Nataliia Shelikhova and the Effect of Her Personal Presence and Later Letters on the Native People of Alaska as Substantiated by the Archeology of Kodiak Island and a Shamanic Display at the Taltsi Museum in Irkutsk, Russia

Dawn Lea Black (Kodiak, Alaska, USA)

Nataliia Shelikhova and the Effect of Her Personal Presence and Later Letters on the Native People of Alaska as Substantiated by the Archeology of Kodiak Island and a Shamanic Display at the Taltsi Museum in Irkutsk, Russia

Nataliia Shelikhova lived in Irkutsk, Russia for much of her life, but for about two years, August 3, 1784 to May 22, 1786 [1], she kept the company stores in the current state of Alaska where she became the godmother and probable mentor of a native businesswoman who represented the Shelikhov-dominated Russian companies. About ten years after Nataliia returned to Russia she became the de facto first woman governor of Russian America which eventually encompassed much of the current coastline of Alaska, during her lifetime, which came to a close in 1810 when she was 52. Nataliia and her husband, Grigorii Shelikhov, were the founders of the Russian settlement at Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island in 1784, and Nataliia is possibly the first nonaboriginal woman to live in Alaska. Three Saints Bay is referred to now, after some initial uncertainty, by researchers such as Lydia Black and Derek Hayes, as Alaska's first permanent settlement with Unalaska being considered more as a first trading post.

Nataliia's personal presence in Alaska is mentioned or is alluded to in only a few sources because the presence of non-noble women was considered rather insignificant, however, there is one company store receipt [2] which mentions her as the head lady who had overseen the transaction with the understanding that her husband was the head man. Her husband mentions her in the first paragraph of his memoirs as one who did not shirk from sharing all the hardships in the New World. The Russian Billings Expedition priest Sivtsov mentions marrying Nataliia Shelikhova's native Alaskan god-daughter, Ekaterina, to Vasilii Petrovich Merkul'ev in 1790. Grigorii Shelikhov had appointed V. Merkul'ev and his then common-law wife, Ekaterina, to take over the company store [this had been Nataliia's job, and it was now being passed on to her god-daughter] when the Shelikhovs departed back to Russia in 1786. Nataliia, herself, dictates a few letters which allude to her presence in America. In one very significant letter of Nataliia to Archpastor in 1795, she requests, among other things, that a bilingual Russian [and possible acquaintance] [3], who was married to an Alaskan native lady, be trained in Russia to help with Russian American church services. This individual, Tobolsk merchant Osip Prianishnikov, Nataliia says, had already been conducting lay church services before the clergy arrived in

1794.  Prianishnikov had a son in Alaska who was born in 1788 [4]. It is known that a Shelikhov-owned Russian ship arrived in Kodiak in 1787 which brought the new manager, Delarov and native people, but there were few, if any other Russian ships which arrived in Kodiak after the Shelikhovs left, which would have brought new people to work there or provisions, until 1790 [5]. S.K. Zaikov's ship, the St. Pavel, and crewmen spent the winter of 1786-1787 on Marmot Island near Kodiak because Shelikhov's manager, Samoilov, did not want them to interact with his men on Kodiak [6]. Thus it is likely that Nataliia knew Osip Prianishnikov from when she was in Kodiak because in order for his son to be born in 1788, and most likely in Kodiak, Osip would conceivably have arrived there in or before 1786. Nataliia's request is tremendously important because it shows that she promoted bilingualism which was to set the tone of significant future Russian-native involvement, especially in the church and schools. One notable example of a successful native-Russian bilingual cooperative project in scripture translation is detailed by the researcher, Lydia Black in regard to “Ivan Pan'kov: Architect of Aleut Literacy” [7]. It is known that the Alaskan head priest and later bishop, Ioasaf, also had wanted to encourage bilingualism and that he used and promoted Prianishnikov in this regard, but Ioasaf died in a tragic shipwreck in mid-1799.

Nataliia dictated a letter [exact date 1798-1799 is unknown] to His High Excellency [Petr/Peter Soimonov, head of all Russian commerce and the Commerce College/governmental department] which indicates that Nataliia's requests and future policies were to have a great effect on Alaska's native people:

In the midst of all such enterprises, he [Nataliia's husband] died in

1795.  I began to run those companies in accordance with his will...

Our partner Golikov was under a great burden of back-taxes to be paid to the State and was not able to provide the Company's office with money. That is why, in accordance with the persuasive requests of Golikov, I helped the office with 100,000 rubles. I sent to Kodiak and to Zubov [Pribylov] Island two ships with fresh people, goods, and for the settlements: cattle, grains and other needs, adding, according to the stated needs of the Spiritual mission: [that which was necessary for] a mobile [traveling] church.

