CHAPTER XVI.
COLONIZATION AND MISSIONS.
1794-1796.
Notwithstanding the quarrels between rival trading
companies and occasional emeutes among the natives, caused in almost every
instance by the greed of the Russians, colonization in Alaska had thus far been
attended with fair success. The Russian seal-hunters had suffered no such
hardships as did the Spanish settlers in Central America, the early colonists
of New England, or the convict band that ten years after Captain Cook sailed
from Nootka in quest of a northeast passage to Hudson’s Bay founded on Port Jackson
the first city in Australasia. Apart from the seal fisheries, however, the
resources of the country were as yet undeveloped. On the island of Kadiak was
raised a scant crop of vegetables; at Voskressenski, as we have seen, was built
the first vessel ever launched into the waters of the North Pacific; but
throughout the settlements was felt a sore need of skilled labor, and in some
of them, as Shelikof would have us believe, of missionaries to educate the
natives and instruct them in the true faith. Application was therefore made for
clergymen and for exiles trained to handicraft. The request was granted, and in
August 1794 the Irekh Sviatiteli and the Ekaterina, two of the Shelikof Company’s vessels, arrived at Pavlovsk
with provisions, stores, implements, seeds, cattle, and a hundred and
ninety-two persons on board, among whom were fifty-two craftsmen and
agriculturists, and eighteen clergymen and lay servitors in charge of the
archimandrite Ioassaf. “I present you,” writes
Shelikof to Baranof, “with some guests who have been selected by order of the
empress to spread the word of God in America. I know that you will feel as
great a satisfaction as I do that the country where I labored before you, and
where you are laboring now for the glory of our country, sees in the arrival of
these guests a hopeful prophecy of future prosperity.” Shelikof’s merits as
teacher and pastor have already been related; the treatment which the
missionaries received from his dram-drinking colleague will be mentioned later.
Priests were not wanted among the. promyshleniki, and if they sojourned in
their midst must earn their daily bread as did the rest of the community. They
might serve, however, to bring into more thorough subjection the docile Aleuts.
By the Ekaterina, Baranof received a lengthy
communication from Shelikof and from Polevoi Golikof’s representative, relating to the establishment of
an agricultural colony near Cape St Elias on Yakutat Bay. The instructions on
this matter were to take the place of
all that had previously been sent. Accompanying them was a document touching
only on the private affairs of the company. Thanking Baranof for his exhaustive
reports, Shelikof concludes: “And now it only remains for us to hope that,
having selected on the mainland a suitable place, you will lay out the
settlement with some taste, and with due regard for beauty of construction, in
order that when visits are made by foreign ships, as can not fail to happen, it
may appear more like a town than a village, and that the Russians in America
may live in a neat and orderly way, and not, as in Okhotsk, in squalor and
misery caused by the absence of nearly everything necessary to civilization.
Use taste as well as practical judgment in locating the settlement. Look to
beauty as well as to convenience of material and supplies. On the plans as well
as in reality leave room for spacious squares for public assemblies. Make the
streets not too long, but wide, and let them radiate from the squares. If the
site is wooded, let trees enough stand to line the streets and to fill the
gardens, in order to beautify the place and preserve a healthy atmosphere.
Build the houses along the streets, but at some distance from each other, in
order to increase the extent of the town. The roofs should be of equal height,
and the architecture as uniform as possible. The gardens should be of equal
size, and provided with good fences along the streets. Thanks be to God that
you will at least have no lack of timber. Make the plan as full as possible,
and add views of the surroundings. Your work will be viewed and discussed at
the imperial court.” In another part of this letter Baranof is reproached for
exchanging visits with captains of English vessels, and warned that he might be
carried off to Nootka or California, or some other desolate place.
