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SUMMARY
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. 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.” 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 anchored 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,” passed 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 Edgecumbe, and the point of land that shoots out from it Cape Edgecumbe.” This name supplanted the one given by the Spaniard and the beautiful cone is yet known by the title he bestowed.
The early Russians called the mountain St. Lazaria, assuming 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 passage behind Kruzof Island to about the present site of Sitka, and made the discovery for the civilized world that Mount Edgecumbe is on an island.