Assimilation and Identity among the Kodiak Island Sugpiat
by
Gordon L. Pullar
Associate Professor
Department of Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development
College of Rural and Community Development
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Presented at the 17th Inuit Studies Conference
Val d‟Or, Quebec, Canada
October 28-30, 2010
Assimilation and Identity among the Kodiak Island Sugpiat
By Gordon L. Pullar
Introduction
When the United States took over control of Alaska from Russia in 1867 the federal Indian policy was in
its final stages of treaty-making with Indian tribes. The U.S. Congress officially ended the practice of
making treaties just four years later in 1871 (Getches, Rosenfeldt, and Wilkinson 1979:67; Prucha
1994:287). Many members of Congress believed that treaties inhibited “the full assimilation of Indians
into white society” (Prucha 1994:287). Most of the treaties had provisions for providing education for the
tribal members but on the terms of the federal government. That is, the education was all to be provided
through a western education model with a goal of assimilation1. Even that education was provided in
sparse amounts. In these very early years of U.S. control of Alaska little attention was paid to the
education of its indigenous residents. When American formal education did arrive in Alaska it came from
missionaries, most notably Sheldon Jackson, the general agent for education for Alaska. Jackson, a
Presbyterian missionary, was an avowed assimilationist who saw Alaska Natives as “savages” that had
“…not had civilizing, educational, or religious advantages” (Jackson 1886:12). In an unusual mixing of
church and state half of Jackson‟s salary for being general agent for education in Alaska came from the
U.S. Department of Education and the other half from the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions (Stewart
1908:362-363).
In 1871, shortly after the end of treaty-making, the United States implemented a new federal Indian policy
of assimilation with industrial boarding schools as one of its centerpieces (Getches, Rosenfeldt, and
Wilkinson 1979:67-68). This system operated on the assumption that the American Indians were
“savages” that needed to be civilized. Under this philosophy it was believed that indigenous people
needed to turn their backs on their cultures, including their languages and traditional customs. This could
be done, it was believed, through an educational system that took the indigenous children away from their
homes and families and educated in a western system that had a strict “English only” policy and firm
rules against any cultural practices, including traditional clothing or any other adornment (such as long
hair styles) that could be identified as indigenous or Native (Reyhner and Eder 2004:125-126). The focus
of this system was vocational training as Natives were deemed incapable of achieving a professional
education (Hoxie 1984:193).
2
The concept of industrial boarding schools and the road to successful assimilation of Native Americans is
accurately described by David Wallace Adams in his book, Education for Extinction: American Indians
and the Boarding School Experience.
Slowly at first, and then with everlasting momentum, the idea was gaining force that Indian
children needed to be removed from their tribal homes for the assimilationist promise of
education to be realized. Only by attending boarding school, policymakers were now convinced,
could savage institutions, outlooks, and sympathies be rendered extinct. Only by attending
boarding school could Indian youth, stripped bare of their tribal heritage, take to heart the
inspiring lessons of white civilization (Adams 1995:59).
The first industrial school was Carlisle Indian School founded in Pennsylvania by U.S. Army Captain
Richard Pratt in 1879 (Reyhner and Eder 2004:137, Adams 1995:48). Pratt is most famous for saying,
A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his
destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with
the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the
Indian in him, and save the man (1892:46).
American education for Alaska Native children began with the mission movement that began in Alaska in
1878 and came to include an industrial training school for boys established by Sheldon Jackson and run
by the Presbyterian Church in Sitka. In less than a decade it had grown to 170 students and 21 teachers
(1890:115). The school opened briefly in 1879 and permanently in 1880 but was destroyed by fire in
1882. It was rebuilt and officially named the Sitka Industrial and Training School in 1884 (Lazell
1960:67). The Secretary of the Interior appointed Sheldon Jackson as General Agent of Education for
Alaska on April 11, 1885 (Harris 1890:14, Lazell 1960:71). With that appointment, Jackson‟s sphere of
influence in the education of Native children was spread across all of Alaska. On Kodiak Island this was
the beginning of the suppression of Sugpiaq language and culture by the American education system
(Black 2001:60).