The latter portion of this epistle appears to have
been written for the purpose of deceiving the empress, to whom the plans of the
proposed settlement were to be shown, though we cannot but admire the comprehensive
scope of Shelikof’s imagination when he thus conceives the idea of building a
well ordered city in the American wilderness. Although such an undertaking
would require all the means and men at the disposal of the Shelikof-Golikof Company, he was engaged, besides other ventures, in
forming a second association under the name of the North American Company, for
the purpose of making permanent settlements on the mainland, and in building
ships for yet a third enterprise of which he was the leading man—the Predtecha Company, then holding temporary possession of the
Pribylof Islands, but left without means of carrying away their seal-skins by
the loss of their only vessel. The estimated complement for the North American
Company was a hundred and twenty men, of whom seventy were despatched in July 1794, and about thirty in 1795. Its main object was to aid in
supplanting foreigners in the trade with the natives, to extend this traffic
from Unalaska to the Arctic Ocean, and to enter into commercial intercourse
with the people living on the American coast, opposite Cape Tehcukotsk.
Moreover, Shelikof cherished in secret the hope of making some new discovery on
the American continent, leading to the long-sought-for passage into Baffin’s
Bay.
As soon as Shelikof had despatched his vessels from Okhotsk, he returned in 1794 to Irkutsk for the purpose of
organizing there a central office for the management of his many enterprises,
thus preparing for the future consolidation of all the Russian companies in
America. This was the inception of the great Russian American Company, which
was to be fully organized only after its originator’s death. Meanwhile Baranof
could do, and knew that he was expected to do, but little toward carrying out
his superior’s brilliant schemes of colonization. On all the principal islands
of the Aleutian group, and at some points on the mainland, the best locations
for agriculture and cattle-raising had been selected and fortified several
years before; additional hunting grounds and a few harbors had also been
chosen, and sites marked out at the mouths of rivers for trading posts with the
natives. But the time was not yet ripe for establishing new settlements, and
meanwhile in accordance with private instructions Shelikof kept the exiles
busily employed, some of them at Kadiak, and the mechanics probably at
Voskressenski, where, it will be remembered, the Delphin and Olga were launched in 1795.
The Trekh Sviatitelei had arrived a few weeks before these
vessels were completed, after a two years’ voyage from Kamchatka, with her
cargo of stores and provisions in good order and intact—a rare occurrence in
the early history of the Russian colonies. Several days were now devoted to
feasting and rejoicing, in which traders, priests, and servants alike
participated. The colonists were, however, no longer in fear of want, for
experiments made in the planting of several kinds of vegetables and
occasionally of cereals had been fairly successful, and, though they possessed
few implements, they had seed in abundance for either purpose. Thus, with a
never failing supply of fish, an abundance of food was, as they thought,
assured.
In December of this year Baranof set forth on a
journey round Kadiak, his purpose being to make arrangements for the hunting
season, and to ascertain the population of the island, which was found to
consist of 6,206 persons, the sexes being about equally divided. About seven
hundred bidarkas, each holding two men, could be assembled at the different
stations.
Though the archimandrite had previously described
Baranof as a man who “continually sat in his house hatching mischief,” and, in
a letter to Shelikof, had declared that he could see no sign that any of his
schemes of colonization were likely to be carried out, the chief manager
certainly took some steps toward establishing the much-talked-of settlement
near Cape St Elias. Intrusting the management of
affairs at Kadiak to his assistant Kuskof, he sailed
for Yakutat in the transport Olga and arrived at the village near Cape
St Elias on the 15th of July, 1796, finding there the Trekh Sviatitelei, which had reached the new settlement
on the 25th of June. The few men left at the place the previous autumn were
found in good health, but complained of having been frequently in want of food
during the winter. Baranof himself remained here two months, superintending the
erection of buildings; and after taking hostages from the natives and leaving a
garrison of fifty men, returned to Kadiak.
Meanwhile the Ekaterina, with a portion of the
exiles on board, and the transport Orel, under command of Shields, had
sailed for Cape St Elias, the latter convoying four hundred and fifty bidarkas
bound for Ltua Bay, where in a few days 1,800 sea
otter skins were secured.
Thus, at length, the settlement on Yakutat Bay was
fairly started with every prospect of success; but this, the first convict
colony established in the far north, like the one sent forth two years later to
people the desert wastes of Australia, was doomed to suffer many disasters.
