Cultural Change in the Aleutian Islands:
Contact with Another Culture

A 6th Grade Social Studies Unit

REASONS FOR THE REBELLION

By 1763 the Russians had hunted from the eastern islands, especially Unalaska, Umnak and Akutan, for several years. They had set a pattern of taking young children as hostages. This had forced the men, fearing for their children's lives, to hunt for the Russians and sell them furs. They were allowed little time to hunt for the food and furs which their own families needed to survive.

The Russians had set another pattern, which showed how little they cared about the lives of the Aleuts. Many seemed to consider it sport to show the power of their guns. One Aleut man, holding a sea lion skin in front of himself as a shield, was shot and killed. Other men had been killed, some in accidents, some maliciously. The Aleuts realized that if their lives were ever to return to normal, they would have to get rid of the Russians.

THE PLAN

There are many accounts of what happened during the winter and spring of 1763 and 1764. The logs from Russian ships tell part of the story. Aleut legends tell other parts, and archaeological evidence tells a third.

Many incidents happened at the same time in several different parts of Unalaska and Umnak Islands. Legends tell of meetings among the headmen from several different villages during the fall. The men must have agreed that all the Unangans would act especially friendly with the Russians, offering to trade their best furs, freely giving hostages. The Russians would relax under this pleasant treatment and be off guard for the attack.

Four Russian ships were in the same area. Because the islanders acted especially friendly that year, the Russians decided they had nothing to fear, and so split up into small hunting parties as usual.

THE PLAN CARRIED OUT

Then, at a prearranged time, the Aleuts in the villages near the Russian camps attacked all the Russians at once. It was a total surprise and most of the Russians were killed. Three of the ships were burned. The surviving Russians left on the remaining ship.

An account of the attack on one group of Russians led by Denis Medvedev is still told by the Umnak Island Aleuts. The story tells of the Aleuts decision to get rid of the Russians, their meetings of representatives from different villages, and of the attack itself. Two hundred years later, in 1970, archaeologists found the bones of Medvedev and the 12 other Russians at Chaluka on Umnak Island.

The Aleuts rejoiced at their victory. They looked forward to beginning their lives again as they had been twenty years before, in the days before the Russians had come.

RETALIATION

The rejoicing did not last long, however. As soon as other Russians learned of the uprising, they moved quickly to punish the Aleuts. One Russian captain destroyed all the villages on the south end of Umnak Island. Another is said to have killed every Aleut male he could find in the eastern islands. On Unalaska Island all bidarkis, darts, spears, throwing boards, and bows and arrows were destroyed. This deprived the Aleuts of their tools for making a living and, in the end, defeated them. One Russian, Ivan Soloviev, tied twelve Aleuts together in a line, faced them, and shot a musket ball at the first. He wanted to learn how many people the bullet would go through. It stopped in the ninth man's body.

ANOTHER WEAPON

Meanwhile, in 1770, the Aleuts learned that the Russians had another weapon as deadly as their guns. This weapon worked more slowly than firearms and the Russians did not use it purposely. Still, it served to kill many Aleuts.

This weapon was disease. The first epidemic to come was tuberculosis. This was a new disease on the islands, one which the skilled Aleut healers could not cure. Then came a respiratory infection, which killed 350 people on Unalaska in 1806-1807. The same disease was taken to Atka the next year and killed so many people that they could not be properly buried. The next disease to kill many Aleuts was smallpox. It was brought by Spanish sailors in 1838. Then came measles, brought in 1845.

So, in the end, the Russians won; they ruled life in the Aleutian Islands.

Most of the Russians who traveled to the Aleutians were traders and trappers. There were very few settlers and only a handful of Russian women at any time during the Russian rule. But the few Russians who did come caused many changes to occur in the Aleut way of life. Ten or eleven young Russian men with guns could bring about many changes in an Aleut village of ninety.

The years after the rebellion of 1764 saw the Russians becoming stronger and stronger in their power over the Aleuts. They did this by taking away those things which made the Aleuts strong. First, of course, was the matter of weapons. Aleuts were not allowed to have guns, or were allowed at most one gun per village. In any event, they never had the power which the Russians had.

