Maritime History

New: Sitka Maritime History Walking Tour

The Sitka Maritime Heritage Society is developing a maritime history walking tour. Below is our first shot at background history for the basis of such a tour. Please give it a read, give us your comments! What should we highlight? Do you have some irresistibly cool stories? Let us know!

Check Out Our Maritime History Links

Read: Sitka's First Ten Years Under American Rule

Tlingit settlement at Sitka 1793 by Sigismund Bacstrom.

Indigenous – Centennial Building

You are standing on Lingit Aani – the ancestral land of the Tlingit people. Tlingit Aani extended pretty much over what is now SE Alaska and beyond Yakutat. The population in 1805 was similar to now, around 55,000 compared to 73,000 now.
Kiks.ádi clan houses Point House, Tináa (Copper Shield) House or Herring House, and Sun House were on Noow Tlein, or “Large Fort” now called Castle Hill. Below the hill other clan houses faced onto the beach, now covered with fill. Other settlements, some seasonal, throughout the Sound.
North America entirely claimed and ruled by sovereign Indigenous societies. As writer Ernestine Hayes has said: “we must always remember that before colonial contact, Native cultures possessed vigorous legal systems, effective educational systems, efficient health systems, elaborate social orders, elegant philosophical and intellectual insights, sophisticated kinship systems, complex languages, profitable trade systems—every social institution needed for a culture to flourish for thousands of years.” 3

The Fur Trade – continue previous location

Trade was the economic engine of Tlingit society, trading Copper River copper, Haida cedar canoes, mountain goat wool woven robes, eulachon oil, up and down the coast, into interior and to California.
The international sea otter fur trade began in mid-1780s, sparked by publication of Captain Cook’s journals: his crew bought sea otter clothing when they overwintered at Nootka Sound, then found the incredible prices for sea otter fur in China. Sea otter have an incredibly luxurious pelt.
The new maritime traders merged into the existing NW Coast Indigenous trade network. Foreign merchants found Tlingit and other Native traders a match for their bargaining skills.
Initially mainly English vessels. By the time Sitka Sound became the popular trading point in the 1790s, trade dominated by United States vessels out of Boston. Picture drawn in 1793 from French (pretending to be American, to avoid capture by British ships – the two nations were at war at the time) vessel Three Brothers. The ship was seized by British ship on the way to China.
Americans sold an average of 14,000 sea otter pelts/year at Canton 1805-1812, so it was unsustainable and over by the 1810s. (Gibson 315)
This trade was important for the brand-new United States after the Revolution. We had lost our trade through England. The “Boston Men” paid high prices for sea otter furs - in 1799 at Sitka, Alexander Baranof reported Boston traders would pay for one pelt: a high-quality gun, ten cartridges, powder and lead, or, over 100 pounds of iron. The Americans traded pelts in China for goods such as porcelain and tea and made their profit in the US market. The sea otter trade built Boston and funded the industrial revolution.
Global sea otter trade, while it lasted, brought tremendous wealth to the North West Coast, and a flowering of art and technology. Masterpieces include the Whale House art, by the master carver Kadjisdu.áxch now at Klukwan. The classic canoe style with its high prow was developed in the early 1800s and Chilkat weaving replaced the earlier Raven’s Tail style.
Global trade also brought smallpox and other diseases. Europeans just as vulnerable but they had access to inoculation. The 1800s saw devastating population losses with the associated trauma and disruption.

Russian fur trade – While Walking to Under Bridge

What about the Russians? Russian fur traders came out of Siberia, an expansion of the Siberian fur trade. The value of sea otter pelts in China had been accidentally discovered by survivors of Vitus Bering’s last expedition, in 1742.
Traders made the leap into North Pacific, launching from eastern Siberia. Small companies formed for each voyage, in basically home-made boats, going farther and longer as sea otter were wiped out. Their method of operation was same as they used in Siberia, by seizing hostages and demanding fur tribute for Czar.
Native people of the Aleutians have sophisticated, rich society, culture and technology, including beautiful waterproof clothes and the baidarka or kayak, a masterpiece of maritime technology and beauty.
Russians met resistance in the Aleutians, but brought new diseases, and committed atrocities including murder and rape. As in other colonial invasions, the invaders were all battle-ready men, while the Indigenous defenders had to defend old people, babies and children in their home land. It was an unequal fight.
In the 1760s Russian entrepreneurs reached mainland Alaska. By the 1780s the Shelikov company violently conquered Kodiak Island.
Alexander Baranov came out in 1791, age 44, to lead the Shelikov company. From Northern Russia, like many other fur traders, who ended up at Irkutsk and engaging in the fur industry. He engaged in various enterprises, including a glass factory, but failed.
Shelikov forced the Indigenous men to hunt for him as employees. The Unangan (of Aleutians), Alutiiq (of Kodiak and nearby coast and islands), and Chugach (of coast) men hunted from two-man baidarkas. Women had to sew the waterproof parkas and boat covers. They had to gather and prepare food for themselves, as well as for the Russian overseers.
Forced labor was the basis of the Russian system and profit, just as slavery sustained the plantations of the American South.
Brutality, danger from the hunting, stress and starvation and illness caused the population of the Aleutians to drop in 1779 to a tenth to a third of what it had been when Russians first arrived.
In 1799 this company was granted a monopoly and a charter by the Czar (emperor) of Russia to colonize North America as the Russian American Company.

