It took seventeen years to date from the signing of the treaty until the Congress of the United States grudgingly granted a skeleton form of government to this one Territory that has proved itself a paying investment from the start. Every year the President called the attention of Congress to the matter, and once the commander of a Russian man-of-war on the Pacific coast announced his intention of going up to Sitka to examine into the defenceless and deplorable condition of the Russian residents, to whom the United States had not given the protection and civil rights guaranteed in the treaty. He never carried out his intentions, however, and the neglected citizens had to wait.
After innumerable petitions and the presentation in Congress of some thirty bills to grant a civil government to Alaska, the inhabitants were on the point of having the Russian residents of the Territory unite in a petition to the Czar, asking him to secure for them the protection and the rights guaranteed in the treaty of 1869. The Russian government would doubtless have enjoyed memorializing the United States in such a cause, after the way the republic has taken foreign governments to task for the persecutions of Jews, peasants, and subjects within European borders.
Senator Harrison’s bill to provide a civil government for Alaska was introduced on the 4th of December, 1883, and, with amendments, passed the Senate on the 24th of January, 1884. It was approved by the House of Representatives on the 13th of May, and, receiving President Arthur’s signature, Alaska at last became a Territory, but not a land district of the United States, anomalous as that may seem.
Hon. John H. Kinkead, ex-Governor of Nevada, and who had once resided at Sitka as postmaster and post trader, was made the first executive. The other officers of this first government were: John G. Brady, Commissioner at Sitka; Henry States, Commissioner at Juneau; George P. Ihrie, Commissioner at Fort Wrangell; Chester Seeber, Commissioner at Ounalaska; Ward MacAllister, jr., United States District Judge; E. W. Haskell, United States District Attorney; M. C. Hillyer, United States Marshal for the District of Alaska; and Andrew T. Lewis, Clerk of Court. These officers reached their stations in September, 1884, and the rule of civil law followed the long interregnum of military, man-of-war, and revenue government in the country that was not a Territory, but only a customs district, and an Indian reservation without an agent.
The most sanguine do not expect to see Alaska enter the sisterhood of States during this century, but they claim with reason that southeastern Alaska will develop so rapidly that it will become necessary to make it a separate Territory with full and complete form of government, and skeleton rule be confined to the dreary and inhospitable regions of the Yukon mainland.
The citizens who have struggled against such tremendous odds for so many years were rather bitter in their comments upon the tardy and ungracious action of Congress in giving them only a skeleton government; and the Russians and Creoles are more loyal to the Czar at heart, after experiencing these seventeen years in a free country. To a lady who tried to buy some illusion or tulle in a store at Sitka, the trader blurted out, “No, ma’am, there’s no illusion in Alaska. It’s all reality here, and pretty hard at that, the way the government treats us.”
The dim ideas that the outside world had of the condition of Alaska was evinced by the stories Major Morris used to tell of dozens of letters that were addressed to “The United States Consul at Sitka.” Governors of States and more favored Territories regularly sent their Thanksgiving Proclamations to “The Governor of Alaska Territory,” long before the neglected country had any such an official as a governor, or any right to such a courteous appellation as “Territory.”
CHAPTER XVI.
EDUCATION IN ALASKA.
Although the pride of this most advanced and enlightened nation of the earth is its public school system, the United States has done nothing for education in Alaska. According to Petroff’s historical record, from which the following resumé is made, the Russian school system began in 1874, when Gregory Shelikoff, a founder and director of the fur company, established a small school at Kodiak. He taught only the rudiments to the native Aleuts, and his wife instructed the women in sewing and household arts. Through Shelikoff’s efforts the empress, Catherine II., by special ukase of June 30, 1793, instructed the metropolite Gabriel to send missionaries to her American possessions. In 1794 the archimandrite, Ivassof, seven clergymen, and two laymen reached Kodiak. Germand, a member of this party, established a school on Spruce Island, and for forty years gave religious instruction and agricultural and industrial teachings to the natives.
In 1820 a school was established at Sitka, and instruction given in the Russian language and religion, the fundamental branches, navigation, and the trades; the object in all these schools maintained by the government and the fur company being to raise up competent navigators, clerks, and traders for the company’s ranks.