You Want Kodiak History Exhibits to Include...

At the end of 2012, the Baranov Museum asked you to complete an exhibit survey so that museum staff could confidently move forward in planning for the renovation of the museum's permanent exhibits. Your answers were analyzed and seriously mulled over, and while there were many interesting tidbits that emerged, here is the response to one of the most important questions:

Question: What aspects of Kodiak history and culture do you think it important to see in new exhibits in the museum?

Topic /  % that agree and strongly agree

Russians in Alaska  91.1%

Natural Disasters  87.5%

Immigration and Cultural Diversity  80.9%

Commercial Fisheries  78.8%

Recent Past  77.9%

Alutiiq History and Culture  73%

Business and Industry  66.6%

Military  65.2%

Fine Arts  60.9%

Community Development  56.3%

Note: Bold indicates most common answer was "strongly agree."

From this information and other data gathered through the survey and conversations, museum staff came up with the two "big ideas" that will guide the new exhibitions:

1. Kodiak is an international crossroads/ Kodiak is a crossroads of diversity
2. The Russian American Magazin has witnessed 200 years of Kodiak history

But before we were certain to move forward with these major themes, we wanted to make sure that the survey results really reflected the feelings of the community. As a result, we held a series of four community conversations, during which we shared the survey results over lunch with Kodiakans. During the conversations, we also asked everyone what they thought about the "big ideas" listed above. The results? Yes, the survey does accurately portray what Kodiak citizens think is important about our history. And yes, Kodiakans really do see our island home as a crossroads of diversity, and are interested in learning more about Kodiak history through the eyes of the oldest building in Alaska.

So, where are we now? While we still have lots of work to do, thanks to the participation of the Kodiak community, we have determined that the exhibits will discuss the following aspects of Kodiak history, and whenever possible, examine the history through the eyes of the building:

A Russian Colony in an Alutiiq Land: We will show Kodiak in the international realm of the 18^th/ 19^th centuries and show the connections that existed on the ground between Russian and Alutiiq peoples. The Russian-American Company was completely dependent on Kodiak Alutiit.  As a result, we propose to look at the Russian era with an eye towards the czar and an eye towards the sea otter hunter.

From Eastern Frontier to "Out the Westward": Kodiak Becomes American: What happened when Russia left, and U.S. officials rarely showed their faces?

Local Resources in an International Market: The fur trade (from the Russian fur trade to fox farms in the 1930s) and commercial fishing have attracted diverse individuals to Kodiak, and the commodities were/ are important to international markets.

Forces of Change: The Katmai eruption in 1912, World War Two, and the 1964 earthquake and tsunami profoundly changed Kodiak.

What do you think about these ideas? Please call (486-5920) or e-mail (anjuli@baranovmuseum.org), or leave a comment below to share your thoughts. We will be hosting other community conversations in the near future, so please keep your eyes open for announcements.

A Murder, 126 Years Old

It may be the season for spookiness, but regardless of the season, visitors to the museum frequently ask if there is a resident ghost. And while I cannot tell you definitively if a spirit dwells in this old log building, I can tell you that there is plenty of cause for a haunting. And if this ghost were to appear, the date is fast approaching. For it was 126 years ago, on November 1, 1886, that magazin-resident Benjamin McIntyre was killed at his dining room table.

As gruesome as it is, this story also happens to be one of my favorite to tell, not only because it is gripping, but because the murder itself provides an incisive glimpse into the characters and livelihoods in Kodiak, less than 20 years after it became part of the U.S. Plus, during my recent research trip to the Alaska and Polar Regions Collection at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I was able to track down a few “new” trails of evidence. Yes, that’s me, a Kodiak history detective.

Benjamin McIntyre, General Agenct of the
Kodiak District of the Alaska Commercial
Company, P-683.

To begin, let me introduce the cast of characters.