The Russian American Company – Under Bridge

In spite of this system - they had cheap, skilled, forced labor, and high profits from selling the immensely valuable sea otter furs that they had in abundance - the Russians struggled to make a profit. They had problems of adequate manpower, poor cohesion and lack of supplies due to the extreme distance from sources of supplies such as wheat and nails. Boats wrecked every year, with loss of life and property. They built their own ships, out in the open, with inadequate materials. By the mid 1790s they had exterminated most of the sea otter in the Aleutians and the Gulf of Alaska. Russian government unwilling to invest.
Baranov believed Russia was entitled to the entire West Coast and its sea otters. From 1795 he sent hunting parties of hundreds of Native hunters into southeastern Alaska. (1796 started colony and base at Yakutat, destroyed 1806) Took thousands of pelts around Yakutat, then in the Sitka area and as far south as present-day Craig. Taking them away from Tlingit.
Sea otter hunting was dangerous and often deadly for the Native hunters. In 1799 115 men died from paralytic shellfish poisoning from mussels, at a place now called Poison Cove; bodies washed ashore at what is now Dead Man’s Reach.
The relationship between the Native hunters and the Russians was laid bare the winter of 1799-1800. Poison Cove and other disasters that killed scores of hunters, and the extreme hardships for those left at home, led Alutiiq (Sugpiak) leaders on Kodiak Island to refuse to go on the next year's hunt. This refusal threatened the very existence of the Russian American Company - forced labor. Baranov and his second-in-command told them they would kill those who refused to go, forcing them to go.[1]
In 1800 these hunters took 2000 sea otter, and in 1801 4000 sea otter for the Company, just in the Sitka area.
1799 Baranov negotiated with the Kiks.ádi clan leader Shk’awulyeil for a site for a fort and settlement at Gajaa Heen, 7 miles north of Sitka, now called Starrigavan ("Old Harbor" in Russian).
The Russian fort near Sitka at Gajaa Heen was a small colony and fur-hunting base, with a ship being built, a warehouse, barracks, livestock and workshops.
Offenses by the Russians and those working for them, plus probably taking so many sea otter, led to the destruction of the Gajaa Heen fort near Sitka in the summer of 1802 by an allied force of clans and communities, led by Shk’awulyeil. Simultaneously, a Tlingit force at Kuiu Island killed most of the Russian hunting fleet based out of Sitka.

Battle of 1804 – Under Bridge

Alexander Baranov could not come back until 1804, they were stretched so thin. In 1804 the round-the-world Russian expedition ships Neva and Nadezhda arrived in Alaska. The Neva was a new, English-built ship, captained by Jurii Lisianski, an experienced young naval captain.
Lisianski waited for Baranov at Port Krestof for a month. Arrived with 350 baidarka, three ships (one small and home made), 800 men – had lost around 50 baidarka and their Native crews to disease, accidents and attacks that season.
On his way to Sitka Baranov had retaliated against clans who had assisted the Kiks.ádi – burning two villages, after stealing valuable property - and put in a full season of sea otter hunting, getting 1600 otter.
The Kiks.ádi, now led by K’alyáan, the nephew of Shk’awuyeil, built a fort in preparation for battle with the Russians, called Shís’gi Noow, or sapling fort, at the mouth of Kaasda Héen or Indian River, that was designed to withstand naval bombardment. It was angled and the walls were angled out to deflect cannonballs, and its location was chosen because ships could not get close due to the shallows.
The Russians towed the Neva into position in front of Sitka, and occupied Noow Tlein.
On September 29 the Neva’s longboat and a canoe coming toward Sitka engaged in a firefight. The canoe’s load of gunpowder exploded, and most of the crew, young Kiks.ádi leaders, were lost. This was a tragedy and also probably the turning point in the 1804 Battle.
The Neva next moved into location in front of Kaasda Héen (Indian River). It was now October. The design of the fort made it impossible to destroy from seaward. Against Lisianski’s advice, Alexander Baranov led a raid on the beach with sailors and Company employees including Unangan, Chugach and Alutiiq men, but Kiks.ádi defenders waited then counterattacked. The famous attack by K’alyáan himself, armed with a blacksmith hammer. 12 Russians and Alutiiq killed, and many wounded including Baranov.
Alutiiq, Chugach and Unangan hunters, despite not having a choice but to work for the Company, were courageous, organized by village, and were critical participants in both battles, as well as suffering most of the casualties.
The Kiks.ádi and their spouses and children evacuated the fort leaving a few people and went overland to Hanus Bay, called the Kiks.ádi Survival March, where they moved across Peril Strait and built a large fort, Chaatlk’noow, at Sitkoh Bay. They lost canoes, winter food, clan property and houses.
The Russians and Native workers built at Sitka, Tlingit people enforced a blockade until then, and harassed the Alaska Native Company employees trying to fish and hunt. Scurvy killed at least 2 that winter (Baranov probably downplayed the number), in spite of their having all the Kiks.ádi winter food stores.
K’alyáan made peace in 1805 with the Russians. However Tlingit clans only allowed the Russians to occupy the townsite of Sitka itself.

