Merchant Kings

by Stephen R. Bown

  Bering’s fears proved to be prophecy. After exploring several islands, encountering a variety of native peoples and its passengers realizing the enormous size of the new lands to the east, Bering’s ship was wrecked on an island off the Russian coast. Scurvy took hold during the voyage and killed many of the crew as well as Bering himself. The island where they spent a wretched winter eking out a miserable existence is now known as Bering Island, after the doomed captain. During the long, dark months of that winter, the shipwrecked mariners observed several of the unique creatures that were endemic to either Bering Island, the Aleutian Islands or coastal Alaska, including the massive, now-extinct northern manatee, sea lions and fur seals, which “covered the whole beach to such an extent that it was not possible to pass without danger to life and limb.”

  The most populous creature they observed, and the most important in the history of the Russian American Company, was the sea otter, a friendly, communal animal that lived close to shore all along the coast. “Altogether in life it is a beautiful and pleasing animal,” Steller wrote, “cunning and amusing in its habits . . . Seen when they are running, the gloss of their hair surpasses the blackest velvet. They prefer to lie together in families, the male with its mate, the half-grown young and the very young sucklings all together. The male caresses the female by stroking her, using the forefeet as hands, and places himself over her; she, however, often pushes him away from her for fun and in simulated coyness, as it were, and plays with her offspring like the fondest mother. Their love for their young is so intense that they expose themselves to the most manifest danger of death. When their young are taken away from them, they cry bitterly, like a small child, and grieve so much that, as I came to know on several occasions, after ten to fourteen days they grow as lean as a skeleton, become sick and feeble, and will not leave the shore.”

  The sea otters were playful creatures that elicited amusement from mariners until someone realized that their skins were extremely valuable. Their furs were worth a fortune in China, and throughout the summer the men hunted thousands of them and stripped them of their skins. Hardened by years of harsh life in Kamchatka and the dreadful sufferings of the past winter, the hunters saw the otters as their ticket to a life of ease and went “raging among the animals without discipline or order,” clubbing them, drowning them and stabbing them until the large herds had all but disappeared from the eastern side of Bering Island. In the spring they constructed a makeshift boat from salvaged planks, loaded it with mountains of otter skins and sailed west, back to the Asian mainland. Bering had, along with dozens of his unfortunate mariners, perished miserably of scurvy during the winter. The survivors, however, brought back the tale of their incredible voyage—and of the fortune that awaited others hardy enough to brave the journey.

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  THE FUR HUNTERS WHO EXTENDED THE REACH OF Imperial Russia across the Pacific Ocean, and who eventually became the nucleus of the Russian American Company, lost little time in exploiting the valuable resources of the new land. When the first mariners returned from Bering’s ill-fated voyage, the tales they wove of the wealth of sea otters in the Aleutians and Alaska had an immediate impact. The following year a shipload of hunters returned with a cargo of sixteen hundred sea otters, two thousand fur seals and two thousand blue foxes. Soon thousands of hunters annually crossed the Bering Sea in their quest for the velvet booty. Financed by merchants as far away as Moscow, traders became rich overnight, prompting even more to enter the bonanza. Within fourteen years, Bering Island’s treasure of sea otters, sea lions, fur seals and foxes was gone. The hunters moved farther east, where they occasionally engaged in bloody battles with the coastal natives, after which they forced them into servitude as hunters.

  Soon the hunters’ forays became a vicious wild-west-style slaughter as they moved from island to island, attacking and capturing natives and engaging in massive harvests of sea otters.

  One expedition in 1768 returned with forty thousand seals and two thousand sea otter pelts, fifteen thousand pounds of walrus ivory and vast quantities of whalebone. Expeditions began venturing farther along the coast so that voyages lasted up to two years and the crews, a mix of Russians and indigenous Siberians, established semi-permanent depots or settlements. On the Asian mainland the settlement of Okhotsk grew busy as the depot of the American trade, hosting the sailors and their families as well as the semi-annual influx of merchants who brought in packhorse trains from Irkutsk laden with supplies.

