Alaska, the Great Country - Ella Higginson

With the clearness of vision which distinguished his whole career, Shelikoff selected Alexander Baranoff as his agent in the territory lying to the eastward of Kodiak. In Voskressenski, or Sunday, Harbor—now Resurrection Bay, on which the town of Seward is situated—Baranoff built in 1794 the first vessel to glide into the waters of Northwestern America—the Phœnix. At the request of Shelikoff a colony of two hundred convicts, accompanied by twenty priests, were sent out by imperial ukase, and established at Yakutat Bay, under Baranoff. During the years that followed many complaints were entered by the clergy against Baranoff for cruelty, licentiousness, and mismanagement of the company's affairs. But, whatever his faults may have been, it is certain that no man could have done so much for the promotion of the company's interests at that time as Baranoff; nor could any other so efficiently have conducted its affairs.

It was during his governorship that the rose of success bloomed brilliantly for the Russian-American Company in the colonies. He was a shrewd, tireless, practical business man. His successors were men distinguished in army and navy circles, haughty and patrician, but absolutely lacking in business ability, and ignorant of the unique conditions and needs of the country.

After Baranoff's resignation and death, the revenues of the company rapidly declined, and its vast operations were conducted at a loss.

It was in 1791 that Baranoff assumed command of all the establishments on the island of the Shelikoff Company which, under imperial patronage, had already secured a partial monopoly of the American fur trade. Owing to competition by independent traders, the large company, after the death of Shelikoff, united with its most influential rival, under the name of the Shelikoff United Company. The following year this company secured an imperial ukase which granted to it, under the name of the Russian-American Company, "full privileges, for a period of twenty years, on the coast of Northwestern America, beginning from latitude fifty-five degrees North, and including the chain of islands extending from Kamchatka northward to America and southward to Japan; the exclusive right to all enterprises, whether hunting, trading, or building, and to new discoveries, with strict prohibition from profiting by any of these pursuits, not only to all parties who might engage in them on their own responsibility, but also to those who formerly had ships and establishments there, except those who have united with the new company."

In the same year a fort was established by Baranoff, on what is now Sitka Sound. This was destroyed by natives; and in 1804 another fort was erected by Baranoff, near the site of the former one, which he named Fort Archangel Michael. This fort is the present Sitka. Its establishment enabled the Russian-American Company to extend its operations to the islands lying southward and along the continental shore.

We now come to the most fascinating portion of the history of Alaska. Not even the wild and romantic days of gold excitement in the Klondike can equal Baranoff's reign at Sitka for picturesqueness and mysterious charm. The strength and personality of the man were such that to-day one who is familiar with his life and story, entering Sitka, will unconsciously feel his presence; and will turn, with a sigh, to gaze upon the commanding height where once his castle stood.

There were many dark and hopeless days for Baranoff during his first years with the company, and it was while in a state of deep discouragement and hopelessness that he received the news of his appointment as chief manager of the newly organized Russian-American Company. Most of his plans and undertakings had failed; many Russians and natives had been lost on hunting voyages; English and American traders had superseded him at every point to the eastward of Kodiak; many of his Aleutian hunters had been killed in conflict with the savage Thlinkits; he had lost a sloop which had been constructed at Voskressenski Bay; and finally, he had returned to Kodiak enduring the agonies of inflammatory rheumatism, only to be reproached by the subordinates, who were suffering of actual hunger—so long had they been without relief from supply ships.