Benjamin McIntyre was the General Agent for the Alaska Commercial Company’s Kodiak District. Hailing from Vermont, McIntyre was responsible for the operations of the wide-reaching trading enterprise. The AC Co. (as it was known), in many ways filled the shoes of the business enterprises of the Russian-American Company. The business funded sea otter hunting expeditions, traded and sold furs, operated general stores, functioned as a credit agency and bank, delivered the mail, and in general was the main American entity in what was still very much a Alutiiq/Russian town.  McIntyre lived in the magazin, had a wife and three children.

Peter Anderson was a trapper, hunter and fisherman from the River Don region of Russia. He owned a sloop. Anderson was the suspected murderer and described by Ivan Petroff (see below) as having “a red, course face almost hidden in beard and unkempt shock of black hair, joined almost without neck to an herculean body with immense breadth of shoulders.”   

Benjamin Woche was the Alaska Commercial Company storekeeper in Kaguyak (abandoned following the 1964 earthquake and tsunami). Mr. Woche first came to Kodiak in 1867 with the US Army, which established Fort Kodiak. By 1870, the Army had left Kodiak, but Woche stayed and married a local woman.   

Heywood Seton-Karr was a British mountaineer, explorer, and writer. He was in Kodiak at the time of the murder, awaiting the schooner Kodiak’s return voyage to San Francisco.

H.P. Cope was the storekeeper at Kodiak’s AC Co. general store. This Englishman became Kodiak’s first postmaster, took the 1910 census for the island, and has a street named after him today.

The Kodiak's Custom House in
the late 1800s. Kodiak Historical
Society, P 399-1.

Ivan Petroff was the assistant Collector of Customs in Kodiak. Petroff was responsible for undertaking the first census of Alaska in 1880 and also worked on the 1890 census. He was Russian, a journalist, and a counterfeiter of historic documents. He gathered and translated materials used by historian H.H. Bancroft in the early and foundational History of Alaska and was caught falsifying translations that were used in an international tribunal. To most historians of Alaska, Petroff is a source of utter frustration.

W.E. Roscoe was one of the earliest Baptist missionaries in the region. He and his family laid much of the groundwork for the creation of the Woody Island Baptist Mission. Roscoe was not present for the murder, but performed McIntyre’s last rights immediately following the shooting.

Efka Pestrikoff worked as a servant for the McIntyre family in the magazin. He was a local Alutiiq man. His daughter, Natalia, worked as a cook and housekeeper for the Erskine family within the same building several decades after the murder.

 

Recounting the Gruesome Deed

“He scowled at me and as he scowled I began to feel sick and faint,” McIntyre told Petroff about his first encounter with Peter Anderson, his assassin. After their first meeting, McIntyre reported feeling “out of sorts ever since.” Did McIntyre sense he had met his murderer? Or later, as Petroff wrote the account, was Petroff merely trying to make a good story better?

The Alaska Commercial Company store and wharf,
where the Tustumena docks today. Kodiak Historical
Society, P. 399-4.

Soon after arriving in Kodiak, Anderson asked McIntyre to outfit him for a sea otter hunting trip. This was not an uncommon request. The AC Co would supply sea otter hunters with necessary goods, including food and arms, on credit for their trapping and hunting expeditions. Often, the company would send Alutiiq sea otter hunters with the white vessel owners to hunt, as well. The hunters were expected to sell the captured pelts to the AC Co, thus paying off their debts and coming out at the end of the transaction with more goods or cash.  As he would with any sea otter hunter, McIntyre outfitted Anderson, who then departed.

However, Anderson returned empty handed. It wasn’t unheard of for trappers and hunters to return without pelts- in fact, I found several instances in Alaska Commercial Company ledgers from the 1870s and 1880s that some hunters ended the season in debt to the company.

