The eight
Orthodox monks who arrived in Alaska in 1794 were simply part of this
centuries-old missionary heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Beginnings of the
Alaskan Mission
In 1648, the Russian explorer Simeon Dezhnev
sailed from the Arctic Ocean, around the Chukotka Peninsula, and founded
the post of Anadyr on the Bering Sea, facing Alaska. During the next
several generations, Siberian entrepreneurs ventured across the straits
to engage native Americans in commerce. Rumors of these early permanent
Russian settlements on Alaskan soil during this period persist among
Alaskan native peoples today. Whether permanent or occasional residents,
these Russian frontiersmen brought with them not only beads, blankets,
pots and pans, but their religious traditions as well. Orthodox laity
brought the Orthodox faith to North America, baptized the first converts
(often their own native wives and Creole offspring), and even
constructed the first chapels. Clergy and official missionaries came
much later.
A totem pole in Sitka depicts historic battle
between Russian settlers and a local tribe.
In 1728, and again in 1741, Vitus Bering and
Alexis Chirikov mapped the Alaskan coast, and in the process set off a
"Fur Rush" -- creating a Russian "Wild East" much like the later "Gold
Rushes" of the American "Wild West." For the next forty years, Russian
traders and trappers would make annual or biannual trading expeditions
to the Aleutian Archipelago in search of valuable sea otter pelts.
Poorly equipped, these Siberian entrepreneurs were not seasoned military
men, but frontier adventurers, much like Daniel Boone. Unlike Boone,
though, these adventurers were bachelors. Inevitably they married local
women who provided their Siberian husbands with the same clothing,
tools, and food they would have given native Alaskan spouses. Thus, when
the British Captain James Cook visited the Aleutian Islands at the end
of the century (1793), he could not distinguish the Slavs from the
native Alaskans. The Siberians had been completely acculturated into the
material culture of the Aleuts.
This pattern of intermarriage and gradual evangelization of the
indigenous people provoked some resistance. A major uprising against the
Siberians -- during which some 200 Siberians and an equal number of
Aleut warriors were killed -- took place around 1764. Despite occasional
outbursts, the Aleut, Russian, and Creole communities gradually returned
to a generally peaceful coexistence.
Gregory Shelikov
Russian
Double-headed Eagle Crest used to
mark Russian territorial claims in
America.
In the 1780’s a
Russian trader, Gregory Shelikov, argued
that sending annual trading expeditions to
the New World across the Bering Strait was
unnecessarily expensive and dangerous. The
time had come, he argued, for the
establishment of permanent trading posts in
Alaska. The importation of a few hundred
Russian settlers, Shelikov reasoned, could
lead to the systematic exploitation of the
sea otter habitats all along the Alaskan
coast -- and vast profits. As the natives
might not be receptive to such a colonial
intrusion, Shelikov suggested that the
commercial adventure assume a military
dimension as well. A Russian settlement in
Alaska, atop the North Pacific, would extend
Russian political and military influence as
far as Spanish California, British Hawaii,
and the Spanish Philippines.
In the summer of 1784, Shelikov set out for
Kodiak Island to establish his Alaskan base.
By all accounts except his own, Shelikov’s
expedition was greeted with hostility and
armed resistance. Subduing the Kodiak
islanders in a bloody encounter, Shelikov
returned to St Petersburg to relate his
conquest and present a request for a
monopoly on the ensuing fur trade to the
imperial court. He installed Alexander
Baranov as company manager, governor, and
virtual dictator of the small Russian
colony. Shelikov did not live to see his
Russian-American Trading Company receive its
monopoly, nor did he ever return to Alaska.
Baranov, however was to rule both the colony
and the company with an iron fist for 27
years.
The Alaskan Mission
Abbot Nazarius
of Valaamo Monastery blesses
missionaries leaving for America, at
the direction of the Empress
Catherine the Great.
To convince the
imperial court of the seriousness of his
colonial scheme, Shelikov journeyed to
Valaam and Konevitsa monasteries, located on
the Russo-Finnish border, to recruit
monastic volunteers for the new settlement
in Alaska. One Archimandrite, three
priestmonks, one deacon-monk, one lay monk,
together with several staff members, left St
Petersburg on December 21, 1793. They
arrived in Kodiak on September 24, 1794,
having traveled 7,300 miles in 293 days.
Upon arrival, the monks were shocked at
conditions in the colony.
It was not the poor living conditions,
inhospitable weather, nor the strange
customs and foods of the native peoples that
so upset the monks, but the violent and
exploitative behavior of their own Russian
countrymen. Within a few weeks, the leader
of the mission, Archimandrite Joasaph (Bolotov)
was sending vivid reports of abuse back to
Shelikov, believing that Shelikov would
intervene. Receiving no reply, Joasaph, the
priest-monk Makary, and the deacon Stephen
returned to Russia in 1798 to report
firsthand about Baranov’s outrageous
actions. On their return to Alaska, their
ship sank, and all aboard perished (1799).
