90 
BULLETIN OE THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
time until tlie end of tlie regime of tlie Eussiau- American Company tlie yield of the 
Commander Islands was very insignificant. It is true, the reports were in 1859 that 
the rookeries were again crowded, a condition evidently due to the improved methods, 
especially the prohibition of killing the females, but as the Pribylof Islands showed 
the same favorable conditions and could easily supply the demand, there was no induce- 
ment for the chief management in Sitka to incur the increased labor and risk at the 
more distant islands, and it is lu'obable that the Commander Islands were only worked 
enough to supply the kind and quantity of skins demanded for the Siberian (Kiakhta) 
trade, a comiiaratively insignificant amount (5,000 to C,000 a year). 
In a general Avay the condition of affairs on the Commander Islands during tliis 
pei’iod must have been very similar to that on the Pribylofs, though from their remote- 
ness from the seat of the general management and their comparative insignificance 
the criticisms of the company’s dealings which were current probably applied with still 
greater force to the Commander Islands. 
Once a year the islands had communication with the outer world. A small vessel 
brought supplies, etc., from Sitka and carried away the dried skius.^ In the earlier 
days, after the recolouization of the islands, the skins were apparently shipped to one 
of the ports in the Okhotsk Sea, but this was changed later, so that all the furs were 
first sent to Sitka, whence they were reshipped the following year. This method, hoAv- 
ever, involving additional cost and risk, was discontinued in 1851, and the vessel which 
brought the supplies and inspectors was henceforth ordered to proceed with the skins 
to Ayan, on the Okhotsk Sea, by Avay of the Kuril district (Fur Seal Arb., viii, p. 319). 
Occasionally some of the vessels of the semi-military navy of the company would call 
at the islands on their cruises of protection against the foreign — chiefly American — 
fleets of whale ships which infested the waters in those days, and even landed on and 
raided the islands.^ 
When finally, in 1868, the Russian-Americau Company abandoned the management 
of the islands, the so called “interregnum” commenced. The islands were placed 
under the jurisdiction of the Petropaulski district, and the first thing the ispravnik, 
or official, of that place did was to issue a proclamation declaring the natives to be 
fi'ee meu^ and giving them liberty and poAA^er to regulate all their affairs, including the 
catch of the fur-bearing ai’dinals. It seems that only a non-commissioned officer, 
Teterin, was left in charge. 
Quite a number of foreign merchants, among them the Russian vice-consul at 
Honolulu, Mr. Pfluger, but mostly American citizens, prominent among whom was the 
so-called “Ice Company” of San Francisco, flocked to the islands, their schooners bring- 
ing all sorts of trade goods, necessities and luxuries of life — particularly the latter — 
‘I am not aware tli.at skins were ever salted on the Commander Islands during the time of the 
Eussian-Americau Company. 
^Note, for instam-e, the case told hy Tikhmenief (Istor. Ohoz. Eoss. Amer. Komp., ii, p. 131?) 
to the effect that “in 1847 one of the whalers came to Bering Island, and on the captain being told that 
he must not capture sea-lions on a neighhoring small island [evidently Ari-Kamen], he ordered the 
overseer of the island to he turned off his ship, and immediately went on shore with his men with the 
evident intention of disregarding the ])rohibition. It was only when active steps were taken to resist 
them that the whalers left, hut before going they cut down a plantation, which had been grown with 
great trouble, the island being without other trees or shrubs.’’ It is curious to reflect that the British 
case at the Paris Tribunal has taken this incident as a jjroof that “traffic in fur-seal skins was carried 
on by a United States whaler at Bering Island” (Fur Seal Arb., i\^, p. 66). There never were fur-seals 
on the island referred to, though, on the contrary, it formerly abounded in sea-lions (sivutch), the 
only animal mentioned hy Tikhmenief. 
During the r6gime of the Eussian-Americau Company the natives were practically serfs. 