Second, the Russians took away the Aleut men. They forced them to hunt for them rather than for themselves. The Russians could never learn to handle bidarkis at the same time they hunted for sea mammals, so they needed the Aleut hunters. The men were often taken far away from home for months at a time to hunt in territory the Russians had recently found. They were returned to their families in the spring.

Third, the Russians deprived the Aleuts of natural resources. The sea mammals which had been food and clothing to the people were now stripped of fur and shipped away. Even if the animals themselves had still been available, there were few hunters left at home to hunt them. Women, old men, and children fished and gathered bird eggs and beach food, and tried to live on those. Nonetheless, without able-bodied hunters many people died of starvation during the early days of Russian rule.

Too many people were hunting the animals in too small an area. The companies applied for and were granted monopolies over certain portions of the Aleutians, Alaska Peninsula, Kodiak Island, and Southwestern Alaska. In other words, each company was allowed to hunt only in certain areas, but no other company was allowed within that area.

A NEW "DISCOVERY"

Then in 1786 the problem of decreasing numbers of sea otters seemed to be solved. That year a Russian navigator named Gerrassim Pribylov began searching for the breeding grounds, or rookeries, of the huge fur seal herds that inhabited the Aleutians. He barely escaped being shipwrecked as his ship drifted into a high, fog-shrouded cliff on what is today called St. George Island. He had rediscovered one of the islands first found centuries earlier by the Aleut hunter Igadik.

St. George and other islands which are now called the Pribilofs were indeed breeding grounds for fur seals, sea otters, sea lions, walrus, and foxes. The Russians immediately landed Russian trappers and Aleut hunters there. Almost from the first landing a permanent village was located there.

There were some objects in the trading posts which saved the women time, and so they were quickly taken up. For instance, metal needles soon replaced the bone ones women had used for centuries. They didn't break as easily and did not need to be carefully carved from bird wing bones. Also, metal pots replaced stone and basketry pots in those households that were near trading posts. The metal pots could be placed directly on a flame for cooking. The traditional stone or basketry pots cooked food with the use of red-hot stones which were dropped into the filled container until the ingredients boiled. Besides making cooking easier, the metal pots were also time savers, because the women did not need to make them themselves. 

New foods were also introduced through the Russians and their trading posts. The Russians stationed at the trading posts often planted potato gardens, and learned that potatoes grew well in the Aleutians. In this way the Aleuts learned about and came to like potatoes. They were also introduced to tea, sugar, and flour. They became used to these new foods. Soon, people depended on the posts. They needed them to get the things they were used to having and the things they no longer had the time to hunt for or make.

ALEUTS COMPLAIN TO THE CZAR

Meanwhile, many cruel acts were still being committed by some of the Russian traders and trappers. Although the rebellion of 1763- 64 had been put down, the Aleuts had not given up their attempts to get better treatment. They sent many complaints to the czar through the years. One, sent in 1799, said,

"The Russians are coming to America and to our Fox Islands and Andreanof Island to hunt sea and land animals. We receive them in friendly fashion, but they act like barbarians with us. They seize our wives and children as hostages, they send us early in the spring, against our will, five hundred versts (about 330 miles) away to hunt otters, and they keep us there until fall, and at home they leave the lame, the sick, the blind, and these, too, they force to process fish for the Company and to do other Company work without receiving any pay . . .The remaining women are sent out on Company labor and are beaten to death. They are removed by force to desert islands, and the children are taken away from those who walk with crutches, and there is no one to feed them."

Source: The Russian-American Company, S.B. Okun, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1951.

The company was also to act as the official Russian government in Alaska in matters dealing with the law, education, religion, and economy. Perhaps the Russians at the capital in St. Petersburg hoped to be able to eliminate the cruel acts of some of the trappers; with a branch of the government in Alaska, those acts could be reported and punished quickly.

