The Story of Sitka Part 1

The Story of Sitka.

by C. L. Andrews.

SITKA

Foreword

The panorama of sea, island, and mountain, which holds Sitka, Alaska, as a jewel in its setting, is one of the most beautiful of those which surround the cities of the world. Toward the sea from the peninsula on which Sitka is situated stretches an expanse of waters, studded with forest-clad islands which break the swell of the Pacific that foams and tumbles on the outer barriers. To the westward Mount Edgec.u.mbe lifts its perfect cone, its summit truncated by the old crater whose fires have been dead for centuries; to the northward Harbor peak lifts its signal to mariners; the Sisters, with a gleam of snow and ice among their pinnacles, lie in the distance of Indian River; to the east is the arrowhead of Mount Verstovia; the glaciers glisten beyond; and the sweep of mist-clad mountains, in their softness, beyond the bay to the southeast completes the circle.

Radiating like the spokes of a wheel, waterways with historic memories reach out from the town. Krestof Bay, where the early navigators cast anchor; Neva Strait, commemorating the first Russian ship that visited Sitka from around the world; Katleanski Bay, on which was situated Old Sitka; Silver Bay, a Norwegian fjord transplanted to Alaska; Lisianski Bay, named for the Russian navigator of a century ago; the inlet at Ozerskoe Redoubt and Globokoe (Deep) Lake; the island-studded way to the Hot Springs; each with its individual charm; the ocean, with the deep, rich, marine tints of northern waters; the forest of blue, that folds like a robe over the mountains; the mountain summits beside the glaciers, clad in the exquisitely wonderful green of the Northland, all are delightful. But when the sun sinks low in the west, with the long, lingering twilight of the North, and the soft, delicate rays touch and blend with the water and islands, the mountains and sky--then, in the mystery of the evening, is the supreme beauty of the land. To those who have really known and loved Sitka, there is no place on earth to compare.

There are pleasant recollections of those who have lived there. Jovial Edward Degroff and his stories at the Roastology Club; the Mills, whose hospitable home is known to every resident of the town; Wm. Gouverneur Morris, whose name recalls a leader of Revolutionary days; genial George Barron, who upheld every good tradition of the Navy; the gallant old soldier, Matthew P. Berry; dignified Judge Delaney, Alaska's staunchest advocate through all vicissitudes; Governor Brady, with his neverfailing faith in Alaska's greatness; Captain Francis, without whom the early naval commanders thought the warships could not thread the intricate pa.s.sages; Nicholas Haley, with his optimistic dreams of El Doradoes; Pauline Archangelsky, for whom the "Old Timers" have pleasant recollections; Alonzo Austin and his mission; Captain Kilgore of the "Rush"; Merrill, who caught on the photograph plate the elusive spirit of the varying surroundings as only a true artist could; Katherine Delaney Abrams, whose touch in watercolor delineated the glory of the sunsets as none else could; Professor Richardson, who for a quarter of a century returned year after year thousands of miles to perpetuate in paintings the exquisite tintings of glaciers and mountain; George Kostromitinoff (Father Sergius); Father Metropolski, and many others who have made a part of the quaint old town.

There is a saying that whosoever comes to love the waters of the Indian River will ever after yearn for them, and it seems true, for always is that harking back to its banks with an unsatisfied longing.

From prehistoric time this has been the home of the Sitka Kwan of the Thlingit people. For sixty-three years it was the scene of the chief activities of the Russian American Company, who represented the rule of the Muscovites, who, when Chicago was but a blockhouse in a sedgy swamp on the banks of a sluggish, reedy river, and when San Francisco was but a mission and a Presidio of sun-burned bricks, maintained in Sitka a community of busy people who were casting cannon and bells, and who were building ships for commerce.

In the establishment of this outpost the foundation was laid for the t.i.tle of the United States to the southeastern part of Alaska, a land rich in fur and forest, in gold and copper, in marble and fish, the potential possibilities of which are not even approximately forecasted today. Enough to say of it, that in its limits are two mines, one of which has yielded over sixty-five millions of dollars in gold, and the other ranks among the richest of the mineral producing veins of the world.

Some may have an interest in the story of the quaint, quiet, beautiful village on the sh.o.r.e of Baranof Island. I hope this may add something to history, keeping the events of the past bright in the memory of those who love the Northland and its story, and add a little of interest and information of the present to those who come as transient visitors to while away a few days among the myriad islands of the Sitkan Archipelago. It is a link to connect the Sitka of the past, the _Novo Arkangelsk_ of the great Russian American Company in the romantic days of the fur trade when it was the center of the vast domain of Russian America and gathered to its magazines the pelts of sea-otter and fox, with the Sitka of today with its fisheries and mines. The old landmarks are fast disappearing, scarce a year pa.s.ses without some monument pa.s.sing away, and even their location will soon be forgotten unless some record is made for those who do not know where they stood.

