Alaska (46 page)

But as the Russian Baranov had learned when he first saw the sound some years before, one of its most attractive features was the horde of islands, some no bigger than a tea table, others of considerable size, which speckled the surface of the water, breaking up surging storm waves that would otherwise have roared in from the Pacific.

When the fog finally lifted, Captain Corey gingerly threaded his Evening Star through the islands, bringing her some hundred yards from the foot of the hill, and fired a cannon to inform the Indians that he was prepared to trade with them for pelts, but when the time came for such trade, the Americans found themselves in a predicament. Ever since the ambushing of Captain Cook in the Hawaiian Islands, captains and crews had remained on their trading ships and invited natives to come aboard with their goods, while sailors armed with rifles maintained watch. However, at Sitka the Tlingits were preoccupied with burying their Great Toion, so the Americans launched a longboat, and with Ravenheart perched in the prow, they ignored custom and rowed ashore.

At first, the grieving Tlingits waved them away, but when those in charge of the ceremony saw the slave Ravenheart standing amongst the visitors, they announced that they had spent the last five days seeking him as one of the three slaves to be slain so as to provide the toion with servants in the next world. When Captain Corey and First Mate Kane realized that the Tlingits were determined to take Ravenheart from them and put him to death, they indicated that they would not allow this, but since they had only four sailors in the boat, and they without arms, they knew that the Tlingits could overpower them if they tried to make a serious protest. So with a sense of sinking shame at abandoning a good man who had placed his life in their care, they made no further objection when some of the elders seized Ravenheart and started hauling him to the ceremonial log.

But now an important man in Tlingit history stepped forward, the bold young chieftain Kot-le-an, a tall, sinewy fellow in his early thirties, dressed in shirt and trousers made from choice pelts and draped in a decorated white tunic of deerskin. About his neck he wore a chain made of shells and on his head the distinctive hat of the Tlingits, a kind of inverted funnel from the top of which streamed six ornate feathers. Like Ravenheart, he had a slim copper ring in his nose, but his brown-red features were made distinctive because of his drooping black mustache and neatly trimmed 285

goatee. In height, slimness and mien he was visibly differentiated from the other Indians, and in voice, determination and willingness to act he displayed a moral force which made him the acknowledged military leader and principal aide to the toion.

The six Americans had not encountered Kot-le-an on previous trips to Sitka, for he had been absent on punitive forays against troublesome neighbors, but even had he been present they would probably not have met with him, because he felt that trade was beneath him. He was a warrior, and it was in this capacity that he now stepped forward to prevent the execution of Ravenheart. In words that the Americans did not understand and which were not interpreted for them, since Ravenheart had previously provided that service, the young chieftain voiced a decision that would soon prove to have been prophetic: 'One of these days we shall have to protect our land from either the Americans like these here today or Baranov's Russians gathering strength in Kodiak. As your leader in battle, I shall need men like Ravenheart, so I cannot let you take him.'

'But the Great Toion also needs him,' several of the old men cried. 'It would be indecent to send . . .'

Kot-le-an, a man who loathed oratory or extended debate, responded by nodding to the elders, then ignoring them and grasping Ravenheart by the hand, pulling him free of both the Americans and the funeral managers: 'This one I must have for when the battles begin,' and in this abrupt manner the life of the big Tlingit was saved.

The Americans then watched with horror as two male slaves, young men in their teens, were dragged down the hill to the seashore, where their heads were held under water until they strangled. Unmarred, their corpses were then hauled back up the hill and placed ceremoniously beside the dead body of the Great Toion, whereupon four of the stoutest Tlingits grabbed the slave who had been selected to replace Ravenheart, stretched him across the sacrificial block of wood, and placed across his neck a slim driftwood log, pressing it down until all twitching in the body ceased. Sadly, as if mourning the loss of a friend, they placed this third body across the toion's feet, and signaled to the watching Indians that the burial of their chief could proceed.