During the very first winter news reached Kadiak that the village was in danger
of being abandoned for want of provisions. The Trekh Sviatitelei, which left the settlement on her
return voyage a few days before Baranof’s departure, was driven by heavy gales
into Kamuishatzk Bay. There a large force of men was
sent early in the following spring to repair the vessel, but she was found to
be so badly damaged that her hull was set on fire, and only her iron-work was
saved. At Voskressenski Bay Baranof was met by a messenger from Yakutat, who
reported that twenty laborers and several women had perished of scurvy at the
settlement during the past winter.
While hastening to the relief of the distressed
settlers, the chief manager found time to visit Fort Konstantine on Nuchek
Island, where the Lebedef-Lastochkin Company had hitherto maintained their
principal depot. For several years no supplies had been forwarded to this
place, and in consequence great dissatisfaction existed among the employees of
the firm. Baranof found no great difficulty in inducing a majority of the
Lebedef men to enter the service of the Shelikof Company, and the remainder
were promised a passage to Okhotsk. At the same time the Chugatsches formally
submitted to Baranof and furnished an additional quota of a hundred bidarkas to
reenforce his hunting parties, thus relieving him of all apprehensions of a
native uprising west of Yakutat, and enabling him to turn his undivided
attention to the wants of the new colony.
After relieving the existing distress and establishing
order among the settlers, Baranof returned to Kadiak, arriving there on the
first of October. Shields, who commanded the Orel, had in the mean time
proceeded south-west from Ltua Bay with his fleet of
four hundred and fifty bidarkas, and succeeded in reaching Norfolk Sound, where
he soon collected two thousand sea-otter skins.
We shall have occasion to refer later to the progress
of the convict colony at Yakutat. Shelikof and his colleagues, when petitioning
the empress that a band of exiles should be sent to Alaska to aid in developing
the resources of Russian America, and a party of clergymen to convert and
educate the natives, assured the government “that their wishes tended only to
add new possessions to Russia and new parishes to the church.” “But,” says Golovnin, who was instructed by the government to
investigate the affairs of the colony, “the clergy and the poor mechanics had
hardly arrived at Kadiak, when the former were set to earn their bread by the
sweat of their brow, mid the latter were distributed over different localities,
wherever furs could be got to swell the profits of the Shelikof Company.
Between 1794 and 1818 the missions received from the company neither bibles nor
new testaments, nor any other religious books, not even spelling-books to teach
the children, while wax candles, wine, etc., necessary for the performance of
sacred ceremonies, could not be obtained from them. But of the thirty-five
families of mechanics only three men and one woman remained in 1818. The
remainder were killed or died from want and hardship, while hunting for the
company. For all this I am in possession of written proofs. And thus Shelikof
showed to the world that between traders on a large or small scale there is no
difference. As the shopman in the market makes the sign of the cross and calls
God to witness in order to sell his goods a few copeks dearer, so Shelikof used the name of Christ and this sacred faith to deceive
the government and entice thirty-five unfortunate families to the savage shores
of America, where they fell victims to his avarice and that of his successors.”
All this is sufficiently bitter, and if any further
proof be wanted that Golovnin was somewhat biased,
his mention of Baranof, whom he describes as “a man who became famous on
account of his long residence among the savages, and still more so because he,
while enlightening them, grew wild himself and sunk to a degree below the
savage,” is further evidence. It is but due to the memory of Shelikof, whose
decease occurred in July 1795, to quote a few lines from the letter of his
widow, addressed on November 22d of that year to the governor of Tauris: “The
administration of the colony has made arrangements that these settlers shall
not be hampered in their work of constructing the new village by anxiety with
regard to producing the necessary provisions during the first year, and has
provided ample supplies of food to last them until they can provide for
themselves, as well as tools, etc., all of which have been purchased at Okhotsk
by my late husband at his own expense. At the same time an agent was appointed
to attend to the issue of these supplies, according to the wants of the people.
But finally they got up a conspiracy, and threatened to take the agent’s life
unless he gave them guns and ammunition to protect themselves against the
savages when they would reach the mainland, and that they would take possession
of the ship and sail for the Kurile Islands, selecting one of their men as
navigator. They had three great guns with ammunition, all ready for use, but
the chief agent of the company discovered their conspiracy, and three of the
ringleaders were, in accordance with the instructions of the commanding officer
at Okhotsk, punished by flogging, and separated among the hunters at various
stations.”
