THE POLK COUNTY
Pulse
News 15
October 18, 2023
Reflections from History and Faith: By Jeff Olson This past June, my wife and I did something we had been wanting to do for many years: Go to Alaska. Our “Alaskan Cruise” took us to Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan. Though we barely scratched the surface of this magnificent state, it was a breathtaking and memorable introduction to what we hope will be another trip, next time to the interior of Alaska. We want to see more… learn more. Our experience, as that of many others, was possible in great part because of events occurring more than 150 years ago. Let’s take a look. Alaska had quite an interesting journey on her way to becoming one of the United States. The first people came to Alaska about 15,000 years ago crossing the Bering Land Bridge. The second migration across the Bridge brought the Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut. They arrived in Alaska about 12,000 B.C. and moved through the north to populate Alaska and Canada. When the most recent ice age ended and sea levels rose to cover the Bering Land Bridge, the American populations became isolated. Of these migrant groups, the Athabaskans, Aleuts, Inuit, Yupik, Tlingit and Haida remain in Alaska. The name “Alaska” derives from the Aleut word Alaxsxaq (also spelled Alyeska), meaning “mainland” While the indigenous peoples of Alaska have been there for centuries, the modern history of this area is quite short. In 1578 Cossack Chieftain Yermak Timofief was on an expedition in central Russia when he heard word of rich sable and valuable furs in the east. The journeys across the steppes (a large area of flat unforested grassland in Siberia) marked the beginning of Russia’s conquest eastward.
Seward: Folly or foresight
In 1639 Cossack horsemen came over the eastern mountain range in Siberia and continued to the shore of the Okhotsk Sea. Once there, they built the first Russian Village, facing east, across the Pacific. In 1725 Peter the Great of Russia commissioned a Danish sea captain,
ties in Russia, the desire to keep Alaska out of British hands, and the low profits of trade with Alaskan settlements. And the region had proved to have little other value and was remote and hard to defend. Negotiations with the United States were opened during the Buchanan ad-
Vitus Bering, to explore the Northwest coast of Alaska. This marked the “official” discovery by Russia, and Bering established Russia’s claim to Northwestern North America. In 1741, the first Russian ships arrived, and animal trappers began the fur trade. By then, the Europeans had also discovered Alaska and by 1774 the Spanish were exploring parts of the region. In 1799, Alexander Baranov established a Russian post known today as Old Sitka and the Russian American Company was granted exclusive trading rights. By the mid-nineteenth century, Russia was ready to sell its possessions in North America. This had been coming for some time due to financial difficul-
ministration but ceased with the beginning of the Civil War. President Andrew Johnson’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward, was an ardent expansionist. He was committed to the spread of American influence throughout the Pacific as a means of enhancing the nation’s trade and military standing. Seward actually began negotiations with the Russians before receiving authorization from Johnson. However, when the outline of a deal was presented to the cabinet, Seward was surprised to find little opposition, but there were still strong critics of the deal in the U.S. Senate and elsewhere. Seward refused to back down. After a week of debate, the Senate approved the agreement by a single vote. It was
signed in March 1867. The official transfer of Alaska to the United States took place at Sitka (the last capital of Russian America) 156 years ago, Oct. 18, 1867, through a treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate. On that date American soldiers raised the United States flag over Sitka. Seward’s deal cost the United States $7.2 million, amounting to a price of about 2.5 cents per acre for an area twice the size of Texas. Seward’s critics were not shy in expressing their views. The purchase became popularly known as Seward’s Folly, Seward’s Icebox or Andrew Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden. In a speech given at Sitka on Aug. 12, 1868, Secretary Seward claimed he did not doubt “that the political society to be constituted here, first as a Territory, and ultimately as a state or many States, will prove a worthy constituency of the Republic.” In time, with the discovery of gold and oil in the late 1800s and with the evolving value of Alaska’s strategic location for national defense, Seward’s critics came to realize that perhaps he was more savvy and wiser than given credit for. On Jan. 3, 1959, “The Last Frontier,” the “Land of the Midnight Sun” entered the Union as America’s 49th state.