Anderson went to McIntyre again, asking for traps, munitions, and other supplies so that he could spend the winter trapping. Giving Anderson the benefit of the doubt, McIntyre instructed the store to provide the requested materials. However, according to one account, Anderson “set the traps but failed to look after them and didn’t even go to take them up when the trapping season was over. He used up all the supplies but didn’t go hunting either.” Again, Anderson returned to Kodiak without a pelt to put down to pay off his debts to the company. Multiple accounts verify the fact that Anderson was either too lazy or negligent to hunt. Spiridon Stepanoff, Alutiiq Creole from Eagle Harbor recounted in an oral history recorded in 1969 that “he wouldn’t do nothing!”

Accounts vary if McIntyre outfitted Anderson for another voyage after the second failed attempt. He did return on his last hunting trip outfitted by the Alaska Commercial Company without a fur in sight, and his vessel had gained an eerie appearance. Two accounts provide this sinister image - one claimed Anderson’s sloop was rigged with black sails, another that his sails were made from blue drill cloth. Whatever the material, his dark-sailed vessel presented an unsettling image in St. Paul’s harbor.   Anderson demanded to be outfitted again, but this time McIntyre refused.

Anderson’s sloop was not alone in the harbor. The Alaska Commercial Company owned schooner Kodiak was making preparations to sail to San Francisco on November 2. It appears that McIntyre was planning on departing for the winter on the vessel. He was to join Heywood Seton-Karr on the journey, an English explorer who had recently attempted an ascent of Mount St. Elias. According to the daily cash record kept at the AC Co. store, on October 28, Seton-Karr purchased a “colosh basket and mats,” examples of Tlingit basketry. (This same cash record informs us that McIntyre was a smoker of pipe tobacco.)

In Spiridon Stepanoff’s telling of the story, McIntyre ordered the slaughtering of a cow. “Won’t you give me a little piece for my supper?” asked Anderson, to which McIntyre responded, “Ah! You! You’re not my man. You’re not working man. You don’t do nothing! You don’t get nothing from me! You get home!”



The window likely obliterated by Anderson's buckshot.

At 6 PM, a group gathered for dinner in the McIntyre home, the magazin. Customs Collector Ivan Petroff, storekeeper H.P Cope, explorer Seton-Karr, and Kaguyak storekeeper Benjamin Woche (in town awaiting instructions for the winter), gathered around the table, as Efka Pestrikoff, servant in the McIntyre home, was busy with household matters.  “Suddenly there came a loud explosion, a crashing and jingling of glass and something whizzed by my nose creating quite a current of air…. The station agent was groaning under the table and when I turned to my left I saw M—still sitting in his chair, with a pleasant smile lighting up his open honest features. But from under his chin on one side, the bright red blood came oozing out,” wrote Petroff.

“But he shot. Buckshot. Back, shot him, bang, bang, two shots,” recounted Stepanoff.

It was “a fiend who fired through the window with a breech-loading double barreled shotgun,” wrote Wesley Roscoe. “Mr. McEntyre (sic) was killed so suddenly that he did not move…he was just taking something to his mouth--- and his head did not even fall to the table.” Mr. Roscoe  arrived immediately after the shooting and performed McIntyre’s last rights.

The spray of buckshot hit Woche, who “fell under the table, and then rushed out streaming with blood in torrents, for he was shot through the lower part of the head,” wrote Seton-Karr in his book, Shores and Alps of Alaska published in 1887.

In the chaos of the instant, no one saw the murderer, although there was an immediate suspect- Anderson. He had a violent reputation and terrified the townspeople. His boat was found ashore, untied, the next day, although he and his gun were missing. And everyone knew that McIntyre had refused to extend him further credit. The next day, Cope wrote to inform the San Francisco office of the murder. He wrote that they “were entirely at a loss to locate the” perpetrator, but it was generally thought to be “a man named Peter Anderson who arrived on a sloop of that name from Sitka last year. Today I think that our conclusion was a correct one, as the man has not been seen all day. A thorough search was made without success so far….The man was seen at the back of the dwelling house a few minutes before 6 pm but nothing was thought strange… The whole town is very much shocked and I think I can say that Mr. McIntyre has the respect of all who knew him both American and native.” A manhunt ensued, but Anderson was never seen again.