Still, the most important goal of the Russian American Company was to make money. The company officials decided to hire more skilled Aleut hunters and fewer Russian hunters. Not only were the Aleuts better hunters, they could also be forced to hunt for lower wages. With the permission of the Russian czar, the company demanded that half of all adult Aleut males between the ages of 18 and 5O work for the company in three-year shifts. At the time, this was seen as an improvement in conditions for the Aleuts: before, there had been no limit to the number of men who served. The hunters were not paid for each fur when they got it, but instead were paid at the end of the year for the whole year's work. Meanwhile they had to buy their supplies at company trading posts on credit, and at the end of the year they had to pay back part of their wages. The Aleuts were paid about one-fifth of what the Russian hunters had been paid per year.

In Russia, during the time of the Czars, there was one official religion which all of the nobility and most of the people in the country belonged to. This was the Orthodox Eastern Church, or as it is called today in America, Russian Orthodoxy. It is a Christian Religion which became separate from Roman Catholicism in 1054 AD It is also different from the various Protestant churches, which became separate from Roman Catholicism much later.

In 1796 the first Orthodox clergyman, Hieromonk Makary, came to the Aleutians. He baptized a number of Unangans, and took note of the conditions of the life of his new followers. He was horrified at the treatment of the Aleuts by the Russian trappers. He set off for St. Petersburg in Russia to make protest to the Czar. He died on the return trip to Alaska, and it was to be twenty-five more years before a clergyman was again stationed in the Aleutians.

The year 1824 marked the real beginning of Russian Orthodoxy in the islands. The Russian American Company had been ordered to send priests to the eastern and western portions of the Aleutian Islands. They would pay the salaries of the priests, and the priests' job was to convert and to serve the faithful in their territories.

A young priest, Father Ioann (John) Veniaminov was chosen to go to the Unalaska headquarters of the eastern district. Veniaminov, his wife, son, brother, and mother arrived there in 1824. At the same time, a Creole (the term the Russians gave to a half-Aleut, half-Russian) was chosen to serve the western district. Father Iakov Netsvetov, who had been born and raised in Atka, returned to his home village in 1828 to serve the Church.

FATHER VENIAMINOV' S IMPACT

Father Veniaminov was a large and powerful man, with a quick mind and an understanding manner. It was his personality, more than anything else, that so firmly established Russian Orthodoxy as the religion of the Aleuts. Father John's activities in the Unalaska district spanned ten years, and went beyond purely religious service. He personally built the church in Unalaska and many chapels in other villages. He began the first school, which taught Aleut pupils to speak, read and write in Russian. He trained Aleuts to be priests. And, most important of all, he learned to speak Aleut so that he could preach in the language of the people.

Father Veniaminov's yearly cycle of activities shows what was expected of a Russian Orthodox missionary in the 1800s. During April and May he traveled by iqax (the Russians called it a "bidarki") to various villages in his district. In June he returned to Unalaska to wait for the yearly mail from Irkutsk, in Siberia. He sent out all his requests for lumber or other goods then. From July to September he traveled to other villages, sometimes to the faraway Pribilof Islands. From September to April he stayed in Unalaska, working in the church, school, and orphanage.

GENERAL LITERACY COMES TO THE ALEUTS

Father Veniaminov was also one of the two people who affected the Aleuts' lives in ways no one could have foreseen at the time: he helped them achieve literacy, the ability to read and write. Because he had learned Aleut, and in fact preached in Aleut most of the time, Veniaminov saw that there was a need for prayer books and other religious writings in that language. An Aleut named Ivan Pan^'Kov had learned to read and write in Russian under Veniaminov's teaching. He was the perfect man to work with the priest in writing down his own language for the first time. Not only did he understand the theory of writing - that letters stand for sounds - but he also could hear the different sounds in his own language. Although this seems a simple thing at first, it is actually a skill which like fine musical ability, is rare.

So Veniaminov and Pan'kov invented an alphabet. They translated Russian works into Aleut. They printed books, and began teaching from them. Veniaminov reported that, by the 1840s, most of the Aleuts in the eastern district could read and write both Russian and Aleut.