SITKA

THE HISTORIC OUTPOST OF THE NORTHWEST

CHAPTER I

DISCOVERY

Sitka of the Russians, a century ago, was the center of trade and civilization on the Northwest Coast of America, the chief factory of the Russian American Company in the vast and little known land of the Russian Possessions in America. The sails of ships from far off Kronstadt on the Baltic brought Russian cargoes. The famous clipper ships of New England made it a stopping place on their way to the China seas. English traders and explorers visited it on their voyages, and in it was centered the trade of a wide region. It was the chief factory of the greatest rival in the fur trade of the world, with which the Honourable, the Hudson's Bay Company, which then was the controlling power in the English fur market, had to contend.

The story of Sitka goes back past the middle of the Eighteenth Century.

There are Russians, Spanish, English, French and Americans who have woven each their own part of the web of the tale, and the scenes have been as varied and strange as the people.

July 16, 1741, a Russian ship stood into a broad harbor on the Northwest Coast of America. The commander, Captain Alexei Chirikof, had sailed three thousand miles across the unknown Pacific from the sh.o.r.es of the Okhotsk Sea. Civilized eyes had never before rested on these sh.o.r.es and he was keen with the excitement of adventure and discovery as he dropped anchor. He sent a party ash.o.r.e in the ship's longboat to explore, and awaited the result. Days pa.s.sed and no word or signal came, so the remaining boat was sent to recall the party and it was swallowed up in the labyrinth among the green islands. Signals indicated that it safely landed but none returned to the ship although the orders were imperative that both boats return at once. The last boat was gone. Three weeks pa.s.sed. Captain Chirikof could not reach the sh.o.r.e and could no longer lie at anchor, so reluctantly and sadly he set his course for the far off Kamchatkan sh.o.r.es and sailed away from the port of missing men.

Nearly two centuries have pa.s.sed 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 ash.o.r.e 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mount Edgec.u.mbe.]

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 anch.o.r.ed 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," pa.s.sed 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 Edgec.u.mbe, and the point of land that shoots out from it Cape Edgec.u.mbe." This name supplanted the one given by the Spaniard and the beautiful cone is yet known by the t.i.tle he bestowed.

The early Russians called the mountain St. Lazaria, a.s.suming 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.

Captain Dixon, of H. M. S. "Queen Charlotte," came during the summer of 1787, on a fur trading voyage. Dixon had just departed from the harbor when Captain Portlock, of the English ship "King George," which was lying in Portlock Harbor, to the northward in Chichagoff Island, sent his ship's boat through the pa.s.sage behind Kruzof Island to about the present site of Sitka, and made the discovery for the civilized world that Mount Edgec.u.mbe is on an island.

CHAPTER II

SETTLEMENT

The sea-otter, a marine animal about four feet in length when fully grown, with soft, long black pelage of silky texture, is one of the most valued of the fur-bearers. It was found abundantly all the way along the Northwest Coast, and especially in the pa.s.sages about Sitka. It is now nearly extinct.

The Russians had been gathering the skins of the sea-otter in the northern waters for years, ever since Chirikof made his voyage to Sitka, and they were truly an El Dorado, in fur, to the traders who plied their trade along the coasts. Captain Cook and his sailors, when on their voyage in these waters, bought skins for mere trifles, some for a handful of iron nails. These same skins sold for as much as sixty dollars each in China where they visited on their way home. The story of the furs went over the world and English, French and American traders thronged to these waters to sail their ships into the straits and barter for the rich pelts. To secure a profit of $50,000 on a voyage was not unusual. Ingraham, the lieutenant of Captain Gray whom we all know so well for his discovery of the great River of the West, sailed to near Sitka before his princ.i.p.al entered the river which he named for his ship, the Columbia. The French ship "Solide," in 1791, sailed from France to gather a portion of the harvest. Her captain, etienne Marchand, anch.o.r.ed in Sitka Bay, and called it _Tc.h.i.n.kitinay_, as he declares it was known to the natives. To his ship flocked the painted and skin-clad natives with their peltries for barter. On their persons he saw articles of European manufacture, showing that other ships had visited there, and in the ears of one young savage were hanging pendant two copper coins of the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts. His success in trade was not such as he might have wished, so he sailed way, remarking that, "The modern Hebrews would, perhaps, have little to teach to these people in the art of trade."

March 31st, 1799, the Yankee skipper, Cleveland, of the merchant ship "Caroline," sailed into the bay, dropped anchor and fired a cannon shot as a signal. He was one of those shrewd, lean traders, skilled in navigation, who sailed from Boston round the Horn, with their bucko mates, who could drive a tack with the prow of a ship, so to speak, and in those days there were no corners of the earth where they might not be found seeking for profit. He was wise to the ways of the sharp trading canoemen of these waters, and their aggressive proclivities, so he prepared his ship with regard for all the possibilities of the business.

Around it as a bulwark he stretched a barrier of dry bull hides brought from the California coast. At the stern was a place prepared for the trading. Forward on the deck were planted cannon, shotted with shrapnel, trained so as to rake the afterdeck, and beside each was a gunner's match.

