting party consisting of a hundred bidarkas to take on one expedition 2,000 skins of the _Morski bobrov_, as they called the sea-otter.

The animals were becoming scarce in the seas about the western islands and Baranof was compelled to replenish his trade by the catch of the southeastern waters. In 1795 he sent one of his ships as far south as the Queen Charlotte Islands and it visited Sitka on the way. Two thousand skins were secured by the hunters while on this voyage. In the same year Baranof himself paid Sitka a visit, coming through the strait from the north in his little schooner "Olga," a 40-foot boat, and he named the passage for his craft as Olga Strait. On the shore near his anchorage he erected a cross; the bay he named Krestof Bay, and he then selected the locality of his future settlement.

In the spring of 1799, Baranof sent orders to the toyons, or chiefs, of the tribes on the islands around Kodiak to assemble the hunters. Five hundred and fifty bidarkas, each manned by from two to three Aleut paddlers, came in answer to his call, and with two convoying ships he set sail for Sitka Sound. On July 7th he landed at a bay six miles north of the present town of Sitka, purchased a tract of land from Skayeutlelt, a local chief, and began the construction of a post which he named redoubt St. Michael. The building was done under great difficulties. Rain fell incessantly. There were but thirty Russian workmen as most of the Aleuts returned to Kodiak, hunting as they went. Of the men who remained ten had to stand guard constantly, for the Thlingits were not to be trusted. Barracks, storehouses, quarters for the commanding officer, were constructed; a bath house also, for the Russian must have his bath, and the whole was surrounded by a stockade and strengthened by blockhouses. Their troubles were not all with the elements, for during the winter the scarcity of provision and other causes brought scurvy to add to their discomfort. Their food was mostly yuhali (dried salmon), but during the winter the hunters took 40 sea-lions, and in the spring many seals were killed in the bay by the Aleuts.

The natives, called Thlingits at the present, were known as the Kolosh by the Russians. They were divided among themselves in their feelings toward the new settlers in their midst. Some looked with extreme disfavor upon the establishment, while others were friendly. The young and turbulent warriors were hostile. A messenger was sent to invite them to a prasdnik (holiday) at the fort. He was taken prisoner by them and detained until Baranof landed in their midst with an armed force and demanded his release, when they set him free and ridiculed the incident. At a dance at the fort many of the Kolosh came with long knives concealed under their cloaks. Their treachery was detected and their design frustrated. The courage and caution of Baranof held them in check until spring when he departed for Kodiak, leaving strict instructions as to the precautions to be observed during his absence. After his departure the discipline grew more lax and the Kolosh became more bold. The watchful savages at last saw an opportunity to rid themselves of their new neighbors.

On a June day of 1802, the exact date is not recorded, a horde of painted savages burst from the forest, clad in all the paraphernalia of war masks and barbaric armour. A fleet of war canoes landed warriors on the beach in front of the redoubt. In the attack that followed the stockade and buildings were reduced to smoking ruins, the magazines were robbed of rich stores of furs, most of the defenders died on the spears of the Kolosh or were tortured till death relieved their sufferings, and the women and children were made slaves. Skayeutlelt, the false friend of Baranof, directed the battle from a nearby knoll and his nephew, Katlean, was one of the principal actors in the bloody tragedy. A few survivors who were hunting in their bidarkas or were in the forest, escaped to the ships of the English and American traders which were in the bay.

Captain Ebbetts on an American ship and Captain Barber of the British ship "Myrtle" were in the harbor. Some of the survivors on reaching these ships asked them to rescue their countrymen. Captain Ebbetts ransomed several prisoners, but Captain Barber adopted a more effective course. Chief Katlean and Chief Skayeutlelt came on board his ship to trade. He at once put them in irons and threatened to hang them to the yardarm of the ship if the captives remaining in the hands of the natives, and also the plundered sea-otter skins, were not immediately surrendered to him. The threat was effective, the greater part of the sea-otter furs and several captives were brought on the ship and delivered to him. He then took the ransomed captives from the other ship and sailed for Kodiak, where he demanded a ransom of 50,000 rubles from Baranof for the captives. The ransom was later reduced to 10,000 rubles which was paid by Mr. Baranof.