THE CHANGES BROUGHT ABOUT BY LITERACY

Being able to read and write brought big changes to the Aleuts. Some changes improved the quality of their lives. But those improvements were sometimes at a cost. For instance, reading can become a pleasant leisure-time activity. It can teach about faraway places or tell wonderful stories. But, when one reads one is alone. There is no talking to other people, no learning from other people unless they are the authors of the books. Time which was once spent being with others is now spent alone. The elders of the family are not the teachers --books are. And the things which the elders have to teach are no longer learned. 

These were changes which no one foresaw when Veniaminov and Pan'kov brought literacy. While no one today regrets the advantages of reading, some do regret the loss of some parts of the Aleut culture which were not or could not be written down.

THE BIGGEST LOSS

By 1867, the Aleuts' culture had become very Russianized. Much of the old culture had been lost. But worse than the culture, many of the people had been lost. Before the Russians had come there had been from 16,000 to 20,000 Aleuts. In 1866 there were only 4,363 left. Three-fourths of the Aleut population was gone.

 

CHAPTER VIII
1867: THE AMERICAN PERIOD BEGINS

Then, in 1867, something different happened for all of Alaska. In that year, Russia sold the land it had claimed in Alaska to the United States. Although the Aleuts did not help make the decision, they were affected by it.

Suddenly the Russian language was no longer used in trading furs. The new traders were Americans, who spoke a new language: English. Their food, clothing, manners and religion were all different from those that the Aleuts had gotten used to. The Russian Orthodox Church ran schools in the Aleutians for a few years after the Russian government left. Then, in 1866, a law was passed which made it illegal to use any foreign language (including Russian) in a public school. Although the religious schools continued for a number of years, they taught in English.

For the second time in their history, the Aleuts were invaded by foreigners with strange customs. Would Anna's great-great-grandchildren have to go through the same hardships she and her brother had gone through when they met the first group of foreigners?

EARLY AMERICAN INFLUENCES

How did contact with Americans change the Aleuts' way of life? In some ways, changes were at first fewer than you might think. To the Russians, the Aleutian Islands were the closest part of Alaska. To the Americans, they were the farthest away. For a long time the only Americans who traveled to the Aleutians were people interested in sea mammals. Whalers from Boston began coming to the Aleutians and sailing through the passes to whaling grounds in the 1840's. They continued to sail and hunt in the Aleutian area until well into the 1900's. Their presence did not, at first, make many changes in the Aleuts' way of life.

American trading companies picked up where the Russian American Company had left off. Because so many fur-bearing sea mammals in the Aleutian Chain had been hunted out, trading took place mostly on the Pribilof Islands where the fur seals spent their summers. The American-owned company that bought the fur seal pelts from the Pribilofs set up a school and built houses for the Aleut hunters there. The school taught only English. The houses were drafty. And the American traders were, at first, no more careful about the dangers of over-hunting the fur seals than the Russians had been. By 1913 the fur seals were nearly extinct, and hunting had to stop for a while.

It was in the 1890's and the early 1900's that the Aleutian Islands saw the first real influx of Americans. During those years the first American schools were founded. American ships carrying passengers bound for the gold fields of Nome and the Yukon Territory stopped off regularly at Unalaska. The village became a crossroads for travelers, and acquired an orchestra, dance hall, bars, and hotels. People started gold and coal mines, whale processing plants, fox farms, and beef ranches in various other parts of the Aleutians. Most of these businesses eventually failed, but for a time they brought people and ideas to the Aleutian Chain. The villages gradually took on the appearance of American villages: buildings and people were clad in American-style fashions, with English signs and insignia. Eventually, English did become the main language of the Aleutians, though the Aleut language continued to be spoken at home in many villages. The Aleutian Islands were finally becoming Americanized.

DIFFERENT FROM RUSSIANS

Today we (as Americans) think of ourselves as being fair-minded, making sure that everyone's rights are protected. In the early days of American rule in Alaska, however, the rights and freedom of the Aleuts were not protected.

For instance, the Aleuts, like other Native Americans, were not given full American citizenship until 1924. They were not allowed to vote until that year. They had no more power over their lives under American rule than they had had under Russian rule.

The physical cruelty and murders which the Russians had been guilty of were not copied by the Americans. But the Americans were guilty of some mental cruelties which the Russians were not.

