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Updated: June 7, 2025
Washington White was a good shot, but he did not like fighting. And he was particularly careful not to show himself above the breastwork of boulders behind which he, with his companions, were crouching, holding the Aleuts at bay. "Disher ain't no place for a'spectable pusson ob color," he muttered. "Wot do Buttsy an' me want o' shootin'? Wah! Dat bullet chipped de rock right near ma haid!
For days at a time we were storm-bound, and unable to hunt, or even leave our little tent, where frequently we were obliged to remain under blankets both day and night to keep warm. On May 15, by 4 o'clock, I had finished a hurried breakfast, and with my two Aleuts had left in the baidarka for our daily watching place.
Whole villages were blown up by mines of powder in birch bark. Fugitives dashing from the conflagration were sabred by the Russians, as many as a hundred Aleuts butchered at a time, villages of three hundred scattered to the winds, warriors bound hand and foot in line, and shot down. Suffice it to say, scurvy slaked Solovieff's vengeance.
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.
It was that ideal state, which finical philosophers describe as the "survival of the fit," and it worked well till the other party to the arrangement resolved he would play the same game and become fit, too, when there resulted a cataclysm of bloodshed. The Indians bowed the neck submissively before oppression. Abuse, cruelty, outrage, accumulated on the heads of the poor Aleuts.
"That's what the earthquakes did for it," said Phineas Roebach. "You see those crevasses and some of 'em mighty deep? Well, they weren't here the last time I came this way." "She is in motion again, perhaps," suggested Professor Henderson. "It ain't been in motion for ages or, so the Aleuts say," responded the oil hunter. "But there looks now to be some sagging forward.
These people can take us to the settlements any time they feel like it. I only wish we could talk more of their language or they more of ours." The Aleuts for the time did not talk much of any language, for presently their mouths were too full for speech. Each would stuff his mouth full of meat, and then with his knife cut off a piece so close to his lips as would seem to endanger his nose.
The whites talked the situation over and finally the oil man made the Aleuts an offer through the captive. It was agreed that if the white men were allowed two sleds and two teams of good dogs, with provisions for the dogs to last a week, they would instantly set out on the trail of the departed traders, thus removing their fatal presence from the vicinity of Aleukan.
Baranof haggled the Englishman tired, and compromised for one-fifth the demand. Two years passed, and the fur company was powerless to strike an avenging blow. Wherever the Russians led Aleuts into the Kolosh hunting-grounds, there had been ambush and massacre; but Baranof bided his time.
Afterwards another enemy, almost as dangerous as the Yankee, appeared in the shape of Russians from Alaska. They brought down a colony of Kodiak Indians, or Aleuts, and established themselves at Fort Ross, north of San Francisco. The Spaniards then founded the missions of San Rafael and Solano in front of the Russians, to head them off, as the priest makes the sign of the cross to ward off Satan.
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