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So are the islands that lie between it and the Sitkan shore handsome and ornamental, but there are far too many of them. The picture is overcrowded, and in this respect is as unlike the Bay of Naples as possible; though some writers have compared them, and of course, as is usual in cases of comparison, to the disadvantage of the latter. Leaving Sitka, we ran out to sea.
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.
He talked with Imber, haltingly, with throaty spasms. Jimmy was a Sitkan, possessed of no more than a passing knowledge of the interior dialects. "Him Whitefish man," he said to Emily Travis. "Me savve um talk no very much. Him want to look see chief white man." "The Governor," suggested Dickensen. Jimmy talked some more with the Whitefish man, and his face went grave and puzzled.
We all wanted volumes on the Northwest as many of them as we could get; but almost the only one obtainable was Skidmore's "Alaska, the Sitkan Archipelago," which is as good as any, if not the best. A few had copies of the "Pacific Coast Pilot. Alaska. Part I. Dixon's Entrance to Yakutat Bay," invaluable as a practical guide, and filled with positive data.
Barber affected not to understand, lured both Indians on board, seized them, put them in irons, and tied them across a cannon mouth, when he demanded the restoration of all captives and loot; but the Sitkan chief probably had his own account of who suggested the massacre. Also it was to the English captain's interests to remain on good terms with the Indians.
George Davidson, President of the Geographical Society of the Pacific, has written an irrefutable pamphlet on why Kyak Island and Sitka Sound must be accepted as the landfalls of Bering and Chirikoff. Thus the terrible Sitkan massacre of a later day was preceded by the slaughter of the first Russians to reach America.
It was his intention to move the Sitkan colony down to the mouth of the Columbia River; not only pressed by the need of a more beneficent soil, but as a first insidious advance upon San Francisco Bay. Upon this trip it would be enough to make a survey of the ground and bury a copper plate inscribed: "Possession of the Russian Empire." The Juno had encountered terrific storms.
Sentries paraded the gateway; so Baranof sailed back to Kadiak. The Kolosh or Sitkan tribes had only bided their time. That sleepy summer day of June, 1802, when the slouchy Siberian convicts were off guard and Baranof two thousand miles away, the Indians fell on the fort and at one fell swoop wiped it out. Up at Kadiak honors were showering on the little governor.
The ships began to line up and land field-pieces for action, when a Sitkan came out with overtures of peace. Baranof gave him the present of a gay coat, told him the fort must be surrendered, and chiefs sent to the Russians as hostages of good conduct. Thirty warriors came the next day, but the whites insisted on chiefs as hostages, and the braves retired.
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