Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

Shellikov sent out a scouting party and captured a Kaniag, brought him into camp, and loaded the bewildered native with presents and kindness, then sent him back to his people; but the native, though won wholly over himself,[49] could not prevail upon his hostile countrymen, who soon gave the Russians ample evidence of their enmity. A party of the latter in two of the ships’ boats were exploring and hunting, when they were disturbed by the appearance of a “perfect cloud” of natives that were encamped on rough and precipitous uplands of Oogak Island, a short distance from the main island itself. Shellikov resolved to proceed himself to the spot and endeavor to win them over to amity and trade. He exhausted every art of pacification that his ready wit could suggest without making the slightest favorable impression upon these men, who treasured up in the liveliest recollection those outrages and indignities which they had hitherto suffered from the arms and vices of Shellikov’s Muscovitic predecessors. The only answer that they made to the trader now was that he at once embark and leave the island, and a few arrows and bird-spears were discharged and thrown at him by way of clinching the argument. The Russians retired to their camp, and wisely erected over day a rude stockade—none too quick, for these Kaniags approached the harbor in the middle of the night, unobserved, and threw themselves with frenzied fury upon the slightly fortified Russians. The battle lasted until daylight. The necessity and instinct of self-preservation caused the whites to fight with desperate coolness and intrepidity. The slaughter was great among the natives, and, considering the vastly inferior numbers of the Russians, their loss, too, was heavy. In spite of the bravery of the whites in this terrible midnight struggle, they would have been overpowered and exterminated ere the dawning, had it not been for the consternation which the reports of their small iron two-pounders created in the assailing ranks of those dusky hosts.

Recognizing the fact that now the only hope of peace and commercial intercourse with these natives lay in their complete subjugation, Shellikov, immediately after the sullen retreat of the hostiles, armed one of his vessels and followed them up to their rocky fortresses in Oogak, where they had taken up a position that was well-nigh impregnable, and to which savage reinforcements were rapidly flocking from the main islands. Unable to reach the entrenched camp of those defiant natives with the small ship’s-cannon, Shellikov picked a party of sixty men out of his company, went ashore with them, and, with his little iron two-pounders, he stormed the enemy with such impetuosity that the rapid discharges of these guns and small firearms of the charging Russians utterly demoralized an immensely superior force of the savages, who became panic-stricken, and actually jumped by scores off the high bluffs of Oogak into the sea, hundreds of feet below; the rest of them, more than a thousand souls, surrendered to the Russians, who took and located them on a rocky islet, several miles from the harbor of Three Saints, and temporarily provided them with provisions; and then, with hunting-gear, they were set to work and liberally paid for their peltries. Twenty or thirty of their leaders were kept as hostages on the vessels, and the result was entire submission everywhere afterward to the Russians in this region. Occasional attacks and massacres would now and then be made upon far-distant hunting parties of the Russians, it is true, but the moral effect of the Oogak victory and slaughter was such among the Kadiakers that no further combined organized resistance or opposition was ever given again.

Shellikov soon realized that he was in no further danger from savage attacks. He began a most extensive and thorough exploration of the great island, and organizations of trading-posts at every eligible point. He sent a large party around to the north side and located it at Karlook, where we now find quite a salmon-canning establishment. Here, during the winter of 1785-86 fifty-two Russians and as many natives ranged all over the water of Shellikov Straits in eager search of the sea-otter; in the meantime the whites under Shellikov’s immediate command were actively examining the recesses and fiörds which are so numerous and deep on the south side of Kadiak. So well and so thoroughly was this work carried out, that by the beginning of 1786 Shellikov had made himself well acquainted with the whole region—had established his trading-posts at every point between Shooak, in the north, and Trinity Islands, at the extreme south; and had even made himself tolerably familiar with the coast of Cook’s Inlet, having chastised the ugly Kenaitze in a most summary manner.

Again, this remarkable man is distinguished by the successful and sensible effort which he made in substituting for the orgies of Kadiak demonology the practices of the Greek Church, which, he wisely foresaw, if effected, would bind the natives closer to the Russians than any other power. He was aided in this by the personal labors and example of his wife, who accompanied him at the outset. She instructed the girls and women in needle-work, and acquired an influence over them that was very great. Feeling certain that he had established his trade on a secure foundation, Shellikov and his wife sailed for home on May 22, 1786, in the same vessel which brought them out, leaving an impress of enduring character upon Alaska of the greatest good and worth.