  After making the exchange, they trundled, under the protection of guards, west into the heart of Asia with their American furs. Chinese merchants ran caravans out of Kiakhta on the Mongolian-Russian border, a 2 ,100-kilometre journey across Mongolia and the Gobi desert from China.

  After several decades of invasion and plunder, the various trading companies coalesced around a handful of conglomerates, backed by capital from Moscow. The Shelikhov-Golikov Company was the most significant conglomerate, with ambitions to dominate the fur trade and control all of Alaska. In 1767, when Grigorii Shelikhov was about twenty years old, he had met Ivan Larionovich Golikov, a disgraced financier who was several years older and who was serving a term of exile in Irkutsk. Shelikhov had worked in all areas of the fur trade, from sales at Kiakhta to production in Okhotsk, when he teamed up with Golikov. With Golikov’s financial knowledge they started a strong enterprise of great scope. Shelikhov’s wife, Natalia, tall and charming, was also shrewd in business and eager for success. After hearing of Captain James Cook’s third voyage along the North American Pacific coast, the Russian entrepreneurs were inspired to expand their enterprise in Alaska with a permanent colony. After two years of planning, in 1783 Shelikhov and his wife were set to lead this group to Kodiak Island in a pilgrimage that included three ships carrying two hundred men, dozens of cattle, seeds for cabbages and potatoes, and tools. They had grand plans, some might say delusions, and took with them a blacksmith, carpenters, navigators and farmers. Shelikhov imagined cities flourishing along the coast, where music and art blended with commerce and agriculture, where fine houses and churches lined paved streets and public squares.

  Although it was illegal for Russian traders to use violence against native Alaskans—this was a crime against the state ostensibly punishable by death—Shelikhov planned right from the outset to do exactly this to establish a foothold for his colony, counting on the great distance from Russia to keep his secret. He chose Kodiak Island, despite a history of violence with native people there that made most Russian ships avoid it. His ships landed in the summer of 1784 , in what is now called Three Saints Bay (named after one of Shelikhov’s ships), and quickly launched an assault against a native fortress. Over the next few months, Shelikhov and his settlers attacked and killed many natives, taking hostages and building fortresses and stockades around the island as well as exploiting intertribal rivalries to gain additional manpower for the conquest of the region.

  Shelikhov followed his vicious assaults with placatory gifts and unexpected fairness. Captured islanders were surprised to be treated with respect and dignity; the women were not exploited but encouraged to marry colonists, and many were urged to live near the Russian settlement. Once the company had established a toehold, Shelikhov tried to make friends. He built a small school to teach native children the Russian language and other basic skills, such as carpentry, that might make them useful to the new company colony. When he and Natalia sailed away in 1786, the colony was well underway.

  Over the next several years Shelikhov, his wife and Golikov schemed and lobbied government officials in Irkutsk and St.

  Petersburg to grant them both a monopoly and state financing for their enterprise. They made exaggerated claims for their accomplishments as well as appeals to patriotism. One powerful and united company would be better able, they argued, to defend their territory from the encroachment of British, American and Spanish traders. But rumours of Shelikhov’s brutal methods on Kodiak Island had begun to trickle back west to Russia, no doubt
spread and amplified by agents of the other powerful trading enterprises operating in Alaska. Shelikhov was a boaster and an exaggerator, claiming that he had converted all the Aleut Islanders to the Orthodox faith and had added over fifty thousand subjects to the empire, as well as making other outrageous claims that were so patently false that they hindered rather than helped his cause.

  Although it was still the era of the great monopolies in Europe, Russia’s empress, Catherine the Great, was not interested in obtaining new lands on the distant fringe of her already expansive and sparsely populated domain. “It is one thing to trade,” she claimed, “quite another thing to take possession.” She turned down Shelikhov’s requests, and he retreated east to Irkutsk. All was not well with the Shelikhov-Golikov Company: although the colony was running smoothly and furs were being returned across the Pacific to its warehouses, the trade with China was closed—it had been so for years, because of a diplomatic dispute. The Alaskan furs were building up in warehouses, and as a result most of the company’s competitors had cut expenses and temporarily abandoned the trade. It was easier for them to do so, since they had no colony to maintain. Shelikhov’s money was running out; his managers in Alaska had not been proactive enough, so the colony was stagnating rather than expanding.

