a brief history of russian america & the russian orthodox church

15 January 2015 ©HISTORICPHILIPPINES.COM 2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1

A brief history of Russian America & the Russian Orthodox Church


The Flags

The flag of the United States of America with only 37stars representing the states of the union beforeAlaska joined the union.

The flag of the Russian American Company from1799 to 1867 as approved by the Czar of all theRussias, in 1806, Alexander I.

The State Flag of Alaska starting in 1867.


Peter 1The Great2 Nov 1721 to 8 Feb 1725

Catherine I8 Feb 1725 to 17 May 1727

Peter II18 May 1727 to 30 Jan 1730

Anna13 Feb 1730 to 28 Oct 1740

Ivan VI28 Oct 1740 to 6 Dec 1741DisputedMurdered 16 Jul 1764

Elizabeth6 Dec 1741 to 5 Jan 1762


Peter III9 Jan 1762 to 9 Jul1762Murdered

Catherine III The Great9 Jul 1762 to 17 Nov 1796

Paul I17 Nov 1796 to 23 Mar 1801Assassinated

Constantine I1 Dec 1825 to 26 Dec 1825Disputed

Alexander I 23 Mar 1801 to 1 Dec 1825

Nicholas I1 Dec 1825 to 2 Mar 1855

Alexander IIThe Liberator2 Mar 1855 to 13 Mar 1881Assassinated

Alexander IIIThe Peacemaker13 Mar 1881 to Nov 1894

The Czars and the Czarinas who ruled the Russias from the 1760s to the 1890s.


Russia laid claim to Alaska in 1741, following Vitus Bering’s pioneer voyage across thePacific from Siberia. Hundreds of Russian fur-seekers followed. The first Orthodox houseof worship in America was a chapel built by laymen on Umnak Island in the Aleutians in the1760’s.

The Orthodox mission established a formal presence in North America, at Kodiak, in 1794with the arrival of ten monks including North America’s first Orthodox Saint, the humblemonk Herman.

Another great cleric, Bishop (also Saint) Innocent (Veniaminov) designed and built the firstRussian Orthodox cathedral in North America, St. Michael’s in Sitka, between 1844 and1848.


Original Chapel on Umnak Island at Attu, Alaska


Nikolski Orthodox Church, Umnak Island, Alaska


Russian Orthodox Church at Umnak, Alaska, by Sam McLainThe original Chapel was built on this location during the 1760s.


The island of Unalaska was first inhabited by the Aleut people, who named it "Ounalashka",meaning: "Near the Peninsula". They developed an intricate and complex society long beforetheir first contact with the Russian fur traders who would document their existence.

Unalaska and Amaknak Islands contained 24 settlements with more than 1,000 Aleut inhabitantsin 1759, when the first Russian group under Stepan Glotov came and started trading for threeyears on Umnak and Unalaska.

Between 1763 and 1766, a conflict between the Russian fur traders and the Unalaska Nativesoccurred; the Aleuts destroyed four Russian ships and killed 175 hunters/traders

The Port of Unalaska as seen by Louis Choris in late summer 1816.


Old Russian Orthodox Church, Kodiak, Alaska destroyed by fire July 1943 by Sam McLain


Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox Church, Kodiak, Alaska by Sam McLain


Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov (1747-1795) was a Russian seafarer and merchant bornin Rylsk.

Shelikhov organized commercial trips of the merchant ships to the Kuril Islands andthe Aleutian Islands starting from 1775.

In 1783–1786, he led an expedition to the shores of Russian America, during whichthey founded the first permanent Russian settlements in North America. Shelikhov'svoyage was done under the auspices of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, the otherowner of which was Ivan Larionovich Golikov.

The company would later form the basis on which the Russian-American Companywas founded 1799.

In 1784, Shelikhov arrived in Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island with two ships, theThree Hierarchs, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom andthe St. Simon.

The Awa'uq Massacre or Refuge Rock Massacre, was an attack and massacre byRussian fur trader Shelikhov and 130 Russian armed men & cannoneers of theShelikhov-Golikov Company against the Qik’rtarmiut Sugpiat tribe of Koniag Alutiiq(Sugpiaq) people of the Kodiak Island in 1784 in Russian-controlled Alaska.