Two years passed before much is again known of Sitka. English and American captains sailed their ships into the harbor and gathered the furs which Baranof had endeavored to garner in the storehouses of the Russian American Company. In the summer of 1804 Baranof gathered a force at Kodiak with which to cross the Gulf of Alaska to re-establish his post. There were one hundred and fifty bearded _promyshileniks_, or fur hunters, and over 500 Aleuts in their skin bidarkas. With him were the ships "Alexander," "Ekaterina," "Yermak," and "Rostislaf." When they reached Sitka they found there Captain Lisianski of the Imperial Russian Navy, with the ship "Neva," one of the first Russians to circle the globe, and who came to help to recapture the post.

The Indian village of Sitka was almost in the same place as the present town, grouped around the Baranof hill which was called by the Russians a _kekoor_. On the top of the kekoor was a redoubt, and a stronger fort was near the mouth of the Indian River, or _Kolosh Ryeku_.

On the morning of September 28th the Russian ships moved to a point opposite the village, the "Neva" being towed by a hundred bidarkas. The Sitkans abandoned their village and the fort on the hill and withdrew to the stronger fortification near the river. Baranof landed a force and occupied the kekoor, planted cannon on the top, then opened negotiations for the surrender of the other fort, but his overtures were rejected by the Indians.

The ships were brought near the river fort and the cannon were trained on it. The fort was built of thick logs in the shape of an irregular square, with portholes on the side next the sea, and inside the breast works were 14 barabaras, or native houses.

The walls were of such thickness that the cannon shot from the "Neva" made but little impression on the structure. Baranof was impatient and urged an attack. Reinforcements were landed from the ships under command of Lieutenants Arbusof and Polavishin. The hunters, sailors, and Aleuts flung themselves against the fortifications, but meeting a murderous fire were driven back in disorder and only saved from disaster by the protection of the fire of the ships. Ten men were killed and 26 wounded, and among the wounded was Baranof.

Captain Lisianski then took command and moved his ships nearer the shore. A canoe with reinforcements and a supply of powder for the Indians approached among the islands but a shot from the "Neva" struck it, the powder exploded, and the Indians who were saved from the wreck were taken on board the Russian ship. The bombardment was steadily continued until the 6th of October, when the Kolosh proposed to surrender, and a parley was held, but during the night they evacuated the fort and went over the mountains to the north. In the fort were left the bodies of 30 warriors and also the bodies of five children who had been killed to prevent their cries making the retreat known to the Russians. The only remaining survivors were two old women and a little boy. A few straggling warriors remained lurking about, seeking revenge, and a few days later they killed eight Aleuts who were fishing on Jamestown Bay.

How the Kolosh went over the mountains was long a mystery to the Russians. They reached the shore of Peril Strait and crossing to the north shore placed a fort near the entrance to Sitkoh Bay which was stronger than their old fort at Indian River and where over 1,000 people gathered. A tradition among the old Indians says that the fugitives first went to Old Sitka, then over the mountains to the northeastern side of the island. On the way they suffered extremely from fatigue and hunger, and one Sitka Indian who lives on Peril Strait relates that his father was a child at the time of the exodus. His father carried him till exhausted, when he abandoned him, and his mother then took him up and carried him the remainder of the way.

The property left in the fort by the Kolosh was taken out, the fortification was burned and the canoes on the beach were broken to pieces. There was enough remaining of the structure that some of the remains of the foundation may yet be seen in the forest which has sprung up around it in the Indian River Park, although more than a century has since elapsed.

Then began the restoration of the post, on the present site of Sitka, and with energy and despatch the building of a new Russian settlement proceeded. Around the kekoor the native houses were removed, and along with them more than a hundred burial houses with the ashes of the bodies which had been burned. The great tribal houses, or barabaras, as they are called in the Russian accounts, were spacious, some measuring 50 feet in width and 80 feet in length.[2] In their place rose the town of New Archangel (_Novo Arkangelsk_,) and on the kekoor was built a redoubt. This was the official name and generally recognized by the Russians, but the name Sitka was early used by them. Baranof frequently used the term Sitka in his letters, and in the letter of the Minister of Finance to the Minister of Marine, from St. Petersburg, April 9, 1820, Sitka is used in several places. The name Sitka, or Sheetkah, in the Thlingit language, means, in this place, that this is the place, or the best place, implying superiority over all other places.

All winter there was cutting of logs in the forest and by the spring of 1805 there were eight substantial buildings, the space for 15 kitchen gardens had been cleared, the livestock brought on the ships were thriving, and an air of prosperity pervaded the place.[3] Surveys of the harbor were made by Captain Lisianski who also made the first ascent of Mt. Edgecumbe, and who then sailed for Kronstadt, Russia, by the way of Canton, with a cargo of furs for the China trade valued at 450,000 rubles.[4]