I, having taken care of the Company, sent a paper to Your High Excellency's attention, requesting [you] to present a petition to the Emperor that the Company be granted some advantages, among them are:

Firstly: The right that other companies not be established where Shelikhov has blazed trails, so as to avoid competition and [the resulting] bad behavior of the Americans [natives] who [could be improperly influenced by one company to turn against the other companies and] could become a bad influence [over the whole area].

Secondly: Such as to allow ship-navigation to Canton, Macao, Batavia and the Philippine Islands.

Thirdly: So that the Company could be granted a protector. After this paper [was sent], the report reached the Emperor [Paul I] that I and Golikov, .... joined the Irkutsk company. That is why the following circumstances happened:

Firstly, the Emperor, certifying the union, ordered, that without the permission of the [later Russian] American company, no other new companies could take their business and go there: where it already has its establishments.

Thus, the Commerce College would be the protector of the Company.

Alexander Baranov who became the Chief Administrator of the Shelikhov-associated and later the Russian American Company sent a number of letters to Nataliia. One which was received by her on December 1, 1798 has this to say:

...in January we had a celebration [upon] opening the first civil [public] school. About 20 boys started going there; ... Two of the pupils are amanaty [hostages]: one is from Mednovskii, [an Ahtna/Copper River area Alaskan native] and another one from Koliuzhi, from the other side of [Alaska from] the Bering [Strait], [being] from the Yakutatskii [Yakutat people] not far from L'tua [Bay]. I took and brought them here. Would you [please] give [them] food and [give] the order to clothe [them] well and bring them as amanaty to Irkutsk? We are to demonstrate to them our might and prosperity so that they might assure their fellow-countrymen that our words are true.

Nataliia also had at least five native boys from Alaska at her estate in Irkutsk who were educated, primarily in music, and four were later sent back to Kodiak. The fifth died of a disease. The Shelikhovs took about 40 natives back to Russia on their ship, and many of these natives are documented as having returned to Alaska. Some natives went willingly to Russia and others went as possible hostages. Several children were sent to be educated, possibly with their parents' consent. If the natives had not been aboard Shelikhovs' ship, it probably would not have reached port as most of the Russians were too sick with scurvy to be of much help aboard ship or in going to get water in the Kurile Islands.

Nataliia also advocated godparenting the native people of Alaska by the Russian Orthodox. The natives who became godchildren usually had special favor with the Russians, did not seem to be coerced to assist the Russians, and could be put in charge of important undertakings [8].

One archeological find at Karluk on Kodiak Island, originally populated partially by Yup'ik Eskimos, probably indicates that the religious beliefs of the native people there bear some similiarities to the beliefs of Russian Orthodoxy including heaven/s with a diety, earth, and a spiritual realm under the earth. For this reason, the advocacy by Nataliia that Russian Orthodoxy be taught to Alaskan native people, most likely, found a fertile field in which to grow. This Karluk find is the painted widespread symbol of concentric circles (believed to indicate the various levels of the spiritual universe [9]) with vertical axes radiating out from the center, which in this case includes a face [10]. There are similar symbols to be found among the Blackfoot Indians and their lands both in personal adornment [11] and in enormous raised rock designs on their lands, visible from the air [12]. A Pima Indian symbol which has been interpreted and which is woven into their round basketry also includes this type of symbolism. The Pima symbol, called the maze of life, includes a series of maze-like lines, originating from the central area, and also a vertical space radiating from the same center. This space contains an anthropomorphic figure described by the Pima as one of their deity, Elder Brother [13]. Scientific genetic tests indicate that some of the indigenous people of North America originated from an area near Lake Baikal, Russia. They probably migrated after 17,000 years before the present time [14]. The symbolism of Lake Baikal area Buriat/Buryat people can be seen at a shamanic display [15] at the Architectural-Ethnographic Taltsi Museum and is quite similar to the previously discussed aboriginal symbols. Because Nataliia came from this Lake Baikal area, she was probably familiar with the local native symbolism and could relate her religious message more meaningfully to the indigenous people of Alaska.