In describing the Sitka Industrial Training School, Jackson, justified its “English only” policy for
students. He wrote:
The children speedily acquire an English-speaking vocabulary when strictly prohibited from
using their native dialects. For five years English has been the exclusive language of the school.
Experience has removed all doubt as to its expediency. The use of their vernaculars (Thlinget,
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Tsimpshean, Hydia) seriously retards their progress and does them no essential benefit. No
schoolbooks have ever been printed in any of their native dialects. Each distinct people has a
dialect of its own, local in character, and in course of time the vernacular dialects of the tribes in
southeastern Alaska will become obsolete and English will everywhere prevail (Jackson
1893:931).
Sheldon Jackson patterned the industrial school at Sitka after the Carlyle Indian School established by
General Richard Henry Pratt in Pennsylvania in 1879 (Mitchell 2003:232). The industrial school concept
was formed by Pratt and Jackson became enamored with him and his education philosophies and in turn,
Pratt expressed his admiration and respect for Jackson (Mitchell 2003:68).
Central to the industrial school concept was that Native children be placed in the school with no contact
with their parents. This was deemed necessary so the children would forget their cultural practices and
language. At the Sitka school, “Native children were accepted by the school with the understanding they
would remain there for five years; it took that long for the youngsters to become accustomed to a new
way of life and to learn homemaking and mechanical skills that were unknown to them or their parents”
(Lazell 1960:16). The children were taught “to speak English and to dress and act white” (Mitchell
2003:233). In 1891 the government education authorities in Alaska felt that their task was to “civilize” the
Natives from their “savage state” (Jackson 1893:927).
Education in the Kodiak Island area
The Sugpiaq people of Kodiak Island were colonized by two outside powers, Russia and the United
States. The island was occupied by Russian fur traders and government representatives from 1784 to 1867
when the transfer of control was made to the United States. During the Russian period the Sugpiaq2 (or
Alutiiq) people became bicultural and bilingual and adjusted to Russian rule. A new social class, that of
Creoles, made up largely of the offspring of Sugpiaq women and Russian men was established through
the Russian American Company. This new social class became almost totally bilingual so that when the
U.S. took over Alaska in 1867 most of the indigenous people of Kodiak Island, including children, were
bilingual.
After the U.S. takeover, however, the Natives of Kodiak Island were forced to abide by the policies of the
U.S. government. These policies included assimilation that resulted in considerable culture and language
loss. This greatly impacted the identity of the indigenous people of the area. The Creole class, made up of
people who had a somewhat elevated position in pre-U.S. Alaska was left with the unattractive option of
4
being identified as “half-breeds.” Certainly, the term “half-breed” had a negative image in American
society but soon the term “Creole” became a pejorative with “racist overtones” as well (Hinckley
1972:31). In a move of self-defense to avoid the “half-breed” label, some of the Sugpiaq people began to
deny their Native heritage and identify themselves as Russians.
By 1867 Kodiak Island had been under Russian control for 83 years and a majority of Sugpiaq people had
incorporated much of Russian language and culture into their lives thus becoming bicultural, and for
many, bilingual and biliterate. The early years of Russian occupation of Kodiak Island were marked by
uncontrolled brutality and atrocities at the hands of the Russian fur traders or promishleniki. The
population of the Sugpiat dropped dramatically from introduced diseases, mistreatment, and outright
killing of the people. It is important to note that the Russian occupation was being carried out, not by the
Russian government but by the Russian American Company, a fur trading company. This company,
formed under government sanctioned charters, was charged with the responsibilities of providing
healthcare and education for the indigenous people of Kodiak Island. Russian occupation began in 1784
with the brutal massacre of a large number of Sugpiat at Refuge Rock just off the coast of Sitkalidak
Island near the present-day village of Old Harbor (Black 1992:165,
Crowell, Steffian and Pullar
2001:76).
