page_title: Battle of Sitka
section_title: Previous colonization and resistance
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Sitka / Previous colonization and resistance
caption_attribution_description: English: The K'alyaan Totem Pole of the Tlingit Kiks.ádi Clan, erected to commemorate those lost in the 1804 Battle of Sitka. Photograph by Robert A. Estremo, copyright 2005.
context_page_description: The Battle of Sitka was the last major armed conflict between Russians and Alaska Natives, and was initiated in response to the destruction of a Russian trading post two years before. The primary combatant groups were the Kiks.ádi Clan of Sheetʼká Xʼáatʼi of the Tlingit nation and agents of the Russian-American Company assisted by the Imperial Russian Navy.
context_section_description: Members of the Kiks.ádi of the indigenous Tlingit people had occupied portions of the Alaska Panhandle, including Sheetʼká Xʼáat'i (present-day Baranof Island), for some 11,000 years. Alexandr Baranov (Chief Manager of the Russian-American Company) first visited the island aboard the Ekaterina in 1795 while searching for new sea otter hunting grounds. Baranov paid the Tlingit a sum for the rights to the land in order to prevent "interlopers" from conducting trade on the island.
  On 7 July 1799, Baranov, with 100 fellow Russians, sailed into Sitka Sound aboard the galley Olga, the brig Ekaterina, the packet boat Orel; and a fleet of some 550 baidarkas, carrying 700 Aleuts and 300 other natives.
  Wishing to avoid a confrontation with the Kiks.ádi, the group passed by the strategic hilltop encampment where the Tlingit had established Noow Tlein ("Big Fort") and made landfall at their second-choice building site, some 7 miles (11 kilometers) north of the colony. The location of the Russian settlement at Katlianski Bay, "Redoubt Saint Michael," is known today as Starrigavan Bay, or "Old Harbor" (from Russian старая гавань stáraya gavanʼ) The outpost consisted of a large warehouse, blacksmith shop, cattle sheds, barracks, stockade, block house, a bath house, quarters for the hunters, and a residence for Baranov.
  Though the Koloshi (the Russian name for the Tlingit, based on the Aleut name for the Tlingit) initially welcomed the newcomers, their animosity toward the Russians grew in relatively short order. The Kiks.ádi objected to the Russian traders' custom of taking native women as their wives, and were constantly taunted by other Tlingit clans who looked upon the "Sitkas" as the outsiders' kalga, or slaves. The Kiks.ádi came to realize that the Russians' continued presence demanded their allegiance to the Tsar, and that they therefore were expected to provide free labor to the Company. Competition between the two groups for the island's resources would escalate as well.
caption: The Tlingit Ḵʼalyaan Pole, erected at the site of Fort Shís'gi Noow in Sitka National Historical Park to commemorate the lives of those lost in the Battle of Sitka.
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