Alaska (47 page)

he replied: 'It's better than the Seal Islands.'

Satisfied by further scouting that the cadre really was Aleut, Kot-le-an and Ravenheart decided that an attack in total force stood a good chance of driving off the Russians, for, as Kot-le-an pointed out, If the others were all from Kodiak, it might be difficult, but we know that in battle we can overpower Aleuts.' And an attack would have been mounted except that, to Kot-le-an's astonishment, the new toion, without adequate discussions among the warriors of his tribe, not only arranged a peace treaty with the Russians

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but actually sold them a portion of land at and around the growing fort.

Enraged by this supine surrender to what he properly perceived as a mortal threat to Tlingit aspirations, Kot-le-an assembled all who were disgruntled with this invitation to Russian interference in ancient ways, and harangued them: 'Once the Russians fix their fort on this bay, we Tlingits are doomed. I know them from what others say. They will never let go, and before we know it, they will demand this hill and this portion of the bay. They'll want the island there and the volcano and our hot baths and the shore beyond. All the otters will belong to them, not us, and for every American ship that comes here now to trade with us and bring us the things we need, six of theirs will come, and not for trade. With guns they'll steal everything we have.

'I am not happy with what I see as our fate if we let them stay unchallenged. Our totems will crumble. Our canoes will be driven from the bay. We will no longer be masters of our lands, for the Russians will smother us everywhere and in everything we want to do. I feel the terrible hand of the Russians pressing down upon us like the log that presses upon the throat of a condemned slave.

'I hear our children speaking not our language but theirs and I can smell the coming of their shaman among us and our souls will be lost to wander forever in the forests and the moaning will never end. I see these islands changed, and the seas lifeless, and the skies angry. I see the imposition of strange orders, new enforcements, totally different ways of life. And above all, I see the death of Tlingits, the death of all we have fought for through the years.'

His words were so powerful, and so predictive of the future which many of his listeners were beginning to fear, that he might have enlisted hundreds in his drive to eliminate the Russians and their Aleut allies had not the leader of the Russians, this little man Baranov, anticipated such a ground swell. On a day in August, as summer was beginning to fade, this clever Russian, always attentive to the safety of his flanks, got in his biggest ship and had his sailors bring him down the bay to the Tlingit settlement, and as he approached the landing, where sailors carried him ashore through the 291

waves, the sun came out in full radiance, so that he climbed the hill the first time on a day as beautiful as this part of Alaska provided.

It's an omen, he said to himself, as if he could foresee that he would spend the glory years of his life atop this fortuitous hill, and when he reached the lofty summit, with the new toion coming forth to greet him, he stopped, looked in all directions, and saw as if in a revelation the incredible majesty of this spot.

To the west swept the Pacific Ocean, visible beyond the hundred islands, the highway back to Kodiak, out to the far Aleutians and on to Kamchatka and the ramparts of Russia. To the south rose a squadron of mountains, marching backward in file to the end of the horizon, green then blue then misty gray, then almost white in the far distance. To the east, crowded close in, stood the glory of Sitka, the mountains that dipped their toes in the sea, big and powerful but also gentle in their green finery. They were mountains of infinite variety, of changing color, of surprising height to be so close to the sea. And to the north, where he was already building, he saw that splendid sound, island-dotted, ringed with its own mountains, some as sharp as needles carved from whalebone, others big and comfortable and rounded.

He was so enchanted by the rich variety of this scene from the hill that he was tempted to cry out at its wonder, but his Russian merchant's canniness warned him not to reveal how struck he was lest his Tlingit hosts fathom his interest in their paradise.

Dropping his head and keeping his arms folded across his belly, as was his custom, he merely said: 'Great and Powerful Toion, in appreciation for your many kindnesses in helping us to establish our little fort on your bay, I bring you a few humble gifts.' And motioning to the sailors who accompanied him, he had them unroll bundles which contained beads, brass, cloth and bottles. After these had been distributed he asked his men for

the piece de

resistance and he called it by just those words in French and they produced a somewhat rusty, out-of-date musket, which he handed gravely to the toion, asking one of the sailors to provide powder and ball plus an exhibition of how the old gun should be fired.