While the indigenous population of Kodiak Island was in distress and dropping in numbers, some efforts
at education for indigenous people were implemented by the Russian American Company in the early
years of the 19th century. Barely 20 years after the Russian takeover there were already children from
Sugpiaq mothers and Russian fathers who were of education age. The years 1784-1818, called the
“darkest period of (Sugpiaq) history” ended with a change in the management of the Russian American
Company (Black 1992:165-177). From then until the American period began in 1867 education
opportunities for Native children increased (Black 2001:60-61).
The early Russian American Company-controlled education system consisted of both the establishment of
schools on Kodiak Island and opportunities for children to be sent to Russia for extensive education,
including professional development through higher education. By the 1840s, the Russian-controlled
schools on Kodiak Island had implemented a bilingual system under which students learned the Russian
language and were also taught in their indigenous language, called Sugtestun. In 1848 the first textbooks
were printed in the “Kadiak” or Alutiiq language and written in Cyrillic script (Bancroft 1886:706; Black
2001:60). With literacy many Sugpiaq (and Unangan) became “avid writers” (Oleksa 1992:155). The
result was a system of bilingual education in which students became fluent in both Sugtestun and Russian
5
and could not only speak both languages but write them as well. This was the education system in place
on Kodiak Island at the time of the 1867 transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States (Black
2001:60-61).
In 1886-87 the public school in Kodiak, with W.E. Roscoe as teacher, had 59 students (Harris 1890:15).
By 1890 there were 67 students that Roscoe reported were making satisfactory progress but were
hampered by what he considered the inordinate number of holidays of the Russian Orthodox Church of
which nearly all of the students were members (Jackson 1893:1246). On March 21, 1890, Professor Duff,
who was teaching school in the village of Afognak near Kodiak wrote, “We must have, and that very
soon, an industrial school in this district (Jackson 1893:1248). In 1891 there were 13 government run day
schools in Alaska including one in Kodiak with Roscoe as teacher. According to the official government
report on education in Alaska that year the school in Kodiak was listed as a “Native school” (Governor of
Alaska 1891:12). The 1891 enrollment was 80 “Russian Creole” students (Jackson 1893:929).
By 1890 there were 14 government schools in Alaska, including one in Kodiak. (Secretary of the Interior
1890:114) In addition there were ten schools in Alaska being run by religious missions with government
assistance (1890:114).
In 1891 Jackson reported that the American Baptist Home Missionary Society‟s proposed home
(orphanage) on Wood Island would be the new education opportunity for Native children from other
villages in the Kodiak Island area (Jackson 1893:929). On Kodiak Island this was the beginning of the
suppression of Sugpiaq language and culture by the American education system (Black 2001:60). For
decades to come under the American “English only” policy, Sugpiaq children were punished in school for
speaking either Sugtestun or Russian. Sugpiaq elders of today still recall the punishment they received for
speaking the language that they spoke with their families in their homes and in church (Crowell, Steffian
and Pullar 2001:65, 80-81, 227, 229, 237).
Tensions between the Russian Orthodox clergy and the Baptist representatives began when the Kodiak
Baptist Orphanage was established on Woody Island at the direction of Sheldon Jackson and continued
for many decades. Jackson acknowledged in his 1890-91 annual education report that there was a Russian
school in Kodiak with 40 children taught by a Russian Orthodox priest (Jackson 1893:933). He gave no
other description. When the Russian schools were further ignored by Jackson in his annual reports,
Russian Orthodox Archimandrite Anatoli responded in the American Orthodox Messenger in 1900. The
Archimandrite was upset with Jackson for these omissions, saying, “Of the Greek-Orthodox….not a
word, beyond the names of missionaries and teachers. This silence may be attributed to one of two
6
reasons: either Dr. Jackson supposes the educational labors of these missions to be too generally known to
require a special mention; or – he considers them too unimportant to deserve being mentioned as all. In
either case the silence is significant (Oleksa 1987:253). The Archimandrite goes on to criticize Jackson
for the Baptist Orphanage on Woody Island near Kodiak of which he says was under Jackson‟s “paternal
protection.” He describes Kodiak as being “…settled by Aleuts and half-breeds, always was and now is
one of the finest spiritual vineyards ever owned by the Orthodox Church in Alaska” (Oleksa 1987:255256). Interestingly, the archimandrite uses the distasteful term, “half-breeds” in his reference to Kodiak‟s
Native people.
