-------------------------- / I 0-1.6 7.2 historic resource study le historic structure report historical data section I historic furnishing study I august 1981 I I I I I I• I I I I I NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK I ALASKA~ I (J\\ ~,ru~(J~\'1:. 1.• I B&WScans I 5jcs.jzcX52- I .~-- HISTORIC RESOURCE STUDY 1" HISTORIC STRUCTURE REPORT Historical Data Section I HISTORIC FURNISHING STUDY I THE RUSSIAN BISHOP'S HOUSE SITKA NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK I ALASKA I I I by •• James D. Mote I I I DENVER SERVICE CENTER I HISTORIC PRESERVATION DIVISION NATONAL PARK SERVICE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR I DENVER, COLORADO I I•• I I -. FOREWORD I The study which follows was prepared on the basis of agreements contained in the Planning Directive of April 1974 covering rehabilitation and adaptive restoration of the Russian Bishop's I House; covering, also, a Historic Resource Study for Sitka National Historical Park. In effect, this Planning Directive detailed the I contents of three distinct historical studies: a "Historic Resource Study"; the historical data section of a "Historic Structure Report," I and; a "Historic Furnishings Study." Because the budget allotted for this work was limited, the plan to cover this much information I in a single project was an excessively large order. This is apparent in the end product, for it is marred by uneven coverage. The first part of the document the "Historic Resource Study" is I adequate under the terms of the Planning Directive. Likewise, the "Furnishings Study" covers all available data as was requested in I the Planning Directive. However,. in the historical data section for the "Historic Structure Report" additional information, while I• perhaps not crucial to rehabilitation and restoration, would have been of value to the architects engaged in the now ongoing work to the Regional Office, and to the Park staff. Such data would have I presented, for example, the 20th Century uses and modifications of the building among other such detail. When this information is I gathered at a ·future date, the Service should have nearly full I information on the structure. In reading the historical narrative of the Russians in Alaska, their I economic developments and practices, and their relations with the native populations, the reader may at times encounter language and accounts of events somewhat shocking to people who live in the I latter half of the 20th Century. The events may sound brutal; the attitudes racist. This material was deliberately introduced to show I dramatically the nature of the era and to reflect Russian colonial attitudes vis a vis the native peoples. The tone for native I. attitudes toward peoples of European origin was set in this era. I I I The events recounted here, using in many cases the language of ., the Russians themselves, give graphic evidence of what can happen when human populations of disparate cultural backgrounds meet. The events are unique only in detail. The pattern they typify has I been repetitive on a global basis and has relevance to human relations as they exist today. I I I I I I I •I I I I I I I ••I I i J I I•• I I I I <( I l)cc 1.1.1 :2 I <( z CJ) I• z <( CJ) CJ) I :::> 0: 1.1.1::c I f- .. >- Cl I :::> f- CJ) 1.1.1 I l) 0: :::> 0 I CJ) 1.1.1 0: l) I 0: 0 f- CJ) ::c I•• I -~--- ------ --------------~----- I CONTENTS •• / I Introduction I 1 Russian Expansion to the East and Discovery of America: 1584-1742 I 3 I Expansion Into the North Pacific, 1742-1790 I 13 The Founding of the Russian-American Company I 23 I The Destruction of Old Sitka, 1802 I 29 Baranov Reestablishes Sitka I 35 I The Russian-American Company Under Baranov, 1804-1818 I 45 The Search for Food: Fort Ross, 1812-1841 I 63 I The Middle Period, 1821-1840 I 67 The Church in Russian America I 95 The Final Period of Russian Rule, 1840-1867 I 117 I Russian-America Becomes American-Alaska I 137 Recommendations I 147 I Appendix A: Imperial Ukase of 1799 I 149 Appendix B: Collinson Journal I 153 I• Appendix C: Excerpts from Blaschke Dissertation I 161 Appendix D: Transfer Map of Sitka, October 18, 1967 I 187 I Bibliography I 197 I ILLUSTRATIONS I Map of Sitka I 90 I I I I. I I I le INTRODUCTION I Russian presence in the New World does not loom large when one surveys those nations that discovered, explored, settled, and exploited the North American continent. England, the Netherlands, I France, and Spain each had a lasting influence on the colonization of the Western Hemisphere by European nations, but Russia's I advance into the New World was