Russians on the Copper River: 1794-1848
The Russians first learned about the Ahtna in 1783 when Leontii Nagaev briefly explored the Copper River Delta. Beginning in 1794 the Russians launched several expeditions to explore the Copper River. The Ahtna destroyed two of these expeditions. Ahtna oral tradition says that the Russians came twice to the upper Copper River and both times all members of the expeditions were killed by Ahtna. The first incident took place at Batzulnetas or Nataełde, probably in the winter of 1794-95, and may have involved the Samoilov expedition; although there is some controversy as to whether this was the case.
Despite Samoilov’s death the Russians continued to send expeditions into the Copper River Basin. Demitrii Tarkhanov was the first Russian explorer to visit the Ahtna and survive the trip. He provides the earliest first hand account of the Copper River and the Ahtna. In April of 1797 Tarkhanov reached the Ahtna village of Takekat or Hwt’aaC’aa’e located at the mouth of Fox Creek and visited two other villages in the vicinity.
In 1799 the Russian American Company received it first imperial charter granting it a monopoly over all of Alaska and in 1821 established Mednovskaia Odinochka, its only trading post in the Copper Basin. The company also sponsored several expeditions to the Copper River. In 1819 an expedition led by Afanasii Il’ich Klimovskii reached the Copper Basin provided the first accurate sketch o the country.
The final Russian expedition into the Copper Basin occurred in 1847-48 and was led by Ruf Serebrennikov, a Creole or person of mixed descent. Like Allen, Serebrennikov had been sent to the Copper River to find a link between the upper Copper and upper Tanana rivers. Serebrennikov’s expedition was the second to be wiped out by the Ahtna.
The story of Serebrennikov’s expedition is interesting because of the various interpretations about the incident. In addition to the published extract of what has come down to us as Serebrennikov’s journal we have Petr Doroshin’s detailed description and interpretation of events leading up the killings. Doroshin was at Nuchek in July of 1848 when the Ahtna who had accompanied the expedition arrived at the post with news of Serebrennikov’s death and his journal. The journal provides an account of the expedition’s movements up to June 6, 1848. After that the journal is silent. Subsequent information comes from the Ahtna headman Teinatkhel, (who is the Bacile met by Allen in 1885) and the Eyak who accompanied the expedition. A third source of information is Ahtna oral tradition as told by Ahtna elders Fred and Katie John to the linguist James Kari.
Many reasons have been provided for why Serebrennikov was killed. Russian commentators believe the upper Ahtna were protecting their economic interests. They did not want the Russians to find a route to the Tanana nor establish a post in their area because it would undermine their position as middlemen in the fur trade. However, Ahtna accounts attribute the killings to Ahtna fear of Russian reprisals and to a hex placed on one of the expedition members by an Ahtna woman.
In September of 1847 Serebrennikov and his party arrived at Mednovskaia Odinochka and stayed the winter. They departed for the upper Copper River in May of the following year. The expedition included at least on Russian, several creoles, an Eyak, and Teinatkhel. On May 24 1848 expedition members explored the Tazlina River and on June 6 re-assembled at the mouth of the Tazlina. Here the written evidence ends. What follows is evidence provided by Teinatkhel and the Eyak at Nuchek. According to Teinatkhel the expedition was attacked at Chistlai-kaekak, the first village of the Upper Ahtna. The location of this village is uncertain, but it may have been located near the mouth of the Chistochina River. A single, unexplained astronomical reading of 62 48’ 43’’ found in Serebrennikov’s journal shows the expedition may have reached a point just west of the Glenn Highway between 3 and 4 miles south of Mentasta Pass. The story as told by Teinatkhel and others, who survived the fight because they were out of the village at the time, was that Serebrennikov had insulted the Ahtna chief at the village of Chistlai-kaekak and was killed along with other members of the expedition.
But another explanation, suggested by Doroshin, is that both the Upper and Lower Ahtna wanted to stop the Russians from proceeding inland and establishing direct ties with Athabascans living on the upper Tanana River. According to Doroshin, the Upper Ahtna understood that a Russian presence on the upper Copper River would have undermined their middleman position and caused them to “lose easily-gotten profits.”
Both the Upper and Lower Ahtna were intermediaries in a complex trade network that linked them with Han Athabascans from the upper Yukon River, Upper Tanana Athabascans and Tutchone Athabascans living in what is now south eastern Yukon Territory. The Tutchone and Upper Tanana traded with Chilkat Tlingit traders from village of Klukwan. The Tlingit brought trade goods from American trading ships operating in Southeast Alaska. By 1848 both English and American trade goods were filtering south to Athabascans living on Cook Inlet and into the sphere of Russian influence. Ferdinand von Wrangell, the governor of Russian America, wrote that Upper Ahtna from Nutatlgat or Batzulnetas traveled west to the upper Susitna River to trade English flints and “copper money and coral” (probably dentalium shells from Southeast Alaska) to Dena’ina Athabascans from Cool Inlet.
While Teinatkhel believed the expedition was attacked at Chistlai-kaekak, Ahtna elders Fred and Katie John believe the killing of Serebrennikov took place at Stl’aa Caegge or ‘Rear River Mouth’ at the confluence of the Slana and Copper Rivers. This location would make sense of the astronomical reading Serebrennikov’s journal. According to the Johns, the killings occurred because the Ahtna at Stl’aa Caegge were afraid of Russian reprisals for the earlier killings at Nataełde. But another reason for the problems faced by the expedition was that one member was married to a lower Ahtna woman, and she had put a hex on her husband. According to the John’s this woman knew a “forbidden (medicine) language” and she made a song to hex her husband. The song went like this and was repeated 3 times:
Upriver you should become the chief of excrement
Ho-heyaa
May weapons here go into Bae Ninaexi’s mouth.
Fear of revenge permeates the John’s versions of events. They state that the chief of Rear River Mouth, a man called Eł C’alnes Ta’ or‘ Father of wrapped in cloth’, knew about the Russians who had been killed at Nataełde years before. In fact the Johns note that Bets’ulnii Ta’ (“Father of Someone Respects Him’), the chief of Nataełde who would meet Lt Allen in 1885, was at Rear River Mouth when the Russians arrived. As soon at the Russians arrived, Eł C’alnes Ta’ summoned another chief named Takol’ixx Ta’. This chief was part white, being the offspring of an Ahtna woman and Russian who had come upriver earlier and probably been killed at Nataełde. Takol’ixx Ta’ had several wives, all from different clans and his children, because they were from different clans, were considered especially aggressive and fierce. Rather than blaming Russian conduct for the killings, the John’s point out that the Ahtna chiefs debated whether to kill the Russians and that the decision was made only after Takol’ixx Ta’ goaded others into it. After the killing the Ahtna burned the bodies. The John’s version of the story notes the complexity of events, citing the hex, fear of revenge, and the fact that the Upper Ahtna did not want the Russians in their territory. The destruction of this expedition was felt throughout Russian America and may have been one reason the Russians abandoned Mednovskaia Odinochka in 1850 and withdrawing from the Copper River. In 1867 the Russians sold Alaska to the United States.
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