Sitka by Ilja Vosnsensky 1843 from the site https://envisioning-alaska.org/authors/voznsensky-ilya-gavrilovich

Russian Sitka – Totem Square

Throughout the Russian occupation of Sitka, the next 63 years, it was merely an outpost in Tlingit territory, Russians always had to pay close attention to diplomacy with Tlingit leaders. The Russian settlement, their headquarters for all the colonies in Alaska and California, at Sitka was beneficial to Sitka clans, for buying manufactured goods for trade, and as a customer, selling the Russian settlement halibut, venison, potatoes, artwork and even working for them as sailors and other occupations.
The herds of sea otter were gone by the 1810s. Sitka didn’t make economic sense, but kept for the sake of empire, to stake a claim to the coast vis a vis other European nations and the United States per the Doctrine of Discovery, by which these nations claimed lands, even if owned and occupied by other (non-European or United States) people already.
Tlingit clans controlled all their lands throughout the Russian era. Reoccupied settlements in Sitka Sound soon after, and around 1828 rebuilt a big settlement next to the Russian settlement, now the Historic Indian Village. The Russians had a stockade, with the blockhouse now in the location of one from before, between the two settlements, but they never had enough manpower or arms to meaningfully defend it, either from Tlingit people or from other Europeans. They always had to make nice.
Imagine this place in Russian times: this was a company town, though also had defenses. The street was right here, and these buildings are on the sites of Russian ones. The Cathedral is a replica of one built in 1848. The building with the dormers contains a Russian official’s apartments in half of it. The Russian Bishop’s House was built in 1843. Lots of big buildings, made of logs, beautifully crafted and built, but, they could never keep ahead of rot. For years roofs were mostly yellow cedar bark. Only the best had metal roofs. This was the pier, you can see the Russian-era stones, on the end, with a warehouse, a large barracks, and on the hill was the chief administrator’s home and offices, and gardens.
Homes for workers and their families and gardens extending along the shore to the park.
They had a shipyard and workshops where we are standing. They built at least 24 ships at Sitka, ranging from 38 feet to over 130 feet long. Shipbuilding was essential, but never quite made economic sense, they had such a small workforce and a huge backlog of maintenance and building projects. They had no sawmill until 1833 and were working outside until 1834.
An American engineer named Muir or Moore came out in 1838 with an American-built steam engine and built the first steam ship built on the west coast, the Nicolai. Only one other steamship was on the west coast at that time, the Hudson Bay Company’s Beaver. Muir built a steam engine from scratch for the vessel Mur in 1841, which the company sold in 1847 in California.
The builder of the Nicolai was an Alaska Native man, Osip Netsvetov, a member of the “Creole” class trained by the RAC. To get around a fee on every Russian citizen, they created a new class called “Creole” for the descendents of Russian fathers and Native mothers. They would train and educate Native and “Creole” youth in trades like navigation, bookkeeping and shipbuilding, in exchange for a period of work for the company. Osip’s brother was Jacob Netsvetov, later canonized as a saint, buried near the blockhouse on the hill.
Who was here? In the Village, the population was about 1000, still with much Kiks.ádi clan representation, and now with a major Kaagwaantan presence. Other clans from the region also established houses in Sitka. These were large, multi-family houses. Each house, such as the Kiks.ádi Point House, is a lineage with matrilineal inheritance, even as the physical houses are replaced or disappear.
Most trade was done in a special area built into the fence, and Tlingit men worked for the Russian American Company, and Russian men had Tlingit wives, and there were mixed-lineage people on both sides of the fence.
On the Russian side, by 1860 the population of about 1000, 452 people were ethnic Russians, all but 63 of those men; 505 were “Creole” or multi-ethnic Russian and Native; and 64 were Native people (Fedorova 205). Indigenous ethnicity was mainly Kodiak Island and the Aleutians, but also Californian from the colony at Fort Ross, 1812-1842. Russia’s tax system meant there were only 825 Russians in Alaska, at the most at any time, over the century or so of occupation and activity.
Few of the Russian workers, who came out on contract, had good morale, because of the cold and wet and high prices and poor quality from the Company store. Pay included a ration of alcohol, became a black market currency. Food included a lot of dried fish from Redoubt, not what most Russians enjoyed. Managers after Baranov were Navy officers, members of the Russian aristocracy, so the higher management did enjoy a library, museum, fine furnishings in the chief manager’s house.

The steamship Nicholai, built in Sitka, picture by Ilja Vosnsensky 1843 from the site https://envisioning-alaska.org/authors/voznsensky-ilya-gavrilovich

Russian Economy

The Company never did find a replacement for the herds of sea otter hunted by forced-labor Indigenous crews. By the end, one of their few sources of income was the markup on supplies and clothes they sold to their own employees!
In the 1830s they did institute conservation measures in Western Alaska, but it was not enough. Other ideas like mining or selling fish and timber to Hawaii and California didn’t pan out. Efforts on self-sufficiency were also frustrating, because the Russians preferred grains and had to buy it. They also had growing expenses of supporting widows and families and retired or disabled workers, and supporting churches and clergy and medical facilities, as an arm of the Russian government.
One profitable venture was the ice trade, which started in the 1850s with ice cut on Swan Lake, that they sold to Gold Rush-era California. The American Russian company was formed, and both Russian and American ships came to Sitka and then to Kodiak (where the ice was more dependable) to load ice. Incredibly, this (and the fur seals of the Pribilof Islands) was one of the biggest assets when Alaska was turned over to the U. S. in 1867. Zenobia Rock in Eastern Channel is named for one of those American ships who discovered it the hard way in 1855.

