Analyzing this table, we arrive at a clearer insight into the affairs of the Company. If its receipts have been considerable, they have been subject to serious deductions. From the expenditures we also learn something of the obligations we are about to assume.
Another table shows that during this same period 122,006 rubles were received for ice, mostly sent to California, 26,399 rubles for timber, and 6,250 for coal. I think it not improbable that these items are included in the list of “receipts” under the term “other traffics.”
In Russia the churches belong to the Government, and this rule prevails in these districts, where are four Greek churches and five Greek chapels. There is also a Protestant church at Sitka. I am glad to add that at the latter place there is a public library, which some years ago contained seventeen hundred volumes, together with journals, charts, atlases, mathematical and astronomical instruments. In Atcha, Oonalaska, Kadiak, and Sitka schools are reported at the expense of the Company, though not on a very comprehensive scale; for Admiral Wrangell mentions only ninety boys as enjoying these advantages in 1839. In Oonalaska and Kadiak there were at the same time orphan asylums for girls, where there were in all about thirty; but the Admiral adds, that “these useful institutions will, without doubt, be improved to the utmost.” Besides these, which are confined to particular localities, there is said to be a hospital near every factory in all the districts.
I have no means of knowing if these territorial subdivisions have undergone recent modification. They will be found in the “Russischen Besitzungen” of Wrangell, published in 1839, in the “Geographie” of Wappäus in 1856, and in the “Archiv von Russland” of 1863, containing the article on the Report of Golowin. I am thus particular with regard to them from a double motive. Besides helping us to understand the government, they afford suggestions of practical importance in any future organization.
The Company has not been without criticism. Pictures of it are by no means rose color. These, too, furnish instruction. Early in the century its administration was the occasion of open and repeated complaint. It was pronounced harsh and despotic. Langsdorff is indignant that “a free trading company should exist independent, as it were, of the Government, not confined within any definite regulations, but who can exercise their authority free and uncontrolled, nay, even unpunished, over so vast an extent of country.” In stating the case, he adds, that “the Russian subject here enjoys no protection of his property, lives in no security, and, if oppressed, has no one to whom he can apply for justice. The agents of the factories, and their subordinate officers, influenced by humor or interest, decide everything arbitrarily.” And this arbitrary power seems to have prevailed wherever a factory was established. “The stewardship in each single establishment is entirely despotic; though nominally depending upon the principal factory at Kadiak, these stewards do just what they please, without the possibility of their being called to account.” If such was the condition of Russians, what must have been that of natives? Here the witness answers: “I have seen the Russian fur-hunters dispose of the lives of the natives solely according to their own arbitrary will, and put these defenceless creatures to death in the most horrible manner.”[60] Our own D’Wolf records Langsdorff’s remonstrance in behalf of “the poor Russians,” and adds that it was “but to little purpose.”[61] Krusenstern concurs in this testimony, and, if possible, darkens the colors. According to him, “Every one must obey the iron rule of the agent of the American Company; nor can there be either personal property or individual security, where there are no laws. The chief agent of the American Company is the boundless despot over an extent of country which, comprising the Aleutian Islands, stretches from 57° to 61° of latitude and from 130° to 190° of east longitude”; and he adds, in a note, “There are no courts of justice in Kadiak, nor any of the Company’s possessions.”[62] Chamisso, the naturalist of Kotzebue’s expedition, while confessing incompetency to speak on the treatment of the natives by the Company, declares “his wounded feelings and his commiseration.”[63] It is too probable that the melancholy story of our own aborigines has been repeated. As these criticisms were by Russian officers, they must have had a certain effect. I cannot believe that the recent government, administered by the enlightened magistrates of whom we have heard, has been obnoxious to such terrible accusations; nor must it be forgotten that the report of Lisiansky, contemporaneous with those of Langsdorff and Krusenstern, is much less painful.
Baranoff, who had been so long superintendent, retired in 1818. He is much praised by Langsdorff, who saw him in 1805-6, and by Lütke, who was at Sitka in 1828. Both attribute to him a genius for his place, and a disinterested devotion to the interests of the Company, whose confidence he enjoyed to the end. D’Wolf says, “He possessed a strong mind, easy manners and deportment,” and “commanded the greatest respect from the Indians.”[64] Although administering affairs for more than a generation without rendering accounts, he died poor. He was succeeded by Captain Hagemeister. Since then, according to Lütke, an infinity of reforms has taken place, by which order and system have been introduced.
The Russian officer, Captain Golowin, who visited these possessions in 1860, has recommended certain institutional reforms, which are not without interest at this time. His recommendations concern the governor and the people. According to him, the governor should be appointed by the Crown with the concurrence of the Company, removable only when his continuance is plainly injurious to the colony; he should be subject only to the Crown, and his powers should be limited, especially in regard to the natives; he should provide protection for the colonists by means of cruisers, and should personally visit every district annually; the colonists, Creoles, and subject natives, such as the Aleutians, should be governed by magistrates of their own selection; the name of “free Creole” should cease; all disputes should be settled by the local magistrates, unless the parties desire an appeal to the governor; schools should be encouraged, and, if necessary, provided at the public expense. These suggestions, in the nature of a reform bill, foreshadow a condition of self-government in harmony with republican institutions.