In retaliation for such continuing
"interference," Baranov placed the remaining
monks under house arrest, forbidding them
any further contact with the native peoples
(1800).
St. Herman of Alaska
Despite continuing oppression by the
Company, native Alaskans flocked to join the
Orthodox Church. The priest-monk Juvenal
reported baptizing several thousand himself.
Although Juvenal would be martyred by
hostile natives in 1796 [2], the more
general success of the Alaskan mission can
be explained only by the heroic efforts of
the missionaries in defending the Alaskans
from Baranov and his henchmen, as well as by
the missionaries’ sensitive approach to the
pre-Christian spirituality of the Aleuts.
The Russian monks presented Orthodox
Christianity not as the abolition, but as
the fulfillment, of the Aleut’s ancient
religious heritage. Most persuasively, the
personal example of the monk Herman provided
the natives with tangible evidence that the
Gospel, when embraced with full dedication
and commitment, produced God-like men.
To avoid harassment (and possible
assassination at the hands of Baranov’s
men), the monk Herman left Kodiak sometime
between 1808-1818, and relocated to Spruce
Island, three miles to the north. He named
his small hermitage "New Valaam," in honor
of his former monastery, from earlier
generations of Orthodox monks had set out to
evangelize Karelian, Lapp, and Finnish
tribespeople. At New Valaam, Herman spent
the rest of his life teaching the Aleuts,
nursing the sick, raising orphans, praying,
and working miracles. Most importantly,
through his kindness, compassion and
personal holiness, Herman exemplified an
ideal Christian life. The last surviving
member of the original mission, Herman died
in 1837. His remains repose in Holy
Resurrection Orthodox Church in Kodiak. The
Aleuts never forgot the humble monk nor his
legacy of prayer and deeds. Largely at their
insistence, Herman was canonized in 1970 by
the Orthodox Church in America as the first
Orthodox Saint of America.
St. Innocent
Up the street
from a Sitka trading post, St. Michael's Cathedral nears completion.
Following Baranov’s death in 1818, social
and economic life in Russian Alaska
stabilized. In 1824, Fr John Veniaminov, his
wife, children, and mother-in-law arrived in
Unalaska, opening a new chapter in the story
of the Alaskan Mission. Quickly learning
Unangan Aleut, the language of the Fox
Islands, Veniaminov translated the Gospel of
St Matthew with the assistance of local
Aleut chief, Ivan Pan’kov. The two also
collaborated on the translation of a
catechism. Together they opened a parish
school in Unalaska in 1828.
Traveling from village to village by sea
kayak, for which he would later suffer
constant pain and some crippling in his
legs, Veniaminov impressed his parishioners
with his fluency in their language, respect
for their traditions, and pastoral concern.
In 1836, he joined a Russian schooner
traveling south to minister to those
stationed at the most distant Russian
outpost in America, Fort Ross, near San
Francisco. While in Spanish California,
Veniaminov visited the Franciscan missions
along the coast, conversing with the Spanish
monks in Latin. In a rare gesture of
ecumenical goodwill for the time, Veniaminov
even built small pipe organs for at least
two of the Catholic missions.
Veniaminov returned to
European Russia in 1839 to report on his
missionary work. During this journey, his
wife died in Siberia. After some hesitation,
Veniaminov accepted monastic tonsure and
ordination as the Bishop of Kamchatka, the
Kurile and Aleutian Islands, in late 1840.
Upon his return to Alaska, Veniaminov
founded an All-Colonial School for the
"training of native and Creole (mixed
ancestry) clergy, seamen, navigators,
physicians, accountants, cartographers, and
artisans" in New Archangel (Sitka) [3]. He
quickly learned the local Tlingit language.
In 1844 he designed and began the
construction of St Michael’s Orthodox
Cathedral for the capital of Russian Alaska
-- a structure which continues to dominate
Sitka to this day.
In 1852, Veniaminov was raised to the rank
of archbishop and transferred to Yakutsk,
Siberia. There he learned yet another native
language and continued his missionary work
among the native peoples of Siberia.
Veniaminov ended his days (+1879) as the
Metropolitan of Moscow (the senior hierarch
of the Russian Church), where among his
other accomplishments he established the
Imperial Missionary Society. At the request
of the Orthodox Church in America,
Veniaminov, who is buried at the Holy
Trinity-St Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad,
Russia, was canonized as "St Innocent,
Enlightener of the Aleuts, Apostle to
America and Siberia," by the Russian
Orthodox Church in 1977.
