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Signal and shout confused in the thunder of the surf ordered the men to paddle for their lives inshore. Night was coming on. The distance was longer than Baranof had thought, and it was dark before the brigades landed, and the men flung themselves down, totally exhausted, to sleep on the drenched sands.
No wilder lord of the wild northland ever existed than that old madcap Viking of the Pacific, Alexander Baranof, governor of the Russian fur traders. For thirty years he ruled over the west coast of America from Alaska to southern California despotic as a czar. And he played the game single-handed, no retinue but convicts from Siberia, no subjects but hostile Indians.
Baranof would have selected the site of the present Sitka, high, rocky and secure from attack, but the old Sitkan chief refused to sell it, bartering for glass beads and trinkets a site some miles north of the present town.
Skayeutlelt, the false friend of Baranof, directed the battle from a nearby knoll and his nephew, Katlean, was one of the principal actors in the bloody tragedy. A few survivors who were hunting in their bidarkas or were in the forest, escaped to the ships of the English and American traders which were in the bay.
Reinforcements were landed from the ships under command of Lieutenants Arbusof and Polavishin. The hunters, sailors, and Aleuts flung themselves against the fortifications, but meeting a murderous fire were driven back in disorder and only saved from disaster by the protection of the fire of the ships. Ten men were killed and 26 wounded, and among the wounded was Baranof.
Captain Yanovski became enamored with the beautiful daughter of Baranof, and if you search the old records of the Cathedral of St. Michaels at Sitka you will find the entry as made of the marriage of Simeon Ivanof Yanovski "with the late head governor of the Russian American possessions, Collegiate Adviser and Cavalier Baranof's daughter Irina, one of Creoles."
The white Easter vestment is of cloth of silver and the cloth of gold for high feast days was the personal gift of Alexander Andreevich Baranof, the great Russian who established the colony. The belfry clock is said to be the work of the hands of Veniaminof.
On August 10, 1790, about the same time that John Jacob Astor also embarked in the fur trade that was to bring him in contact with the Russians, Baranof sailed to America.
Affairs were at this pass when Konovalof, the dashing leader of the plunderers, planned to capture Baranof himself, and seize the shipyard at Sunday Harbor, on Prince William Sound. Baranof had one hundred and fifty fighting Russians in his brigades. Should he wait for the delayed instructions from Siberia?
Such was the inauspicious introduction for Baranof to the founding of the new Russian fort at Sitka or Norfolk Sound. It was the end of May before the brigades glided into the sheltered, shadowy harbor, where Chirikoff's men had been lost fifty years before. A furious storm of snow and sleet raged over the harbor.
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