HISTORY OF ALASKA

:''"Alaska history" redirects here. For the academic journal, see Alaska History (journal).''
The 'history of Alaska' dates back to the end of the Upper Paleolithic Period (around 12,000 BC), when Asiatic groups crossed the Bering Land Bridge into what is now western Alaska. At the time of European contact by the Russian explorers, the area was populated by Alaska Native groups. The name "Alaska" derives from the Aleut word ''alaxsxaq'', meaning "mainland" (literally, "the object toward which the action of the sea is directed").^[1]
The first European contact with Alaska occurred in the 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the ''St. Peter''. After his crew returned to Russia bearing sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the Aleutian islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784, and the Russian-America Company carried out expanded colonization program during the early to mid-1800s. Despite these efforts, the Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the colony was never very profitable. William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State, engineered the Alaskan purchase in 1867 for $7.2 million.
In the 1890s, gold rushes in Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. Alaska was granted territorial status in 1912.
During World War II, three of the outer Aleutian Islands—Attu, Agattu and Kiska—were occupied by the enemy. Their recovery became a matter of national pride. The construction of military bases contributed to the population growth of some Alaskan cities.
Alaska was granted statehood on January 3, 1959.
In 1964, the massive "Good Friday Earthquake" killed 131 people and leveled several villages.
The 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay and the 1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline led to an oil boom. In 1989, the ''Exxon Valdez'' hit a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling between 11 and 35 million US gallons (42,000 and 130,000 m³) of crude oil over 1,100 miles (1,600 km) of coastline. Today, the battle between philosophies of development and conservation is seen in the contentious debate over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Contents

Prehistory

18th century

European "discovery"

Early Russian settlement

Missionary activity

Spain's attempts at colonization

Britain's presence

19th century

Later Russian settlement and the Russian-American Company (1799-1867)

Alaska purchase

The Department of Alaska (1867-1884)

District of Alaska (1884-1912)

20th century

Alaska Territory (1912-1959)

World War II

Statehood

The "Good Friday Earthquake"

1968 to present: oil and land politics

Oil discovery, ANSCA, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Environmentalism, the Exxon-Valdez, and ANWR

Notable historical figures

See also

References

Notes

External links

Prehistory

Main articles: Prehistory of Alaska

Paleolithic families moved into northwestern North America sometime between 16,000 and 10,000 BC across the Bering Land Bridge in western Alaska.^[2] Alaska became populated by the Inuit and a variety of Native American groups. Today, early Alaskans are divided into several main groups: the Southeastern Coastal Indians (the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian), the Athabascans, the Aleut, and the two groups of Eskimos, the Inupiat and the Yup'ik.^[3]
The Coastal Indians were probably the first wave of immigrants to cross the Bering Land Bridge in western Alaska, although many of them initially settled in interior Canada. The Tlingit were the most numerous of this group, claiming most of the coastal Panhandle by the time of European contact. The southern portion of Prince of Wales Island was settled by the Haidas emigrating from the Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada. The Aleuts settled the islands of the Aleutian chain approximately 10,000 years ago.
Cultural and subsistence practices varied widely among Native groups, who were spread across vast geographical distances.

18th century

European "discovery"

Main articles: Russian Alaska

The first European contact with Alaska came as a part of the 1733-1743 second Kamchatka expedition, after the ''St. Peter'' (captained by Dane Vitus Bering) and the ''St. Paul'' (captained by his deputy, Russian Alexei Chirikov) set sail from Russia in June 1741. On July 15, Chirikov sighted land, probably the west side of Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska.^[4] He sent a group of men ashore in a long boat, making them the first Europeans to land on the northwestern coast of North America. Bering and his crew sighted Mt. St. Elias. Chirikov and Bering's crew returned to Russia in 1742, carrying word of the expedition. The sea otter pelts they brought, soon judged to be the finest fur in the world, would spark Russian settlement in Alaska.

Early Russian settlement

Main articles: Russian Alaska

After the second Kamchatka expedition, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the Aleutian islands. As the runs from Siberia to America became longer expeditions, the crews established hunting and trading posts. By the late 1790s, these had become permanent settlements.
On some islands and parts of the Alaska Peninsula, groups of traders had been capable of relatively peaceful coexistence with the local inhabitants. Other groups could not manage the tensions and perpetrated exactions. Hostages were taken, individuals were enslaved, families were split up, and other individuals were forced to leave their villages and settle elsewhere. Over the years, the situation became catastrophic. Eighty percent of the Aleut population was destroyed by violence and European diseases, against which they had no defenses, during the first two generations of Russian contact.
Though the colony was never very profitable, most Russian traders were determined to keep the land. In 1784, Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov arrived in Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island.^[5] Shelikov established Russian dominance on the island by killing hundreds of indigenous Koniag, then founded the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska on the island's Three Saints Bay.

In 1790, Shelikhov hired Alexandr Baranov to manage his Alaskan fur enterprise. Baranov moved the colony to what is now the city of Kodiak. In 1795, Baranov, concerned by the sight of non-Russian Europeans trading with the Natives in southeast Alaska, established Mikhailovsk near present-day Sitka. Though he bought the land from the Tlingits, Tlingits from a neighboring settlement later attacked and destroyed Mikhailovsk. After Baranov retaliated, razing the Tlingit village, he built the settlement of New Archangel. It became the capital of Russian America and today is the city of Sitka.

Missionary activity

The Russian Orthodox religion (with its rituals and sacred texts, translated into Aleut at a very early stage) had been informally introduced, in the 1740s-1780s, by the fur traders. During his settlement of Three Saints Bay in 1784, Shelikov introduced the first resident missionaries and clergymen. This missionary activity would continue into the 1800s, ultimately becoming the most visible trace of the Russian colonial period in contemporary Alaska.