Father Jacob Netsvetov
In 1828, Father Jacob Netsvetov, a Creole of
Aleut and Russian ancestry and graduate of
the Irkutsk Seminary, was ordained to assist
Veniaminov (then still a priest) in the
evangelization of the Aleutian Islands.
Later, when Veniaminov was ordained bishop,
he assigned Netsvetov to begin missionary
work in the Yukon river delta. Making his
headquarters at Ikogmiut, a village today
called "Russian Mission," Netsvetov labored
for nearly twenty years among the Yup’ik
Eskimo. At the invitation of Athabascan
Indian tribes upstream, he preached to,
converted, and baptized hundreds in the
Innoko River in 1852, thereby narrowly
averting a tribal war. Netsvetov described
this accomplishment in his personal diaries:
"What a joy to see so many joined to the
Church of Christ; former enemies, now living
together in peaceful coexistence" [3].
Without the benefit of technology, without
the protection or physical support of
military or legal authorities, and hundreds
of miles from the nearest European outpost,
Father Jacob preached the Good News and
brought salvation to thousands of Alaskans
during his decades of service. In
recognition of his outstanding work,
Netsvetov was made a member of the Imperial
Order of St Anna and knighted by Tsar
Nicholas I. Fr Netsvetov was canonized by
the Orthodox Church in America at St
Innocent’s Cathedral in Anchorage on October
15-16, 1994. He is venerated as "St Jacob,
Enlightener of the Peoples of Alaska."
The Meaning of the
Alaskan Mission
St. Herman
moved to Spruce Island where he
nursed the sick, raised orphans, and
performed miracles.
Through St. Herman,
the Alaskan Mission was blessed by the
traditional monastic example which SS. Cyril
and Methodius provided to the Slavs,
centuries earlier. By SS. Innocent and
Jacob, the Alaskan Mission demonstrated the
linguistic adaptability, cultural
sensitivity, and educational outreach
characteristic of Orthodox missions from
Moravia to Kamchatka. Unfortunately, the
heroic missionary work of the Siberian
traders who married, converted, and raised
their families in the Orthodox faith, and
that of their children, the first Native
American Orthodox evangelists, have received
less attention. Nevertheless, through all
their efforts the foundations of the Alaskan
Mission had been firmly laid.
Orthodox
wedding party on St. Paul Island,
ca. 1898.
With the transfer to
American rule in 1867, most ethnic Russians,
including the vast majority of Orthodox
priests, returned to Russia, leaving the
12,000 native Christians, 9 Orthodox
parishes, 35 chapels, 17 schools, and 3
orphanages to fend largely for themselves.
In 1872, the diocesan see was transferred
from Sitka to San Francisco, and the bishop
was able to supervise the mission only from
afar. Over the next 100 years, the Alaskan
mission received only sporadic assistance
from the Orthodox community in the "lower
48."
Nevertheless, the mission continued to grow,
largely through the efforts of indigenous
leaders. Despite the fact that the mission
never had more than 15 priests, scores of
new parishes and chapels, as well as schools
and orphanages, were built. Lay leaders
continued to conduct services, preach, and
teach even in the absence of clergy. The
Orthodox Church in Alaska was able to
survive because, from its very beginning, it
was envisioned, in the best tradition of
Orthodox missionary spirituality, as an
indigenous church, not as a "diaspora." [5]
Between 1870-1920, Orthodoxy in America would
change from a small mission in Alaska to one of the fastest-growing
religions in North America. Through mass immigration and mass conversion
of immigrants, the small mission to Alaska would become a continent-wide
enterprise. By 1917 the Orthodox mission in North America would include
more than 350 parishes and chapels, its own seminary, bank, women’s
college, monasteries, orphanages, schools, publications, and fraternal
societies, with an annual central administrative budget of $500,000.
Over a period of two decades the Russian mission to the native peoples
of Alaska had become an emerging Church composed of immigrant peoples
from many nations.
Notes:
[1] This chapter was co-authored by Fr.
Michael Oleksa.
[2] In 1980, the OCA Diocese of Alaska
canonized Juvenal, together with other
martyrs of Alaska, known and unknown.
[3] For a fuller listing of St. Innocent’s
accomplishments see Paul Garrett’s
biography, St. Innocent: Apostle to America
(Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1979).
[4] Orthodox America, p. 19.
[5] For a more detailed discussion, see
Richard Pierce, The Russian Orthodox
Religious Mission in America, 1794-1837
(Kingston, ON: The Limestone Press, 1978);
Bishop Gregory (Afonsky), History of the
Orthodox Church in Alaska, 1774-1914
(Kodiak, AK: St Herman’s Seminary, 1977);
and Michael Oleksa, Alaskan Missionary
Spirituality (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1992).