  Shelikhov had already replaced one manager, and now the second, a Greek named Evstrat Delarov, was also proving to be a disappointment. Shelikhov had earlier tried to hire Baranov for the position; indeed, historians have speculated that Baranov may have been one of the investors in Shelikhov’s enterprise. Wondering what to do about his ineffectual manager at Kodiak, Shelikhov was probably delighted when Baranov arrived in Okhotsk, momentarily destitute and open to possibilities that he had dismissed only a few years earlier. As we have seen, he lost no time in offering Baranov a position.

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  BAR ANOV HAD NEVER BEEN TO SEA AND KNEW LITTLE of what to expect from a long ocean voyage. If he had imagined it with some trepidation, he would have at least been mentally prepared. He boarded the ship to Alaska in August 1790, with high hopes and dreams, but was soon facing a set of unusual difficulties. Crammed into the hold of the small ship were cows and sheep, milling about, defecating, mooing and baying in terror and confusion. Goods were crammed into every available space: boxes of tools and work materials, cloth, nails, fuel, bales of tobacco, bricks of tea, great sacks of sugar, salt and flour— mundane but necessary provisions that could keep for years.

  The overburdened old ship lurched and wallowed in the swells, its aging timbers moaned and protested under the strain and water leaked in to such an alarming extent that the passengers were pumping round the clock. They could barely rouse themselves from their befouled bunks, so sick were they with the motion of the ship.

  The ship’s water casks were improperly filled, and the precious liquid drained away into the bilge. The captain ordered water rations cut, while storms bucked the ship about the wild ocean. Soon the dreaded scurvy had sapped the vitality of dozens: their teeth fell out, their breath became rancid, and strength left their limbs. When the lookout finally spied the island of Unalaska through the fog and mist, it was nearly too late. Dropping anchor there, the men rushed ashore for fresh water, but a storm moved the anchor at night and the Three Saints was dragged towards shore, where its already decaying timbers scraped against rock, parted and let the water in. The ship let out a sigh as it settled. As the storm increased in severity, the passengers and crew rushed to unload the precious cargo—their very lives depended upon it. They ferried the supplies ashore on rafts and in small boats while the Three Saints was picked apart and its planks tossed up on the gravelly beach. The fifty-two men disconsolately settled in for the winter on the barren, windswept island, hunkering down in some dugout dwellings abandoned by the natives.

  Once he was on land, though, Baranov was filled with excitement and energy. At forty-four years of age, he was by far the eldest of the group; indeed, many considered him far too old for this harsh life. But he explored all winter, hiking constantly and observing the new land, learning the language of the Aleuts and practising how to sail a small boat and hunt sea otters. And his group survived the winter. In the spring, all but five of the men loaded themselves into three sea-lion hide boats and pressed on, through the cold and rain, to cover the 1,100 kilometres to Kodiak Island; the other five remained to guard the remains of the cargo. Baranov did not like sea travel. Exhausted by the journey, he broke down with fever and remained weak and ill for over a month after the boats arrived at Kodiak Island in June 1791. When he recovered, he was stunned by what he saw: heavily forested, snow-capped mountains thrust skyward right from the water; it was a majestic, desolate, harsh and awe-inspiring scene.

