CHAPTER XVII.
THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN COMPANY.
1796-1799.
It will be remembered that after Bering and Chirikof
had discovered the Aleutian Islands and the adjacent coast in 1741, their
wealth in fur-bearing animals was soon made known to Europe and northern Asia.
Trading, or, as they were termed, ‘contribution’ companies were quickly formed;
some of the first vessels despatched from Okhotsk
returned with cargoes that enriched their owners by a single voyage; and it was
believed that in the far north a never-failing source of riches had been
discovered, greater and more certain than the mines of Espanola, which yielded
their millions in the time of Bobadilla, or those of Castilla del Oro, where
lay, as the great navigator believed, the veritable Ophir of the days of
Solomon. Of course many of the fur-hunters found only a grave where they had
gone in quest of wealth; but, like the Spaniards who followed Cortes and Pedro
de Alvarado, they set little value on their lives or on those of others.
Moreover, the faint-hearted Aleuts offered no such resistance as was encountered
by the conquerors of Mexico and Guatemala. The promyshleniki could easily take
by force what they had not the money to buy, or what the natives did not care
to sell. They had no fear of punishment. Robbery, rape, and even murder could
be committed with impunity, for, to use their own phrase, “God was high above,
and the tzar was far away.”
Thus for many years matters were allowed to take their
course; but toward the end of the eighteenth century the threatened exhaustion
of the known sources of supply caused much uneasiness among the Siberian
merchants engaged in the fur trade, and some of them endeavored to remedy the
evil by soliciting special privileges from the government for the exclusive
right to certain islands, with the understanding that a fixed percentage of the
gross yield—usually one tenth—was to be paid into the public treasury. Such
privileges were granted freely enough, but it was another matter to make the
numerous half-piratical traders, who roamed Bering Sea and the North Pacific,
respect or even pay the least attention to them.
The encounters which took place between rival
companies have already been related, and now only two remained—the Shelikof-Golikof and the Lebedef-Lastochkin. The former had
established itself in Kadiak by force of arms, and Shelikof, by greatly
exaggerating the importance of his conquest, and representing that he had added
fifty thousand subjects to the Russian empire1and as many converts to the Greek
church, had so worked upon the authorities at St Petersburg that his petition
for exclusive privileges for his company was favorably received. These
privileges amounted in fact to a grant of all the Russian discoveries in
north-western America, and of the islands that lay between them and the coast
of Asia, including also the Kurile Islands and the coast of Kamchatka.
Nikolai Rezanof, of whom mention has already been
made, and who later becomes a prominent figure in the history of the colonies,
making Shelikof’s acquaintance at St Petersburg, was somewhat impressed with
the scope of his plans. A man of parts and ambition, of noble birth but scant
patrimony, he solicited the hand of Shelikof’s daughter and was accepted. But
the plans of Shelikof, bold as they seemed to many, were thrown into the shade
by those of his son-in-law, who purposed to obtain for himself and his partners
in America rights similar to those granted by the English government to the
East India Company. Matters prospered for a time. Shares in the association
were taken by members of the nobility, and after much astute intrigue had been
brought to bear, Catherine II was on the point of granting a charter, when her
decease occurred in 1796.
Meanwhile Shelikof had returned to Irkutsk, where he
died, as will be. remembered, in 1795. After this event, his wife Natalia, who
had accompanied her husband in all his travels in the wilds of Siberia and even
to Kadiak, and had always successfully conducted her husband’s business during
his absence, at once undertook the management of affairs, with Rezanof as chief
adviser.
During the year 1797 an Irkutsk merchant named Muilnikof organized a company, with a capital of 129,000 roubles, for the purpose of engaging in the fur trade; but
fearing that his capital was inadequate, and that complications might ensue
from the fact that Shelikof’s widow, who was to share in the enterprise, was
interested in other associations already permanently established, Muilnikof proposed to join himself with the Shelikof
Company. The offer was accepted, an agreement made which included all the partners,
and on the 3d of August, 1798, an association, including two smaller concerns,
and known as the United American Company, was organized at Irkutsk, with a
capital of 724,000 roubles, divided into 724 shares
of 1,000 roubles each. All hunters, or ‘small
traders’ as they were more frequently called, in Russian America were invited
to become partners in the company, on the same conditions as had been granted
to other members, and were forbidden to hunt or trade in the territory claimed
by the company without their permission.