Knowing how he had compromised himself in his dealings
with the turbulent traders on Cook Inlet by assuming official authority which
did not belong to him, Baranof had to exert all his ingenuity, and probably
resorted to threats and violence, in order to keep the knowledge of his
proceedings from the priests, who were only too ready to meddle with the
concerns of the Shelikof Company. Though outwardly professing the veneration of
an orthodox member of the Russian church for its ordained representatives, Baranof
considered them as enemies and acted accordingly. He knew that in the pursuit
of his business the full control of the natives was essential to his success,
and he believed that every one of the missionaries would strive to obtain such
control for himself in the name of the holy synod. In order to lessen the
number of his enemies, he urged upon Ioassaf the
necessity of sending out missionaries to the savage tribes of the mainland,
from whom the light of Christianity was still entirely hidden. The chief of the
mission expressed his full understanding of this necessity, but winter was then
approaching fast and the journey to the continent was becoming dangerous. Thus
Baranof was obliged to face his adversaries during the whole of a long arctic
winter, and to counteract their intrigues as best he might.
The attitude assumed by the first apostles of
Christianity in Alaska from the very beginning of their residence in America
was decidedly hostile to all who managed and carried on business enterprises in
the colonies. Previous to reaching their destination the members of this
mission were detained for a whole winter in the wretched sea-port towns of
eastern Siberia and Kamchatka, where they met with numbers of the former
servants of the various trading companies, who were full of discontent and
resentment, and painted to them in the blackest colors the condition of the
country and the people inhabiting it. The result was that the priests finally
sailed for the American coast imbued with a prejudice against everything and
everybody belonging to the colonies. Being thus prepared to see nothing but
evil, priestly ingenuity and craft succeeded, in finding much more than had
been discovered by their ignorant informers. In the correspondence transmitted
by members of the mission to Shelikof, and to dignitaries of the synod, during
this first period of their missionary work, they make the worst of everything.
The archimandrite was especially bitter in his
denunciations of the chief manager, but there is little doubt that many of his
accusations were unfounded. It must be admitted, however, that the
ecclesiastics suffered many privations through the neglect of Baranof and the
traders, who regarded them simply as intermeddlers, of whom they must rid
themselves as speedily as possible. During their first winter the missionaries
were without sufficient food and shelter; no encouragement was afforded them in
their work, and it was not until July 1796 that the first church was built in
Kadiak, at Three Saints, though before that time it was claimed that twelve
thousand natives had been baptized.
While making his report to Shelikof, the archimandrite
states that he could fill a book with, the evil doings and atrocities that came
under his observation, but that out of consideration for him he would not lodge
a formal complaint with the supreme church authorities. He felt that even if
Baranof knew that he was writing the truth to the head of the company, he would
be prevented from making any further progress in his work, and perhaps even
endanger his life. He expressed his firm belief that no admonition of the
managers by his superiors could do any good, and that removal alone could
remedy the evil. Should that be considered impracticable, he would suffer in
silence, doing all the good that was possible under such unfavorable
circumstances, and patiently awaiting the time when providence would carry him
and his much-abused brethren back to Russia, beyond the control of their
‘untiring persecutor.’ The reverend correspondent likewise throws out hints of
mismanagement and peculation in business affairs.
On the other hand, the letters of Baranof and his
chief assistants, written during the same period, display a marked forbearance
in speaking of the missionaries and their doings. The difficulties of Baranof’s
position during this winter of close companionship with inquisitive, suspicious
priests, rebellious servants, and discontented natives cannot well be exaggerated.
No supplies of provisions had arrived with the missionaries, who, to a certain
extent, were responsible for their own privations, having feasted and lived in
too great abundance during their detention on the coast of Siberia and on the
sea voyage.
In the spring of 1795 the missionaries, with one
exception, proceeded to the mainland, there to labor with but indifferent
success among the native tribes not previously approached by the pioneers of
Muscovite civilization.