One of the main differences between the Russians and the Americans seems to have been in their goals in being in the Aleutians. Russians had been there to make money. Then later the missionaries and priests were there to serve the faithful. Americans were also there for money. But many others such as teachers, government officials, missionaries from other churches, even company officers, thought it was their duty to change the Aleut way of life. The Americans wanted the Aleutian Islands to be just like the rest of their country. They wanted everyone to speak English, to learn the same facts in school, and to live in the same type of house. They wanted to make these changes because they sincerely believed that their way was better. But most of the new arrivals to the Aleutians never bothered to find out what the old way was.

 

CHAPTER IX
THREE CASE STUDIES

INTRODUCTION: This chapter tells about three parts of the traditional Aleut culture and how each one gradually changed through time, from 1741, through the Russian and American periods, to the present. Each one is seen through the eyes of a descendant of Anna's or Stephan's. As you read them, look for reasons for the changes that came about.

CASE STUDY I: THE BARABARA

Today, Anna's descendant might explain the history of the barabara in this way:

"I've never lived in a sod barabara and neither have my parents,for that matter. But there were a few fallen down barabaras in our village when I was growing up that I used to explore. I'll tell you what I found."

"The very oldest barbarous were often quite big, because they housed a large, extended family. Every fall the men would fix up the old barabara or build a new one. They would cut sod blocks out of a rectangular-shaped area. That would become the floor of the barabara. Then they'd take whale ribs or large driftwood logs and stand them up along the edges. Those became the support beams. More bones or beams were put along the top. Meanwhile, the women were weaving grass mats. These mats would be placed above the support beams. The chunks of sod that had been cut out were put up on top of the mats. Because the mats were so tightly woven, none of the dirt from the sod would fall into the barabara."

"The old, old barabaras had one or two entrances at the top. Notched logs served as ladders. A bench ran along the edge of some of the barabaras inside. A lower place, or trough, was dug beside the bench. This was covered with mats or skins and was the sleeping place. It was also the work area in the daytime where people worked at fixing tools or sewing while the children played with dolls. Then the part in the middle of the barabara was raised a little. Lamps were here. Pits for refuse were dug into this portion. And, it was also the part of the barabara they used as a stage during festivals."

"When the Russians came, they didn't change the way barabaras looked much. In fact, the Russians who spent a winter or two on the islands built barabaras of their own and lived in them. Even though they were used to wooden houses, they realized that it would be a waste of time to try to find enough wood on the treeless Aleutians to build that type of house. Besides, I guess they realized that the barabara style of building kept out drafts, which is very important in our windy environment."

"By the late 1800's, after so many people had died, and there were so few Aleuts left, the barabaras had changed a bit. The barabaras were made much smaller. Families were smaller, you see."

"There was another change in the barabaras. Maybe it was because some of the Russians started to stay on the islands after trading posts and churches were built. You see, people started putting their doors in the side of the barabaras instead of on top. This followed the Russian style of doorway more. In fact, the doors themselves were often made out of wooden boards."

"As I said before, neither I nor my parents ever lived in a barabara. I was brought up in a painted wooden house, with linoleum on the floor, several rooms, a kitchen sink, and glass windows - in other words, a typical American house."

"When did we Aleuts change from barabara to frame house? It was a different time for each family, but it was caused by the Americans. Often cannery owners or the Alaska Commercial Company people who bought the furs encouraged our people to change from the barabaras. For some reason, the Americans, unlike the Russians, felt that it was their business to tell us what kind of houses we should live in. The strange thing was, it cost them money because they had to ship in trees to make wooden houses."

"I'm used to a wooden house, electricity and plumbing. So it would be hard for me to ever live in a barabara. But people say that the early wooden houses were very drafty compared to the barabaras; they didn't hold heat as well and they didn't have the same cozy feeling. But people got used to them and by World War II, in the 1940's, no one was living in sod barabaras any more."

"I'm one of the few men who still remembers how our bidarkis were made. Nowadays, I make little models of the bidarkis and sell them. But they're nothing compared to the beauty of the real thing."

