1850-52 Period of low annual kills, fewer than 7,000; herd 



size also probably low. 

 1856-67 Consistently moderate kills; probably fewer than 



necessary. 



Research During the Russian Period 



Little is known of scientific studies on the Pribilofs during 

 the Russian regime. The first published illustration of Pribilof 

 seals was that of Ludovik Choris (1822). He anchored 6 mi (10 

 km) off St. Paul Island on 3 July 1817 and evidently landed, 

 for his color plate XV is captioned "ours marins [fur seals] 

 dans lTle de St. Paul." 



The Russian explorer Frederic Lutke, in the corvette Le 

 Seniavine, arrived at St. George Island on 2 September 1826 

 and lay at anchor for several days (Lutke 1835-36, Tome 1, p. 

 249-267). Here he met Rezanov, "homme d'un age avance" 

 (Lutke 1835-36, Tome 1, p. 250). Rezanov donated three live 

 fur seals to Lutke's scientific collection. The Pribilof popula- 

 tion of 225 Aleuts and 17 Russians were then killing up to 

 3,000-4,000 seals a day on St. Paul and 500-2,000 seals a day 

 on St. George. During the 42-yr period ending in 1828, more 

 than 3 million sealskins had been taken, an average of more 

 than 71,000/yr. 



Thirty-six years after the event, Elliott was told by natives 

 that sea ice persisted around the Pribilofs until the middle or 

 end of August 1836. It formed "an icy wall completely around 

 the island [of St. Paul] looming up 20 to 30 feet above the 

 surf .... The females were compelled to bring forth their 

 young in the water and at the wet, storm-beaten surf-margins, 

 which caused multitudes of the mothers and all of the young to 

 perish" (Elliott 1887:333). Kirik Artamonov, born on the 

 Pribilofs about 1821, told the same story to members of the 

 Jordan Commission, though the year of the ice was placed at 

 1834 (U.S. Treasury 1898-99, part 2, p. 466). 



According to Hulten (1940), at least seven naturalists visited 

 the Pribilofs between 1805 and 1827 and made plant collec- 

 tions. 



Meanwhile, in the United States, the first unhairing and dye- 

 ing of fur seal skins was introduced in 1825 by Denison Wil- 

 liams, a cap maker of Albany, N.Y. He may have used Alaskan 

 skins, obtained through London, or he may have used skins 

 from Southern Hemisphere islands. Stevenson (1904:300-301) 

 described the evolution of sealskin processing, and Elliott (in 

 U.S. Congress, Senate 1926:8-9) carried the history to 1922. 



In 1836 "an earthquake occurred on the Pribyloff Islands, 

 on the 2d of April. The shock was so severe that people could 

 not stand erect, and was preceded by a loud noise. The rocks 

 were split and broken in many places, and the same phenom- 

 ena occurred with less violence in August" (Dall 1870:470). 



According to Veniaminov in 1840 (Elliott's translation, 

 1874, p. [148] "sometimes the ice brings bears and red [blue?] 

 foxes. The bears were never allowed to live, since they could 

 not be made useful." 



In studying the parasites of Pribilof mammals today it is 

 useful to remember that the islands are not truly isolated but 

 are often in contact with drift ice from continental Alaska, and 

 with the animals transported by ice. 



In 1842, a Doctor Warneck ("savant zoologiste de Mos- 

 cou") collected nine species of birds on St. Paul Island, form- 

 ing the basis for the earliest account of the Pribilof avifauna 

 (Coinde 1860; Preble and McAtee 1923:122). 



The explorer L. A. Zagoskin (1847) anchored off St. Paul 

 Island on 7 June 1842 and visited here several days. "The chief 

 of the village, Shaesnikoff, told us how four days past the ice 

 broke away from the village" (transl., p. 6). A "Behring's 

 Straits Sea-Bear," adult skin and broken skull, was sent to St. 

 Petersburg, to Amsterdam, and to London, where it was cat- 

 alogued in 1859 in the British Museum as no. 1221a, later no. 

 1859.1.17.1. Scheffer examined the skull there in 1957; it is 

 certainly a male, estimated age 10 yr. On the basis of the skull, 

 John Edward Gray erected the new genus Callorhinus (Gray 

 1859b:359). Gray had, earlier in the same year (1859a), men- 

 tioned the specimen under Arctocephalus ursinus (Gray 

 1859a: 103) and had illustrated the skull (plate 68). Allen and 

 Bryant (1870:86) agreed that "the first and only specimen of 

 the skull [of an Alaskan fur seal] hitherto figured is that of a 

 male. . .published by Dr. Gray in. . . 1859[a] (Plate LXVIII)." 



An early zoological experiment on fur seals was carried out 

 in the 1860's, when the Russian overseer at St. Paul Island 

 "drove up a number of young males from Lukanon, cut off 

 their ears, and turned them out to sea again. The following 

 season, when the droves came in from the 'hauling grounds' to 

 the slaughtering-fields, quite a number of these cropped seals 

 were in the drives" (Elliott 1884:77). Bryant repeated the ex- 

 periment in 1870. 



In 1865 the Russian-American Company tried to improve 

 the curing and processing of Pribilof sealskins. An agent vis- 

 ited London to study the methods of Oppenheim and Com- 

 pany and Lampson and Company. "An attempt was made to 

 entice some expert workmen over from [Lampson] but it did 

 not succeed" (Okun 1951:227). 



In 1865, Robert Kennicott (leader), William Henry Dall, 

 and Henry Wood Elliott, naturalists attached to the Western 

 Union Telegraph expedition, visited St. Paul Island. Kennicott 

 died the same year. Dall revisited the islands in 1868, 1874, and 

 1880. In 1870 he wrote a book, "Alaska and its resources," in 

 which he described the fur seals. The book is valuable because 

 it is the first natural history account in English of the Alaskan 

 fur seal. Elliott's many contributions will be discussed later. 



In 1868, Charles S. Bulkley, "Engineer-in-chief Russo- 

 American Telegraph," and Charles M. Scammon, "Chief of 

 Marine Western Union Telegraph Expedition, 1865 and 

 1866," published brief descriptions of the Pribilof Islands 

 under Russian control (U.S. Congress, House 1868b). Al- 

 though both men visited the islands once or twice, they learned 

 little about the fur seals or the fur seal industry. Bulkley 

 thought that there were at least "100,000 to 200,00 fur-seal" 

 on St. Paul (U.S. Congress, House 1868b:5); Scammon be- 

 lieved that the annual take of sealskins on St. Paul was "usual- 

 ly from 70,000 to 80,000" (U.S. Congress, House 1868b:15). 



The father of Priest Innokenty Shayashnikov was a manager 

 of the Pribilof Islands under the Russian regime. "The acci- 

 dental loss of the elder Shayashnikov's diary destroyed the 

 only written historical record of the Pribilofs for many 

 decades" (Geoghegan 1944:92). 



THE INTERREGNUM, 1868-69 



Sealing During the Change of Ownership 



Alaska was transferred to the United States in 1867 after the 

 Russians had taken the annual seal harvest. The exchange of 

 ratifications took place in Washington on 8 June and formal- 



