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Baranof. At last the natives were defeated and driven off, partly by the aid of a oneand-a-half-pounder gun of the Russians. Baranof wrote of this battle to Shelikof as follows:

As for myself, God protected me; though my shirt was torn by a spear and the arrows fell thickly around me. Being aroused from a deep sleep, I had no time to dress, but rushed out as I was to encourage the men and to see that our only cannon was moved to wherever the danger was greatest. Great praise is due to the fearless demeanor of my men, many of whom were new recruits.

Baranof had intended to spend the winter on Prince William sound, but the hostility of the natives induced him to return to Kadiak. Here he received instructions from his directors to begin shipbuilding at once, with the aid of an English ship-builder sent to him from Siberia. But as winter quarters for his men were more pressingly needed than ships, he set to work to construct them first. There being no suitable timber for shipbuilding on Kadiak or Afognak islands, he erected quarters for his ship-carpenters on the shores of Sunday bay in Prince William sound, and all through the winter the work of felling trees went on. But tar and oakum for calking were entirely lacking, and

the necessary iron had to be collected from the wrecks of vessels. Some iron ore was found, and Baranof made many attempts to smelt iron, but he was unsuccessful. Besides all this, food was scarce; and had Baranof not been possessed of indomitable energy and perseverance, the work could never have been accomplished. An last he triumphed over all difficulties, and the first ship built in northwestern America was launched. She was named the Phoenix and must have been an odd-looking craft. She was seventy-three feet long on the water-line, and seventynine feet over all, with a depth of thirteen and one half feet and a beam of twentythree feet. She was built of spruce timber, and her capacity was about one hundred tons. The sails were made of scraps of canvas raked together from the company's warehouses in Kamchatka and the colonies, and presented a motley appearance. For paint a mixture of tar and whale-oil was used, and as there was not enough even of this to cover the whole vessel, the rest was coated with spruce gum and oil. With great difficulty she made her way to Kadiak, where her appearance was hailed with joy. Being refitted, she made a quick passage to Okhotsk in Siberia, where she was supplied

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of log buildings surrounded by a stockade. The Shelikof company already had a fort, named Saint Alexander, at the entrance of the inlet. It was square, with bastions at two of the corners, and had a gate protected by two guns. Inside were dwellings and warehouses, on one of which was a lookout tower. In 1791 the Lebedef company's ship, Saint George, reached the inlet. The commander beached his ship and began to erect a stockaded fort, to which the name of Saint Nicholas was given.

At these fortified posts the Russians took

At last the news of their outrages and quarrels reached Baranof, who, though angry, was restrained from taking immediate measures by the fact that Shelikof was a partner in the Lebedef company, and Baranof did not wish to interfere without communicating with his chief. So he contented himself for the present with warning the men at Fort Saint Nicholas that he would not permit any outrages likely to injure trade. In spite of this, quarrels occurred continually, and attacks and ambuscades were almost daily events. Towards the end

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things pretty easily, making the natives go out hunting for them, and themselves doing little more than guard-duty. The domestic work was performed by the female hostages, helped by the children who had been sent by native chiefs to learn Russian manners and customs at the post. Now and then the band would set out on a marauding expedition, in the course of which they plundered their own countrymen and the natives with a cheerful lack of discrimination. The Lebedef men at Fort Saint Nicholas soon became a nuisance and a terror to the whole country, robbing the natives of their furs without payment, pillaging the stores of their own countrymen, and carrying off their native servants and hostages.

of 1793 Baranof received reinforcements which made up the total number of his men to about one hundred and fifty. The Lebedef men were not much fewer in number, were superior to Baranof's men in dash and recklessness, and occupied an excellent position with easy access to supplies. At last Baranof's shipyard at Sunday harbor was in danger, and this roused him to vigorous action. He summoned the commander of Saint Nicholas to his presence, and put him in irons, but he failed to do much to restrain the excesses of the rival traders.

Soon, however, Baranof's hands were much strengthened by his receiving authority to form settlements anywhere in America, and to control the country for five hundred versts

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round them. Against such extensive powers the other trading companies could do nothing, and ere long they abandoned their posts, leaving the Shelikof company master of the field. But their crimes and outrages had seriously injured trade by arousing the animosity of the natives against the Russians. Baranof, therefore, made great efforts to reassure the natives and to maintain order among his subordinates. He patched up, to the best of his ability, the discontent existing among the company's employees, and told them that he would redress their grievances. By firmness and an autocratic demeanor he rapidly gained great ascendency over them.

The Shelikof company, anxious to undertake fresh enterprises, requested the imperial authorities to send out to the colonies Siberian exiles skilled in ironwork, blacksmithing, and agriculture. In August, 1794, in response to this request, two of the Shelikof company's vessels arrived at Saint Paul with a cargo of stores, cattle, and provisions, and carrying 192 persons, of whom fifty-two were craftsmen and agriculturists. Baranof was instructed to use his taste and judgment in selecting a site on the mainland for a Rus

sian settlement, which he was to make as trim and neat as possible, not permitting the Russians to live in such squalor and untidiness as did many of their countrymen in Siberia. The settlement was to have spacious squares and wide streets radiating from them. The streets were to be bordered with trees, and the houses built with spaces intervening, so that they might spread over a larger area and give a more imposing appearance to the town.

Nor was Shelikof content with all this. He was busy building ships for a company which then held the Pribylof islands, organizing the North American company, and extending traffic from Unalashka to the Arctic ocean. He established a central office at Irkutsk for the control of his many American enterprises, thus paving the way for the future consolidation of all the Russian companies in America.

Much had already been done in America: the best localities for raising cattle and for agriculture had been chosen and fortified: hunting grounds and sites for harbors and trading-posts had been selected. The colonists had been pretty successful in raising

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vegetables, and in some places even cereals, and plenty of excellent fish was always obtainable. By magnifying his conquests and representing that he had added fifty thousand subjects to the Russian empire, Shelikof produced so good an impression on the imperial authorities that he gained for his company the exclusive privilege of trading throughout Russian America, and on the islands between it and Asia. Shelikof's daughter had married Rezanof, a man of good family and great influence. Rezanof formed the ambitious project of procuring from the Empress a charter as wide as that of the British East India company, and of adding an empire as vast as India to the realms of the Tsar. His far-reaching schemes received a check by the death in 1795 at Irkutsk of Shelikof, who must be regarded as the founder of the Russian colonies in America; and by the death in 1796 of the Empress, before she had granted the extensive charter he hoped for.

However, Natalia, Shelikof's widow, undertook the management of the company, and

VOL. XXX-2

being a woman of great energy and intelligence, though of little education, with the aid of her son-in-law, she conducted its affairs with much shrewdness and discretion. In 1798 the imperial government, thinking that by giving exclusive privilege to one strong company the natives would be protected, disorder prevented, the fur-bearing animals saved from extermination, and Russian authority firmly established in America, permitted an association with three quarters of a million rubles (about $577,000) capital, and known as the United American comany, to be formed. It had been feared that the death of the Empress would be fatal to the schemes of the association, but Rezanof, by constant attendance on her successor, Paul I, obtained confirmation of the act of consolidation of the United American company, to which the name of the Russian American company was given.

The company was granted the exclusive privilege for twenty years of hunting, fishing, exploring, trading, founding, and building settlements on the northwestern main

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