Schemes were in the air with Baranof for the impressment of
Siberian exiles as peasant farmers among the icebergs of Prince William
Sound, for the remission of one-tenth tribute in furs from the Aleuts
on condition of free service as hunters with the company, and for the
employment of Astor's ships as purveyors of provisions to Sitka, when
there fell a bolt {307} from the blue that well-nigh wiped Russian
possession from the face of America.
It was a sleepy summer afternoon toward the end of June in 1802.
Baranof had left a guard of twenty or thirty Russians at Sitka and,
confident that all was well, had gone north to Kadiak. Aleut Indians,
impressed as hunters, were about the fort, for the fiery Kolosh or
Sitkans of this region would not bow the neck to Russian tyranny. Safe
in the mountain fastnesses behind the fort, they refused to act as
slaves. How they regarded this invasion of their hunting-ground by
alien Indians--Indians acting as slaves--may be guessed.[4] Whether
rival traders, deserters from an American ship, living with the Sitkan
Indians, instigated the conspiracy cannot be known.
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