THE LAST STAND OF THE RAVEN CLAN

Russian imperialism is checked in an often surprising story of Native American resistance.

Beginning in the 1600s and stretching out over the next two centuries, czarist Russia had strong designs on what Boston College historian Easter and travel writer Vorhees call “the northwestern flank of North America.” Russia’s early ambitions had mostly to do with the lucrative sea otter fur trade, though later, as Russian ships made their way south to California, czarist planners saw the promise of a breadbasket that could supply the people of less fertile Siberia. Those ambitions were stymied and finally halted by the Tlingit people, from their capital at Sitka, Alaska. These Indigenous groups mounted fierce resistance against would-be Russian settlers, some of whom were “drawn from the most depraved thieves and bandits in Irkutsk.” Many of the Russians’ leaders were of a higher caliber and character than all that, though they were not reluctant to visit atrocities on Indigenous people; in one engagement, many hundreds of Alutiiq and Aleuts died. By way of reply, however, the Tlingit coalition later killed 250 Russians in a localized campaign, a number “comparable to the number of dead cavalrymen at the iconic Battle of the Little Bighorn.” It must have been with some relief that Russia sold Alaska off to the United States in 1867 “at two cents per acre.” Easter and Vorhees skillfully relate the story of the Tlingit-Russian war to other events, asserting that the Monroe Doctrine was a response to Russian and not British expansionism and noting that the Russians also attempted to bring Hawaii into their empire, only to be thwarted by the intrigues of Yankee sailors.

A capable narrative that sheds light on a little-known aspect of Native American history.