FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA TN 1910. 37 



When discovered by the Russians in the eighteenth century, these 

 Aleuts were a hardy race of fishermen and aquatic hunters. In 

 their tiny bidarkis or skin boats they made long journeys and in 

 them successfully weathered storms that would have sent the 

 European rowboat to the bottom. They subsisted upon fish and 

 the flesh of such warm-blooded animals as they could capture. 



Being a tractable race, except when goaded to desperation, they 

 were at once made use of by the Russians as hunters of the sea 

 otter, which was the fur the white men most eagerly sought. Whole 

 fleets of bidarkis with hundreds of native hunters would be trans- 

 ported hundreds of miles from their homes, and thence with a little 

 food supplied them were put to sea to buffet with the storms of the 

 northern ocean which withal were not so greatly feared by the natives 

 as were their white masters. Thousands of them never returned. 



Aleuts in numbers were taken to Sitka by the Russians as hunters 

 and laborers, and kept there until they died. Entire fleets of bidarki 

 hunters were loaned by the Russian company to foreign vessels to 

 hunt sea otter, the profits of the venture being shared equally b}- the 

 vessel and the company. The ship was required to pay the Russian 

 company about 200 Mexican dollars for every Aleut lost at sea or 

 killed b} T coast Indians. In 1805, 20 bidarkis were fitted out at 

 Kodiak and with a colony of natives were taken to San Quinten bay 

 in Lower California, where they were required to hunt for fur seals. 

 This colony struggled on until 1841, when it was abandoned. 



In the draft of the terms upon which the Russian-American Com- 

 pany should receive an extension of its charter, after its expiration in 

 1861, or thereabouts, the following paragraph is found: 



10. The Aleuts and other peaceful natives within the colonies are relieved from 

 compulsory labor on behalf of the Russian-American Company. They shall be allowed 

 to settle in localities which they may find convenient, and shall be free to absent them- 

 selves from the places of their residence, subject only to such rules of police as may be 

 established by the board of administration of the colonies. 



This clause in the proposed charter was inserted to cure abuses in 

 respect to the treatment of natives reported by Golovnin and the 

 Creole Kashevarof. In short, the Government would renew the 

 charter only under such terms as the company would not accept. 



When the Russian-American Company acquired control of Alaska 

 the Aleuts were paid nothing for sea-otter skins, but in lieu of compen- 

 sation received subsistence and "exemption from imperial taxes and 

 dues." When this practice was forbidden by the Emperor Alexander 

 I and the company instructed to pay the natives for every skin 

 deposited by them with the company the natives received for every 

 sea otter 10 rubles in leather scrip, the equivalent of $2, but each 

 hunter was required to furnish his own subsistence. The company 

 sold the sea-otter skins for at least $100 each. 