The next day, the injured Woche, the shaken Seton-Karr, and the corpse of McIntyre were loaded on the schooner Kodiak, which sailed for San Francisco. The surviving cash record shows that on board the Kodiak was food for the journey, purchased the day after the murder, including 168 pounds of fresh beef. This was quite possibly part of the same cow that McIntyre refused to surrender to Anderson the day before.  

But the story continues! In 1917, The Valdez Miner asserted “Bones of Kodiak Murderer Found.” The skeletal remains of a man with a shotgun were found near the town of Kodiak- the shot gun shells matched those that had been salvaged from the dining room following the murder. Many believed that the bones were all that were left of Peter Anderson.

Natalia Pestrikoff, the the left. P 368-1-2.

And McIntyre, what of his spirit? Natalia Pestrikoff, daughter of McIntyre’s servant Efka, worked for many years for the Erskine family. Her domain was the kitchen. She swore that the magazin was haunted, so much so that she refused to sleep within the Erskine’s home. For Natalia and other Kodiak residents, strange sounds within the magazin were certainly McIntyre’s ghost. One time, the errant sound was a moaning cow, but as Carolyn Erskine Andrews recounted, “Once more MacIntyre’s (sic) ghost was routed but he never remained peacefully away for long.”

While the lingering presence of McIntyre’s murdered spirit continues to be debated, there is a legacy that remains. Petroff wrote that “the window, which opened upon a narrow alley, was almost demolished, both frame and glass being shattered…” As carpenter Don Corwin restored the magazin’s historic windows, one was distinct from those around it- the one that Anderson’s buckshot had obliterated.

So is the magazin haunted? Just this weekend, someone left a note in a museum gallery, claiming they had seen a ghost as they left the bathroom. Was this a trick, the result of an overactive imagination, or McIntyre’s restless spirit? I can’t say for sure… but I must run, as I am the only one left in the magazin and the sun is dipping in the horizon…

References
Alaska Commercial Company Records, 1868-1913.  Rasmuson Library Alaska and Polar Regions Collection, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Andrews, Carolyn Erskine. Faraway Island: Childhood in Alaska. Great Bay Press, 2000.

Jeffrey, Susan M. A Legacy Built to Last: Kodiak's Russian American Magazin. Kodiak Historical
Society, 2008.

Karr, Heywood Seton. Shores & Alps of Alaska. London: Sapson Low, Marston. Searle & Rivington, 1887.

Partnow, Patricia. "Alutiiq Ethnicity." PhD diss. University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1993.

Roscoe, Fred. From Humboldt to Kodiak, 1886-1895. Kingston, Ontario: The Limestone Press, 1992.

Kodiak's Whaling History

The recent spotting of the rare right whale in Uganik Bay, the recent return of a familiar orca pod, and the recent release of the Alaska-flimed, feel-good whale movie, “Big Miracle,” all point to whales receiving wide attention this winter. Add to this the highly rated reality t.v. show, “Whale Wars,” in which activists prowl the waters of the Antarctic for Japanese whaling vessels, risking their own lives in order to halt the hunt, and it’s clear that whales are on the mind, and the conservation of their species receives wide support.

But for centuries, humans did not view whales as sentient creatures worthy of conservation. Rather, whales were floating oil reserves, and the products that came from whales were essential to daily life. Rendered whale blubber and spermaceti from the head of the sperm whale illuminated American and European cities. Whale oil lubricated the gears of the Industrial Revolution (and later, our forays into space, where sperm whale oil continues to be used as a lubricant). Whale oil was used in soap, in cosmetics and cleaners. Ambergris, another sperm whale product, was essential in the making of perfume. Whale meat was turned into fertilizer. Baleen was used where we employ plastic today- not only in outmoded products like corsets, but also in umbrellas and other goods that required a durable and flexible material. In general, consider the wide array of goods made from petroleum now, and there is a good likelihood that if a similar product was around in the 1800s, whale was used instead of petroleum in its manufacture.

