The Sea Otter Trade and Sitka

Sea otter, an image published (in black and white) in The World: or, the Present State of the Universe, being A General and Complete collection of Modern Voyages and Travels. Selected, arranged, and digested, from the narratives of the latest and most authentic travellers and navigators. By Cavenshish Pelham, Esq. This book was published in London in 1806. This colored image is from Ancestry Images.com.

by Rebecca Poulson  I wish to acknowledge the Tlingit people as the original owners of this land and whose history must be foregrounded. I take all responsibility for any errors, and will be grateful for any corrections or comments.

I put together the following for a Sitka Maritime Heritage Society boat cruise, as background for a presentation by Jerry Deppa about how sea otters came to be reintroduced to Sitka Sound.

First, picture the northwest of North America 300 years ago: populated by many distinct Indigenous nations, with thousands of years of complex histories, wars, trade, and customs. North American Indigenous societies, and technology, were far from static, and far from passive, far from the stereotype of simple, timeless people living on natural bounty. Native nations managed resources, and social systems and language are as complex and “advanced” – or more so, in this era – as those of Europe. There was an extensive and sophisticated trade system on the coast, connecting far into the interior; this was the economic engine of the North West Coast.

Sea otter were valued by North Americans for their rich fur, probably traded, and were eaten.ⁱ Sea otter are a kind of weasel, but spend their lives at sea. Unlike other marine mammals, sea otter do not have a layer of fat under their skin, but are insulated from the cold ocean water with dense, soft fur, with from 250,000 to one million hairs per square inch. This makes it the most luxurious fur in the world.

A robust trade network on the NW Coast flourished in products such as hooligan oil, Copper River copper, large baskets, Haida red cedar canoes, and seal oil.ⁱⁱ Regional trade came together at a huge annual market at The Dalles on the Columbia River.ⁱⁱⁱ

This was also the European Age of Exploration, and, of global trade: In 1778 Captain Cook, on his last voyage, spent time working on his ships in Nootka Sound. While there, they traded for some sea otter garments. In 1779, they made a huge profit on them in trade at Canton, China.^iv

Cook’s journals were published in the mid 1780s, and the rush was on.^v

Soon American ships dominated, nearly all out of Boston.^vi Trade moved from Nootka Sound (on Vancouver Island) as sea otter were hunted out, and, as traders tried to get closer to the sources of the skins (to bypass Indigenous traders): Sitka was popular in the 1790s.^vii Trading protocol followed existing practice. Too often the foreign traders tried to get a bargain or “teach a lesson,” resulting in violence, but overall trade was civil as shrewd Yankees met their match in shrewd and experienced Indigenous traders. ^viii

British traders were handicapped by Hudson’s Bay Company monopoly on NW Coast, and East India Company monopoly in China, which meant they had to pay to play. And wars raged on the European Continent during the peak years of the trade, which further handicapped European traders, who had to risk seizure by enemy ships.^ix

Americans alone sold an average of 14,000 sea otter pelts/year at Canton 1805-1812. The peak years for profits were 1790-1810.^x

Over the next several years, increasing competition and fewer furs made the trade less profitable. The trade moved to land furs and other products, and ventures like supplying the Russians at Sitka. In the late 1830s the Hudson’s Bay Company, trading out of forts on land, took over the fur trade on the Northwest Coast – other than on Tlingit lands. Tlingit people shut down Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts that infringed on their trade. The Hudon’s Bay Company also began supplying the Russians.^xi

Impact on United States: After the Revolutionary War, the sea otter skin trade was an important replacement for lost British markets. Sea otter furs were the only thing Americans had in any quantity that the Chinese wanted.^xii The Americans then traded furs for porcelain, silks, tea, and profited in each of the three transactions: trading furs for guns and other goods with the Natives; trading Chinese luxury goods for sea otter furs; and then their biggest profit came in selling Chinese goods on the domestic market.^xiii Profits from the North West Trade produced some of the capital for American industrialization.^xiv

Every one of these hundreds of thousands of furs was purchased from Northwest Coast Natives – so the trade also brought great wealth into the Northwest Coast economy. There was an explosion of art. The Native clans who owned trading rights at critical junctures – such as Sitka, Chilkat, and the Stikine – profited the most, as guns, ammunition, beads, fabric, iron etc. were traded far into the interior for more furs, which in turn were traded for further profit with Americans and Europeans.^xv

International trade also brought disease epidemics: in the early 1770s the smallpox epidemic affecting all of North America was brought by a Spanish explorer; further outbreaks in 1795 and 1811, and a devastating epidemic in 1836-37, plus other diseases such as syphilis, killed more than half the people originally here.^xvi By this time smallpox affected all people equally, but Europeans and Americans had access to innoculation. It is hard to overestimate the impact the decimation of the Native population must have had. What could it have been like, to see a third, or a half, of your community sicken and die over a short period of time? It must have been traumatic, to lose children, parents, grandparents.