If we can believe the report of the committee on the
organization of the Russian American colonies, made by royal permission and
extending Back to the time of the earliest discoveries, the need of such an
institution as the United American Company was greatly felt by the government.
“Having received information from all sides,” says this report, “of disorders,
outrages, and oppressions of the natives, caused in the colonies by parties of
Russian hunters, as well as of groundless claims advanced by foreign navigators
to lands discovered by Russians, it had some reason to hope that placing the
business of that distant region in the hands of one strong company would serve
on the one hand to perpetuate Russian supremacy there, and on the other would
prevent many disorders and preserve the fur trade, the principal wealth of the
country, affording protection to the natives against violence and abuse, and
tending toward a general improvement of their condition.”
Nevertheless it was at first feared that the decease
of Catherine II would be a death-blow to the ambitious schemes of the Shelikof
party, for it was known that her successor, Paul I, was opposed to them. But
Rezanof never for a moment lost heart, and with the versatility of a true
courtier, quickly adapted himself to the change of circumstances. He had been a
faithful servant to the pleasure-loving empress, and he now became a constant
companion and attendant upon the feeble-minded man who wore the crown. So
successful were his efforts, that on the 11th of August, 1799, the act of
consolidation of the United American Company was confirmed by imperial oukaz, and the association then received the name of the
Russian American Company. “By the same oukaz,” continues
the report above quoted, “the company was granted, full privileges, for a
period of twenty years, on the coast of north-western America, beginning from
latitude 55° north, and including the chain of islands extending from Kamchatka
northward to America and southward to Japan; the exclusive right to all
enterprises, whether hunting, trading, or building, and to new discoveries,
with strict prohibition from profiting by any of these pursuits, not only to
all parties who might engage in them on their own responsibility, but also to
those who formerly had ships and establishments there, except those who have
united with the new company.” All who refused to join the company, and had
capital invested in fur adventures, were allowed to carry on their business
only until their vessels returned to port.
In addition to the original capital, a further issue
of one thousand shares was authorized; but it was forbidden that foreigners
should be allowed to invest in the enterprise. Subscriptions flowed in rapidly,
and the entire amount was quickly absorbed, most of it probably in St
Petersburg; for by oukaz of October 19, 1800, it was
ordered that the headquarters of the company, which had formerly been at
Irkutsk, should be transferred to that city. Two years later, the emperor,
empress, and Grand Duke Constantine each subscribed for twenty shares, giving
directions that the dividends be devoted to charity. The company was allowed to
engage all classes of free labor, and to employ serfs with the consent of their
masters; but nothing was mentioned in the text of the oukaz of 1799 as to the obligations of the company in relation to the native
inhabitants. The only regulations on this subject are contained in the first
paragraph of the act of consolidation, in which “the company binds itself,” to
quote the words of the report once more, “to maintain a mission of the Graeco-Catholic
church in America, members of which were to accompany all trading and hunting
expeditions, and voyages of discovery which were likely to bring them in
contact with known or unknown tribes, and to use every endeavor to christianize them and encourage their allegiance to Russia.
They were to use efforts to promote ship-building and domestic industries on
the part of Russian settlers who might take possession of uninhabited lands, as
well as to encourage the introduction of agriculture and cattle-breeding on the
American islands and continent. They were also to keep constantly in view the
maintenance of friendly relations with the Americans and islanders, employing
them at their establishments and engaging in trade with them.”
Thus was the famous Russian American Company
established on a firm basis, and little did Shelikof dream, when representing
an obscure company of Siberian merchants he founded on the island of Kadiak the
village of Three Saints, that he was laying the basis of a monopoly which was
destined, as we shall see later, to hold sway over a territory almost as vast
as was then the European domain of the tzar. As yet, however, the boundaries of
this territory were not clearly defined, and its inhabitants were for the most
part unsubdued. The Aleuts were indeed held in subjection, but none of the
warlike tribes that peopled the peninsula and the adjoining continent had yet
been conquered. The Russian colonies at Yakutat and elsewhere on the mainland
were constantly threatened, and, as will presently be described, a settlement
that was founded about this time near the site where now stands the capital of
Alaska was attacked and destroyed by savages.
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