After the funeral ceremony was concluded, trading for the pelts collected by the Tlingits proceeded, and ten of the eighteen barrels of rum were exchanged, under the mediation of Ravenheart, for seal pelts. No sea otters, the fur that China, Russia and California wanted, were in evidence, and it looked as if the Evening Star would have to sail without 286

trading the guns, which the Tlingits really sought. However, just as Captain Corey was about to give the signal 'Haul anchor!' Ravenheart and Kot-le-an drew up to the ship in a small wooden rowboat recently built in imitation of those used by American ships, and when the two men were aboard the Evening Star,

Ravenheart showed the young chief who had saved his life the dozen boxes containing the guns, telling him in Tlingit: 'There they are. The guns you need.'

Kot-le-an, spotting immediately the box whose top had been removed earlier to show Ravenheart the guns, pulled the loose boards aside and saw the handsome dark-blue barrels and the polished brown stocks. Even had the guns had no practical purpose, they would have been beautiful, but as rifles capable of protecting the Tlingits from would-be invaders, they became objects of immense importance.

'I want them all,' Kot-le-an said, but when this was interpreted, Captain Corey demurred: 'We trade only for sea otter.'

When this was translated, Kot-le-an found it impossible to control his rage. Stamping the deck with his moccasined feet, he shouted: 'Tell him that we have enough men to take the guns!' but before Ravenheart could speak, Corey grabbed Kot-le-an by the arm, swung him about to indicate the four cannon on the port side pointing directly at the houses atop the hill, and then to the four on the starboard, which could be pivoted around. 'And tell him,' he snarled, 'that we have one aft and one forward, ten in all.'

Translation was not necessary, for Kot-le-an knew what cannon were. One year ago an English ship, having fallen into dispute with Tlingits on the mainland, had lost a sailor in a brawl, and in retaliation had bombarded the offending village until only one house remained standing, and Kot-le-an knew that American whalers were even quicker to exact vengeance. Capitulating to Captain Corey's superior strength, he instructed Ravenheart: 'Tell him in five days, many otter pelts.'

When Corey saluted this information, as if Kot-le-an were the ambassador of a sovereign power, the Tlingits withdrew, and as they departed First Mate Kane assured them: 'We'll wait five days.' Within the hour the Americans saw numerous small boats set forth from Sitka Sound to visit outlying settlements, and during the next days they watched them returning much deeper in the water than they had been when departing.

'We'll be getting some otter pelts,' Corey assured his men, but even as he prepared to leave ship he ordered Kane: 'While Kot-le-an can see, train half our cannon on the hill, half on

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the shore where he'll be, and have the men stand ready.' Kot-le-an, watching these preparations, was satisfied that no surprise attack from his side was going to succeed, but he also knew that the Americans, having come so far from Boston, could not return with an empty hold. They needed furs as badly as he needed guns, and from this pragmatic base the barter proceeded.

When Corey stepped ashore and saw the enormous number of pelts assembled under duress, he realized that whereas the sea otter might be extinct in the Aleutians, the Pribilofs and Kodiak, it was still swimming vigorously in these southern waters, and at the end of two hours of close inspection, he saw that he could with great profit to his ship dispose of his entire dozen cases of guns. So the deal was struck: 'Tell Kot-le-an I will give him all the guns. You saw them, four hundred and thirty-two. But I want all these pelts and this many more.' Pulling aside nearly a third of the pelts, he indicated that this was the requirement, then stood back, allowing Kot-le-an time to digest this new demand.

As a warrior, the young chief did not relish bartering, he was more used to command, but his apprehensions about the future were so strong that he knew he must have those guns the

Evening Star

carried, so with a gesture which astonished Corey, in a low voice he issued orders to his men, who moved aside a beached boat to disclose a hidden cache of otter pelts half again as large as the additional demand being made by Corey. Showing his contempt, he started kicking the skins toward the pile already belonging to Corey, and when he had thus moved some dozen pelts he growled to Ravenheart: 'Tell him he can have them all.'

When the precious cargo was safely stowed upon the Evening Star, with a value many times the cost of the guns, Kot-le-an and Corey stood facing each other, and in a formality which the Tlingit had learned from English captains, he held out his right hand, and Corey took it. But the American was so surprised at the gesture and so pleased with the results of this barter that on the spur of the moment he told Ravenheart: 'Tell Kot-le-an that because he gave us extra fur, we shall give him extra lead and powder,' and he ordered his sailors to bring forth a substantial chunk of lead and nearly half a barrel of powder.