Tlingit Economy Pioneer Home or Stay Totem Square

The economy of Tlingit Aani in the 1850s was the global fur trade. The most powerful clans owned trading rights with the interior, at the Stikine, the Chilkat, and at Taku. These clans defended their exclusive rights to trade with interior traders from the Hudson’s Bay Company on each of those trading routes.
By 1851, Tlingit traders bypassed Sitka and took furs by canoe, 600 or more miles to Victoria, to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Thousands of Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian and Heiltsuk “Northern Indians” camped at Victoria. In the 1850s. Tlingit and many other tribes also gathered to work and to trade in Puget Sound.
Smallpox epidemics ripped through the Indigenous population in 1836--37 and 1861, killing and disabling many people, and leaving the survivors with trauma and vulnerable to other diseases.
The political situation was rapidly changing in Canada and the American North West in the 1850s American gold prospectors, settlers with the military forced all of the Native peoples in Washington Territory onto reservations, with coerced treaties and genocidal removals. US and British militaries punished resistance, especially any retribution for settler violence, with overwhelming force.
The Russian occupation of Sitka by contrast had been very weak and limited. An attack on Sitka in 1855, left 5 or 6 dead Russians and dozens wounded. The RAC was powerless to enact vengeance, as the US or Britain would have done. Instead they fired their manager who let relations get bad and made peace.

American Occupation 1867

Russia gave up the Alaskan colonies because it was not profitable and could not be defended.
The Transfer took place on Noow Tlein/Castle Hill on October 18th 1867. Picture Sitka’s harbor filled with ships: The side-wheel steamer John L Stephens had 263 Army soldiers, plus officers and civilians. U.S.S. Ossippee arrive on October 18th with the Russian and U.S. commissioners. Also in port were the steamship USS Resaca and the sailing ship USS Jamestown, five Russian American Company ships, and two U.S. trading vessels. The USS Lincoln had been in Sitka but was not here on October 18th.
A number of American speculators and merchants were in Sitka, anticipating a boom town, as had happened again and again in the rapid American colonization of the West.
There was a short ceremony. Tlingit people, the actual owners of southeast Alaska, were not invited. They observed the ceremony from canoes from below.
Tlingit leaders protested from the start that Russians had no right to any land other than townsite of Sitka. Ignored.
Army goal to put down “insolence” and demand subjugation. Kiks.ádi leader Kooxx'aan initially refused to lower the Russian flag in front of his house. The American commander General Davis had a talk with him, presumably threatening what would happen if he did not comply. Similar meetings were held with other clan leaders at Icy Strait.
In Tlingit Aani, and rest of NW Coast, everyone, including Russians and American traders, followed Indigenous law of compensation by the group.
In American and British law, by contrast, the individual is punished.
In early 1869, an Army sentry killed men leaving Sitka by canoe. Relatives of some of the men, from Kake, went to see General Davis about compensation, but he refused to see them. These relatives then killed two Euro-Americans, unconnected with the conflict, who were camping at what is now called Murder Cove on Admiralty Island.
This led to the so-called “Kake War” in 1869, when the USS Saginaw shelled three villages and burned all the houses but one to the ground, a total of 28 clan houses, many of them 30 or 40 feet square. They also destroyed most of the canoes. This brutal act, in late fall, caused death and hardship. A similar incident happened in 1869 at Wrangell. This was the usual pattern throughout North America by both British and American militaries.
However, Army and Navy also often used Tlingit justice as an expedient to keep the peace.
Army occupation here was supposed to be temporary but lasted ten years. The economy, the fur trade, had crashed. Potential miners and settlers had no need to come to Alaska, because they had all the lands in the contiguous US from which Indigenous people had been forcibly removed. The entire country was in the post-Civil Way Long Depression of 1870s.
Native merchants were pushed out of what there was by aggressive American traders – which was primarily in alcohol, just as today in a depressed area, drugs are the main item of trade.
Army here 10 years, no civil law, and they were not technically even allowed to punish civilians who broke what law there was.
American culture at the time was permeated with racism. The Americans were never in fear of the Tlingit; the goal was to bring Tlingit people into subjugation to American power. The Army left in 1877 to take part in last, brutal Indian Wars, to subdue and conquer the Modoc and the Nez Perce.
What followed was rule by the Treasury Department, by the ships of the US Revenue Cutter Service. However the Cutters were mainly occupied in western Alaska in pursuing seal poachers.
As soon as the Army left, Tlingit people tore down the stockade, and even compelled a white trader to pay for the death of a Tlingit man from alcohol he had sold. K’alyáan, a descendent of the leader of 1804, asked for compensation from a whaling company for the deaths and wages owed five Tlingit sailors killed while working for the company, and was turned down, he supposedly threatened violence, and some of the residents called for protection. Their claims even at the time were seen as exaggerated, and a self-serving attempt to get federal spending in Sitka. First to respond was British ship HMS Osprey, followed in June by the USS Jamestown, and four years of Navy rule. Civilian government only came in 1884.

