Tlingit Warriors – Hunt the Past

History

Tlingit Warriors
(High School)
Second Battle of Sitka: October 1 - 4, 1804

Russian America
Russian America is an odd-sounding term, but Alaska once belonged to the Czar, his foothold into the new world. Small in number, the Russian hunters and colonists relied heavily upon native Alaskans for trade and assistance. Competition over the fur trade from British trappers come out from Canada obliged the Russians to extend their influence into southeastern Alaska, building forts on Tlingit lands. The Tlingit (Kling-it), initially, extended a friendly hand to the newcomers, but as so often happened, relations soured spilling into war. Between 1802 and 1804 two battles were fought between the Russians, and their Aleut allies, and the Kiks. ádi Tlingit of Sitka island, upon which the fort was built.
Ultimately, the Kiks. ádi Tlingit removed themselves from their island homeland after fierce fighting. Though defeated, this did not blemish the fact that the Tlingit were a formidable foe indeed, ones who gave the beleaguered Russians a hard time indeed on the far shores of North America.
Russia’s hold over what is now Alaska was tenuous at best. Obviously there were few of them to begin with and far more natives. Moreover, the primary purpose of Russian North America was to get a foot in the door of the lucrative otter trade than pervading, not to colonize the land for few Russians were eager to settle in the great unknown of Alaska. Problem was, most Russians were landsmen, ill-used to the ways of the sea and thus not deft hands at hunting the creatures that inhabited its depths. So, naturally, they turned to the peoples they encountered to do the hunting for them. Many of the early Russians in Alaska were contract workers known collectively as promyshlenniki. Initial contact with the Aleuts, the people inhabiting the Aleutian Islands off the Alaskan coast, was peaceful. Violence soon erupted and by the 1770s the Aleuts were brought to heal; their wives and children held hostage as insurance that the men would continue to hunt the valuable otters and offer an annual tribute. No amount of literacy, nor the introduction of Christianity, could ever make up for the wrenching apart of Aleut culture brought about by the Russians' arrival. Ivan Veniamov, a Russian priest living amongst them in the 1820s and 30s, noted:

“On rough seas they always guess the height and the speed of the waves, and they invariably distinguish between an ordinary wave at open sea and a wave in shallows and shoals…[therefore] only Aleuts, or people with such eyesight and sight estimation, can hunt otters at sea, and Russians...can never be otter hunters.”