What was the impact on the North West Coast Natives? Wealth while it lasted, but, then the sea otter were gone; after that the trade was in land furs, which were not as profitable; by the 1830s changing fashions and social disruption in Europe meant there was a smaller market and lower prices; due to hunting pressure, there were fewer fur-bearing mammals of any sort, and the Hudson’s Bay Company was relentless in pushing out the Indigenous traders.

The Russians:

The Siberian fur trade of 1600s and 1700s brought Russian fur traders sweeping across Siberia, hunting and trapping animals but mainly forcibly demanding “tribute” or taxes to the Czar in the form of furs.

In 1742 the survivors of Vitus Bering’s last voyage returned to Siberia with sea otter furs. Like Cook’s men 30 years later, they discovered how valuable sea otter furs were in the Chinese market. (The sea otter had been hunted out in the Western (Asian) Pacific.) Between 1743 and 1800 there were a hundred expeditions for furs to Alaska and the North Pacific islands. Over time, companies had to be bigger and take longer to go farther, as sea otter were exterminated closer to the Siberian mainland.^xvii

This was brutal and violent from the start. Then Shelikov, who had the biggest company, forced Native people to hunt as employees.

There were deadly confrontations,^xviii and Russians forced Native labor not just for hunting, but providing food and equipment for the hunting expeditions and sustaining the Russians themselves. Devastating disease epidemics; taking people away from providing for their own needs; and violence caused the population of the Aleutians – people who had developed rich and unique technology and culture over thousands of years – to drop to only 20% of what it had been.

Shelikov built the first permanent Russian fort, on Kodiak, in 1784, after brutally conquering the local people. There were only two companies left by that point. These companies consolidated in 1799 as the Russian American Company, with a charter by the Czar to govern Alaska.^xix

So, by the 1790s, the Russians were also moving into southeastern Alaska, as they hunted out the sea otters farther west. They brought fleets of hundreds of Native hunters (Unangan, from the Aleutian Islands, Alutiiq or Sugpiaq people from Kodiak and other islands, and Chugach people from the coastal Gulf)   in baidarkas (kayaks).^xx

Alexander Baranov – who had been Shelikov’s manager, then became the first Governor of the Russian American colonies – wrote that Southeastern Alaska and the sea otters belonged to Russia, and that the Americans and British, trading with the Tlingit, had no rights to them.^xxi

In 1794 the Russian ship Phoenix (built at Seward) with 170 baidarkas took 2000 otter just at Yakutat.^xxii The first hunting expedition to the Sitka area was in 1796.^xxiii

Over the years 1797-1821 Russians took average of 3000 sea otter a year;^xxiv in the 1790s and 1800s, most of those were from southeastern Alaska.

Alexander Baranov established a fort at Gajaa Heen, also named Old Sitka, about seven miles north of present-day Sitka, in 1799.^xxv It seems remarkable that they could establish a base for hunting sea otter, which would have diverted the profits from those skins from the Tlingit, to the Russians.

In 1799, 115 Native hunters returning to Kodiak died from paralytic shellfish poisoning from mussels at what is now called Poison Cove. In spite of this tragedy, they took 1800 furs that season.^xxvi

In 1800 they took 2000 sea otter, and in1801 4000 sea otter, just in the Sitka area. Sitka’a harbor also had various British and American ships trading from the Tlingit at this time.^xxvii

The Russian hunters taking thousands of sea otters from the Tlingit waters, in addition to insults and abuses, led a multi-clan alliance of Tlingit to destroy the fort in 1802.^xxviii They salvaged the stored sea otter pelts, and went to Captain Barber on the ship Unicorn, according to him to demand surrender of the survivors he had on board. Barber instead forced the Tlingit to turn over the pelts and the captives they held. He then took the survivors to Kodiak and gave back to Baranov in exchange for 10,000 rubles (in furs) for his trouble.^xxix  (He didn’t mention the furs he had already gotten.)

Sitka, or New Archangel, was established on the site of Noow Tlein, now downtown Sitka, by the Russians in 1804, following the Battle of Sitka at Kaasdaa Héen, or Indian River. This battle might have gone the other way, but, the defending Kiksadi lost canoe of gunpowder and several young leaders in an accidental explosion. Baranov had also retaliated against other clans who had participated in the 1802 sacking of the Old Sitka fort, burning villages at Kuiu and Kake, which may have discouraged potential reinforcements.^xxx

The Kiksadi clan and their relations made a strategic retreat, but, in the peace in 1805, ceded only the site of Sitka and retained control of all their lands, although Baranov reported 500 furs from 1804-early 1805.