This happened in April. When our people revisited theplace in the summer the stench of the corpses lyingon the shore polluted the air so badly that none couldstay there and since then the island has beenuninhabited. After this, every chief had to surrenderhis children as hostages. I was saved by the fact thatmy father begged to be exempted and paid with manymore sea otter pelts than demanded.

It occurred on the secluded stack island Refuge Rock(Awa'uq in Alutiiq language) of Partition Cove onSitkalidak Island, near and across Old Harbor, in theKodiak Archipelago. The Russians slaughtered 500men, women and children on Refuge Rock, althoughsome sources state the number to be 2000 or worsebetween 2,500–3,000. Following the attack of Awa'uq,Shelikhov claims to have captured over 1000 peopleand detaining 400 as hostages. There were noRussian casualties. The massacre was an “isolatedincident” and the Alutiiq were completely subjugatedby Russian traders thereafter.

1784 to 1818 were called the "darkest period ofSugpiaq history," and it ended with a change in themanagement of the Russian-American Company.


Over a half century later, an old Sugpiaq (Koniag Alutiiq) man, Arsenti Aminak, reported his ownrecollections of the same events to a Finnish naturalist and ethnographer Heinrich Johann Holmberg(1818–1864) who was collecting data for the Russian governor of Alaska.

This is the memory of Russian conquest at Awa’uq that Aminak had survived as a young boy. He stated:“The Russians went to the settlement and carried out a terrible blood bath. Only a few were able to flee toAngyahtalek in baidarkas; 300 Koniags were shot by the Russians.

Having established his authority on Kodiak Island, Shelikhov founded the first permanent Russiansettlement in Alaska on the island's Three Saints Bay Kodiak Island was explored in 1763 by Russian furtrader Stephan Glotov. The first outsiders to settle on the island were Russian explorers under GrigoryShelekhov, a fur trader, who founded a Russian settlement on Kodiak Island at Three Saints Bay near thepresent-day village of Old Harbor in 1784. The settlement was moved to the site of present-day Kodiak in1792 and became the center of Russian fur trading. (Unalaska had existed long before, but it was neverconsidered the permanent base for Russians until Shelikhov’s time).

In 1790, Shelikhov, back in Russia, hired Alexandr Baranov to manage his fur enterprise in RussianAmerica.

The settlement of Grigory Shelikhov in Kodiak Island.

A gulf in the Sea of Okhotsk, a strait between Alaska and Kodiak Island, and a town in Irkutsk Oblast inRussia bear Shelikhov's name. Shelikhov actually travelled via Shelikhov Bay in the Sea of Okhotsk inDecember 1786-January 1787, after he had been left behind at Bol’shereck in Kamchatka as the winds torethe Three Hierarcs from her anchors and carried her out to sea.


The Russian colony in Alaska was established in 1784 bymerchant Grigory Shelikhov. Shelikhov's colonisation attempt atKodiak Island was met with resistance by the native population.

He returned to Russia and installed Alexandr Baranov as directorof the colony.

In order to convince the Russian imperial court of the seriousnessof his colonial ambitions, Shelikhov recruited volunteers from theValaam, an environment that appears strikingly similar to theKodiak archipelago's landscape, and Konevitsa monasteries totravel to the new colony.

The volunteers, led by Archimandrite Joasaph (Bolotov), departedSaint Petersburg on December 21, 1793, and arrived at KodiakIsland on September 24, 1794. When they arrived they wereshocked by the harsh treatment of the Kodiak natives at thehands of the Russian settlers and Baranov.

They sent reports to Shelikhov detailing the abuse of the localpopulation, but were ignored. In response, however, the HolySynod created an auxiliary episcopal see in Alaska in 1796, andelected Fr. Joasaph as bishop. Fr. Joasaph and a small partyreturned to Russia in 1798 for his consecration, and to offer first-hand accounts of what they had seen. During their return voyageto the colony in May 1799, their ship sank and all aboard died.

In 1800, Baranov placed the remaining monks under housearrest, and forbade them to have any further contact with thelocal population.

Russian outpost at Three Saints Harbor, 1790

Alexander Baranov of the Russian-American Company & the first governor of Russian

Alaska.


Despite the lack of leadership, the Orthodox missionin Alaska continued to grow.

In 1811, however, the Holy Synod officially closed theepiscopal see. It was not until 1823 that the HolySynod sent instructions for a new priest to travel toAlaska.

