How the Tlingit Indians forced Russia to sell Alaska

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

We remember and grieve about the sale of Alaska to the Americans to this day. But few people know that one of the reasons for the loss of Russian America was the bloody and fierce war between the Russian colonists and the desperate Indians of the Tlingit tribe. What role did Russia's trade with China play in this confrontation? Who was behind the backs of the Indians fighting the Russians? What is the attitude of the Soviet rock opera "Juno and Avos" to those events? Why did the conflict between Russia and the Tlingits formally end only under Putin?

Russia all the way to Vancouver

Russian colonization of North America in the 18th-19th centuries was very different from the conquest of other territories of the empire. If, for example, in Siberia, after the Cossacks and merchants, the governors and archers always followed, then in 1799 the government gave Alaska to the mercy of the private-state monopoly - the Russian-American Company (RAC). This decision largely determined not only the peculiarities of the Russian development of this vast territory, but also its final result - the forced sale of Alaska to the United States of America in 1867.

Tlingits

Photo: historymuseum.ca

One of the main obstacles to the active colonization of Alaska was the bloody and fierce conflict between Russian settlers and the warlike Indian tribe of Tlingits at the beginning of the 19th century. This confrontation later had serious consequences: because of it, the penetration of Russians deep into the American continent stopped for many years. In addition, after that, Russia was forced to abandon its ambitious plans to seize the Pacific coast southeast of Alaska up to Vancouver Island (now the territory of the Canadian province of British Columbia).

Clashes between the Russians and the Tlingits (our colonists called them kolosh or thorns) regularly took place at the end of the 18th century, but a full-scale war broke out in 1802 with a sudden attack by the Indians on the fortress of Michael Archangelan on Sitka Island (now Baranov Island). Modern researchers name several reasons for it. First, as part of the fishing parties, the Russians brought the Tlingits to the land of their long-time bitter enemies - the Chugach Eskimos. Secondly, the attitude of the newcomers to the natives was not always, to put it mildly, respectful. According to the testimony of the lieutenant of the Russian fleet Gabriel Davydov, "bypassing the Russians in Sitka could not give the thorns a good opinion of them, for the industrialists began to take their girls away from them and do them other insults." The Tlingits were also unhappy with the fact that the Russians, while fishing in the straits of the Alexander Archipelago, often appropriated Indian food supplies. But the main reason for the Tlingit dislike of Russian industrialists was different. Initially, our "conquistadors" came to the coast of Alaska to catch sea otters (sea beavers) and sell their fur to China. As the modern Russian historian Alexander Zorin writes, “the predatory fishing of sea animals, which was launched by the Russian-American company, undermined the basis of the economic well-being of the Tlingits, depriving them of their main commodity in profitable trade with Anglo-American sea traders, whose inflammatory actions served as a kind of catalyst that accelerated the unleashing imminent military conflict. The rash and rude actions of the Russians served as an impetus for the unification of the Tlingits in the struggle to expel the RAC from their territories. This struggle resulted in an open war against Russian settlements and fishing parties, which the Tlingits waged both as part of extensive alliances and by the forces of individual clans."

The intrigues of the Americans

Indeed, in the unfolding fierce competition for sea fishing off the northwestern coast of North America, the local Indians saw the Russians as their main enemies, who came here in earnest and for a long time. The British and Americans only occasionally visited here on ships, so they posed a much less threat to the aborigines. In addition, they mutually traded valuable fur from the Indians for European goods, including firearms. And the Russians in Alaska mined fur themselves and had little to offer the Tlingits in return. Moreover, they themselves were in desperate need of European goods.

Historians are still arguing about the role of the Americans (in Russia they were then called Bostonians) in provoking the Indian uprising against Russia in 1802. Academician Nikolai Bolkhovitinov does not deny the role of this factor, but believes that the "intrigues of the Bostonians" were deliberately exaggerated by the leadership of the Russian-American Company, but in fact "most of the British and American captains took a neutral position or were sympathetic to the Russians." Nevertheless, one of the immediate reasons for the Tlingit performance was the actions of the captain of the American ship "Globe" William Cunningham. He threatened the Indians with a complete cessation of all trade with them if they did not get rid of the Russian presence on their land.

Sitka. Mass grave of Russian sailors who died in the war with the Tlingits in 1804

Photo: topwar.ru

As a result, in June 1802, the Tlingits, in the number of one and a half thousand, unexpectedly attacked and burned the fortress of Michael the Archangel on the island of Sitka, destroying its small garrison. It is curious that several American sailors participated both in the defense of the Russian settlement and in the attack on it, and some of them deserted from the American ship Jenny, commanded by Captain John Crocker. The next day, also taking advantage of the surprise factor, the Indians killed the fishing party returning to the fortress, and the captured half-Creoles Vasily Kochesov and Alexei Yevlevsky were tortured to death. A few days later, the Tlingits killed 168 people from the Sitka party of Ivan Urbanov. The surviving Russians, Kodiaks and Aleuts, including women and children freed from captivity, were taken aboard by the nearby British brig Unicorn and two American ships - Alert and the notorious Globe. As Bolkhovitinov bitterly notes, his captain William Cunningham wanted "apparently to admire the results of his anti-Russian agitation."