"The Russians saw, when they first came to the Aleutians, that the bidarkis were amazing craft and that the Aleuts were amazing boatsmen. Father Veniaminov, the priest who first wrote down our language, wrote this about the bidarkis:

The Aleut master their bidarkas with the greatest skill:no wind - no matter how strong - no roughness of the sea, not even a shock caused by a casual force when the Aleut is aware of it, are able to capsize him, if only he had the paddle in his hands.

 "We used bidarkis until the hunting of sea otters stopped in 1910. The Russians and Americans both realized that it was the perfect craft for the hunt. It was seaworthy. It was lightweight and could be carried on the deck of a company ship. The ship would travel from island to island, and when a pod of sea otters was spotted, the men would be lowered down in their bidarkis."

"Anyway, after the sea otter hunting stopped, people just stopped making bidarkis. If they worked for a cannery, they fished from cannery-owned boats. If they were after fur seal pelts on the Pribilofs they rounded them up and butchered them on shore. If they did their own subsistence fishing they either used nets and traps in the streams or rowed out in a wooden boat. Although they had to buy the wooden boats, they didn't have to spend days making them the way they did with bidarkis. The sea otters had become nearly extinct by 1910, so no one had use for a bidarki to hunt sea mammals after that."

"Today none of our youngsters has ever been in a bidarki, and the only way they know about them is from the models. They're getting interested in them again, though."

"Before the Russians came, almost all of the skin-covered boats had one opening, or hatch, in them. Each man had his own bidarki. There were some two-hatch bidarkis made to carry the very old and to train youngsters. But the Russians were the ones who encouraged our people to make the two- and three-hatch bidarkis which became common."

"This is the way they figured it: the Russians were not very good at maneuvering the bidarki. So they sat in the front or middle and let the Aleuts do the paddling if they needed to be transported somewhere. And, whenever guns were used in hunting, the front hunter would have the gun and the back man in a two-hatch bidarki would have the responsibility of keeping the boat stable after the gun went off. You couldn't shoot a gun and stay upright in a one-hatch bidarki all by yourself."

CASE STUDY III: THROWING DART

Another descendent might describe the fate of the throwing dart like this:

"Second, the Aleuts already had developed a method of hunting sea otters without using guns. A number of men went out in their bidarkis. They surrounded one or more sea otters and beat the water with their paddles to scare the creature. The circle of hunters got smaller and smaller as the hunters closed in on the otter. Finally, one of the men threw a dart - a small harpoon - from his throwing board. The aim was almost always perfect, because the men had practiced this skill since they had been small boys."

"Not all Russian traders used the same methods, though. Some of them especially just before they gave up claim to Alaska, did give their Aleut employees guns. Before each trip they would hand out a gun to each hunter. The hunter and another man who acted as paddler would put out to sea in their two-hatched bidarki. They would hunt the sea otters in a similar manner, only using guns to frighten the sea otters rather than paddles slapping the water. Then they would sometimes shoot the otters and sometimes use their darts and throwing boards to kill the otter. Gunshot wounds decreased the value of the fur. And the darts, unlike bullets, were attached to a line so the otter could be hauled into the boat."

"Well, when the men returned to the traders with their catch, they had to hand the guns back to the Russians. They were not trusted to keep them."

"Some hunters felt that the guns caused more trouble than they were worth. The noise from the guns frightened whole pods of sea otters away and made it harder to find them. Some even felt that it kept them from breeding and that was one reason the numbers of sea otters declined so quickly. Therefore, many hunters continued to use the dart and throwing board."

"When America came into the picture in 1867, the U.S. Government went even further. They passed a law which made it illegal to hunt sea mammals with a gun. So of course people had to use the old weapons then."

"In 1910, sea otter hunting stopped altogether by order of the government. The animal was almost extinct from over-hunting. The Americans didn't put restrictions on who could own a gun as the Russians had, so by then most Aleuts were used to hunting with rifles. When sea otter hunting ended, the last reason for using the dart and throwing board went with it. Now Aleuts are good marksmen with rifles, but not darts."