Civil Government and 1880s Economy – Herring Rock

The Yaaw Teiyi or Herring Rock was under where the Totem Square Inn is now, this piece was saved. It is very important landmark in linking ancient history, the Kiks.ádi clan and the environment. Ancient stories and names connect this rock to people today.
In the 1880s, Alaska’s economy started to take off, with mining and canneries and tourism. Limited opportunities for Native people to participate.
Canneries took salmon streams without compensation to Native owners. Leaders petitioned authorities, who decided they were out of luck – anyone could claim whatever they wanted to use for industrial development – as long as they were white. Native people were not citizens.
Miners allowed to stake whatever they wanted. The major gold rushes in interior Alaska led to depletion of fish and game, causing starvation and severe stress for Native residents.
Tlingit leaders protested every taking to government officials, but American law was against them: not citizens, no rights.
Another problem with unregulated resource exploitation: Tlingit clans strictly regulated salmon streams, American-style free-for-all led to damage. Similar later for herring – Tlingit people regulated harvest of herring eggs, and cultivated growth. American way was unregulated harvest, especially the 1930s herring reduction plants, that led to crashes of populations still continuing.

Christianity – Continue Herring Rock

The Christian Native village of Metlakatla in Canada was famous all over the coast. Founded in 1861, an Anglican missionary and over a thousand Tsimshian people built their own Christian community, with their own sawmill, cannery, church, and homes.
Tlingit leaders invited Presbyterian Missionaries in the late 1870s, perhaps inspired by hope to get their own industry once again.
The Presbyterian mission built its first large building in 1882 and prominent Sitka clans sent their sons. But within a few years the Sitka Mission school dropped out of popularity, perhaps because of the glass ceiling: Presbyterians believed Native people could be good Christians, but they wanted them to train to full the lowest level of jobs: the intention was that Native men would work in a sawmill, not own it. 1885 were multiple lawsuits, most families withdrew their children.
There was competition between the Presbyterians and the Russian Orthodox church in the later 1880s. Protestants controlled government and commerce. Believed ROC was dirty, superstitious. Both churches trying to recruit Tlingit people, both had ultimate goal to replace Tlingit spiritual practices, culture and political power, but both had to hold back in order to be competitive. 1904 was the “Last Potlatch” by permission of Presbyterian Governor John Brady, hosted by Kaagwaantaan clan Wolf houses, an incredible demonstration of wealth, culture art and power, showing how strong the clan system remained, which sadly probably resulted in increased efforts by the authorities to undermine it.
Orthodox church took off in the later 1880s. In Russian times, and well into American era, separated Russian and Tlingit worship. Tlingit leaders objected to being in a separate church, which was built into the palisade, the site marked by the monument next to the blockhouse. The church was even used in the attack in 1855. Tlingit still not welcome in St. Michael’s for years after the American transfer.
By late 1880s Russians (who were mixed-heritage Russian/Native, people called by the Russians “Creole” class) and Native people (some of whom also had mixed heritage) grew the church into a force, creating a new tradition.
Native Civil rights fight started in Sitka. I believe some of the success was that here unlike other places in North America, Alaska Native people are still in their homeland (not removed to reservations), and participated in economy and respected as fishermen and boatbuilders, and through social and temperance organizations that came out of the Presbyterian and Russian Orthodox churches.