The government teacher, a Mr. Slifer, gave his own opinion of the Woody Island Sugpiaq in the Jackson
report. He said: “The work here is worthy of the attention it is receiving. It is doing a vast amount of
good. It has never been my lot to meet a people who were so degraded, and in many ways so hard to work
with, as the creoles of this section. The creole children are in most cases the very worst that could be
found to deal with when they come into the mission; in a short time they are better than the rest of the
outsiders” (Oleksa 1987:256).
In 1892, Lyman Knapp, the governor of Alaska, expressed his contempt for the Native people of Kodiak
and Aleutians having Russian blood and customs. He wrote:
The Aleuts have been thoroughly Russianized. They talk Russian, belong to the Russian orthodox
church, shade off into Russian blood, features, and complexion, and affect Russian ideas. They
are rapidly fading away. Their physical condition if far from satisfactory, and their moral
condition is worse. They are an easygoing, gentle, and kindly disposed people, somewhat lacking
in force of character. They secure a comfortable living with their sea-otter hunting and fishing,
and have little forethought as to the future (Knapp 1892:57).
Governor Knapp was not the only one expressing these views during this time period.
W.E. Roscoe, a Baptist missionary at Wood Island near Kodiak said,
“…the future of this race is that they will perish off the face of the globe unless they are
Christianized, and that soon. …It is only right that our Government take orphan children and
inebriates‟ children and put them in a good industrial school under religious teachers, who, in
addition to moral and intellectual training, will teach them the cultivation of the soil, the rearing
of cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry, the elements of some of the mechanical arts, and the girls the
arts of sewing and of cooking” (Jackson 1895:26).
7
My mother, Olga Rossing, was born in Woody Island village in 1916 and placed in the Kodiak Baptist
Orphanage in 1920 along with her sister. Two of her brothers would later join them. She was the second
generation in her family to be a resident of the orphanage. Her father, Vasili Shmakov, was placed in the
orphanage in 1893 and became the object of a high profile legal case. The Russian Orthodox Church filed
a lawsuit against the Baptist Church claiming that my grandfather had been illegally taken away from his
mother by the missionary Roscoe through the use of alcohol to get her intoxicated enough to sign over
custody of her son (Pullar 1992:187).
The Kodiak Baptist Orphanage on Woody Island became an industrial school although not publicly
acknowledged as one. Letterhead from the early twentieth century said, “Kodiak Baptist Orphanage: A
Christian Home and Industrial School.” Children in the orphanage, many of whom were not orphans at
all, were taught trades based on their gender. The girls were taught cooking, sewing, and other tasks
associated with maintaining a household. A training program my mother was in at the orphanage was
designed to teach girls to be servants or maids. Boys were tasked with cutting wood, carpentry,
maintaining gardens, and caring for the livestock owned by the orphanage. They also caught and
processed fish from the sea to help feed the children of the orphanage. Besides their daily work chores
and training children were expected to adapt to the Baptist form of Christianity even though most had
been baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. My mother, for example, was baptized as a Russian
Orthodox but was required to be baptized a second time as a Baptist. Some of the students from the
Kodiak Baptist Orphanage went on to other boarding schools such as the Eklutna Industrial School near
Anchorage and some even to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. My mother, after
becoming the first Woody Island student to receive a high school diploma, was sent by the Baptists to
Chicago to attend the Baptist Missionary Training School. After one year she transferred to the State
Normal School in Bellingham, Washington with the intent of becoming a teacher.
The U.S. education policy based on assimilation continued in Alaska even beyond 1959 when Alaska
achieved statehood. Native children from Kodiak Island, unaware that they were ever called such a thing
as “Creoles” were sent to federal Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools. The majority of them were
sent to Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka but many others were sent to Chemawa Indian School in
Oregon and some as far away as Oklahoma.