At Unalaska and the neighboring islands Father Makar,
though meeting with, little opposition from the few promyshleniki remaining
there, labored with apparent success. The natives were now thoroughly subdued,
and hundreds of them had been carried away to join the hunting parties of
Baranof. Their territory no longer afforded sites for profitable stations, and
they were left almost to themselves. An indifference bordering on apathy had
succeeded to the former warlike spirit of the Aleuts, who in earlier days had
wreaked dire vengeance upon their Russian oppressors whenever opportunity
offered. It is impossible to ascertain whether Makar was really an eloquent
preacher of the gospel, or whether his success was solely due to circumstances;
but success he certainly had. In a few years nearly all the inhabitants of the
Aleutian Isles were baptized and duly reported to the holy synod as voluntary
converts and good Christians. The circumstance that no attempt was made to
translate the confession of faith, or any portion of the scripture or ritual,
into the native language at that early time, suggests serious doubts as to the
agency of eloquence and argument in this wholesale conversion. When Veniaminof
entered upon his missionary career on the islands twenty years later, he found
the people Christians by name, but was compelled to begin from the foundation
the work of enlightenment and explanation of the creed in which they had been
baptized by Makar.
With the death of Shelikof the missionaries lost their
principal support, and no further attempt was made to extend their operations
until the archimandrite Ioassaf was recalled to
Irkutsk by order of the synod, in order to be consecrated as bishop. He started
upon his journey full of ambitious plans, and with the determination to make
use of his new dignity in overcoming all opposition, real or imaginary, on the
part of his persecutors. Visions of building up an ecclesiastical empire in
Russian America may have gladdened his soul after years of suffering and
humiliation; but whatever his ambitious dreams may have been, they must have
lost much in scope and vividness long before he embarked in the Feniks a second
time, not to return in splendor to the scene of former misery, but to find a
watery grave at some unknown point within a few days’ sail of his destination.
Prominent among the missionaries who accompanied the
archimandrite was Father Juvenal, who in 1795 was sent to Yakutat Bay, probably
to draw plans for Baranof, and on his return commenced to labor at Kadiak as a
priest and teacher. “With the help of God,” he writes from Three Saints Harbor
on June 19, 1796, “a school was opened today at this place, the first since the
attempt of the late Mr Shelikof to instruct the
natives of this neighborhood. Eleven boys and several grown men were in
attendance. When I read prayers they seemed very attentive, and were evidently
deeply impressed, though they did not understand the language.” On the
following day two more youths were placed under his charge, and “when school
was closed,” continues the father, “I went to the river with my boys, and with the
help of God we caught one hundred and three salmon of large size, which some of
the women assisted us in cutting up ready for drying.” Other scholars were
quickly enrolled, and though the pupils had an unpleasant trick of running off
without ceremony to trade furs whenever opportunity offered, all went well
until the 12th of July, when Baranof arrived at the settlement, with
instructions from the bishop of Irkutsk that Juvenal should proceed to Ilyamna
station.
On the following sabbath the priest celebrated divine
service for the last time at Three Saints. A brief description of the ceremony
may not be without interest: “We had a very solemn and impressive service this
morning. Mr Baranof and officers and sailors from the
ship attended, and also a large number of natives. We had fine singing, and a
congregation with great outward appearance of devotion. I could not help but
marvel at Alexander Alexandreievitch [Baranof], who
stood there and listened and crossed himself, gave the responses at the proper
time, and joined in the singing with the same hoarse voice with which he was
shouting obscene songs the night before, when I saw him in the midst of a
drunken carousal with a woman seated in his lap. I dispensed with services in
the afternoon, because the traders were drunk again, and might have disturbed
us and disgusted the natives.”
The next day Juvenal repaired to Baranof’s tent to
inquire what disposition was to be made of the pupils under his charge. The
reply was that they were to be removed to Pavlovsk, where Father German had
arrived and opened a school for girls; he would doubtless be willing to take
the boys also.