When the sailor had everything in order, he showed the toion how to handle the gun, apply his forefinger to the trigger, and discharge the ball. There was a flash of fire as the excess powder burned away, a feeble blast from the end of the gun, and a slight rustle of leaves as the ball bounced its way harmlessly through the treetops below the hill. The toion, who had never before fired a gun, was excited, but 292

Kot-le-an and Ravenheart, who had nearly five hundred first-class new rifles hidden away, smiled indulgently.

' However, it was canny Baranov who seemed to triumph, for in response to these impressive gifts, offered with such voluntary good will, he was given the loan of fifteen Tlingits, who would move to the fort and supervise the Aleuts in catching and drying the multitude of salmon which had begun streaming into the small river to the north of the fort.

Kot-le-an, infuriated by this easy capitulation of his toion to the blandishments of the strangers, did gain one advantage: he insinuated into this group of temporary workers his man Ravenheart, so that when Baranov returned to the fort with the salmon experts, he took also a spy with unusual powers of observation and deduction.

At the fort, Ravenheart performed like the other Tlingits, standing knee-deep at the mouth of the river with a wicker scoop, which he dipped among the multitude of fat thirteen inch salmon as they returned to their natal stream to spawn and give rise to the new generation. They left the salt water like myrmidons, each fish in file behind another, fifty or sixty files across, so that at any one spot at the river mouth for these relatively few days, thousands of fish passed, driven only by their urge to return to the fresh water where they had been born years ago, and there to lay the eggs which would renew their species.

A blind man with a torn net could catch salmon at this spot, and when Ravenheart and his mates had thrown several thousand ashore, they showed the Russians how to spot females rich with roe and how to eviscerate the fish and prepare them for drying in the sun. Baranov, watching the stacking up of food in piles of unbelievable size, told his Russians: 'This winter nobody starves.'

In the evenings, when work was done and the Tlingits were left to themselves, Ravenheart utilized his time in memorizing details of the growing fort. He saw that the promontory was divided into two halves: one inland, consisting of a blockhouse that could be furiously defended from fixed gun emplacements and portholes through which rifles could be fired; the other half, a collection of small buildings outside the main blockhouse and not heavily defended. These sheds and barns, he concluded, were to be sacrificed in case of an attack, with all defenders withdrawing inside the fortress, which had to the rear, away from the seafront, a huge square yard with walls two feet thick. Invading and taking that fortress was not going to be easy. But the more he studied the redoubt the more clearly he saw that a determined assault, which took first the outlying

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buildings without destroying them and then laid siege to the blockhouse, could succeed if some way were found to break into that huge enclosed yard at the rear, for then the attackers could nibble away at the central redoubt while enjoying protection from the very buildings provided by the Russians, and in time the latter would have to surrender. Redoubt St. Michael could be captured, provided the attackers were led by a man like Kot-le-an and staffed by determined aides like Ravenheart.

When the salmon season ended, in late September, the Tlingits were sent back to their hill, with the understanding that they would not be needed next year, since the Russians and Aleuts were now proficient in the business of catching and preserving the valuable fish. Fourteen of the Tlingits left the redoubt merely with memories of a reasonably pleasant stay, but Ravenheart departed with complete plans for capturing this fort, and as soon as he rejoined Kot-le-an, the two men drew up diagrams of the Russian installation and procedures for destroying it.

During the remainder of 1799 the impetuous young men were prevented from putting their scheme into operation by the hesitancy of their toion, who was awed by Russian power, and by the thoughtful leadership of Aleksandr Baranov, who anticipated and frustrated any Tlingit moves. Whenever it looked as if the Indians on their hill might be getting restive, he threw them off balance by offering them trades of surprising generosity, and once when several hundred of them threatened actual rebellion, he boldly marched among them, advising them to come to their senses. 'He's a brave one,'

the Tlingits said, and in this manner Kot-le-an and Ravenheart were neutralized by Baranov's clever moves, even though they continued to regard him as their chief enemy.