Telescope, Kodiak Historical Society, 81-4-1.

The waters of Kodiak were central to this whale oil boom. In 1835, Yankee whalers from Nantucket “discovered” the Kodiak Grounds, also known as the Northwest Coast Right Whaling Grounds. The Kodiak Grounds encompassed more or less the Gulf of Alaska, including the waters that fall north and west of Vancouver Island. Soon after the discovery, hundreds of Nantucket and New Bedford whaling vessels crowded the waters around Kodiak, inaugurating what historians now call the Golden Age of Whaling. During the height of whaling intensity on the Kodiak Grounds, it was our waters that provided 60% of the whale oil that pumped back to East coast home ports, making the towns of Nantucket and New Bedford very wealthy.

However, these American whalers were hunting in Russian waters. Indeed, it was the partially due to the incredible number of American whalers throughout the waters of Russian America that the Russians began to see the sale of Alaska to the U.S. as a sure eventuality. In the meantime, the Russians belatedly tried to profit from commercial whaling, entering the industry in 1851 when the Russian-Finnish Whaling Company launched its first whaling vessel. Several Alutiit from Three Saints Bay even worked as crew on the Turku. However, by the 1850s it was harder and harder to hunt whales in the over-harvested Kodiak Grounds, and soon the Crimean War broke out, meaning that British vessels could seize Russian whalers at any point. The Russians never profited from whaling in the Kodiak Grounds.

This ceremonial bowl from Woody Island continues to ooze
what is likely a mixture of seal and whale oil.
Kodiak Historical Society, 70-167-9.

Whales were not a source of profit for the Russian American Company, but they certainly were a crucial resource in Kodiak. Boiled and pickled whale meat and oil were important food items for RAC employees as well as the Alutiiq, and whale oil provided light, lubricated the grist mill at Mill Bay, was used in making caulking, paint, and a wide variety of other goods.  Alutiiq whalers, or ar’ursulek, surrendered from 1/3-1/2 of a whale for colonial use. According to an 1833 report, the settlements that provided the most whales were Karluk, Afognak, Alitak, Old Harbor, Angiskoe (between Kodiak and Spruce Islands), St. Paul (modern day Kodiak) and Igak (possibly Ugak or Ugat). Alutiiq whalers at Kodiak killed between 150-300 whales a year during this time. At Three Saints Bay, several individuals were employed in butchering and processing whales that floated south from Afognak and St. Paul.

In the early 1830s, Russians hired an American whaler to try to modernize the whale hunt, only to find that the traditional methods were more effective. Alutiiq whale hunting methods were dangerous, secretive, and efficient. Rituals surrounded each aspect of the hunt, from preparation to processing. Whalers seemed to live separately from the rest of their community. Whaling was a hereditary occupation that involved such secretive rituals that even apprentices were not allowed to participate fully. Within caves, whalers kept totemic objects and talismans that helped to insure the success of a hunt. In these caves, whalers sequestered the bodies of recently dead, prominent community members in order to render the fat from the corpses. Sometimes the bodies were turned into mummies. In fact, a whaler reportedly told Aleksandr Baranov that he would try to steal Baranov’s corpse once he died.

Alutiiq whalers went out in single hatch kayaks and targeted smaller, humpback and fin whales. Slate whaling lances were smeared with monkshood, a local flower that contains the poison aconite, and human fat. The fat acted as a bonding agent. Aiming at the fins or tail, once the whaler had lodged the lance in the whale, it took several days for the poison to paralyze the targeted region. Around three days later, the whale died and washed ashore. In order to assure that a hunter would claim his whale, the whaler drew a line with human fat across the mouth of the bay in which the whale swam, creating a spiritual border through which the whale could not pass. He also marked his slate spears with personal, identifying marks. During the Russian period, slate lances were sometimes marked with Cyrillic initials, and sometimes contained both symbols as well as initials. Examples of such lances are on exhibit at the Baranov Museum.