Father John Veniaminov of Irkutsk volunteered for thejourney, and left Russia in May 1823.

He and his family arrived at Unalaska Island on July29, 1824. In 1840, after the death of his wife, Fr. Johnaccepted monastic tonsure taking the name Innocentand ordination as the Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurileand Aleutian Islands, making him the first rulingbishop of the Alaskan mission since Bishop Joasaph.

Bishop Innocent was elevated to archbishop in 1850.For his missionary and scholarly work that hadfocused on blending indigenous Alaskan languagesand cultures with Orthodox tradition, Innocentbecame a saint of the Orthodox Church in America in1977, and is referred to as the Enlightener of theAleuts and Apostle to the Americas.

Fr John Veniaminov

Fr John Veniaminov, his wife & children arrive in Alaska, painting by: Nikolai Solomin

St Innocent of Alaska

=


The Shelikhov-Golikov Company appealed to the Most HolySynod of the Russian Orthodox Church to provide a priest for thenatives. Catherine the Great decided instead to send an entiremission to America. She entrusted the task of recruitingmissionaries to Metropolitan Gabriel of St. Petersburg, who sentten monks from Valaam, including Herman. The missionariesarrived on Kodiak on September 24, 1794.

Herman and the other missionaries encountered a harsh reality atKodiak that did not correspond to Shelikhov’s rosy descriptions.The native Kodiak population, called “Americans” by the Russiansettlers, were subject to harsh treatment by the Russian-AmericanCompany, which was being overseen by Shelikhov’s managerAlexander Baranov who later became the first governor of thecolony.

The men were forced to hunt for sea otter even during harshweather, and women and children were abused. The monks werealso shocked at the widespread alcoholism in the Russianpopulation, and the fact that most of the settlers had taken nativemistresses. The monks themselves were not given the suppliesthat Shelikhov promised them, and had to till the ground withwooden implements. Despite these difficulties, the monksmanaged to baptize over 7,000 natives in the Kodiak region, andset about building a church and monastery.

Herman was assigned in the bakery and acted as the mission’ssteward (ekonom).

St Herman of Alaska

St Herman’s Crucifix & Chains


The monks became the defenders of the nativeKodiak population. Herman was especially noted forhis zeal in protecting them from the excessivedemands of the RAC, and Baranov disparaged himin a letter as a “hack writer and chatterer.”

A contemporary historian compares him toBartolomé de las Casas, the Roman Catholic friarwho defended the rights of native South Americansagainst the Spanish.

After over a decade spent in Alaska, Hermanbecame the head of the mission in 1807.

Although he was not ordained to the priesthood, thelocal population loved and respected him, and heeven had good relations with Baranov.

Herman ran the mission school, where he taughtchurch subjects such as singing and catechismalongside reading and writing. He also taughtagriculture on Spruce Island.

However, because he longed for the life of a hermithe soon retired from active duty in the mission andmoved to Spruce Island.

The Russian Orthodox church founded its first mission in Alaska in 1794 Church in Kodiak


Herman moved to Spruce Island around 1811 to1817. The island is separated from Kodiak by a mile-wide strait, making it ideal for hermit life. Hermannamed his hermitage “New Valaam.”

He wore simple clothes and slept on a benchcovered with a deerskin. When asked how he couldbear to be alone in the forest, he replied, “I am notalone. God is here, as God is everywhere”.

Despite his solitary life, he soon gained a following.He received many visitors—especially nativeAleuts—on Sundays and church feasts.

Soon his hermitage had next to it a chapel andguesthouse, and then a school for orphans. Hermanhad a few disciples, including the Creole orphanGerasim Ivanovich Zyrianov, a young Aleut womannamed Sofia Vlasova, and others. Entire familiesmoved in order to be closer to the Elder, who helpedto sort out their disputes.

Herman had a deep love for the native Aleuts: hestood up for them against the excesses of theRussian-American Company, and once during anepidemic he was the only Russian to visit them,working tirelessly to care for the sick and console thedying Herman spent the rest of his life on SpruceIsland, where he died on November 15, 1836.