In the summer of 1800, at the end of the first full year since the Russian arrival at Redoubt St. Michael, when Ravenheart's spying warned him that the fortress had been completed in good style and ahead of schedule, Baranov, to the surprise of all, loaded one of his ships with pelts from Sitka waters, hoisted sail, and set out for Kodiak, where his wife, Anna, and his son, Antipatr, waited in the big log house which served as the capitol of Russian America. He had gone to Kodiak expecting to load there with supplies forwarded from mainland Russia, but when he landed he heard the pitiful news: 'No ship has reached us in the past four years. We're starving.'

So his attention was diverted from his outpost at Sitka and directed to the problem which would assail him all his life in Alaska: How can I increase the power of this colony if I'm ignored and neglected by the homeland?

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With Baranov tied down in Kodiak, no help from that quarter could be forwarded to the new establishment at Sitka, and in the summer of 1801, Kot-le-an and Ravenheart suspected that the Russians would be so weakened that they would not be able to defend themselves. But just as the Tlingits were preparing their attack, the Boston trader Evening Star

put into the sound on a return trip from Canton, and whereas on all previous visits it had anchored near the hill to conduct trading with the Tlingits, this time it sailed right past, as if acknowledging that now it was the Russian fort that was important. Seething with anger, Kot-le-an suffered the indignity of having to get into a boat and trail along behind the trader as if hungry for its favors, and then wait in the sound until the Americans had completed details with the Russians. 'I have been made a stranger in my own land,' the young chieftain fumed to Ravenheart, who took advantage of the enforced idleness to coach his leader in the steps that would be required when the attack on the redoubt took place. That it would occur, neither man doubted.

But it did not happen in 1801 because supplies from the Evening Star strengthened the four hundred and fifty Russians who now operated the place, making an assault at this time inadvisable. However, on its way out of the bay, the Evening Star

did stop at the Tlingit stronghold, where Captain Corey and First Mate Kane proved their basic friendship for the Indians by showing them a corner of the hold in which they had hidden from Russian eyes the trade goods that the Tlingits really sought, casks of rum and flat boxes filled with additional rifles made originally in England and shipped to China.

'We saved the best for last,' Corey assured the Indians, and as before, Ravenheart scrambled among the small settlements scattered about the littoral, collecting the still-surprising harvest of seaotter pelts. When the barter was concluded, Corey and Kane met with Kot-le-an on the hill, and as they shared a bottle of rum, the Americans drinking little but pouring generously for the Tlingits, Corey observed: 'Wouldn't it make sense to join these two settlements? Russians and Tlingits working together?'

'In Boston,' Kot-le-an asked with surprising acuity, 'do you and your Tlingits work together?'

'No. That wouldn't be possible.'

'Here, too, it is not possible,' and Corey, remembering the large number of guns he had sold these warlike Tlingits, looked at his first mate and with a gesture so slight that only Kane could see it, shrugged his right shoulder as if to say: 'What happens is their business, not ours,' and that afternoon 295

he made final calculations on his cargo of whale oil and otter skins, weighed anchor, and headed for Boston, which he had not seen in six years.

When he was gone, Kot-le-an told Ravenheart: 'We'll wait. If you want to build your house at the southern salmon stream, do it now,' and this invitation, thrown off so casually, marked a turning point in the slave's life, for it released him, by implication, from servitude. Because if a Tlingit was free to build his own house, it meant he was also free to take himself a wife to help occupy that house, and for some time now Ravenheart had been eying with increasing excitement a Tlingit girl who bore the lovely name of Kakeena, a name of lost meaning belonging to her great-grandmother.

She had not only the bland, open face which bespoke spiritual ease but also a nobility of bearing which warned the world: 'I shall do many things in my own way.' The daughter of a skilled fisherman, she was sixteen, and for some lucky reason had escaped both tattooing and the inserting of labrets into her lower lip. She was, in these early years of the new century, the self-confident yet modest type of young woman who, in these times of change, might be expected to marry with some Russian in exile, forming with him a bridge between past and present, between Tlingit and Russian.