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Sitka - Steeped in History

On May 2,1670, the Hudson's Bay Company was incorporated by virtue of a charter signed by King Charles II of England. It granted the company exclusive rights to all the land in the Hudson Bay watershed (about one third of present day Canada).

It was the bold explorers and shrewd merchants of the Hudson's Bay Company who explored and exploited the Canadian West in the name of fur trading. The Hudson's Bay Company exercised great power and became a de facto government over its territories.

The country of Canada was established in 1867.

On March 20, 1869, under the Rupert's Land Act, Canada bought the vast landholdings of the Hudson's Bay Company for 300,000 pounds in what is known as the Rupert's Land purchase. It included what is now northern Quebec, Nunavut and most of the prairies. This marked a major decline in the fortunes of the very influential Hudson's Bay Company.

So why does this introduction have nothing to do with Sitka?

During my visit to historical Sitka I was again reminded of the Russia-American Company which at its peak was the most profitable fur trading company in the world .

The Russia-American company played a dominant role in Alaska very much the way the Hudson's Bay Company did in what is now western Canada.

The Russia-American Company, established by Czar Paul I in 1799, acted as the only authority in the land and served as an extension of the government of czarist Russia.

The company was given carte blanche in its exploration and exploitation of Russia's far eastern perimeters which include Kamchatka and Alaska. The driving force was the search for furs, much as it was with the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada.

Under Alexandr Baranov, governor from 1790 to 1818, a permanent settlement called Novo-Arkhangelsk (New Archangel) was established in 1804.

It became for Russia a capital for the colony, headquarters of the Russia-American Company, and its major Pacific port.

After the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the name was changed to Sitka which is located on Barinov Island, again a reference to its Russian roots.

In 1818 the czarist government took control away from the merchants of the Russia-American Company. One of its most important governors was Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangell who held the office from 1830 to1835 .

In my blogs on Wrangell - Saint Elias National Park (largest national park in the U.S.), I have already blogged about Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangell after whom the park is named.

Although born to a Baltic German noble family, he spent his career in the service of czarist Russia. His name appears in Alaskan geography in the name of the national park, a small town, an island and a channel in the archipelago, as well as an island in Russia. His contribution must have been significant. It was for that reason that I called him a "wunderkind" in the Wrangell - Saint Elias blog. He and his wife Elisabeth were the first Alaskan power couple.

In my visit to the National Park headquarters there was much historical evidence of Wrangell's presence as well as that of his wife. Russia's claim to Alaska ended officially in 1867 with the so-called Alaska purchase by the United States for the relatively minor sum of $7,200,000 .

After the Alaska purchase in 1867 Sitka remained the territorial capital until 1906 when the gold rush in Juneau created the conditions for making Juneau the capital of the American territory of Alaska.

Because of this heavy Russian presence, the town was a priority on my list of places to see. I was therefore disappointed that my Alaska Marine Highway Ferry schedule would not allow for an overnight stop but at the same time glad that I could visit the town during a three hour stop over.

So what was I able to accomplish during my three hours stop over in Sitka?

I visited the Sitka National Historic Park Visitor's Center at the Fort site where the newly appointed director was still keen enough to launch into great detail about the scale model of the original Novo-Arkhangelsk as it appeared during Barinov's time. By the way, there is a statue of Barinov in front of the visitor's center .

All the while the real jewel of my visit was eluding me.

Novo-Arkhangelsk was also the eastern headquarters of the Russian Orthodox church. The church was headed by a bishop who was responsible for Alaska and Kamchatka, located on opposite sides of the Northern Pacific.
Nearby was the second site of the Sitka National Historic Park - the Russian Bishop's House. It has been newly restored to its former glory and in the off season is open to tours by appointment only. The person responsible for giving tours of the Russian Bishop's House could not be located by the staff at the Visitor's Center nor the director at the Sitka National Historic Park, therefore I was left with admiring the glorious exterior and peeking into its windows.

The Russian Orthodox Church was the most enduring legacy of the Russian colonization of Alaska for the church is still a presence in Alaska to this day as my previous blogs will attest.

The Russia-American Company was instrumental in supporting the missionary efforts of the church to bring permanent cultural change to Alaskan natives .

Special attention is given to Bishop Innocent who arrived in Novo-Arkhangelsk in 1841. One of his fortés was a strong interest in native culture resulting in missionary work which incorporated Native clergy and way of life.

He was an extraordinary man conversant in several languages, a seasoned frontier traveler, a craftsman, a gifted educator, and a versatile intellectual.

If there was any doubt about that, he was eventually appointed Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna, the highest office of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The final crowning feature to this story came a hundred years after his death in 1879 when he was glorified as a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Not bad for a bishop who toiled in the outer regions of the Russian empire in the historic town of Novo-Arkhangelsk (Sitka).and lived in the Russian Bishop's House, one of the most refined houses in the colony which was before me . The bishop himself described it as an "ecclesiastical palace".

In the fine tradition of the czarist era of hiring foreign experts, Finnish shipwrights were employed among the craftsmen to build the house. Among its features were sand, grave,l and sawdust insulation and glued paper to seal seams and cracks in the walls.

The residence was maintained by the Russian Orthodox Church until the 1960's when it eventually fell into disrepair.

In 1972, the National Parks Service bought the house and over a period of 15 years restored it to its former glory of 1853, with the cooperation of Russia.

www.nps.gov/sitk

Anyway, it makes for a great story and it certainly was the highlight of my visit to Sitka despite the fact that I never gained access to the residence.

My third stop was at the Sheldon Jackson Museum which contains artifacts collected between 1888 and 1900 from native groups representative of Alaska .

The man responsible for this collection was Dr. Sheldon Jackson, a Presbyterian missionary and first General Agent of Education for Alaska. As one of the organizers of the Alaska Society of Natural History and Ethnology, he recognized the importance of saving cultural historical objects for the benefit of future generations. This resulted in the present building, the first concrete structure in Alaska, built in 1897 which houses the current selection of impressive native artifacts.

In 1985 the museum became part of the Alaska State Museum which furthermore underlines its historic importance.

I also learned that the native groups in Alaska were composed of the:

Inupitat and Yup'ik
Aleut and Alutiiq
Athabascan
Northwest Coast (Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian)
and the Alutiiq

My visit to Sitka was a mad rush to get in as much as possible in the three hours available to me but I think I succeeded in maximizing the time.

A short 15 minute taxi ride took me back to the waiting Alaska ferry which was to carry me to my next stop - Ketchikan.

Footnote:

In my recent trip to Hawaii we toured the island of Kauai. Along the south coast near the town of Waimea we visited Russian Fort Elisabeth .

A Russian doctor, Georg Scheffer, established a fort on behalf of the Russia-American Company in 1815. It proved to be a short lived venture but it does illustrate the point that the Russians were in Hawaii.


Sources:

Sitka - tourist pamphlet
also available on line: www.travelsitka.com
Sitka National Historical Park pamphlet
Sheldon Jackson Museum Guide
Wikipedia

Coming Soon

Catching the Alaska Marine Highway to Ketichikan