Fort Ross – The Russian Colony in California

Records show that after 1812 there were from twenty-five to one hundred Russians and from fifty to one hundred twenty-five Native Alaskans at the settlement at any given time. The number of the Kashaya, who came to work as day laborers, varied with the seasons. Records indicate the presence of only a few Russian women in the colony (the most prominent of whom was the wife of the last manager); “creole” and Alaskan women were somewhat more numerous. However, during the life of the colony, a number of Russians and Alaskan natives married California Indian women—Kashaya, Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo—with the consent of tribal and Company authorities. The children at the settlement, who made up about a third of the residents by the mid-1830s, were almost all considered as “Creoles,” born of these ethnically mixed unions.

Everyone in the vicinity of Fort Ross labored for the Russian-American Company. The organization and operation of the colony followed the same general pattern as in the Company’s Alaskan settlements. The Ross colony, as in Alaska, was headed by a manager. He was paid a salary and given living quarters, and, although he also had servants, he worked as hard as any of the colonists, even finding time to tend a garden to add to the food supply. Kuskov, the first manager, was a particularly avid gardener, growing cabbage and beets for pickling, with enough produce harvested for shipments to be sent to Sitka for distribution in Alaska. The Ross settlement had five managers during its existence—Kuskov served from 1812 to 1821, Karl Ivanovich Schmidt from 1821 to 1824, Pavel [Paul] Ivanovich Shelikhov from 1825 to 1830, Peter Stepanovich Kostromitinov from 1830 to 1838, and Alexander Gavrilovich Rotchev from 1838 to 1841.

The rest of the Russian colonists were drawn from various parts of the Russian Empire. Besides prikashchiki, who were the administrative assistants and work supervisors, some of the colonists were artisans—carpenters, blacksmiths, coopers, and those skilled in a trade. Many of the Russians were promyshlenniki (Kuskov used the term promyshlennye in his census of 1821): handymen, laborers, hunters, and occasional seamen in the Company service. Before 1820, such workers were hired to work on a share-of-the-catch basis; after that time they were paid a salary, signing on for a seven-year term and agreeing to serve their manager, to resist trading with the natives or foreigners for personal gain, and to avoid vice, particularly drunkenness. Their salary was paid in Company scrip, and out of this they had to buy their clothes and food; a portion of meat and flour was allotted to them on a regular basis. In 1832, the 72 salaried employees at Fort Ross averaged an annual income of 360 rubles apiece¾ not a subsistence wage. The Aleuts, with their “passion” for hunting sea otter, were paid according to the number of otters they caught. They were furnished waterproof parkas and boots for the hunt and sea lion skins with which to repair their baidarkas, which could stand the battering of the sea for only about three months before needing to be mended.

Much of the wear and tear on the baidarkas took place in the waters off the Farallon Islands, some 30 miles west of San Francisco, where the Russians, until about 1830, maintained their chief hunting base. Here, in their hunting group, or artel, up to ten Aleuts and Indians under a Russian foreman lived in crude earthen huts on the rocky slopes and regularly embarked upon harpooning forays on shore and sea. They processed their catch at this base camp for periodic shipment to the mainland—bundles of seal and sea otter pelts, bird meat, eggs and feathers, resilient sea lion skin and sinew, salted and dried sea lion meat, and blubber stored in small kegs, used both for food and as lamp oil. Members of the artel and their families were rotated between Fort Ross and the Farallones, depending on the size of the sea mammal herds during the hunting season.

When Kuskov selected the settlement site for Ross on Kashaya territory in 1811, he was uncertain about relations with the Indians. Such concerns proved groundless. Unlike relations between the Indians and other foreigners in California, those between the Russians and the Kashaya were remarkably free of tension and strife. On the whole, the Russians appear to have treated the Kashaya fairly. The Indians employed at the settlement were paid in flour, meat, and clothing (either daily or monthly); lodging was provided, and their labor was at first voluntary, although relations deteriorated later. The coastal Indians regarded the Russians as far more desirable neighbors than the Spaniards, and they viewed the Russian presence as a safeguard against the Spanish (or Mexicans) and against other Indians entering their territory.