After blessing his flock and taking leave of them one
by one, the priest embarked for Pavlovsk on the 16th of July on board the
brigantine Catherine, where, he tells us, the cabin being taken up by
Baranof and his party, he was shown a small space in the hold between some
bales of goods and a pile of dried fish. In this dark and noisome berth, by the
light of a wretched lantern, he wrote a portion of his journal, often disturbed
by the ribald songs which the chief manager’s attendants sang for his amusement.
On the second day of the voyage a strong head wind set in, accompanied with a
heavy chopping sea. Baranof, being out of humor, sent for the father and asked
him whether he had blessed the ship. On being told that he had done so, he was
ordered with many curses to light a taper before an image of Nikolai Ugodnik, which hung in the cabin. Juvenal complied without
a word, and then retired to his berth, which, foul as it was, he preferred to
the company of the chief manager. The gale continued over night, and at
daybreak the vessel was out of sight of land, whereupon in presence of the
sailors and passengers Baranof spoke of the priest as a second Jonah, and
observed that there were plenty of whales about. All this time the latter was
unable to partake of food, and, as he says, was buried under a heap of dried
fish whenever the vessel rolled heavily.
At Pavlovsk, Juvenal noticed the great activity in
building, which was not even interrupted on the sabbath. On the fourth day
after his arrival he took his leave of Baranof, who promised him a passage in
his fleet of bidarkas as far as St George on the gulf of Kenaï, but told him
that afterward he must depend on the Lebedef Company, whose traders, he added
with a malicious grin, “were little better than robbers and murderers.”
After a tedious passage from island to island,
sometimes meeting with long delays, the priest reached the Kaknu or Kenaï
River, where was the nearest station of the Lebedef Company, on the 11th of
August. Here, notwithstanding Baranof’s warning, he met with the first signs of
religious observance by promyshleniki during his travels in the colonies.
During his stay of about a fortnight he married several couples, baptized a
number of infants and adults, and at intervals held divine service, which was
well attended.
Soon, however, the religious ardor cooled, and so
little interest did the natives take in the missionary that, when ready to
depart, he found it difficult to obtain men and bidarkas to take him across
the inlet to his destination. At last one morning after service he appealed to
the natives for men to assist him across the water, telling them that he must
go to the Ilyamna country to preach the new word to the people, who had never
yet heard it. Thereupon an old man arose and remarked that he ought not to go;
that the Kenaïtze people had been the friends of the
Russians for long years, and had a better right to have a priest among them
than the Ilyamnas, who were very bad. The missionary,
in his journal, confessed that he was puzzled for a fitting reply to this
argument. On the 25th, however, he set out from the station, accompanied by two
men from Chekituk village.
A delay was again occasioned by his guides indulging
in a seal-hunt on Kalgin Island, situated midway in
the inlet, and the western shore was not reached till the 29th. On the 30th he
writes: “This morning two natives came out of the forest and shouted to my
companions. Two of the latter went out to meet them. There was a great deal of
talking before the strangers concluded to come to our tents. When they came at
last, and I was pointed out to them as the man who was to live among them, they
wished to see my goods. I encountered some difficulty in making them understand
that I am not here to trade and barter, and have nothing for sale. Finally,
when they were told that I had come among them to make better men of them, one
of them, named Katlewah, the brother of a chief, said
he was glad of that, as they had many bad men among the Ilyamna people,
especially his brother. The two savages have agreed to carry my chattels for me
to their village, but, to satisfy Katlewah, I was
compelled to open every bundle and show him the contents. I did not like the
greedy glitter in his eye when he saw and felt of my vestments.”
On the 3d of September the party reached Ilyamna
village, after a fatiguing journey over the mountains and a canoe voyage on the
lake. Shakmut, the chief, received the missionary with friendly words,
interpreted by a boy named Nikita, who had been a hostage with the Russians. He
invited him to his own house, and on the priest’s expressing a wish for a
separate residence, promised to have one built for him, and allowed him to
retain Nikita in his service. Finding that the latter, though living with the
Russians for years, had not been baptized, Juvenal performed that ceremony at
the first opportunity, before the astonished natives, who regarded it as
sorcery, and one asked whether Nikita would live many days
Juvenal’s success was not remarkable, to judge from
his diary. One young woman asked to be baptized like the boy Nikita, expressing
the hope that then she could also live in the new house with the missionary. An
old woman brought two boys, stating that they were orphans who had nobody to
care for them, and that she would like to see them baptized, “to change their
luck.” The chief Shakmut also promised to consider the question of embracing
Christianity, and for some reason he did so promise in the presence of the
whole tribe, and amidst great feasting and rejoicing. Two servants and one of
his wives were included in the ceremony, the priest not daring to refuse them
on the ground that they had received no instructions, for fear of losing the
advantage which the chief’s example might give him in his future work.