Spruce Island in Herman’s time

Aluets winter lodge


On March 11, 1969, the bishops of the OrthodoxChurch in America (OCA) formally declared theirintention to canonize Herman, “as a sublimeexample of the Holy Life, for our spiritual benefit,inspiration, comfort, and the confirmation of ourFaith”.

On August 9, 1970, Metropolitan Ireney of the OCAalong with Archbishop Paul of Finland and otherhierarchs and clergy presided over the canonizationservice, which was held at Holy ResurrectionCathedral on Kodiak Island. His relics weretransferred from his grave underneath the SaintsSergius and Herman of Valaam Chapel, on SpruceIsland, to the Holy Resurrection Cathedral.

The major portion of his relics are preserved at HolyResurrection Cathedral in Kodiak, Alaska, while hisburial site at the Sts. Sergius and Herman Chapel,Spruce Island, Alaska is an important pilgrimage site,where the devout will often take soil from his graveand water from the spring named in his honour..

Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church, Kodiak, Alaska destroyed by fire July 1943 by Sam McLain

St Herman’s Reliquary at Holy Resurrection Cathedral in Kodiak


The Watercolours in this story are part of a set of 106 paintings by Alaskan Artist Sam McLain.His works are now part of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections. We have included onthe following pages about 30 of Mr. McClain’s work. We will provide you with more examples ofthese beautiful watercolours over the months to come.

SAM McCLAIN (1919-1994).

Sam McClain was born in San Angelo, Texas. He came to Alaska in thelate 1940s and worked as an architect for the U.S. Army Corps ofEngineers, Alaska District Office, in Anchorage from 1949 until hisretirement in 1979.

He married Christine Ferrari Reeder in Anchorage in 1950. McClainwas an artist, specializing in pen and ink drawing and watercolors. Hestudied under watercolor artists Rex Brandt and Robert E. Wood inCalifornia in the late 1960s. He was best known for his drawings andwatercolors of Russian Orthodox churches and other historical buildingsin Alaska.

McClain contributed drawings and designed the cover for FernWallace's book, The Flame of the Candle: a pictorial history of RussianOrthodox Churches in Alaska, which was published in 1974.

He also taught watercolor art classes and performed volunteer work forthe Anchorage School District and other local organizations. SamMcClain died in Anchorage in 1994.


St Nicholas Church, Hoonah, Alaska


Russian Orthodox Church, Wood Island, Alaska


St. Michael the Archangel Chapel, Kolignak, Alaska


Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox Church, Belkofski, Alaska


Saints Peter and Paul Church, Pitkas Point, Alaska


Holy Transfiguration Russian Orthodox Church, Kashega Village, Unalaska Island, Alaska


Church of the Ascension of Our Lord, Karluk, Alaska


Original St. Nicholas Church, Kwethluk, Alaska


St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, Kwethluk, Alaska


Saints Sergius and Herman of Valaam, English Bay, Alaska


Nativity of Our Lord Chapel, Ouzinki, Alaska


St. Michael Chapel, Cordova, Alaska


Church of the Holy Trinity, Kasigluk, Alaska


Church of Saint Nicholas, Juneau, Alaska


St Michael the Archangel, Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Sitka, Alaska


St. George Church, St. George Island, Alaska


St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Chapel, Sand Point, Alaska


Old Russian Orthodox Church, Eklutna Village, Alaska


St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Chapel, Ekuk, Alaska


Old Russian Orthodox Church, Kodiak, Alaska


Russian Orthodox Chapel, Eyak, Alaska


Russian Orthodox Church, Douglas Village, Alaska


St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, Tyonek, Alaska


St. Seraphim Russian Orthodox Chapel, Lower Kalskag, Alaska


Russian Orthodox Chapel, Aiaktalik Island, Alaska


Saints Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Chapel, Sleetmute, Alaska.


St. Innocent Chapel, Bench River, Alaska


Original Church, St. Michael, Alaska


Nativity of Christ Russian Orthodox Church, Makushin Village, Unalaska Island


Transfiguration of Our Lord Church, Newhalen, Alaska


Alaska State Library, Historical Collections.

Roselyn J Parrenas, She Who Must be Obeyed,my wife, facilitator, translator. & de BOSS!

Wikipedia, the on-line-free encyclopedia.

This work by Fergus JM Ducharme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.Based on a work at www.historicphilippines.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at [email protected] .

a brief history of russian america & the russian orthodox church

Travel