page_title: Herman of Alaska
section_title: Mission in Alaska
hierarchical_section_title: Herman of Alaska / Mission in Alaska
caption_attribution_description: en:Grigory Shelikhov, from the Library of Congress. Made with a en:lithograph. Русский: Григорий Шелихов. Литография, хранится в Библиотеке Конгресса США
context_page_description: Herman of Alaska was a Russian Orthodox monk and missionary to Alaska, which was then part of Russian America. His gentle approach and ascetic life earned him the love and respect of both the native Alaskans and the Russian colonists. He is considered by many Orthodox Christians as the patron saint of North America.
context_section_description: The Russian colonization of the Americas began when Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov discovered Alaska in 1741. The expedition harvested 1,500 sea otter pelts, which Chinese merchants bought for 1,000 rubles each at their trading post near Lake Baikal. This spurred a "fur rush" from 1741 to 1798 in which frontiersmen known as promyshlenniki explored Alaska and the Aleutian Islands and alternately fought and intermarried with the native peoples. Grigory Shelikhov, a fur-trader, subjugated the native population of Kodiak Island and with Ivan Golikov founded a fur-trading company which eventually received a monopoly from the Imperial government and became the Russian-American Company. Shelikhov founded a school for the natives, of whom many were converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity.
  The Shelikhov-Golikov Company appealed to the Most Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church to provide a priest for the natives. Catherine the Great decided instead to send an entire mission to America. She entrusted the task of recruiting missionaries to Metropolitan Gabriel of St. Petersburg, who sent ten monks from Valaam, including Herman. The missionaries arrived on Kodiak on September 24, 1794.
  Herman and the other missionaries encountered a harsh reality at Kodiak that did not correspond to Shelikhov's rosy descriptions. The native Kodiak population, called "Americans" by the Russian settlers, were subject to harsh treatment by the Russian-American Company, which was being overseen by Shelikhov's manager Alexander Baranov who later became the first governor of the colony. The men were forced to hunt for sea otter even during harsh weather, and women and children were abused. The monks were also shocked at the widespread alcoholism in the Russian population, and the fact that most of the settlers had taken native mistresses. The monks themselves were not given the supplies that Shelikhov promised them, and had to till the ground with wooden implements. Despite these difficulties, the monks managed to baptize over 7,000 natives in the Kodiak region, and set about building a church and monastery. Herman was assigned in the bakery and acted as the mission's steward (ekonom).
  The monks became the defenders of the native Kodiak population. Herman was especially noted for his zeal in protecting them from the excessive demands of the RAC, and Baranov disparaged him in a letter as a "hack writer and chatterer." A contemporary historian compares him to Bartolomé de las Casas, the Roman Catholic friar who defended the rights of native South Americans against the Spanish.
  After over a decade spent in Alaska, Herman became the head of the mission in 1807, although he was not ordained to the priesthood. The local population loved and respected him, and he even had good relations with Baranov. Herman ran the mission school, where he taught church subjects such as singing and catechism alongside reading and writing. He also taught agriculture on Spruce Island. However, because he longed for the life of a hermit he soon retired from active duty in the mission and moved to Spruce Island.
caption: Grigory Shelikhov, the founder of the Kodiak Island settlement, invited the first Russian Orthodox missionaries to the New World.
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