An influence which Nataliia had on the native people can be deduced from descriptions of her Alaskan native god-daughter. One of these is found in the memoirs of M. Sauer [16] who accompanied the Billings Expedition to Kodiak in 1790. Although Sauer does not identify her by name, he says that this native lady was “dressed in the Siberian fashion”, kept her house “extremely clean”, was a “perfect mistress of Russian economy” and had been married by the Billings group's priest Sivtsov. This lady conducted herself and her household and served him dinner in a manner of which Sauer approved. It is the priest's notes which say that she was Nataliia's god-daughter and that she was married to Vasilii P. Merkul'ev. The one other native woman married the same day as Ekaterina could not have been married to Merkul'ev due to the description of her husband given by the priest. Another, slightly later Spanish visitor to Three Saints Bay settlement, S. Fidelgo [17], mentions that in 1790 the person who kept the Kodiak warehouse was living in a wood house. It is probable that this was Merkul'ev. Merkul'ev, himself, says that he had an original house, before the July 11, 1788 tsunami which was destroyed in that 1788 disaster [18]. Nine days before this tsunami a Spanish ship and visitor, G. Lopez de Haro sailed away from Three Saints Bay, but Lopez de Haro wrote about a wooden house and that of the manager, Delarov, as being quite similar large plank buildings with thatched roofs. It is Aron Crowell who identifies Merkul'ev and his wife as the only people whom Lopez de Haro could be describing, due to the husband, at least, being in charge of the Warehouse of Merchandise and being an officer. The Merkul'evs are not actually named in the Spaniard's narrative. This wife [possibly Creole] is described as being clothed in a dress of Chinese design [possibly silk which the Shelikhovs were known to receive in trade], and she had nice china dishes. Lopez de Haro also dined with them. Grigorii Shelikhov had given a written order that the Merkul'evs be built a good, obviously Russian style “smoothly finished... with double walls” [19] wooden house which should also contain store merchandise. Such a house is described as being in this settlement in 1790 by Sauer, but it was inhabited by the manager Delarov [20]. In any case, it is likely that the Merkul'evs lived in a somewhat hybrid native-Russian manner [21] as described by Crowell, though not in a semi-subterranean native-Russian mixed culture house such as was excavated by Crowell in 1990-1991. The presence of a Russian woman such as Nataliia, no doubt, provided an example for Kodiak native women to emulate. It is also likely that Nataliia, herself, taught her god-daughter and other native women some Russian customs. Nataliia was in charge of distributing her company's Chinese silk and probably brought some silk goods with her to Kodiak. Lydia Black says that Nataliia had more than one god-daughter [to influence], but surmises that it might be Izmailov whom Lopez de Haro is describing. This is unlikely [Izmailov was not in Kodiak] even though Izmailov did have a wife in Kodiak [22]. In any case, the native women would, no doubt, have prompted their men to obtain some of the attractive Russian goods for them.

Nataliia Shelikhova had a real influence on the indigenous people of Alaska by her advocacy of bilingualism, bonding through religion and godparenting, participation in education of the native people, and her modeling of business activity and governance by women such as herself. Her provision for and future vision for her company and her church shaped the unfolding of Russian American history. Her request that the future Russian American Company be granted a monopoly was made with an eye toward promoting the peaceful attitudes of native Americans. The opportunity that Nataliia Shelikhova had to live among the native people of Alaska had resounding implications for the future of Russian America.

Please see the photo of the Pima display and the Taltsi Museum shamanic display below.

1. Grigorii I. Shelikhov [et al.], A Voyage to America, 1783-1786, Alaska History Series, Intro. Richard A. Pierce, ed., no. 19, trans. Marina Ramsay (Kingston, Ontario, Canada: The Limestone Press,  1981), 38, 48. [This is referred to as “memoirs” later in this presentation.]

2.  References to most Shelikhov/a and related documents are taken from the draft of a book on Nataliia Shelikhova which has been submitted to a publisher by co-authors Dawn Lea Black and Alexander Iu. Petrov.

3.  Brackets: ([ ]) indicate words added by the author.

4.   Richard A.   Pierce,   Russian America:  A  Biographical  Dictionary, Alaska History Series, Richard A. Pierce, ed., no. 33 (Kingston, Ontario and Fairbanks, Alaska: The Limestone Press, 1990), 412. Lydia T. Black, Russians in Alaska (Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska Press, 2004), 235-236.