  The following spring, the home-going men sailed away in one of the two remaining ships, leaving Baranov with 110 men, most of whom, Baranov noted, were lacking in ambition and enterprise. Certainly they were not troublemakers, as Shelikhov had chosen them for their docility, but they needed direction and order. Baranov soon imposed a quasi-military structure on the settlement, including strict obedience to orders, periodic inspection of the bunkhouses and ceremonial musters in which the men stood at attention to observe the raising and lowering of the Russian flag. Gambling was prohibited, and alcohol consumption was limited to milder liquids made from fermented berries (although Baranov kept a secret still for his personal use). Prostitution was prohibited, and strict regulations governed relations between the Russian men and native women, in effect requiring a form of monogamous marriage, partially financed by the Shelikhov company. Baranov enforced laws respecting the native custom that children belonged to their mothers, a custom that meshed nicely with his own and his company’s interests in having the men remain in Russian America. Men who grew attached to their female partners and children frequently stayed on much longer than their legal five-year contract required, and many of them settled permanently.

  Baranov improved the standing of his settlement with the nearby natives, the Alutiiq. He learned their language and customs and followed them, toured all of Kodiak Island to meet the people and negotiate with them, and enlisted hundreds of them to hunt sea otters the following spring. Those resisting his urgings to work were coerced to provide from each settlement “several persons of both genders”—which was of course illegal, but he trusted that news of the practice would remain buried.

  He had the authority to enlist native labourers only “provided every one of them is paid fair wages for his work.” Although he technically had no legal authority to punish either Russians or Alaskans, he frequently used the lash to maintain discipline in the distant outpost. For him, the natives were employees, customers, competitors and, in some cases, “second-tier” persons, much like Russian serfs. But Baranov was not all dour and full of the lash. He was also fond of music, dancing and singing, and the barrack-like communal lodging houses were frequently enlivened by energetic celebrants, including Baranov himself, who was an eager participant in festivities.

  Baranov moved the entire settlement to a more sheltered and convenient location, working hard to ensure that the new town was “beautiful and pleasant to live in.” He also began building new forts or outposts on the mainland, where different native groups lived, and persuaded them to maintain good relations, coaxing them with goods and promises of trade. He even took as his wife Anna, the daughter of one of the prominent chiefs. He had a comfortable two-storey house built for himself and Anna, and soon they had a son. Baranov met with English traders, including the famous British mariner George Vancouver, who was then creating a monumental chart of the entire region from California to Alaska for the British government.

  But there were always troubles. The Aleuts and Alutiiq of the Kodiak region, who were essentially under his command, sometimes met with war parties of slave-raiding Tlingit from farther south. The men of Baranov’s colony were constantly in conflict with other Russian traders in a low-level yet violent struggle. Baranov persuaded many of the natives not
to trade with his competitors, and on occasion urged them to attack rival trading outposts. Throughout the 1790s he accomplished much with very little support, keeping everyone fed and managing to placate the quarrelling factions. But he was in constant fear of mutiny by labourers and of attacks from arrogant higher-class Russian naval officers that Shelikhov had hired, and on one occasion he was stabbed by a drunken malcontent in one of the work barracks when he chastised employees for stealing company supplies of liquor and tobacco and for refusing to work. His authority was undermined by the cadre of priests who secretly sent letters back to Russia denouncing his leadership, claiming he was immoral and encouraged drunkenness and other activities, such as singing. Having reached the limits of his tolerance, he threatened to resign when Shelikhov dared to criticize him: “Since coming to work for you I fear I’ve lost that which I value most—my good name. You had best find a successor. I am getting old and my senses are dulling . . . My energy is failing me. The next time I ship furs, however, I come with them unless you change your attitude toward me and send me men capable of labour instead of parasites picked up just to round out a figure.” But before he could leave, he was caught up in events that would keep him in Russian America the remainder of his life.

  While Baranov toiled away in Alaska in the 1790s, slowly building an orderly, efficient and profitable enterprise along a mostly uncharted coast, his titular boss, Shelikhov, was working to place the business on the soundest footing he could imagine in Russia: a monopoly. In 1792 , trade with China was again opened to Russian merchants through the isolated outpost of Kiakhta, and Shelikhov was well placed to take advantage. For a good price, he quickly sold off the great store of American furs he had been amassing and began to pay off the company’s debts.