CHAPTER X
WORLD WAR II IN THE ALEUTIANS

The United States entered World War II in 1941 with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. But Hawaii was not the only United States territory to be bombed by the Japanese. The Aleutian Islands were also bombed and, in fact, invaded by Japanese soldiers. In June, 1942, Aleut and Caucasian prisoners were taken from the island of Attu to the island of Kiska and then transported to a prison camp in Japan.

The United States government had planned to evacuate the Aleuts days earlier but bad weather had kept them from arriving in Attu in time. They did evacuate people from other Aleutian Islands and the Pribilofs. The following account tells what happened to the Aleuts who were removed from their homes.

ALEUTS SEEK DAMAGES FOR WORLD WAR ll Treatment: reprinted with permission from May 12, 1980 edition of Anchorage Daily News. Written by Jeanne Abbott.

In the early morning hours of June 15, 1942, every Native who lived on the Pribilof Islands was herded aboard U.S. Navy carriers for a voyage that would take them from their homes for the next two years.

Nearly 500 Aleuts from the neighboring villages of St. Paul and St. George had less than one day to prepare for the evacuation, but were given no clues about their destination. Each person was strictly instructed to pack "absolutely nothing but one suitcase and a roll of blankets."

Reports and letters about the period read like a grim, but neglected, chapter in Alaska history.

Michael Lekanof, 46, was a lad of 10 when his family filed on board the ship at St. George. He is now with the staff of the Aleutian-Pribilof Island Association in Anchorage and has done research into internment of his people during World War II.

It has been 36 years since the evacuation of the Aleuts, but many of them still live in Alaska and have been pressing Congress for reparations against the injustices they suffered.

Last week, they saw some light at the end of the tunnel. Championed by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, legislation was approved by a Senate committee to investigate the treatment of both Japanese-Americans and Aleuts interned during the war.

"The Aleuts suffered almost unimaginable neglect, hardship and deprivations," Stevens was quoted as saying. "Literally scores of people died from lack of adequate shelter, poor sanitary conditions and inadequate medical care."

Lekanof recalls the following scenario from his boyhood: "We were told that all of us would be evacuated, and had only a matter of several hours to get ready. My mother bundled me up in several pants and underwear, she doubled up all of us." He was the youngest son of nine children in his family.

"Then we headed off to an unknown destination, we didn't know where. The troop carrier really stank because of all the vomiting from the sick people. On many occasions we put on life jackets and had safety drills. The engines were cut, and we drifted for many hours. It took 20 days for us to reach our destination."

Government agents back in the village of St. George, where 165 of the Aleuts lived, were told to prepare for total destruction by placing a pail of gasoline in each house and building, and a charge of dynamite in storage tanks, light plants and radio transmitters.

Presumably, any family belongings left behind were to be blown to smithereens with the rest of the village.

And so the Aleuts departed their villages during the war as a protection against possible Japanese invasion. Eight hundred of them in all, from the Pribilofs, from Akutan, Nikolski, Atka and Unalaska were displaced from their homes.

They walked with few possessions onto crowded ships, facing an uncertain future. Most of them would spend the next two years in abandoned canneries or mining camps in Southeast Alaska, where families partitioned dormitories into little cubicles for themselves out of blankets.

More than 10 percent of them would die of tuberculosis, pneumonia, even mumps and measles.

They would live in conditions described to then Gov. Ernest Gruening in a September 20, 1943 letter from the territorial attorney general's office as: shocking. . .1 have no language at my command which can adequately describe what I saw; if I had I am confident you would not believe my statements.

"There are between 75 and 100 people huddled together in one building. There are no sanitary installations of any kind; in short the situation is shocking. I have seen some tough places in my days in Alaska, but nothing to equal this."

Michael Lekanof and his family were resettled into an old gold mining camp called Funter Bay on Chatham Straits in Southeast Alaska. There, bunkhouses were converted into mass shelters where up to 100 people lived.

"The families took blankets and made cubicles for privacy. There was no running water in the building. We lived in filthy conditions," says Lekanof. "Illnesses came. There were flu epidemics and measles epidemics. Whenever an epidemic would come, my mother would cook a pot of whatever she could find to feed the sick."