On the first day, for two hundred yards of broadcloth, he purchased a hundred prime sea-otter skins, worth $50 each in Canton. Barter was going merrily on, when a scream from amidships startled the crew. The Thlingits sprang to their boats. The squaws backed the canoes away from the ship's sides. Arrows were fitted to bowstrings, spears were poised and muskets primed. On the ships the sailors lighted the cannon matches and stood by ready to fire. A fight was hovering in the air when the cause of the disturbance was discovered. An inquisitive Thlingit pried between the bull hides opposite the cook's galley, and the cook had saluted him with a ladle of hot water. In his surprise he upset his canoe and his family were struggling in the sea. His baby was rescued by a seaman, amends were made to his injured feelings, and the barter proceeded as before.

The waters were filled with ships. In a stay of a month the "Caroline"

spoke the ship "Hanc.o.c.k," the ship "Despatch," the ship "Ulysses," and the ship "Eliza," all of Boston; and the English ship "Cheerful," all trading for furs among the Sitkan Islands.

The Russians, in their colony on Kodiak Island, were jealous of the intruders on what they considered as their domain. Gregory Shelikof, a Siberian merchant, one of the wealthiest and most far seeing of the leaders among the Aleutian Islands, conceived the plan of combining the whole of the fur trade in one great monopoly. In pursuance of this policy he secured a charter from Emperor Paul in 1799, under the name of the Russian American Company, which gave the exclusive right to all profits to be derived from every form of resource in the Russian possessions in America for a period of twenty years. To the management of his business in the Colony he established on Kodiak Island he appointed Alexander Andreevich Baranof, a Siberian trader of great ability and experience. Baranof, the wise and far-seeing Russian ruler of the Russian American Company, at his factory in St. Paul's Harbor on Kodiak Island, had long planned the extension of his settlements to the southeast. The sea-otter catch of the Russians was made by brigades of Aleuts from the western islands, who went along the sh.o.r.es and to sea as far as 20 miles, in their wonderful skin boats called bidarkas, to hunt.

When a sea-otter lifted its head from the water to breathe, within sight of a detachment of Aleut hunters, its fate was sealed, for it seldom escaped.

The pa.s.sages between the islands about Sitka were called the "Straits"

by the Russians, and in them the sea-otter skins were taken by the thousands. It was not unusual for a Russian hunting party consisting of a hundred bidarkas to take on one expedition 2,000 skins of the _Morski bobrov_, as they called the sea-otter.

The animals were becoming scarce in the seas about the western islands and Baranof was compelled to replenish his trade by the catch of the southeastern waters. In 1795 he sent one of his ships as far south as the Queen Charlotte Islands and it visited Sitka on the way. Two thousand skins were secured by the hunters while on this voyage. In the same year Baranof himself paid Sitka a visit, coming through the strait from the north in his little schooner "Olga," a 40-foot boat, and he named the pa.s.sage for his craft as Olga Strait. On the sh.o.r.e near his anchorage he erected a cross; the bay he named Krestof Bay, and he then selected the locality of his future settlement.

In the spring of 1799, Baranof sent orders to the toyons, or chiefs, of the tribes on the islands around Kodiak to a.s.semble the hunters. Five hundred and fifty bidarkas, each manned by from two to three Aleut paddlers, came in answer to his call, and with two convoying ships he set sail for Sitka Sound. On July 7th he landed at a bay six miles north of the present town of Sitka, purchased a tract of land from Skayeutlelt, a local chief, and began the construction of a post which he named redoubt St. Michael. The building was done under great difficulties. Rain fell incessantly. There were but thirty Russian workmen as most of the Aleuts returned to Kodiak, hunting as they went.

Of the men who remained ten had to stand guard constantly, for the Thlingits were not to be trusted. Barracks, storehouses, quarters for the commanding officer, were constructed; a bath house also, for the Russian must have his bath, and the whole was surrounded by a stockade and strengthened by blockhouses. Their troubles were not all with the elements, for during the winter the scarcity of provision and other causes brought scurvy to add to their discomfort. Their food was mostly yuhali (dried salmon), but during the winter the hunters took 40 sea-lions, and in the spring many seals were killed in the bay by the Aleuts.

The natives, called Thlingits at the present, were known as the Kolosh by the Russians. They were divided among themselves in their feelings toward the new settlers in their midst. Some looked with extreme disfavor upon the establishment, while others were friendly. The young and turbulent warriors were hostile. A messenger was sent to invite them to a prasdnik (holiday) at the fort. He was taken prisoner by them and detained until Baranof landed in their midst with an armed force and demanded his release, when they set him free and ridiculed the incident.

At a dance at the fort many of the Kolosh came with long knives concealed under their cloaks. Their treachery was detected and their design frustrated. The courage and caution of Baranof held them in check until spring when he departed for Kodiak, leaving strict instructions as to the precautions to be observed during his absence. After his departure the discipline grew more lax and the Kolosh became more bold.

The watchful savages at last saw an opportunity to rid themselves of their new neighbors.