At the newly-established fort of New Archangel, the Russians and the 700 Native people working for them suffered scurvy, with several deaths, and near starvation the first winter; in 1805 the Russians bought the American ship Juno and its cargo, then sent the ship to California the winter of 1805-06 for supplies from the Spanish.

Fast forward: sea otter were largely hunted out by 1820, and by the early 1830s Russians saw they were driving sea otter and fur seal (they had discovered the Pribilof Islands,where the animals breed) to extinction, so began conservation in areas they controlled, in western Alaska. Through moratoriums on certain areas, they built sea otter back up but nowhere near what it had been.^xxxii

In southeastern Alaska, the Russians purchased sea otter furs from Tlingit traders. The average number of sea otter pelts sold by the Russian American Company 1842-1860 – hunted by Company employees in Western Alaska, and purchased from Tlingit in southeastern Alaska – was 1,347/year.^xxxiii

Of that total, the Tlingit sold an average of 150 sea otter a year to Russians, but after 1851, Tlingit took them all to the newly-established port of Victoria to trade, because they got better goods than the Russians had.^xxxiv

The Russian American Company was dependent on fur trade, which, after the 1810s, was mainly land furs. After the sea otter were hunted down, the fur trade was not that great. The Russian American Company tried to diversify, but couldn’t. Expenses grew as the Company supported retirees and widows, the church, education and health care, and it was always expensive to supply the colonies. The sad state of the fur trade part of why they sold out.^xxxv

In 1867 Russians sold their claims to the United States. Fur hunting and trading was now wide open. Fur seals were very nearly wiped out in the international frenzy for profit.

Summary:

From 1780s through the 1870s the fur trade was the primary economic activity in Southeastern Alaska. After the 1830s, the fur trade was not that great, with declining takes, changing fashions,^xxxvi then the American and European recession of the 1870s.

This is what the incoming Americans saw – the impact of repeated, severe disease epidemics over the previous century and a half, and poverty due to the poor state of the fur trade over the decades before and immediately after the Transfer. The Tlingit economy was probably made worse by the pullout of the Russians, who seem to have bought more food and other items from the Tlingit than the Americans did.

The state of the Tlingit economy in 1867 fed into stereotypes and prejudice against Natives, and justification for denying citizenship, and for excluding Natives from civil and economic opportunities.

In addition to the sources in the end notes, other useful books include Ilya Vinkovetsky, Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804-1867, Oxford University Press, 2011,

and Kenneth N. Owens with Alexander Yu. Petrov, Empire Maker: Aleksandr Baranov and Russian Colonial Expansion into Alaska and Northern California, University of Washington, 2016.

iJames Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785-1841 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992) 7-8

iiGibson, 8-11

iiiGibson, 10

ivGibson, 22

vGibson, 23

viGibson, 38

viiGibson, 135

viiiGibson, 110-126

ixGibson, 24

xGibson, 315

xiGibson, 79-80

xiiGibson, 36-38

xiiiGibson, 58

xivGibson, 292

xvGibson, 270

xviGibson, 272-277

xviiGibson, 12-13

xviii Petr Aleksandrovich Tikhmenev, A History of the Russian American Company, trans. and ed. Richard A. Pierce and Alton S. Donnelly (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), 10

xixTikhmenev, 14

xxGibson, 13

xxi Dauenhauer, Nora Marks, Richard Dauenhauer, and Lydia T. Black, editors. Anóoshi Lingít Aaní Ká / Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 and 1804. Seattle and London: University of Alaska Press and Juneau, Alaska: Sealaska Heritage Institute, 2008, 140

xxiiTikhmenev, 35

xxiiiTikhmenev, 45

xxivTikhmenev, 153

xxvTikhmenev, 61

xxviIbid.

xxviiGibson, 14

xxviiiTikhmenev, 65

xxixIbid.

xxxDauenhauer, 219-325 (Baranov burning villages, 249)

xxxi

xxxiiTikhmenev, 206-206, 235

xxxiiiGolovin, Captain-Lieutenant Pavel Nikolaevich, The End of Russian America: Captain P. N. Golovin’s Last Report, 1862. Basil Dmytrishyn and E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan, translators and introduction (Portland, Oregon: Oregon Historical Society, 1979), 164

xxxivGolovin, 154

xxxvTikhmenev, 215

xxxviGibson, xi