Battle of Sitka - Previous Colonization and Resistance

Previous Colonization and Resistance

Members of the Kiks.ádi of the indigenous Tlingit people had occupied portions of the Alaska Panhandle, including Sheet’-ká X'áat'l (present-day Baranof Island), for some 11,000 years. Alexandr Baranov (Chief Manager of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, a forerunner of the Russian-American Company) first visited the island aboard the Ekatarina in 1795 while searching for new sea otter hunting grounds. Baranov paid the Tlingit a sum for the rights to the land in order to prevent "interlopers" from conducting trade on the island.

On May 25, 1799 Baranov and 100 employees of the Russian American Company (accompanied by their native wives) sailed into Sitka Sound aboard the cutter Olga and sloop-of-war Konstantin of the Imperial Russian Navy; accompanying the Russian settlers was a fleet of some 550 baidarkas, carrying 600–1,000 Aleut escorts. Wishing to avoid a confrontation with the Kiks.ádi, the group passed by the strategic hilltop encampment where the Tlingit had established Noow Tlein ("Big Fort") and made landfall at their second-choice building site, some 7 miles (11 kilometers) north of the colony. The location of the Russian settlement at Katlianski Bay, "Redoubt Saint Michael," is known today as Starrigavan Bay, or "Old Harbor" (from Russian старая гавань) The outpost consisted of a large warehouse, blacksmith shop, cattle sheds, barracks, stockade, block house, a bath house, quarters for the hunters, and a residence for Baranov.

Though the Koloshi (the Russian name for the Tlingit, based on the Aleut name for the Tlingit) initially welcomed the newcomers, their animosity toward the Russians grew in relatively short order. The Kiks.ádi objected to the Russian traders' custom of taking native women as their wives, and were constantly taunted by other Tlingit clans who looked upon the "Sitkas" as the outsiders' kalga, or slaves. The Kiks.ádi came to realize that the Russians' continued presence demanded their allegiance to the Tsar, and that they therefore were expected to provide free labor to the Company. Competition between the two groups for the island's resources would escalate as well.