In Kodiak, the Russians developed a new way of hunting. Chasing after the sea otters in their ungainly wooden boats was exhausting work, and most of the otters escaped. But the Native skin boats, called kayaks, were faster, quieter, and more seaworthy, and the Natives knew how to sneak up on their prey silently. When otters rest, they wrap a blade of kelp around them as an anchor so that they don’t float away. Floating there in a kelp bed, barely above the water surface, they are hard to distinguish from the gas-filled bulbs of the bull kelp. It takes a practiced eye to find them in the middle of a large kelp bed. It didn’t take long for the Russians to realize that they could catch more otters if they forced the Natives do it for them. Starting with a two-person Native kayak—or baidarka, as they called it, meaning “little boat”—they added a third hole in the middle. A Russian overseer could sit in the middle while two Natives paddled the kayak and did all the hunting.
Hunting parties were usually organized by Baranov and lasted for months. The leaders, or Toyons, of every village were required to identify strong men who would participate in the hunt, and up to one hundred kayaks would assemble at St. Paul Harbor at a predetermined date in the spring. One Native would be designated as the partovshchik, or foreman, whose responsibility was to dole out supplies of flour, tobacco, tea, and sugar. After a blessing by the priest, the Alutiiq armada would paddle out of the harbor, not to return until the fall. Arriving at a likely site, the kayakers would spread out in a wide arc. When an otter was seen, it usually made a quick dive underwater. The closest hunter would paddle to the location where it dove and hold his kayak paddle vertically as a sign. The rest of the fleet would then form a wide circle around him. After a little while, the otter would surface to get a breath, and the hunter would launch a dart at it, causing the otter to dive again. The circle of kayaks would tighten around the frightened and exhausted animal, and as soon as it surfaced again, it would be assaulted by a rain of darts, usually killing the animal. The hunter whose dart hit closest to the head would be given credit for the kill and could claim it for payment. It was a deadly, efficient way to hunt. Although the Natives were “paid” for their efforts, it was really more a form of slavery than employment.
Russian relations with the Natives were complicated. The Russians were a wild and free-spirited lot, and with few women to hold their attention, they quickly became troublesome. Some took Native women as wives, often by force. The RAC charter required the Company to treat the Natives as subjects of the Russian Empire, which entitled them to fair treatment; they were to be provided with clothing and food, as long as they provided hunting services in return. However, their services were essentially impressed. Up to 50 percent of the men in each village were required to hunt otters, for which they were paid one-fifth the value that a Russian was paid for the same furs. The Natives continued to be governed by their own Toyons, but these had to be approved by the Company manager, who was usually a senior Naval captain. Despite these stipulations, Russian overseers often treated the Native men who worked for them with contempt, forcing them to hunt until late fall instead of gathering foods that their own families needed to survive.
Despite their inhuman treatment of the Natives, the Russians were a religious group, who followed the rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church. Most of them originated from remote Siberian villages where priests were rare. Realizing that any religion was better than none, the Church at that time allowed citizens to perform their own rituals without the presence of a priest. Many of the Russian workers had come from areas of Northern Russia and Siberia, where their religious beliefs aligned and blended with those of Native groups, and over time had incorporated many Nativist traditions into their own. In Russian America, they continued this practice. Russians recognized and feared the power of Native shamans and occasionally sought their assistance with the weather or health issues. Through these interactions with lay Russians, many Alaska Natives converted to Russian Orthodoxy without any intervention on the part of the Church.
In order to tame the spirits of his workers, nourish their souls, and keep them under control, Shelikhov requested the Russian Orthodox Church to send over a lay priest to administer to the spiritual needs of the settlement and for supplies to build a church. In Moscow, this request was reviewed by none other than Empress Catherine II, who decided instead to send an entire Ecclesiastical mission, consisting of five priests led by Father Iosaf, four postulants, and a lay brother known as Father German (or Herman, in English). Most of them came from monasteries on islands in Lake Ladoga, near St. Petersburg, and were considered well suited for the mission because they were accustomed to cold weather and deprivations. Their trip to Russian America required a three-month overland journey from the monastery at Valaam to Kamchatka, followed by several months at sea. They reached their final destination, on Kodiak Island, in September of 1794.
The priests were not prepared for the crude conditions they encountered there. Kodiak was still a wilderness. There was no church; they lived in huts with bare floors, and had little to eat but dried fish. Several of the priests were dispatched to other settlements. Father Iosaf disapproved of the way in which Baranov’s men treated the Natives and sent letters back to Russia complaining about it bitterly. After several years of this, the Church decided to elevate Father Iosaf to Bishop-Vicar of Russian America, which would give him much greater authority that he could use to control the excesses of Baranov and Shelikhov. In 1799, Father Iosaf returned to Okhotsk where he was consecrated and soon set out for his return to Kodiak aboard the ship Phoenix, under the American Captain Shields. He never made it back though, as the ship was lost in a storm and sank probably somewhere in Shelikhov Strait.
Of the original mission to Kodiak, only three priests remained. One of them was Father Herman.
Father Herman felt he was destined for this life. He dedicated himself to care for the Russian men’s spiritual needs and welfare. But it was also apparent to him that the Natives deserved his attention as well. Compared to most Native Americans, the Koniag Alutiiq had a high standard of living. They were well fed, thanks to plenty of wild fish, and they were well housed; their barabara-style homes sunk into the ground were warm in winter and cool in summer. But in Father Herman’s eyes, they were poor, desperate souls in need of salvation and education; it became his mission to convert them to Christianity first, then to educate them. From this point in history we can look backwards and debate the merits of conversion, but education had definite benefits, the most serious of which was that it would allow the Natives to understand how poorly they were being treated by their Russian overseers and how badly they were being cheated in most transactions. Father Herman may not have realized the full ramifications of his new mission, but Baranov did. It was not in Baranov’s interest for the Natives to be educated, as it would only make his job more difficult.
Disagreements between Baranov and the Church came to a head in 1801 when Czar Alexander I took the throne. The new emperor’s ascension required that all Russian citizens take an oath to him, and to facilitate this, the priests called all Russian and Alutiiq men to Kodiak. Baranov viewed this request as interference with his control of the colony, and vehemently resisted it, insisting that the Natives go out hunting for otters instead. He even went so far as to exclude the priests from the settlement and threatened to ship them out of the colony.
In 1805, the Russian colonies were visited by Nikolai Petrovich Rezanof, son-in-law to the now-deceased Shelikhov and heir to the Russian-American Company mantle. He had come on an around-the-world trip to investigate conditions in the colony. Rezanof was either an organizational genius or a complete despot, and during his brief visit he reorganized the structure of the RAC and the methods of accounting and payments, and improved the treatment of Natives. He also established a hospital, a system of courts, and a real school, which promptly took in ninety students, mostly boys. Although the monks had been charged with the task of educating the children in order to turn them into productive workers, their only real interest had been in teaching them the Catechism and how to perform as altar boys. At Rezanof’s direction, twenty additional students were sent to Father Herman to learn