Look closely and you will see the Cyrillic initials inscribed on this slate whaling lance. Kodiak Historical Society, 85-24-1.

Alutiiq whaling methods were so effective that the RAC dispatched Alutiiq whalers throughout the region in order to teach other Native groups. Rewards were offered to whalers who successfully apprenticed others. Although Alutiiq whaling persisted into the early 20^th century, many of the sacred rituals were no longer practiced after the 1838 smallpox epidemic ravaged the archipelago. By the 1850s, Alutiiq whaling had seriously declined, a drop that can be attributed to the epidemic as well as the rapid shrinking of the whale population due to the incursion of Yankee whalers in the Kodiak Grounds.

Port Hobron shore whaling station, located on Sitkalidak Island in the Kodiak
archipelago, Kodiak Historical Society P 552-6.

In the 1920s there was resurgence of whaling in Kodiak. It was during this decade that the American Pacific Whaling Company constructed Port Hobron on Sitkalidak Island. From this shore whaling station, three catcher boats were dispatched to hunt the waters around Kodiak. Large, bomb-loaded harpoons were mounted to the bow of the vessels. Once a whale was killed, the catcher vessel would pump it full of air, mark it with a flag, and continue hunting for the rest of the day before tugging the day’s catch to Port Hobron. Once at port, large steam winches drug the carcasses onto flensing platforms, where several of the hundred or so employees went to work butchering the whales. Every part of the whale, including the bones, was rendered into oil that was separated into three grades. The whale oil was sold to Proctor & Gamble, the company that makes Ivory soap. Alaska Steamship Company vessels made weekly stops at Port Hobron to drop off supplies and pick up oil, and tourists and other passengers disembarked and got to witness shore whaling first hand. Port Hobron was even included in travel literature as a destination in the 1930s. After nearly a dozen years of operation, Port Hobron closed due to financial issues.

The Carolyn Frances is photographed whaling near what
appears to be Monashka Bay in the city of Kodiak.
Kodiak Historical Society, P 368-5-34

Also during the 1920s, the Carolyn Frances, the Erskine family charter vessel, whaled around Kodiak. Captained by Louis Lane, the Carolyn Frances was a modern incarnation of the off-shore whaling vessel of a century before. Alongside the boat, whales were butchered and on deck the blubber was rendered into oil. Whenever Captain Lane was in town, the Erskine family would join him on a whaling trip. Ever the photographer, local businessman W.J. Erskine brought along his camera to document the action. Within the Baranov Museum photograph collection are pictures of the vessel whaling off Spruce Cape, including photographs depicting each step in the hunt, from preparing the dories to flinging the blubber into the melting pots. After the Carolyn Frances was sold, Captain Lane returned on other vessels to whale around Kodiak, and even sold whales at $500 a pop to local fox farms, where the whales were converted into fox feed.

Whaling did not end in the waters around Kodiak after international agreements curtailed the practice, beginning in the 1930s. Soviet and Japanese whalers continued to hunt for whales just beyond 3 miles offshore, which were considered international waters. Kodiak fishermen recall watching large, industrial whaling ships as they hunted and processed whales right off Kodiak. In an ironic twist, now it was Russian whalers that were not welcome in American waters, while one hundred years earlier it was American whalers who angered the Russians for whaling the Kodiak Grounds. 

The Kodiak Grounds are no longer the domain of whalers, but whales continue as an important local resource. Rather than being a source of oil and food, they are a source of tourism and scientific dollars. Kodiak has a complex relationship with whales and whaling, a relationship which is explored in the new temporary exhibit at the Baranov Museum, Whaling the Kodiak Grounds. Please stop by to learn more about this fascinating story.