United States or Estonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Before the close of Baranof's administration, however, according to the account of Captain Golofnin, it was an establishment well built and furnished with some degree of luxury. Built in 1837 for the official residence of the chief managers of the Russian American Company, and occupied from the time of Kuprianof until 1867.
Here the fort was rebuilt and renamed New Archangel a fort worthy in its palmy days of Baranof's most daring ambitions. Sixty Russian officers and eight hundred white families lived within the walls, with a retinue of two or three thousand Indian otter hunters cabined along the beach. There was a shipyard.
The prisoners were, of course, discharged; for Baranof's conduct could no more bear scrutiny than their own; but it was one way to get rid of rivals; and the fur companies at war in the Canadian northwest practised the same method twenty years later. The effect of the bandit outrages on the hostile Indians of the mainland was quickly evident.
In the dark, the Russians could only fire blindly. The panic-stricken Aleuts dashed for their canoes to escape to Ismyloff's ship. Ismyloff sent armed Russians through the surf wash and storm to Baranof's aid. Baranof kept his small cannon pounding hot shot where the shouts sounded till daylight. Of the sixteen men, two Russians and nine Aleuts were dead.
But a more serious matter than shipbuilding demanded Baranof's attention. Rival fur companies were on the ground. Did one party of traders establish a fort on Cook's Inlet? Forthwith came another to a point higher up the inlet, where Indians could be intercepted.
By the 28th of September Baranof's Aleut Indian hunters had come in and camped alongshore under protection of cannon sent close inland on a small boat.
When the vessel put out to sea again, Baranof, too, put to sea, but it was to the boundless sea of eternity. He died on April 16, 1819, and was laid to rest in the arms of the great ocean that had cradled his hopes from the time he left Siberia. To pass judgment on Baranof's life would be a piece of futility.
How was he to know not a word had come from the governor of Siberia, and the summons was sheer bluff? He was so terrorized at the long hand of power reaching across the Pacific to clutch him back to perhaps branding or penal service in Siberia, that he did not even ask to see Baranof's documents. Coming post-haste, he offered explanations, excuses, frightened pleadings.
The second vessel under Captain Lisiansky proceeded at once to Baranof's aid at Sitka. Baranof was hunting when Lisiansky's man-of-war entered the gloomy wilds of Sitka Sound. The fur company's two sloops lay at anchor with lanterns swinging bow and stern to guide the hunters home. The eight hundred hostiles had fortified themselves behind the site of the modern Sitka.
The Aleut Indian hunters, who had become panic-stricken, gradually regained sufficient courage again to follow the Russians eastward. By the spring of 1804 Baranof's men had gathered up eight hundred Aleut Indians, one hundred and twenty Russian hunters, four small schooners, and two sloops.
Word Of The Day