The Story of Sitka: The Historic Outpost of the Northwest Coast
9781465520562
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
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 shores of the Okhotsk Sea. Civilized eyes had never before rested on these shores and he was keen with the excitement of adventure and discovery as he dropped anchor. He sent a party ashore in the ship’s longboat to explore, and awaited the result. Days passed 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 passed. Captain Chirikof could not reach the shore and could no longer lie at anchor, so reluctantly and sadly he set his course for the far off Kamchatkan shores and sailed away from the port of missing men. 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. 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.