Conclusion
By the time Sheldon Jackson and other American missionaries came to Alaska it had been under U.S.
control for nearly two decades. The world of Alaska Natives had been turned upside down again as it had
8
during the first years of Russian rule. While the atrocities of the very early Russian contact were not
repeated there had been severe mistreatment and discrimination against Alaska Natives that would
continue in one form or another for the next century. After the first two or three decades the Russian
system no longer systematically decimated the Sugpiaq population of Kodiak Island by atrocities. There
continued, however, to be epidemics resulting in extreme loss of life and these continued into the
twentieth century. The Russian system was effective in the acculturation of the Kodiak Island Sugpiaq but
at the same time, the culture and language of the people were not devalued and were, in fact, incorporated
into the Russian education system (Black 2001:60).
The Creole class emerged in Russian America and became extremely important in the development of
Alaska for Russia. Creoles held most of the professional positions “…playing an important role in the
exploration, mapping, economic and commercial development, evangelization, and later acculturation of
Alaska” (Oleksa 1990:185). Creoles became company managers, naval officers, priests, teachers,
navigators, cartographers, ship commanders, and artists (Black 2004:217). After the U.S. takeover of
Alaska the Creoles became disenfranchised, labeled “half-breeds” and unfit for American citizenship
(Black 2004:218, Dall 1897:241). The “half-breed” label for Creoles was the only one that the Americans
of the time could comprehend as there was no category comparable to Creoles in American society. The
Creole class in Russian America, however, was not a racial category but rather a social class. Many, if not
most, Creoles were of mixed ancestry but others of purely Sugpiaq blood could join the Creole class as
well (Black 1990:152, Oleksa 1990:185) As Black says, “…the subject of the Russian-American creole
estate is extremely complicated, and the simplistic equation of a creole as a „half-breed‟ is untenable”
(1990:153).
It was during this period of chaos for the Sugpiaq that Sheldon Jackson arrived with his plan for
Christianizing and educating Alaska Natives. Prior to Jackson‟s arrival very little had been done by the
U.S. government to address the education of Alaska Natives. Congress had appropriated $50,000 for
schools in Alaska but the fund went unused (Bancroft 1886:709). Undoubtedly, Jackson‟s intentions for
Alaska Natives were good. He perceived that unless Alaska Natives were educated and “civilized” that
they would all perish. He especially believed that they needed to accept his form of Christianity as he had
little or no respect for the Russian Orthodox Christianity that had been practiced by the Kodiak Island
Sugpiaq for the eight decades leading up to his arrival in Alaska.
A cultural revitalization movement on Kodiak Island picked up momentum in the 1980s and 1990s and
many cultural programs, both in Kodiak and in the villages were begun. A state of the art museum, the
Alutiiq Museum, opened in Kodiak in 1995 and has had many awards and other recognitions. It is
9
supported from funding from the corporations formed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act as
well as government and private foundation grants. The museum has an extensive language program that is
putting forth a strong effort to bring back the language. There are currently less than 40 fluent speakers of
Sugtestun but many local Natives of all ages are studying to learn the language. Many Sugpiaq continue
to blame their language loss on the assimilationist policy of “English only” practiced in the classrooms in
Alaska from the time of Sheldon Jackson‟s arrival up to the 1960s and 70s.
Today Sugpiaq culture on Kodiak Island is vibrant and visible. Alaska Governor Knapp, who wrote in
1892 that the “Aleuts” were fading away would undoubtedly be surprised that nearly 120 years after his
writing that the people have not faded away and are in fact, thriving.
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Endnotes
1
(NIEA http://www.niea.org/history/educationhistory.php)
2
The traditional name for the indigenous people of the Kodiak Island area is Sugpiaq, meaning “a genuine human
being” (plural Sugpiat). The most common contemporary designation is “Alutiiq” which is an indigenized form of
the word “Aleut” a term applied to the Sugpiat by early Russian fur traders and explorers. In the text the different
names are used interchangeably.
12