The conversion of the chief had not, however, the
desired effect; it only led to dissensions among the people, and when the
priest began to tell the converts that they must put away their secondary
wives, the chief and others began to plot his downfall. It had been a marvel to
the savages that a man should put a bridle upon his passions and live in
celibacy, but their wonder was mingled with feelings of respect. To overcome
the influence which the missionary was gaining over some of his people,
Shakmut, or Alexander as he was now christened, plotted to throw temptation in
his way, and alas for Juvenal! whose priestly wrath had been so lately roused
by the immorality of Baranof and his godless crew of promyshleniki, it must be
related that he fell. In the dead of night, according to his own confession, an
Ilyamna damsel captured him by storm.
On the day after this incident, the outraged
ecclesiastic received a visit from Katlewah, who
expressed a wish to be baptized on the following sabbath. “I can tell by his
manner,” writes the priest on September 26th, “that he knows of my disgrace,
though he did not say anything. When I walked to the forest today to cut some
wood, I heard two girls laughing at me, behind my back; and in the morning,
when I was making a wooden bolt for the door of my sleeping-room, a woman
looked in and laughed right into my face. She may be the one who caused my
fall, for it was dark and I never saw her countenance. Alexander visited me,
also, and insisted upon having his wives baptized next Sunday. I had no spirit
left to contest the matter with him, and consented; but I shall not shrink from
my duty to make him relinquish all but one wife when the proper time arrives.
If I wink at polygamy now, I shall be forever unable to combat it. Perhaps it
is only imagination, but I think I can discover a lack of respect in Nikita’s
behavior toward me since yesterday.” Continuing his journal on the 27th, he
adds: “My disgrace has become public already, and I am laughed at wherever I
go, especially by the women. Of course they do not understand the sin, but
rather look upon it as a good joke. It will require great firmness on my part
to regain what respect I have lost for myself as well as on behalf of the
church. I have vowed to burn no fuel in my bedroom during the whole winter, in
order to chastise my body—a mild punishment, indeed, compared to the blackness
of my sin.”
The next day was Sunday. “With a heavy heart,” says
Juvenal, “but with a firm purpose, I baptized Katlewah and his family, the three wives of the chief, seven children, and one aged
couple. Under any other circumstances such a rich harvest would have filled me
with joy, but I am filled with gloom.” In the evening he called on Alexander
and found him and his wives carousing together. Notwithstanding his recent
downfall, the priest’s wrath was kindled, and through Nikita he informed the
chief that he must marry one of his wives according to the rites of the church,
and put away the rest, or be forever damned. Alexander now became angry in his
turn and bade him leave the house. On his way home he met Katlewah,
who rated him soundly, declaring that he had lied to them all, for “his brother
was as bad as ever, and no good had come of any of his baptisms.”
The career of Father Juvenal was now ended, and the
little that remains to be said is best told in his own words: “September 29th.
The chief and his brother have both been here this morning and abused me
shamefully. Their language I could not understand, but they spat in my face,
and what was worse, upon the sacred images on the walls. Katlewah seized my vestments and carried them off, and I was left bleeding from a blow
struck with an ivory club by the chief. Nikita has bandaged and washed my
wounds; but from his anxious manner I can see that I am still in danger. The
other boys have run away. My wound pains me so that I can scarcely—” Here the
manuscript journal breaks off, and probably the moment after the last line was
penned his assassins entered and completed their work by stabbing him to the
heart. This at least was his fate, as represented by the boy Nikita, who
escaped with the diary and other papers to a Russian settlement, and delivered
them into the hands of Father Veniaminof on his first visit to the Nushegak
villages.
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