The Kashaya called the foreigners associated with the Russian colony the “Undersea People,” whereas they referred to themselves as the “People From the Top of the Land.” Originally, the land made available to the Russians by the Indians was accompanied by an exchange of gifts, mainly tools and trinkets, and professions of friendship. As the settlement grew, the Russians, who were amply aware of Spanish claims to all territory north of San Francisco, prudently decided to formalize their title. Consequently, Chief Manager Baranov sent Captain Leontii Andreianovich Hagemeister to the Sonoma Coast to document the transfer. A deed “releasing land to the Company” was drawn up and agreed upon in 1817 by the local Indian chiefs (Chu-gu-an, Amat-tan, and Gem-le-le), but it was signed only by the Russians present—Hagemeister and six other officials. It stated that “the chiefs are very satisfied with the occupation of this place by the Russians” and that “they now live in security from other Indians who used to attack them.” A copy of the agreement, the only one known to have been executed between Indians and Europeans in California, was dispatched to Russia. Chief Chu-gu-an was presented a silver medal inscribed with the words “Allies of Russia.”

The three-way culture of Native Californians, Native Alaskans, and Russians at Fort Ross was chiefly one of genuine cooperation, which some attribute to the religious values that had been instilled earlier in the Russians and Aleuts, by clergymen in Alaskan Russian America. At Fort Ross many of the Kashaya acquired a good understanding of the Russian language, and a number of Russian words found their way into the Kashaya vocabulary. It is also known that some Kashaya wives and children accompanied their promyshlennik husbands and fathers north to Alaska and even to Russia after the sale of the colony in 1841.

Although no one left a detailed account of daily life in the colony, the observations of both residents and visitors point to a busy if simple existence. In addition to hunting sea mammals and birds, parties fished for salmon, sea perch, and sea bass, and harvested local shellfish for the settlement’s larder. Sturgeon were caught in the Russian River. Farming and ranching consumed many hours of the colonists’ time, with even some of the Aleuts and Indians joining in to handle planting, cultivating, herding, logging, and construction chores. At the sheds along the cove, artisans got to work making furniture, barrels, plows, and other hardware, and later even ships and boats. The blacksmith’s anvil rang with the hammering of metal, as countless articles needed for trade and for operating the colony were fashioned by the skilled workers. Not all was hard work for the employees, however, for at Ross, as in Alaska and in the motherland, various holidays were observed. These occasions were cause for celebrations, which sometimes featured gun and rifle practice, followed by a feast of fresh meat obtained by slaughtering a bull from the settlement’s herd of cattle. All in all, everyday life was active and peaceful.

Not once was the settlement threatened by outside attack. The climate was mild yet invigorating, and the beauty of the surroundings imparted a sense of well-being recorded by many who were there. Manager Rotchev was to look back nostalgically at the time spent in this “enchanting land” as the “best years” of his life.

Closely bound to the lives of the colonists was their religion. The Russians brought with them their Eastern Orthodox Christianity as they had to Siberia and Alaska. In the early 1820s, as reported by the Company’s chief manager, “The Russian, Creole, and Aleut employees at Ross settlement expressed their intention to build at their own expense a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas.” The goal was helped along in 1823-24 when the officers and crews of three Russian Navy ships, on visit to San Francisco Bay, donated a “rather considerable sum” to the proposed chapel, and, soon thereafter, the Company’s home office ordered four icons to be sent from Russia for placement in the building.

Presumably, Paul Shelikhov, the settlement manager at that time, deserves credit for supervising the chapel’s construction, for the first known reference to the “newly built” chapel, the first Orthodox structure established in the New World south of Alaska, came in 1828 from a French visitor, Duhaut-Cilly. The chapel, however, was never consecrated as a church because of the colony’s tenuous legality and the fact that no clergyman was ever permanently assigned. Nevertheless, the colonists conducted prayer meetings in the chapel and designated a sexton for its upkeep. In later years they hosted at least two priests who visited Ross and its chapel.

In the summer of 1836, Father Ioann Veniaminov spent about five weeks at the settlement. While there he preached, instructed, and conducted weddings, confessions, communion services, baptisms, burials, and prayer services. He also held services for the Aleuts (in translation), consecrated the waters of Fort Ross Creek, and led a festive procession around the stockade exterior. According to Father Veniaminov’s detailed journal, about 15 per cent of the settlement’s population, then numbering two hundred and sixty, consisted of Indians baptized in the Eastern Orthodox faith; among the residents were also a few who were Lutheran and Catholic. The priest also described his visit to the missions of the San Francisco Bay area and the cordial relations he was able to establish with the Mexicans. In later years, Father Veniaminov became Bishop of Alaska and, subsequently, Metropolitan of Moscow, the senior bishop of the Russian Empire; in 1980, he was canonized as Saint Innokenty of Alaska.