Commercial Fishing – ANB Harbor

With the introduction of engines into fishing boats in 1900s, fishing dominated Sitka economy.
Commercial seining (catching salmon with a net), for canneries, was dominated by AK Native men into the 1970s.
Boatbuilding too dominated by AK Native boatbuilders. Boat styles were probably introduced by Norwegian immigrants, adapted and built up and down the coast. Sitka boatbuilders included master craftsmen.
Peter Simpson was perhaps Sitka’s greatest civil rights leader – father of Sitka boatbuilding, and father of land claims: Tsimshian, born in Canada, came to Alaska as a teen with the exodus of Christian Tsimshian families from Metlakatla Canada to New Metlakatla USA, near Ketchikan, in 1887. Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson in 1888 brought 32 young men and boys to his Sitka school. Simpson studied steam engineering and co- founded a sawmill business and the town of Gravina near Ketchikan. But it burned down in 1904, and they could not rebuild because they were not citizens. His granddaughter says this was behind his lifelong fight for land claims.
Peter Simpson returned to Sitka and started a boat building operation at the Cottages, the Christian Native settlement on mission grounds, at the entrance to Sitka National Historical Park. There he worked with most of the boatbuilders of Sitka.
He was a founder of the ANB in 1912; nearly all the founders attended the Presbyterian mission school, and most were boatbuilders and/or fishermen. First Native American civil rights organization.
Many Sitka Native families shared a tradition of going to cannery – a family could combine old way of going to fish and harvest, now combined with working and living at the cannery. The family could plant potatoes at their clan-owned garden sites on the way out, and harvest in the fall on the trip home.
Longlining for halibut was also a Native fishery, but mostly Norwegian out of Seattle. The arrival of refrigeration in 1900s enabled big new market for fresh fish (as opposed to heavily salted).
Refrigeration also enabled trolling, hook and line fishing for salmon. King salmon salted into giant barrels called tierces, sent east coast for lox.
Many immigrants in this era, mainly Scandinavian, who became trollers and longliners, and Filipino, worked in and managed canneries and took part in and owned other businesses.
1912 Sitka Cold Storage built, big deal, for halibut and troll fisheries. Burned 1973 leaving tons of rotting fish.
Racism was still pervasive in 20th century. No citizenship until 1924 except by individual petition, and no recognition of original land ownership. School segregation until 1949 – though it continued to some extent after that date
Main impact of racial bias: overwhelming losses from premature death. High rate of death from diseases, especially tuberculosis, a consequence of racial discrimination in education, housing, employment, and health care, more crowded housing, more stress, less likely to have running water and electricity. Loss of a parent, or multiple children, causes stress such as PTSD.
The inevitable consequences of generations of racist discrimination against a group – illness, less money, stress - perpetuates the myth that it is due to something inherent to that group, when is it really the result of the obstacles and bias, stereotypes. We must become aware of prejudice in how we see each other and treat others without stereotypes, as individuals. We can all benefit too by learning about the depth and beauty of Tlingit culture technology and language.

WWII – Totem Square

In 1930s Sitka chosen as a site for a strategic defense base for North Pacific, against the threat posed by Japan. The only defenses for the North Pacific during the war were here, Kodiak and Dutch Harbor. In 1937 first Navy seaplanes based here, 1939 began building full-on Naval Air Base, eventually Naval Operating Base for PBY long-range reconnaissance seaplanes. The islands were blasted, connected for the Army Coastal Defenses constructed to defend the harbor.
The plan was to have 3 batteries of 6-inch guns covering Sitka Sound against enemy vessels. Each with 2 base end stations for aiming the guns, with searchlights and communications cable.
Big influx of thousands of contractors and military in 1939, jobs and dollars, as well as alcohol and violent crime. Sitka mainly important as a waypoint for PBY amphibious planes on way to Aleutians, after Japan attacked and occupied Attu and Kiska Islands.
What you see are two hangars for maintaining the PBYs, an apron the size of a carrier deck with tie downs, and ramps for bringing the planes onto land. Above are the Navy Communications, Recreation, Mess hall and Barracks. The Army base was beyond on Alice and Charcoal Islands, and eventually on a 1 ½ mile Causeway connecting to the battery at Makhnati Island.
You can see the Navy marine haul out, the Japonski Island Boathouse marine ways. Had a big fleet of boats here, for Army and Navy, had to be repaired at the tiny marine ways, probably intended as winter storage and for light maintenance, but they built a woodshop and storage wings and made do. They also had a tidal grid and a floating marine ways, but it was inadequate for the over 40 shipwrights employed by the Navy.

Commercial Fishing, Economy Since WWII – Either continue at Totem Square, or do longer version and go over Bridge to View of Village

After the war, thanks to lobbying by the ANB, the military bases were repurposed as a BIA school, and a tb sanitarium, though this one and one in Anchorage could take only a small fraction of the people sick with tb in the devastating epidemic. Fortunately drugs were developed in the 1950s. Nearly every Native family lost children, parent. Peter Simpson, the boatbuilder and civil rights leader, and his wife had 15 children; only two survived to adulthood and both died early, leaving children. This story was repeated all over Alaska; you can imagine the impact.
From beginning to end of 1800s Tlingit population dropped from about 55,000 to about 7,000 in 1880s.
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) school began in 1946. Closed in 1980s and reopened as state boarding school, Mt. Edgecumbe.
The federal facilities on Japonski Island was its own town, even had its own post office, called Mt. Edgecumbe. People came back and forth on the Shore Boats, a Navy term, that ran on the half hour. The boat shop was used for repairing the Shore Boats, by master boatbuilder Bob Modrell.

Bridge built in 1972.
Statehood, milestone finally achieved in 1959; fish traps were a big issue. Under federal management, the big companies were cozy with federal regulators and could do what they wanted. Advent of fish traps, they employed fewer Alaskan fishermen, and could easily overexploit fish streams. The ANB took a leading role in fighting for statehood so the state could manage its own resources. One of the first acts of the new state was to outlaw fish traps.