The Aleuts were fed from military rations. There was a teacher, an Aleut medic available and later a public health nurse. But that didn't prevent Lekanof's older sister Irene from contracting a disease that wracked her body with chills.

A few members of the family went by small boat to Juneau where she died in the local hospital.

"It was a wrongful death," says Lekanof. "If it hadn't been for the evacuation, she would have lived."

Serafima Shane, now 38, survived the experience as a baby born in the mining camp and remembers only vague references by her parents to the blanketed cubicles where they lived.

Other Aleuts were dispatched elsewhere for war internment. Seventy from Nikolski lived in a Ward Cove camp near Ketchikan, where 15 died from 1942 to 1943. Eighty-four Aleuts from Atka went to Killisnoo, site of an abandoned cannery in Southeastern. Those from Nikolski went to a camp near Wrangell.

The village of Attu, however, suffered an invasion by the Japanese and Natives were taken back to an internment camp in Japan. Only 24 of 42 Aleuts survived that experience; all but one of five newborn babies died.

Lekanof and his family finally returned to St. George in 1944, to find that the village had not been destroyed as planned. What he says they did find was broken windows and doors, furniture ruined and religious icons stolen.

The U.S. Army had been camped there during the war. "We had 500 head of reindeer when I left St. George, but they were all used for target practice," Lekanof claims.

"Many deaths happened that could have been prevented. Many children died."

As a result, the Aleuts are asking the federal government for rightful judgment, but have not put a price tag on their claim.

"There is no fixed monetary value. Nothing can pay for what we lost. We want some fair judgment that will best serve the 3,300 Aleuts now living in Alaska," he says.

CHAPTER XI
LIFE IN THE ALEUTIANS TODAY

After World War II, the Aleuts who survived the camps in Southeastern Alaska were returned to the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands. They began the task of becoming reacquainted with their villages and gathering enough household items to make them home once again.

The war had reminded the rest of Alaska and the country that the Aleutians existed and that people lived there. One pilot's wartime flying experience through the chain led to the creation of the chain's major link with mainland Alaska. In 1946, Robert Reeve established Reeve Aleutian Airways, which began weekly service to the islands. Never totally isolated from the mainland, the Aleutians had nonetheless been remote up to that time. Boat service had been slow, with the result that few people visited or left the islands.

Air service changed that. It meant that people could travel, and that objects could be sent. Ideas and information flowed more freely between the Aleuts and other Americans - so much so that if you were to visit an Aleut village today, you would know immediately that it was an American village. The people speak English, the children go to schools like the schools on the mainland of Alaska, people buy clothing and household items from Sears.

ALEUT CULTURE SURVIVES

Yet, the community still has parts of the Russian past to remind the people of their history. Many villages have Russian Orthodox churches, and most people belong to that faith. Many of the old people speak Russian as well as English and Aleut. Most people have Russian-sounding last names, names that were given to their ancestors when they accepted the Russian Orthodox faith. And many of the customs and holidays which the people celebrate have Russian origins.

There is also another layer of culture, one that goes beyond the Russian layer. That is the Aleut culture. In spite of the hardships of many years, many parts of the old Aleut culture still survive. Many adults speak the Aleut language and are teaching it to their children. People still make a living from the sea, although it is usually from salmon, halibut, shrimp, or crab rather than sea lion, whale and fur seal that they do so. Some women still weave fine baskets from beach grass. And the young people are learning about the plants and animals which their ancestors made use of.

LAND CLAIMS ACT OF 1971

There is another change in life in the Aleutian Islands which has recently come: the people finally own their own land again. This happened in 1971 when the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was passed by Congress. It recognized and accepted the claim that the Aleuts should have owned the land on the islands all along, and that the claims made on the land by the Russian and American governments were not legal. The Act paid the Aleuts for some of the land and gave them legal written title to the rest of it.

For the first time in over two hundred years the Aleuts have a chance to live their own lives the way they want to in their own homelands. Their homelands have greatly changed during that time -but at least people can oversee the direction any future changes take.

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