It is evident that these Russian settlements, distributed through an immense region and far from any civilized neighborhood, have little in common with those of European nations elsewhere, unless we except the Danish on the west coast of Greenland. Nearly all are on the coast or the islands. They are nothing but “villages” or “factories” under protection of palisades. Sitka is an exception, due unquestionably to its selection as headquarters of the Government, and also to the eminent character of the governors who have made it their home. The executive mansion and the social life there have been described by recent visitors, who acknowledged the charms of politeness on this distant northwestern coast. Lütke portrays life among its fogs, and especially the attractions of the governor’s house. This was in the time of Admiral Wrangell, whose wife, possessing a high education, embellished the wilderness by her presence, and furnished an example of a refined and happy household. His account of Sitkan hospitality differs in some respects from that of English writers who succeeded. He records that fish was the staple dish at the tables of functionaries as well as of the poor, and that the chief functionary himself was rarely able to have meat for dinner. During the winter, a species of wild sheep, the Musmon or Argali, also known in Siberia, and hunted in the forests, furnished an occasional supply. But a fish diet did not prevent his house from being delightful,—as was that of Baranoff, at an earlier day, according to D’Wolf, who speaks of “an abundance of good cheer.”[65]
Sir Edward Belcher, the English circumnavigator, while on his voyage round the world, stopped there. From him we have an account of the executive mansion and fortifications, which will not be out of place in this attempt to portray the existing Government. The house is of wood, described as “solid,” one hundred and forty feet in length by seventy feet wide, of two stories, with lofts, capped by a light-house in the centre of the roof, which is covered with sheet-iron. It is about sixty feet above the sea-level, and completely commands all the anchorage in the neighborhood. Behind is a line of picketed logs twenty-five feet in height, flanked at the angles by block-houses, loopholed and furnished with small guns and swivels. The fortifications, when complete, “will comprise five sides, upon which forty pieces of cannon will be mounted, principally old ship-guns, varying from twelve to twenty-four pounders.” The arsenal is praised for the best of cordage in ample store, and for the best of artificers in every department. The interior of the Greek church was found to be “splendid, quite beyond conception in such a place as this.” The school and hospital had a “comparative cleanliness and comfort, and much to admire,—although a man-of-war’s man’s ideas of cleanliness are perhaps occasionally acute.” But it is the social life which seems to have most surprised the gallant captain. After telling us that “on their Sunday all the officers of the establishment, civil as well as military, dine at the governor’s,” he introduces us to an evening party and dance, which the latter gave to show his English guest “the female society of Sitka,” and records that everything “passed most delightfully,” especially, that, “although the ladies were almost self-taught, they acquitted themselves with all the ease and elegance communicated by European instruction.” Sir Edward adds, that “the society is indebted principally to the governor’s elegant and accomplished lady—who is of one of the first Russian families—for much of this polish”; and he describes sympathetically her long journey through Siberia with her husband, “on horse-back or mules, enduring great hardships, in a most critical moment, in order to share with him the privations of this barbarous region.” But, according to him, barbarism is disappearing; and he concludes by declaring that “the whole establishment appears to be rapidly on the advance, and at no distant period we may hear of a trip to Norfolk Sound through America as little more than a summer excursion.”[66] Is not this time near at hand?
Four years afterward, Sir George Simpson, governor-in-chief of the Hudson’s Bay Company, on his overland journey round the world, stopped at Sitka. He had just crossed the continent by way of the Red River settlements to Vancouver. He, too, seems to have been pleased. He shows us in the harbor “five sailing vessels, ranging between two hundred and three hundred and fifty tons, besides a large bark in the offing in tow of a steamer”; and he carries us to the executive mansion, already described, which reappears as “a suite of apartments, communicating, according to the Russian fashion, with each other, all the public rooms being handsomely decorated and richly furnished, commanding a view of the whole establishment, which was in fact a little village, while about half-way down the rock two batteries on terraces frowned respectively over the land and the water.” There was another Administrator-General since the visit of Sir Edward Belcher; but again the wife plays her charming part. After portraying her as a native of Helsingfors, in Finland, the visitor adds: “So that this pretty and ladylike woman had come to this, her secluded home, from the farthest extremity of the Empire.” Evidently in a mood beyond contentment, he says: “We sat down to a good dinner in the French style, the party, in addition to our host and hostess and ourselves, comprising twelve of the Company’s officers”; and his final judgment seems to be given, when he says: “The good folks of New Archangel appear to live well. The surrounding country abounds in the chevreuil, the finest meat that I ever ate, with the single exception of moose,” while “in a little stream which is within a mile of the fort salmon are so plentiful at the proper season, that, when ascending the river, they have been known literally to embarrass the movements of a canoe.”[67] Such is the testimony.