Next milestone: longline boom of 1980s: Magnuson Act 1976 claimed control of ocean fisheries to 200 miles from shore, which included the sablefish or black cod fishery, which has a strong market in Japan. Halibut had been rebuilt, and opened again at about the same time, leading to the 1980s longline “gold rush,” with great profits, but also loss of boats and lives. This was reformed in the IFQ system, where fishermen were given and then can buy and sell a portion of the resource. Still a major part of fisheries value.
Herring: this important fishery was highly valued and stocks grew under Tlingit management. A herring oil and fish meal industry nearly destroyed the fishery in the 1930s-50s. In the late 20th century, the fishery for herring roe led to collapse of even more herring stocks. Fortunately the Japanese market for herring roe is shrinking, and there has not been a fishery in Sitka Sound the past two years.
In 1959 pulp mill built in Sitka which was main employer until it closed in 1993; Sitka was a mill town. We are in the vast, Tongass National Forest, which is contiguous with southeast Alaska – its creation was a major taking of Tlingit lands. In southeastern Alaska trees grow very slowly, unlike Oregon or Washington, here it is a century or more before forest can be cut again. Also, the valuable, big old growth are only a small portion of the forest, and are vital for salmon and other creatures. The pulp mill contracts were cancelled in the 1990s because they were unsustainable and would have harmed fish and wildlife.
Russians never conquered or had treaty with Indigenous people of Alaska. 1867 Treaty of Cession with US left undefined what the “possessions” were. Land Claims finally settled in 1971, in order to clear the way for the Alaska Pipeline. There would have been no rights to settle without Tlingit lawyer William Paul and the ANB. The Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act (ANSCA) signed in 1971. Created regional Native corporations, with Native people as the shareholders.
When the mill closed, fear that Sitka would decline, but, by then was tourism, nonprofit regional health consortium SEARHC, UAS, USCG Air Station Sitka, commercial fishing – not so different from 1900 – a truly diversified economy. Sitka’s biggest population growth had been 1970-1980

Most today see the value of the forest intact – for salmon and tourism – with limited, locally-processed timber - as worth more than its value as large-scale clear cuts for export as round logs and pulp.
Fishing now – we have well-managed salmon and other fisheries - eat wild fish -

Today – continue Totem Square or (long version) go to Boathouse

Tourism – together with other nonprofits and businesses, we are building as arts, culture, heritage destination –
Preserving this building, to keep feel of history, preserve and share our maritime heritage thru interviews, classes, videos, boat building skills
What we do – we are fixing up the building, teach classes – do tours – oral history events – and recording, programs for kids – please join us!

A Short Maritime History of Sitka, Alaska

The Tlingit Maritime Tradition

Tlingit fishermen (Sitka Historical Society collection)

The Indigenous people of Sitka, the Tlingit, have a rich and ancient maritime tradition. They used large red cedar canoes traded from the Haida to transport groups of a dozen or more people to gatherings and to seasonal camps and to trade a thousand miles up and down the coast.
Smaller spruce or cottonwood canoes were used for fishing, berry picking, seal hunting, and other daily uses. The canoes were hollowed from a single log, then steamed open into a final shape.

18th Century European Explorers and Sea Otter Traders

    Mt. Edgecumbe, the dormant volcano at the entrance to Sitka Sound, was given its name by Captain James Cook when he saw the volcano on a voyage around the world in 1778. Captain Cook, who most likely named the volcano after a mountain of the same name nearly Plymouth Harbor in England, was among many explorers to enter the waters of Sitka Sound during the Age of Exploration. And, he was certainly not the first.
    Among early Europeans to the area, Russian navigator Aleksei Chirikov entered Sitka Sound in 1741 and named the volcano Mt. St. Lazarus. Later, in 1775, Spanish explorer Don Juan de la Bodega y Quadra named it Mount St. Hyacinth or San Jacinto, because it was that saint’s day when he spotted it.
      In the 1780s traders came from Europe and the United States to buy sea otter furs for guns, tools and fabric, which Tlingit traders traded up into the interior and up and down the coast.

The Russian Era (1790s-1867)

    The Russian presence in Alaska began in the Aleutian Chain in the 1740s, when Russian traders and hunters moved east from Siberia seeking sea otter pelts. Sea otter were worth a fortune in China. The Russians forced Unangan and coastal Native people to hunt sea otter for them from two-hole baidarkas.
    The Russian American Company formed in 1799 with rights to colonize America on behalf of the Tsar. The first Russian fort at Gajaa Heen (Old Sitka, 7 miles north of present day downtown Sitka) was built in 1799, and destroyed by the Tlingit in 1802.
In 1804, Russian American Company chief Alexander Baranof returned with hundreds of Chugiak, Sugpiak, and Unangan Native hunters and met the armed Russian ship Neva at Sitka.  After a battle with the Tlingit Kiksadi Clan and allies at the Indian River, the Russians established their permanent settlement, New Archangel, at what is now downtown Sitka.
As the headquarters for the Russian American Company, New Archangel was the administrative center for the Russian colonies that reached all the way to California. Sea otters had been hunted nearly to extinction by the early 19th Century, but New Archangel remained the administrative center of the Russian colonies, with boat building, with a boatyard that produced dozens of ships. It was also a stop along trade routes, where European and American boat repairs could be done. The Russian boatyard was about where Totem Square is today.
    Nevertheless, Russians held only the colony at Sitka, and the Tlingit held all their lands as they had before.

The Russian steamer Politofsky was built in Sitka. (Sitka Historical Society)

After the Transfer to the U.S.