During the first years of the existence of the Shellikov Company, thus established here in Kadiak, it enjoyed the partial protection of the Crown and many exclusive privileges, by which advantages nearly all the smaller trading companies had been fairly crowded out of the country. But it was not always the power conferred upon a great firm by its favor at Court and larger capital that gained supremacy in Alaska during those early days—it frequently occurred that the employés of one association resorted to physical force of arms in dispossessing those of another, and then, this order initiated, the strongest organization was sure to eventually dominate the coveted region. This commercial anarchy led to the autocratic monopoly of the Russian American Company in a very few years—it was the best thing that could then have transpired for Alaska and its people.

The approach to Kadiak from the ocean is striking, because it and the numerous islets and islands that join it closely are mountainous and hilly, with many lofty peaks that have plateaux and ravines full of eternal snow. It is not often seen clearly, however, along its full extent of wild topography, on account of clouds, fog and boisterous weather, which terrifies the navigator, driving him from its vision. It is, however, an island that affords the greatest number of safe and snug harbors, and has no rival as the most enjoyable place for the traveller to visit. It so justifies us in our mind to-day, just as it warranted the Russians in expressing their preference for it a full hundred years ago.

Nature has drawn across Kadiak in a firm line, the ultimate limit of timber growth to the westward. It seems to be as arbitrary and capricious as if traced there by the humor of a human ruler. Only one-third of the island itself, its northern extremity, is covered with spruce-forest; the invisible barrier to the west seems to be a perfectly straight line over from the heads of Orlova Bay on the south side to that of Ooganok on the north coast. Here the change from a vigorous growth of spruce-forest to bare hills and grassy tundra is most abrupt and astonishingly sharp in definition; you pass from the jungle of the woods, at a single step, into heather of the moor. This line, with a slight curve to the westward only, strikes the same definition over on the mainland of the peninsula opposite, and runs right up north to Bering’s Straits’ latitude, avoiding the coast everywhere except at Cape Denbigh, Norton’s Sound.

There is scarcely any lowland, indeed none at all, on the large island itself; it is everywhere mountainous and abruptly rolling, with spaces here and there in which the grasses flourish to a great extent. A legion of small streams rush down to the bays from their mountain sources, but none of them are navigable—they are mere rapids and cascades in their entire length. A growth of the characteristic circumpolar annuals and biennials on the slopes of these hills of Kadiak is of exotic luxuriance, and of the most varied beauty of floral display in June, July, and August. Willows and alders fringe the borders of the streams in their range throughout the woodless area, while stunted birch and green grasses reach to the very summits of the hilly ridges of the interior.

Although Shellikov had established the headquarters of his Russian Company on Three Saints Bay with good reason at the time, yet when the entire Alaskan region went into the control of a single organization, it became necessary to have a grand central depot of supplies. Therefore Baranov promptly removed to the site of the present village of Kadiak. Upon that wooded island in the offing he procured the lumber and timbers necessary for the erection of those huge warehouses and numerous dwellings of many sizes required to house the merchandise, furs, and his employés. The harbor, too, is ample, and so situated that sailing-craft can come and go in all winds. Sadly, indeed, did the Russians, a few years later, abandon Kadiak for Sitka, as the numerous letters and protests still on file show; but the menacing encroachments of foreign traders in the far-distant Alexander archipelago were too grave in their portents of loss and usurpation of vested rights to allow of any other action.

To-day many of the ancient Russian structures are still pointed out in the village here which commands the harbor of Saint Paul, and in which some three hundred Creoles are living in well-built log and frame houses. Everything is clean[50] and orderly, but very, very quiet, inasmuch as no commerce, no monthly steamer, no tramping miners invade the solitude of its location. It supports a large Greek church and the priest attendant. Its people, as a rule, are wholly engaged in the business of trading fur and hunting sea-otters. Small codfish schooners often rendezvous here, and the natives also cut considerable cord-wood, for the use of such fur-traders who ply to the treeless districts westward, and fuel for fishing canneries at Karlook and Kassilov. Several little mountain rivulets flow through the limits of this settlement, which is everywhere well drained, and therefore dry in the streets by reason of its position on the rising slopes of the lofty hills which make a bold background, when the picture is viewed from the ship’s deck as you sail up to the anchorage. The presence here of some thirty white men, pure Russian Creoles, and several of our own people who have really settled in the country, many of them married, and who call the place home, makes Kadiak unique in this respect. Elsewhere, if we find a white man living at the trading-posts, or plying his vocation as a cod-salmon fisherman, or miner, he always draws himself up and emphatically denies any idea of permanent residence in Alaska.