The loss of Sitka was a heavy blow for the main ruler of the Russian colonies in North America, Alexander Baranov. He could hardly refrain from immediate revenge and decided to accumulate strength for a retaliatory strike against the Tlingits. Gathering an impressive flotilla of three ships and 400 native kayaks, in April 1804 Baranov set off on a punitive expedition against the Tlingits. He deliberately built his route not along the shortest path, but along a huge arc in order to visually convince the local Indians of Russian power and the inevitability of punishment for the ruin of Sitka. He succeeded - when the Russian squadron approached, the Tlingits left their villages in panic and hid in the forests. Soon the military sloop "Neva" joined Baranov, making a round-the-world voyage under the command of the famous captain Yuri Lisyansky. The outcome of the battle was predetermined - the Tlingits were defeated, and instead of the fortress of Mikhail Archangel destroyed by them, Baranov founded the settlement of Novo-Arkhangelsk, which became the capital of Russian America (now it is the city of Sitka).

However, the confrontation between the Russian-American company and the Indians did not end there - in August 1805, the Tlingits destroyed the Russian fortress of Yakutat. The news sparked ferment among the natives of Alaska. Russia's authority, so heavily restored among them, was again under threat. According to Bolkhovitinov, during the war of 1802-1805, about fifty Russians died and “and there are still many islanders with them,” that is, their allied aborigines. Naturally, no one counted how many people the Tlingits lost.

New owners

Here a logical question should be answered - why did the possessions of the huge and powerful Russian Empire turn out to be so vulnerable to attacks by a relatively small tribe of wild Indians? There were two closely related reasons for this. First, the actual Russian population of Alaska then amounted to several hundred people. Neither the government nor the Russian-American company took care of the settlement and economic development of this vast territory. For comparison: a quarter of a century before that, over 50 thousand loyalists moved from the south to Canada alone - British colonists who remained loyal to the English king and did not recognize the independence of the United States. Secondly, the Russian settlers were sorely lacking equipment and modern weapons, while the British and Americans who opposed them were regularly supplied by the British and Americans with rifles and even cannons. The Russian diplomat Nikolai Rezanov, who visited Alaska on an inspection trip in 1805, noted that the Indians had "English guns, but we have Okhotsk guns, which are never used anywhere because they are unusable." While in Alaska, Rezanov in September 1805 bought the three-masted brigantine "Juno" from the American captain John D'Wolfe, who came to Novo-Arkhangelsk, and in the spring of the following year, an eight-gun tender "Avos" was solemnly launched from the stocks of the local shipyard. On these ships in 1806 Rezanov set off from Novo-Arkhangelsk to the Spanish fort of San Francisco. He hoped to negotiate with the Spaniards, who then owned California, on trade deliveries of food for Russian America. We know this whole story from the popular rock opera "Juno and Avos", the romantic plot of which is based on real events.

The armistice concluded in 1805 between Baranov and the Kiksadi Kathlian, the supreme leader of the Tlingit clan, fixed the fragile status quo in the region. The Indians did not manage to expel the Russians from their territory, but they managed to defend their freedom. In turn, the Russian-American Company, although it was forced to reckon with the Tlingits, was able to preserve its marine fishery on their lands. Armed clashes between Indians and Russian industrialists have repeatedly occurred throughout the subsequent history of Russian America, but each time the administration of the RAC managed to localize them, without bringing the situation to a large-scale war, as in 1802-1805.

The Tlingit greeted Alaska's transition to the jurisdiction of the United States with outrage. They believed that the Russians had no right to sell their land. When the Americans later entered into conflicts with the Indians, they always acted in their characteristic manner: any attempts to resist immediately responded with punitive raids. The Tlingits were overjoyed when, in 1877, the United States temporarily withdrew its military contingent from Alaska to fight the Ne-Persian Indians in Idaho. They innocently decided that the Americans had left their lands for good. Left without armed protection, the American administration of Sitka (as Novo-Arkhangelsk was now called) hastily assembled a militia of local residents, mainly of Russian origin. This was the only way to avoid a repeat of the 75-year-old massacre.

Sitka (Alaska, USA), modern view. Right - Orthodox Cathedral of Michael the Archangel

It is curious that the history of the Russian-Tlingit confrontation did not end with the sale of Alaska to the Americans. The aborigines did not recognize the formal truce of 1805 between Baranov and Catlian, since it was concluded without observing the corresponding Indian rites. And only in October 2004, at the initiative of the elders of the Kiksadi clan and the American authorities, a symbolic ceremony of reconciliation between Russia and the Indians took place in the sacred clearing of the Tlingits. Russia was represented by Irina Afrosina, the great-great-granddaughter of the first chief ruler of the Russian colonies in North America, Alexander Baranov.

Cover photo - Ceremony of potlatch (exchange of gifts) with the Indians of North America