Spain's attempts at colonization

Main articles: Attempted Spanish colonization of Alaska


Spanish claims to Alaska dated to the papal bull of 1493, which allocated to the Spanish the right to colonize the west coast of North America. When rival countries, including Britain and Russia, began to show interest in Alaska in the late 18th century, King Charles III of Spain sent a number of expeditions to re-assert Spanish claims to the northern Pacific Coast of North America, including Alaska.
In 1775, Bruno de Hezeta led an expedition designed to solidify Spanish claims to the northern Pacific. One of the expedition's two ships, the ''Señora'', ultimately reached 59°N latitude, entering Sitka Sound near the present-day town of Sitka, Alaska. There, the Spaniards performed numerous "acts of sovereignty," naming and claiming Puerto de Bucareli (Bucareli Sound), Puerto de los Remedios, and Mount San Jacinto, renamed Mount Edgecumbe by British explorer James Cook three years later.
In 1791, Alessandro Malaspina undertook an around-the-world scientific expedition, with orders to locate the Northwest Passage and search for gold, precious stones, and any American, British, or Russian settlements along the northwest coast. He surveyed the Alaska coast to the Prince William Sound. At Yakutat Bay, the expedition made contact with the Tlingit.
In the end, the North Pacific rivalry proved to be too difficult for Spain, which withdrew from the contest and transferred its claims in the region to the United States in the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819. Today, Spain's Alaskan legacy endures as little more than a few place names, among these the Malaspina Glacier and the town of Valdez.

Britain's presence

British settlements in Alaska consisted of a few scattered trading outposts, with most settlers arriving by sea. Captain James Cook, midway through his third and final voyage of exploration in 1778, sailed along the west coast of North America aboard the HMS ''Resolution'', mapping the coast from the state of California all the way to the Bering Strait. During the trip, he discovered what came to be known as Cook Inlet (named in honor of Cook in 1794 by George Vancouver, who had served under his command) in Alaska. The Bering Strait proved to be impassable, although the ''Resolution'' and its companion ship HMS ''Discovery'' made several attempts to sail through it. The ships left the straits to return to Hawaii in 1779.
Cook's expedition spurred the British to increase their sailings along the northwest coast, following in the wake of the Spanish. Three Alaska-based posts, funded by the Hudson's Bay Company, operated at Fort Yukon, on the Stikine River, and in Wrangell (the only Alaskan town to have been the subject of British, Russian, and American rule) throughout the early 1800s.

19th century

Later Russian settlement and the Russian-American Company (1799-1867)

Main articles: Russian Alaska

In 1799, Shelikhov's son-in-law, Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov, acquired a monopoly on the American fur trade from Czar Paul I and formed the Russian-American Company. As part of the deal, the Tsar expected the company to establish new settlements in Alaska and carry out an expanded colonization program.
By 1804, Alexandr Baranov, now manager of the Russian–American Company, had consolidated the company's hold on the American fur trade following his victory over the local Tlingit clan at the Battle of Sitka. Despite these efforts, the Russians never fully colonized Alaska. The Russian monopoly on trade was also being weakened by the Hudson's Bay Company, which set up a post on the southern edge of Russian America in 1833.
American hunters and trappers, who encroached on territory claimed by Russians, were also becoming a force. An 1812 settlement giving Americans the right to the fur trade only below 55°N latitude was widely ignored, and the Russians' hold on Alaska weakened further.
The Russian-American Company suffered because of 1821 amendments to its charter, and eventually it entered into an agreement with the Hudson's Bay Company that allowed the British to sail through Russian territory.
At the height of Russian America, the Russian population reached 700.
Although the mid–1800s were not a good time for Russians in Alaska, conditions improved for the coastal Alaska Natives who had survived contact. The Tlingits were never conquered and continued to wage war on the Russians into the 1850s. The Aleuts, though faced with a decreasing population in the 1840s, ultimately rebounded.

Alaska purchase

Main articles: Alaska purchase

Financial difficulties in Russia, the desire to keep Alaska out of British hands, and the low profits of trade with Alaskan settlements all contributed to Russia's willingness to sell its possessions in North America. At the instigation of U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, the United States Senate approved the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000. (approximately $90,750,000 in 2005 dollars, adjusted for inflation) on 9 April 1867. This purchase was popularly known in the U.S. as "Seward's Folly", or "Seward's Icebox", and was unpopular at the time, though the later discovery of gold and oil would show it to be a worthy one.
After Russian America was sold to the U.S., all the holdings of the Russian–American Company were liquidated.

The Department of Alaska (1867-1884)

Main articles: Department of Alaska

The United States flag was raised on 18 October 1867 (now called Alaska Day). Coincident with the ownership change, the de facto International Date Line was moved westward, and Alaska changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Therefore, for residents, Friday, October 6, 1867 was followed by Friday, October 18, 1867—two Fridays in a row because of the date line shift.
During the Department era, from 1867 to 1884, Alaska was variously under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army (until 1877), the United States Department of the Treasury (from 1877 until 1879) and the U.S. Navy (from 1879 until 1884).
When Alaska was first purchased, most of its land remained unexplored. In 1865, Western Union laid a telegraph line across Alaska to the Bering Strait where it would connect, under water, with an Asian line. It also conducted the first scientific studies of the region and produced the first map of the entire Yukon River. The Alaska Commercial Company and the military also contributed to the growing exploration of Alaska in the last decades of the 1800s, building trading posts along the Interior's many rivers.

District of Alaska (1884-1912)

Main articles: District of Alaska


In 1884, the region was organized and the name was changed from the Department of Alaska to the District of Alaska. At the time, legislators in Washington, D.C., were occupied with post-