5.  In regard to no Russian provision supply ships coming from Okhotsk area for almost three years see Aron Lincoln Crowell, World System Archaeology at Three Saints Harbor, An Eighteenth Century Russian Fur Trade Site on Kodiak Island, Alaska (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services, 1996), 86. This dissertation, with likely additions, was later published as Archaeology and the Capitalist World System: A Study from Russian America (New York: Plenum Press, 1997). Katerina G. Solovjova and Aleksandra A. Vovnyanko, The Fur Rush: Essays and documents on the history of Alaska at the end of the eighteenth century (Anchorage, Alaska: Phenix Press, 2002), 76.

6.  Solovjova, Fur, 234, 311.

7.  Lydia T. Black, “Ivan Pan'kov: Architect of Aleut Literacy”, in An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past, Stephen W. Haycox and Mary Childers Mangusso, eds. (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1996, 2d ed: 2002), 53-57.

8.  Ivan Kuskov,  “July 1, 1802, Report, I. Kuskov (in charge of the hunting party) to A.A. Baranov on Kad'iak regarding an armed encounter with the local tribes and the devastation of Novo-Arkhangel'sk”, in Richard A. Pierce, ed., Documents on the History of the Russian-American Company, trans. Marina Ramsay, Materials for the Study of Alaska History [Series], ed. Richard A. Pierce, no.  7 (Kingston, Ontario, Canada: The Limestone Press,  133,  137-139),  (some books in this series were also published in Alaska).  The pages cited,  mention some native people, especially Eremei Kochergin, who is described as the godson of Kochergin.  Eremei is put in charge of an important and sensitive expedition of several kayaks to Novo-Arkhangel'sk. Page 139 discusses the loss (probably to a Tlingit war party) of the Chugach-native godson of Galaktionov which is described as «...unfortunate news”. It is apparent that these particular native people are very close to and valued by the Russians and vice versa. They operate on their own, without coercion.

9.    «...Circular   motions,   forming   an   invisible   boundary   around   a person or object, were ubiquitous in Yup'ik ritual activity, simultaneously creating a boundary against evil influences and a symbolic passage between levels of reality...  corresponding to the five steps [often represented by concentric circles] separating the world of the living from the world of the dead” (Ann Fienup-Riordan, “Social Status among the Yup'ik Eskimos of the Lower Kuskokwim as Told to Reverend Arthur Butzin by Alaskuk”, Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska 24, 1-2 (1992): 42.) “Native American cosmologies... [can be] subdivided into three zones of sky, the earth's surface, and the realms beneath earth and water. Earthly space is also conceived of as circular; it is divided into quadrants identified with the four cardinal directions bringing the changes of season... Everywhere in North America the zones of earth, water and sky are also linked by a central, vertical axis that provides a path of orientation along which human prayers can travel between realms of power. The axis is visualized in various ways: as a great tree, an offering pole, or a path... [an Indian artist] visually aligns the tree with the Christian cross... [paragraph indentation] shamanism has diffused... from a place of origin in central Asia [and has]... distinctive patterns of cosmological mapping... particularly the notion of  a world axis that opens a channel of communication between zones of power... arts... relate their experiences of out-of-body travel” (Janet С Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art, Oxford History of Art (Oxford and New York: Oxford U. Press, 1998), 22-23, 26. [Many aboriginal groups in Alaska, including Kodiak, and North America had shamans.] «Shamanism... is... characterized by belief in an unseen world of gods, demons, and ancestral spirits... [paragraph indentation] Shamans could change into animals, dive into the earth, or fly through the air... [paragraph indentation] Spiritual transformation was at the heart... [paragraph indentation] The spiral [symbol] is universally accepted across cultures to represent growth and evolution, the transformation of form and essence. Traveling along the spiral, you reach the same points with each round, but at a different level, and with a different perspective... [paragraph indentation] Related to the spiral are concentric circles, each representing completeness and wholeness... The spiral and concentric circle were thought to carry a shaman into the supernatural” (Woody Knebel, Cape Alitak [Kodiak Island] Petroglyphs: From the Old People (Virginia Beach, Virginia: Donning Company, 2003).

10. Aron L. Crowell, Amy F. Steffian, and Gordon L. Pullar, eds., Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People (Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska Press, 2001), cover and title page.

11.  Smithsonian [Magazine], 33, 9 (December 2002): cover.

12.  Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians (New York: Gramercy Books,1994), 23.