Perfect sea hunters, the Aleuts became handy allies in war against the tribes of mainland Alaska as the Russians advanced eastward. While brutal in the extreme, the promyshlenniki’s conduct is made easier to understand within the context of the time and situation. They themselves hailed from the lowest order of Russian society, the Serfs, virtual slaves used to brutal treatment by their masters; now transplanted thousands of miles from hearth and home, few in number, having a war upon their hands it is no wonder that the Aleuts were brought to heel with such brutality.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Russians were making inroads down the southeastern Alaskan coast to ward off advances by the British. The Chief Manager for the Russian-American Company, effectively the governor of Russian America, Alexsandr Baranov, was a man without much in the way of Imperial power to back up his advances. Penny-pinching amongst company directors, and a general dearth of armaments, men, and material necessary to establish vital trade relations with the locals via peaceful means. In conjunction with his Aleut allies, Baranov began to make military forays into Tlingit controlled waters beginning in the 1790s. Within a decade he’d established a fort on Sitka Island, having bought the land from a local Tlingit headman. Problem was, the decentralized nature of Tlingit society, where power was spread outward rather than concentrated in the hands of anyone single individual, left many Tlingit angered by the Russian imposition of an outpost in their midst.
The Tlingit at War
The Tlingit nation was split between the Raven and Eagle moieties; further divided into a multitude of clans interlinked through marriage and kinship, while the most basic element of Tlingit society rested in the house group. Households were vast, reaching in excess of sixty people. Clan status was not equal, depending upon the mother’s line as the Tlingit are a matrilineal society where the mother’s line provided greater status to her children dependent upon her clan of origin. Communities were a conglomerate of different clans, forming a problem for the Russians who could not distinguish Tlingit from one clan or the other. In 1818 the Russian naval Captain, Basil Golovnin, observed that: “because the local natives do not constitute one single tribe under one chief but are divided into various clans who live or roam as they please... it is not possible to take revenge on them, for one cannot tell to which clan the guilty belong.” Indiscriminate attacks by the Russians would bring a united clan effort against the fledgling Russian settlement on Sitka, a position with enormous defensive inadequacies.
Indeed, by 1802 the inability of the Russians to resist a Tlingit attack against the Sitka settlement forced them from the island in the wake of a massacre. Two years later, backed by a gunboat of the Russian navy, and several hundred Aleut warriors, Baranov personally led an expedition to reestablish the lost fort on Sitka. The Tlingit stood ready to repel his advance. Peers in technological armaments as they possessed firearms aplenty, enough to rival the Russian guns, thanks to trade with American coastal vessels trading guns for furs, the Tlingit held their ground until they ran out of ammunition, inflicting ugly losses upon Baronov’s force. Baranov was operating at the furthest edge of Russian influence; reinforcements would not be coming. It was do or die and after fierce fighting that raged over the first four days in October 1804, the Russians emerged triumphant regaining their former toehold, while the surviving Tlingit withdrew to a nearby island, abandoning their ancestral lands.
Garbed in masks sporting the visages of sacred animals rendered fearsome for the purpose of terrifying the enemy, the Tlingit clans went to war armed with traditional spears and bows, along with modern firearms received through trade with Americans and Brits. Infighting amongst the clans and neighboring peoples bred within the Tlingit a martial tradition; boys were trained from a young age to become warriors, while practical lessons learned through incessant raids led to the erection of palisades and other fortified works around the small communal dwellings. That the Tlingit fought effectively with artillery and muskets behind fortified positions at Sitka against the Russians and their allies is clearly representative of their adaptability towards new technologies and their easy absorption of them into their own tactical doctrine. Indeed, Golovnin was impressed by their natural progression with the musket, remarking “they have learned quickly to use firearms, and they shoot very accurately” and that in battle “ they are so courageous that they are rarely captured alive.”
Clearly, the Tlingit were a people well used to the trails of war; fighting amongst their own clans and against neighboring tribes was frequent enough to breed a warrior society, one more than capable in meeting the few Russians and their native allies in open combat. Seamlessly fusing modern technologies with traditional fighting methods, the Tlingit never accepted Russian claims upon their territories, now were they ever conquered by the newcomers. Far from the popular image of a technologically, numerically, superior European advance, the Russians were paltry in number, operating at the extreme limit of their nation’s influence they crossed blades with the Tlingit on equal terms and found themselves up against a warrior people whom they could not outright defeat.

Tlingit Warriors
(Middle School)
Second Battle of Sitka: October 1 - 4, 1804

Russians in Alaska
Alaska was once a possession of the Czar of Russia. An overseas American colony born in the late eighteenth century from a desire by the Russians to cask in upon the lucrative fur trade than pervading throughout North America. Otter skins were the prize, but the Russians were few in number, and most of them were not fishermen. So, as they moved across the Bering Sea, laying claim to the Aleutian islands they decided to use the native Aleuts for the purpose of hunting these sea creatures. Naturally, relations quickly turned violent; the handful of Russians forced to wrestle the Aleut under their control in a series of bloody confrontations that lasted twenty years between the 1740s and 1760s. Ensuring the Aleuts hunted and did as they were told, the Russians took their wives and children as hostages, teaching them to read and converting them to Orthodox Christianity; however, these introductions did not wipe away the fact that the Aleuts were a conquered people, forced to do the bidding of their conquerors.
While harsh by modern standards, such policy made sense to the Russians. Few in number, operating far from their native land, with a larger native population surrounding them, and no hope of major reinforcements evident, they turned to brutality to keep the Aleuts in line. Moreover, since most of the Russians in Alaska were part of the promyshlenniki, contract workers hailing from Russia’s lowest social orders, the Serfs, virtual slaves in their own country well used to brutal treatment by their social betters, it is no real wonder that they treated the Aleut any different from the way they were treated back in Russia.
Practically speaking, they could not hunt effectively upon the high seas for the precious otters, so the Aleut, who were born hunters, were the perfect stand-ins. Indeed, their abilities are starkly described by Ivan Veniamov, a Russian priest living amongst them in the 1820s and 30s:

Russian America was not an enterprise in colonization, for few Russians ever wanted to come anywhere near the perceived hell of Alaska, but rather an exercise in entrepreneurship; a for-profit undertaking meant to bring Russia a piece of the vast wealth of North America. As the Russians moved southeastward along the mainland coast of Alaska, however, they came into contact with a people far more formidable to deal with than those they’d previously encountered: the Tlingit.
The Tlingit at War
The Eagle and the Raven divided the Tlingit nation into two main tribes, divided further into a host of smaller clans, each one differing in status from the other. Interlinked through marriage and kinship, Tlingit society centered upon vast households of extended families, a cluster of which formed small communal dwellings. These communities were a blur of clan loyalties, creating a unique social order where clan prestige dictated one’s position in society. Clan status depended upon the mother’s line as the Tlingit are a matrilineal society where the mother’s line provided greater standing to her children dependent upon her clan of origin. Even so, within communities there was no recognized authority figure, power rested in the hands of many rather than any one person. This structure confused the Russians to no end with Basil Golovnin, a sea captain voyaging through Alaskan waters in 1818, observing that: “because the local natives do not constitute one single tribe under one chief but are divided into various clans who live or roam as they please... it is not possible to take revenge on them, for one cannot tell to which clan the guilty belong.”
Indiscriminate Russian attacks could bring a united effort down upon their heads, something they were keen to avoid as the Tlingit were a warlike people teeming with a rich martial culture that fused traditional fighting methods with modern armaments like muskets and mobile artillery. Trade links with American trading vessels, in particular, provided the Tlingit with a bountiful supply of firearms and ammunition. So progressed did the Tlingit become with the musket that Golovnin remarked in surprise: “they have learned quickly to use firearms, and they shoot very accurately” and that in battle “ they are so courageous that they are rarely captured alive.”
Male youths began their warrior training at an early age; inter-clan raids were frequent as were larger conflicts against neighboring people. The frequency of such fighting, characterized by swift raids to take slaves and booty, prompted many Tlingit to erect fortifications around their settlements, a skill set that would come in handy against the Russians. By 1799 the Russians had erected a fort on Sitka island, a sure sign that they were here to stay. Three years later it was no more, reduced to charred embers by a Tlingit onslaught that left few alive. Seeking vengeance, the head of Russian Alaska, Alexsandr Baranov, commanded an expedition to reclaim Sitka. Leading a force of Russians, supported by hundreds of Aleut warriors, and backed by a gunboat, Baranov landed upon Sitka early in October 1804. Attacking Tlingit defenses just beyond the landing zone, the Russians bullied their way through a storm of shot and shell to close with the Tlingit hand to hand. Initially repulsed, the Russians stood masters of Sitka after four days of carnage, their foes forced to withdraw for want of ammunition. But the warrior spirit and fighting prowess of the Tlingit was a thing to be admired, and for the next half-century, an uneasy truce prevailed among the Russian few and the Tlingit people.
This was not a one-sided colonial war where the almighty Russians descended upon the helpless Tlingit, far from it. Peers to the Russians in technology and valor, the Tlingit held the advantage of numbers and a keen understanding of the warzone. Their enemies were far fewer, operating at the extreme limit of their nation’s influence. Fusing modern military technology with the tried and true methods of old, the Tlingit presented a fearsome problem for the beleaguered Russians, one they would not be rid of until the Russians happily sold their rights to Alaska to the United States in 1867 at a discount.

Tlingit Warriors
(Elementary School)
Second Battle of Sitka: October 1 - 4, 1804

Russian North America
Russia wanted in on the North American fur trade, so in the late eighteenth century, they began to make inroads into Alaska. Otter fur was the prize, but most of the Russians were landsmen who had no idea how to hunt these sea creatures, so they turned to the Aleuts, the native peoples of the Aleutian islands to hunt them for them. The Aleuts did not take kindly to these demands, so war erupted and ended in Aleut subjugation by the 1770s. To make sure the Aleuts hunted as they were told, the Russians took their wives and children hostage, teaching them how to read and leading many to convert to Christianity. Modern times would look upon such actions as harsh, but when one considers the context things become more understandable.
The Russians were few in number; they were operating far from their homeland, surrounded by greater numbers of native peoples, with no real hope of major reinforcements evident, they turned to brutality to keep the Aleuts in line. Moreover, since most of the Russians in Alaska were part of the promyshlenniki, contract workers hailing from Russia’s lowest social orders, the Serfs, virtual slaves in their own country well used to brutal treatment by their social betters, it is no real wonder that they treated the Aleut any different from the way they were treated back in Russia. The fact that the Russians couldn’t hunt otters is made starkly clear by the observations of Ivan Veniamov, a Russian priest living amongst them in the 1820s and 30s:

Russia was in Alaska to make a profit, not to settle the land, for few Russians wanted anything to do with the unknown vastness of Alaska. Using the natives to achieve the desired goal made sense to the Russians, but as they moved further down the southeastern coasts of Alaska, they can across a people far more formidable than those they had yet encountered: the Tlingit.
The Tlingit at War
The Tlingit nation was divided into two Tribes: the Eagle and the Raven. From there they were further divided into a number of clans each one differing in status from the other. Interlinked through marriage and kinship, Tlingit society centered upon vast households of extended families, a cluster of which formed small communal dwellings. A person’s status derived from your mother’s clan of origin, for Tlingit society, was a matrilineal one, where prestige derived from your mother’s familial line. Even so, within communities there was no recognized authority figure, power rested in the hands of many rather than any one person. This structure confused the Russians to no end with Basil Golovnin, a sea captain voyaging through Alaskan waters in 1818, observing that: “because the local natives do not constitute one single tribe under one chief but are divided into various clans who live or roam as they please... it is not possible to take revenge on them, for one cannot tell to which clan the guilty belong.”
Warfare was a natural part of life, for inter-clan conflict and wars with neighboring people were frequent. By the time the Russians showed up, the Tlingit had long since developed a rich martial culture that seamlessly blended modern technologies like muskets and cannons, with older styles of fighting and weaponry. When the two forces came to blows on the island of Sitka in 1804 it was a battle of equals. The Tlingit had destroyed the first Russian fort on sitka two years before, and now, aided by hundreds of Aleut warriors, the chief Russian authority in Alaska, Alexandr Baranov, led a force to rebuild the settlement and claim revenge.
Attacking Tlingit defensives just beyond the landing zone, the Russians bullied their way through a storm of shot and shell to close with the Tlingit hand to hand. Initially repulsed, the Russians stood masters of Sitka after four days of carnage, their foes forced to withdraw for want of ammunition. But the warrior spirit and fighting prowess of the Tlingit was a thing to be admired, and for the next half-century an uneasy truce prevailed among the Russian few and the Tlingit people.
This was not a war that favored the Russians. They were small compared to the Tlingit who possessed weapons every bit as good as the Russians and knew how to use them to full effect. Fighting on their home soil, the Tlingit understood the nature of the ground, and with wide experience gained from years of warfare were able to meet the Russians in open battle and bloody them. Fusing modern military technology with the tried and true methods of old, the Tlingit presented a fearsome problem for the beleaguered Russians, one they would not be rid of until the Russians happily sold their rights to Alaska to the United States in 1867 at a discount.

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Tlingit Warriors (High School Activity) - The Tlingit fought the Russians, unusual in the history of North America because people don’t often associate the Russians with this continent, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they considered Alaska to be there's. As they settled in southeastern Alaska at Sitka they came into contact with the Tlingit and hostilities were not long in coming. The Tlingit had a vibrant warrior culture, replete with the use of intricate armor worn in battle. Through their trade with the Russians, the Tlingit fought against them using armor made of Chinese coins! The Tlingit do not stand in the mainstream of knowledge concerning the wars between Europeans and the native peoples of the Americas, yet they were highly skilled and effective. Take their most famous armed encounter with the Russians at Sitka in 1802 and again in 1804. Your job is to reconstruct these two encounters and examine the abilities of both sides. Why did the Tlingit triumph, at least initially? Why, again, did many native Alaskans fight with the Russians? Answer these questions and more in an analytic summary of the Battles of Sitka. For background see here:

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Books

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Citations

Jones, Ryan Tucker. Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific’s Strange Beasts of the Seas, 1741 - 1867. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 84 -85.
Veniamov, Ivan. Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District. Translated by Lydia Black and R. H. Geoghegan. (Kingston: The Limestone Press, 1984), 163 -164.
Owens, Kenneth, N. and Alexander Yu. Petrov. Empire Maker: Alexsandr Baranov and Russian Colonial Expansion into Alaska and Northern California. (Seattle: University of Washington, 2015), 179 -180.
Grinev, Andrei V. The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741 -1867. Translated by Richard L. Bland and Katerina G. Solovjova. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 50 - 63.
Quoted in Gibson, James R. “Russian Dependence on the Natives of Russian America.” Conference on Russian America. (1979): 1 - 38. (Accessed December 9, 2019) https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/op70_russian_expansion_siberia_gibson_1979.pdf
Silverman, David J. Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2016), 175 - 186. Grinev. The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 133 - 139.
Grinev. The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 64 -69.
Quoted in Gibson. “Russian Dependence on the Natives of Russian America.” 11. (Accessed December 9, 2019) https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/op70_russian_expansion_siberia_gibson_1979.pdf

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