Following the 1867 transfer, Alska Native people were not citizens. The U.S. Army was much stronger than the Russians had been, and asserted government dominance over the Alaska Native people. U.S. Army troops were quartered in Sitka for a decade, until 1877, then for a short time Alaska was administered by the a few Collectors of Customs and Revenue Cutters. Then, in 1879 the Navy was given jurisdiction over the District of Alaska, which resulted in Navy gunboats being based in Sitka. These government vessels were the only law in Alaska.
Sitka's economy was extremely depressed through its early years as an American outpost, especially the Tlingit were affected as American newcomers took over what trade there was. In the 1880s outside industry started coming in, that unfortunately took Native land and resources. As it does now, Sitka had a diversified economy, relying on tourists who came up on steamships as well as the short-lived sealing industry, among other things. When high-seas sealing was outlawed, Natives were granted an exception if they hunted in small boats, with spears. The Sitka Native boatbuilders developed the “Sitka sealer,” a 20- to 24-foot open boat.

Late 19th Century Tlingit sealers (Sitka Historical Society)

Boat Building in Sitka

Andrew Hope in his shop (Sitka Historical Society)

    The most prolific period of boat building in Sitka occurred at the turn of the 20th Century. From 1900 to 1960 over 100 documented vessels of at least 32 feet were built in Sitka. Many salmon and longlining boats still in use today were built during this era. These boats are extremely seaworthy with deep, heavy, relatively narrow hulls.
     At its peak, Sitka had eight boat shops. Peter Simpson, a graduate of Sheldon Jackson, had a boat shop at the cottages near Sitka National Historical Park as early as 1907. Other shops were on islands and Katlian Street. Most boat builders were Native men, but some were European immigrants. Aside from Simpson, highly productive boat builders of the era included Andrew Hope, Peter Kitka, and George and David Howard.
     Additionally, many fishermen built their own boats, and the Sheldon Jackson school built two boats: the SJS and the Princeton Hall. After World War II, shipwright Bob Modrell taught boat building at the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, where his students built a troller and a deckhouse for the shore boat Arrowhead.
     Also, shortly after the War, the Sitka Marine Railways opened at what is now Allen Marine. Six boats were built there in 1945 and 1946 alone, but the main focus of the operation was on boat repair.

The Sitka Marine Railways (Sitka Historical Society)

Sitka as a Fishing Port

The Myrth, a troller built in Sitka

    As long as there have been people in the area that is now Sitka, people have depended on the rich salmon and halibut stocks. Sitka didn't become a large-scale commercial fishing port, though, until after the transfer to the United States.

SALMON
    The first Salmon cannery in Alaska opened in Klawock on Prince of Wales Island in 1878. That same year one was built at Old Sitka, but it soon closed. Seining and later traps supplied the fish for canning.
    Sitka didn't have another fish plant until 1913 when Booth Fisheries cold storage opened. It became Sitka Cold Storage in 1930. Today the old Sheffield Hotel stands on the site. Pyramid Packing cannery opened a few years later in 1918. It is still standing as the Murray Pacific building. Canneries in Peril Strait and at Sitkoh Bay (Chatham Cannery) also employed Sitkans.
    The struggle for Native citizenship and land claims began when people had their traditional fishing stream rights taken by canneries. Prominent leaders and the founders of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, which fought for Native rights, came from Sitka.
    Early day seining was done with a big rowboat. After 1915, gas-powered boats became common. Cannery-owned traps were also used, and later became a key issue in the vote for statehood.
    Commercial trolling began in Southeastern Alaska in 1905 with rowboats. By the 1920s motorized trollers were common, but most of them were still under 30. Troll caught fish in these years were “mild-cured” – lightly salted and chilled, and shipped south under refrigeration for smoking as lox.

HALIBUT
    Originally, halibut fishermen set out in dories. They set their ground line with buoys and anchors at each end, and pulled it up with the fish.
    Most early West Coast halibut schooners were from Puget
Sound, but the first in Alaska were East Coast boats, which arrived in 1888. Some of the old-style boats are still in use. They are typically 70 to 80 feet long, with a high bow, two masts, and the house aft. Among the classic halibut schooners in Sitka at Eliason Harbor are the Republic and the Pacific.
    Modern Sitka longliners are sturdy boats mostly glass or steel, with a bait shelter on the stern and hydraulic power block for hauling in the longline.
    Halibut fishing changed in Sitka with the introduction of the IFQ (Individual Fishing Quota) system in 1994. Entry to the fishery was limited to those who fished in 1980s, but quota could be bought and sold. IFQs were seen as a solution to the problem of crowded open access fishery and loss of gear and lives.

Early 20th Century fishing boats (Sitka Historical Society collection)

World War II in Sitka

A crew ties up a sinking PBY (Sitka Historical Society)

Sitka had the only functioning Naval Air Station in Alaska at the start of World War II, but other stations were quickly built in Kodiak and Dutch Harbor. The original purpose of the Station was to service PBY Catalina seaplanes.
During the war, the Army and Navy launched hundreds of boats in Sitka ranging from patrol boats to barges and tugs needed for construction. The Army had as many as 26 shipwrights working on boat repair in Sitka during this time. All of them were stationed at the Japonski Island Boathouse, where up to 10 shipwrights could be found working in a 40-foot by 15-foot shop. Because of the space confines of the Boathouse, a great deal of work had to be done on the grid or at a work float.