Nearly two centuries have passed since the Russian seamen landed and no word has come from them. For more than seventy years the Russian Government sought for some sign of their fate.[[1]] Tales were told of a colony of Russians existing on the coast but each upon investigation proved but a rumor.
There is a dim tradition among the Sitkas of men being lured ashore in the long ago. They say that Chief Annahootz, the predecessor of the chief of that name who was the firm friend of the whites at Sitka in 1878, was the leading actor in the tragedy. Annahootz dressed himself in the skin of a bear and played along the beach. So skillfully did he simulate the sinuous motions of the animal that the Russians in the excitement of the chase plunged into the woods in pursuit and there the savage warriors killed them to a man, leaving none to tell the story. The disappearance of Chirikof’s men has remained one of the many unsolved mysteries of the Northland, and their fate will never be known to a certainty.
The faulty record of the navigation of a time that counted by dead reckoning, and without a knowledge of the currents of those seas, does not tell us the exact location of the anchorage, but beyond a reasonable doubt it was in Sitka Sound, and the Russian seamen died at the hands of the Sitka Kwan of the Thlingits. In this manner Sitka first became known to the White Man’s World.
On the 16th day of August, 1775, came the Royal Standard of Spain, flung to the breeze from the little schooner “Sonora,” only 36 feet in length, under command of Don Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra. Quadra was one of the greatest and best of the Spanish navigators in the North. His voyages are among the most successful of those of the mariners of his nation in the waters of the north Pacific ocean, and his name was once linked with that of the English Commander on the island now bearing the name of Vancouver. Quadra came from the Mexican port of San Blas, and after many thrilling adventures and grievous hardships he sailed into a broad bay and dropped anchor. There was a mountain, of which he says: “Of the most regular and beautiful form I had ever seen. It was also quite detached from the great ridge of mountains. Its top was covered with snow, under which appeared some gullies, which continue till about the middle of the mountain, and from thence to the bottom are trees of the same kind as those at Trinity.”
Mount Edgecumbe.
He named the mountain San Jacinthus, and the point of the island that extends out toward the sea, Cape del Engano. No one who has looked upon the slopes of the mountain which stands to the seaward from Sitka can mistake the description. He anchored in what is now known as Krestof Bay, about six miles northwest from Sitka, and he called it Port Guadalupe.
Captain Cook, on his Third Voyage of Exploration, in 1778, with the ships “Resolution” and “Discovery,” passed along the coast and noted the bay, of which he says: “An arm of this bay, in the northern part of it, seemed to extend in toward the north, behind a round elevated mountain I called Mount Edgecumbe, and the point of land that shoots out from it Cape Edgecumbe.” This name supplanted the one given by the Spaniard and the beautiful cone is yet known by the title he bestowed.
The early Russians called the mountain St. Lazaria, assuming that it was the peak seen by Chirikof on his ill fated voyage of discovery and so named by him. The small island at the south is still known as San Lazaria Island.