Russian Exploration

The Russian and American frontiers met in Alaska. The Bering Strait had long been a link between Siberia and North America--many scholars believe the first Native Americans originally populated the American continents traveling from Siberia to Alaska. Russian servitors [government officials] reached the Pacific Coast by the mid-1600s, sighted Alaska in 1741, and established their first permanent settlement in North America by 1773, probably at Captain's Harbor on Unalaska Island. Kodiak became the capital of Russian America in 1792, only to be surpassed by New Archangel (Sitka) in 1808.

Russians came to North America for the same reason they penetrated Siberia, to find furs, in this case sea otters. Missionaries soon followed the traders, looking to convert souls to Christianity. Russia also established outposts on Hawaii and the California coast to facilitate the sea-otter trade. But in Alaska conditions were even more difficult for traders than in Siberia: food was scarce, the Russian supply centers far away, the climate cold and wet, the native Tlingits well-armed and often hostile to the Russians, and the competition of British and especially American traders for furs was stiff. By the mid-nineteenth century, Russian officials realized that they had overextended themselves; Russian America was abandoned with the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867.

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On October 25, [1741] we had very clear weather and sunshine, but even so it hailed at various times in the afternoon. We were surprised in the morning to discover a large tall island at 51° to the north of us.

--Georg Wilhelm Steller, Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741-1742, translated by M. Engle and O. W. Frost (Stanford University Press, 1988), page 119.

^{Source: Library of Congress, American Memory. http://frontiers.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfak/mfalaska.html http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/oct25.html}