WITH WARM FEELINGS ON BOTH SIDES, THE DEAL WAS

concluded, and two days after the Evening Star sailed from Sitka with a fortune in otter skins to be traded in Canton for twice what Corey had calculated, the prudence of Kot-le-an 288

in making this lopsided deal was confirmed. A small armada of Russian ships and Aleut kayaks came into the bay, passed insolently beneath the hill where the local Tlingits kept their headquarters, and threaded its way eight miles to the north, where, in a spot which seemed to be completely surrounded by protecting mountains, they proceeded to unload the material required for the building of a major fort.

The armada, headed by Chief Administrator Aleksandr Baranov, was not a trivial one, for it brought one hundred Russian men, some wives and nine hundred Aleuts to Sitka with the avowed purpose of establishing here the capital of Russian America, from which the mainland north of California could be developed as a major Russian holding.

On 8 July

1799, Baranov led his people ashore, and his aide Kyril Zhdanko planted a Russian flag in the loamy soil beside a gently flowing river. Then Baranov asked Father Vasili Voronov, who had come with him to serve as spiritual mentor of the new capital, to offer thanks to God that although the long trip across the open ocean from Kodiak had experienced grave difficulties scores of Aleuts dying from poisoned fish, hundreds perishing at sea the Russians themselves had completed it safely, and that was what mattered. Prayers said, the chubby little master of Russian imperialism stood uncovered, wiped his bald head, and proclaimed: 'As the old century draws to a close and a bright new one, full of promise, is about to begin, let us apply all our energies to the building of a noble capital city for the greatness that is to be Russian America.'

With that, in a loud voice he christened the fort-that-was to-be 'Redoubt St. Michael,'

and Sitka's Golden Age was under way.

WHEN KOT-LE-AN AND HIS AIDE RAVEN-HEART SAW THE Russian armada creep past their hill at the southern portion of the bay, their first impulse was to muster all the Tlingit troops and engage in whatever activities might prove necessary to repel the invaders and prevent them from landing, whatever their intentions. But when Kot-le-an took the first steps to put this plan into effect, a curious relationship, which would govern the rest of Ravenheart's life, came into operation. 'Tell me what to do,'

he said to Kot-le-an, and by this statement he meant that whatever order was issued at any time, he was prepared to execute it regardless of danger to himself, because, as he said, 'I am already dead. The log is across my throat. I breathe only at your pleasure.'

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'So be it,' the young chieftain said. 'What you must do first is scout out their positions and strength.'

So Ravenheart, keeping to the woods, crept up the eight miles to Redoubt St. Michael and set up an observation post, from which he took careful note of the Russian potential: Three ships, not strong like

Evening Star

but many, many more men than the Americans. About a thousand men, but only one in ten are Russian. The others, what can they be? He studied the non-Russians with care, reasoning that they could not be Tlingits or from any clan associated with the Tlingits: They're shorter, darker. They wear bones through their noses and some of them have that strange sloping hat. He noticed two favorable aspects: They know how to make boats and none of our people can handle paddles the way they do. He decided that in a fight on the water, these little men would be formidable, and that with eight or nine hundred such fighters in support of the three big ships, the Russians would give a strong account of themselves.

They're Koniags, he concluded, and rumor had swept through the islands in recent years that these men of Kodiak were able warriors, to be avoided if possible, but before he reported this to Kot-le-an he wanted to assure himself as to the facts, so one night when the moon was gone, he crept close to where the outlines of the fort had been dug and waited in the darkness till one of the workmen wandered out.

With a leap and a big hand about the man's face, he dragged the man back into the trees, where he gagged him with a handful of spruce needles and bound him with sinew thongs. Sitting on him till daylight, he then hefted him across his shoulders like a bundle of pelts and marched back to Sitka Hill with him. There, others who were familiar with the languages of the Bering Sea identified the workman as an Aleut, and when they interrogated him they learned that he had been born on Lapak Island and had been taken as a slave to Kodiak. He revealed further that all the non-Russians at the redoubt were Aleuts. When asked: 'Are your people happy to be working here?'