13.  The Blackfoot Indians of the Canada-U.S. border area and the Pima Indians of the Southwest U.S. have symbols which were published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. for their set of American Indian cut-out cards with commentary on the cards' back, especially about the Pima Indian symbol. The Smithsonian no longer has a publishing branch, and these cards are no longer available from the publisher. The Blackfoot symbol is half dark and half light—possibly representing the light and darkness or living and dead or sun and moon.

14.  Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, “Who Were the First Americans?” Time, 167, 11 (13 March 2006): 52. [This article mentions that there might have been another migration from Siberia toward North America about 30,000 years ago.]

15.  The two concentrically circular, vertically axised, shamanic symbols connected at the bottom by a ladder-like design have been interpreted by one Caucasian Irkutsk area ethnographer/anthropologist as the sun and the moon. [The sun is often depicted in aboriginal designs because it is “the most important spiritual power, and the source of growth and life.” (Janet С Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art, Oxford History of Art (Oxford and New York: Oxford U. Press, 1998), 24.)] A Doctor of H.S. and Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences at Kemerovo, Siberia, Dr. Anatoly Ivanovich Martynov, says that the various gradations or concentric circles in some aboriginal spiritual designs, such as these, can number as high as 15 (personal communication to Dawn Lea Black in Irkutsk, Russia on August 8,  2007, who was showing Dr. Martynov the above-mentioned Taltsi Museum shamanic symbols to obtain his comments on them). Yakut indigenous scholar, Eleonora Elleevna Sivtseva of Yakutsk told Dawn Lea Black in personal communication on August 8, 2007 that the Yakuts have a flaring sun disk symbol, but in addition, the Yakut shaman has a round silver or copper accoutrement with a circle in the center surrounded by a halo of small circles which represent gods in the sky. Another Russian anthropologist explains, “If there are several shamans in a [Evenk Siberian tribe's] clan, their paths in the [spiritual] universe meet at their common clan cosmic river [vertical axis] which flows from top to bottom through all three worlds of the [Evenk spiritual] universe” (A.F. Anisimov, “Cosmological Concepts of the Peoples of the North”, in Studies in Siberian Shamanism, ed. Henry N. Michael, Arctic Institute of North America Anthropology of the North: Translations from Russian Sources, ed. Henry N. Michael, no. 4 ([Toronto ?], Canada: University of Toronto Press for the Arctic Institute of North America, 1963; reprinted from Kosmologicheskiye predstavleniya narodov-Severa (Moscow-Leningrad, Izd-vo Academiya nauk SSSR, 1959), 203.) [This same article contains a very old aboriginal tale which emphasizes one primeval attribute of the sun and moon: they were originally located on top of the head of the cosmic Mother, and as such were associated with her. The author also explains that the mother diety predates the more patriarchal shamanistic tradition, but still remains in the shamanistic belief system—often as the guardian of the underworld.]

16.   Martin  Sauer,  An Account  of a Geographical  and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia (London: A.  Strahan,  1802), 173.

17.  Salvador Fidalgo's report is cited and quoted in: Crowell, World, 81.

18.   Merkul'ev's letter is cited, though not as to archive location, and quoted in Crowell, World, 74-75. The secondary source for this is: J. Davies et al, “Shumagin Seismic Gap, Alaska Peninsula: History of Great Earthquakes, Tectonic Setting, and Evidence for High Seismic Potential”, Journal of Geophysical Research 86(B5):3821-3855. The actual archival source for this is: Archive of Russian Internal Affairs, F. 339, Op. 888, D. 774, L. 4.

19.  P.A. Tikhmenev, A History of the Russian American Company, vol. II, ed. Richard A. Pierce and Alton S. Donnelly, trans. Dmitri Krenov, Materials for the Study of Alaska History, ed. Richard A. Pierce, no. 13 (Kingston, Ontario: The Limestone Press, 1979, reprinted [with a few additions] from P.A. Tikhmenev, Istoricheskoe obozrenie obrazovaniia Rossiisko-Amerikanskoi kompanii I deistvii eiia do nastoiashchago vremeni, vol. 2 of 2 (St. Petersburg: Edvard Veimar, 1861: first vol. and 1863: second vol.), 11.

20.  Crowell, World, 80.

21.  Crowell, World, 163-182.

22.  Lydia T. Black, Russians in Alaska 1732-1867, (Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska Press, 2004), 111. Crowell, World, 80 cites Merck as saying that Izmailov had a wife in Kodiak. Crowell, World, 76. Pierce, Russian America, 206.