smaller, and its effect was more ephemeral. That there are traces of the Russian-American venture I at all is attributable mainly to the Russian Orthodox churchmen who accompanied the Russian-American Company's promyshlenniks (fur hunters) across the Bering Sea in search of furs. The relationship I between the two representatives of the Russian homeland was not always amicable; the hardy frontiersmen often found the churchmen I to be bothersome moralizers and to be drains on their supplies and finances. The churchmen too often saw a group of morally debased I ruffians devoid of spiritual refinement in the promyshlenniks. Occasionally these complaints could be justifiably applied to members of either group. But frontiersmen and churchmen were cast into •• the adventure together. Forming a minority of common background in a setting thilt was often hostile, the Russians held together for I 100 years, clinging with precarious grip to the shores of North America. When economic interest no longer held the I Russian-American Company there, the Orthodox church--that epiphenomenal adornment of Russian expansion into the New I World--provided the more lasting monument to this Russian adventure. Today in Russian-America, or Alaska, what remain of I the Russian presence are the churches of the missionaries and the living proof of their works--the Russian-Orthodox community of I Alaska, The following study deals with one of the physical remains of the I Russians' presence in Alaska. The bishop's house in Sitka is a ~I ••I 1 I I rare, extant structure dating from the years when Sitka was called el Novoarchangelsk and the promyshlenni ks of the Russian-American fur company held sway in Alaska. Coming into the possession of the National Park Service in 1972 as part of Sitka National Historical I Park, the restored bishop's house can serve well as a symbol of Russian colonization efforts in America. The story it tells can I round out the deservedly more familiar story of the European colonization that came from different lands across a different sea. I I want to thank the staff of the Library of Congress, Manuscript I Division, for their assistance in going through the many documents in the collection of Orthodox church papers from Alaska. Ellen Lang, superintendent of Sitka National Historical Park, has been I most he Ipful. Ruth Larison, National Park Service librarian in Denver, never failed to produce the right document at the right I time. All translations in the report are by the author unless otherwise noted. I .I I I I I I I •• -- 1 2 I I le RUSSIAN EXPANSION TO T H E E A S T A N D D SCOVERY I 0 F AMERICA 1584-1742 Alaska, the Bering Sea (the "Eastern Sea" to the Russians), and I the northwest coast of America lay thousands of miles away from 16th century Muscovy, the core state around Moscow that was to I become the center of the Russian Empire of modern times. The incentives that drove the Russians eastward across this distance I during the 16th to the 18th centuries--to explore, exploit, ·and expropriate products and lands--were the same incentives that I drove the English, French, Spanish, and Dutch to leave their homelands and travel westward to the New World. These incentives could be summed up as economic expansion: the spirit of I discovery, the hope of personal gain, and the search for marketable goods and new markets. This "age of discovery" appealed to the I hardy and adventurous men of these times to make their mark in life far from the comfortable routines of their homelands. This I• appeal was especially true for Russians. Their reward was often a mater.ial wealth and a freedom of spirit unattainable closer to home I and hearth. The first move toward the east (Siberia) from Muscovy came during I the reign of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. In the 1580s a Cossack, Yermak, teamed up with the rich merchant family I of Stroganov to launch military and commercial forays into the vastness of Siberia. These regions, the scene of the former I greatness of the Tartar Khans who had subdued Russia in the Middle Ages, were now witnessing a period of Tartar decline. The I Russian forays met with less military resistance and more commerical success than at first expected by Yermak and the Stroganovs. By the mid.dle of the next century tsarist Russian rule was firmly I implanted as far east as Okhotsk on the Pacific Ocean and at points I•• I 3 I in between throughout Siberia. The Russian movement eastward, el like the American movement westward, brought forth a breed of men who lived by, and for, the hunting and trapping of furs.