Bering Island
In 1743 Emilian Basov landed on Bering Island to hunt sea otter, beginning the island's documented human habitation as well as ecological destruction. Promyshlenniki began to island-hop across the Bering Sea to the Aleutian islands and ultimately Alaska. In 1825 the Russian-American Company transferred Aleut families from Attu Island to Bering Island to hunt, and another group of Aleut and mixed-race settlers followed the following year, thus establishing the first known permanent human habitation on Bering Island. After Russia sold Alaska and the Aleutian islands to the United States in 1867, Bering Island was placed under the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky jurisdiction. The population grew from 110 people in 1827 (17 Russians, 45 Aleuts and 48 mixed race) to more than 300 people in 1879 (100 Aleuts on Copper island alone, along with 332 mixed-race and about 10% Russian or other nationalities). In 1990, after 170 years of separation and loss of cultural traditions, a planeload of Aleuts from Nikolskoye met another planeload of Alaskan Aleuts in Kamchatka's capital, and were surprised they could still communicate in the old Aleut language. Because of their isolation, like the now-Alaskan Pribilof Islands, the Aleuts have been used for studies of genetic drift.