Interethnic Relationships in the Native Alaskan Neighborhood: Consumption Practices, Cultural Innovations, and the Construction of Household Identities KENT G. LIGHTFOOT AND ANTOINETTE MARTINEZ THIS CHAPTER CONSIDERS the research problems and theoretical approaches that guided the investigation of the Native Alaskan Neighborhood. We first synthesize archival accounts on the residents of the Neighborhood, including labor and compensation practices, ethnic and gender composition, residential patterns, and socio- political organization. This ethnohistorical section also includes firsthand observations on the settlement layout and architecture of the Neighborhood. Next two related research problems outlined in the first volume of The Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Fort Ross, California are addressed-how nonnative goods and foods were used and what cultural innovations took place in intereth- nic households. We argue that both research problems are closely related to the construction of "public" identities of households, and outline three strategies that may have been used in the Native Alaskan Neighbor- hood. Informed by practice theory and the Annales historical perspective, the final section summarizes the research design used to define the organizational prin- ciples of interethnic households and to evaluate whether different strategies of native resistance, upward mobility, and/or the creation of new cultural identities were being implemented in daily practice. NATIVE OCCUPATIONS AND COMPENSATION NATIVE ALASKANS Similar to other Russian-American Company outposts, Native Alaskan workers made up the largest portion of the Fort Ross community from 1812 to 1841. As detailed in Volume 1, the population ranged from about 80 to 125 individuals, composed mostly of Alutiiq peoples who were part of a broader cultural and linguistic community drawn from Kodiak Island, the upper Alaska Peninsula, sections of the Kenai Peninsula, and Prince William Sound. The majority of the Alutiiq workers at Ross were from Kodiak Island, referred to in this volume as the Kodiak Island Alutiit or Alutiiq (its singular form). Other designations used in anthropological studies for Kodiak Islanders are Koniag (derived from Russian usage) and Qikertarmiut (see Crowell in press). The other Alutiiq workers identified at Ross were Chugach most likely from Prince William Sound. Still other Native Alaskans stationed at Colony Ross in relatively few numbers were Unangan (or Aleut) peoples from the Aleutian Islands, Tanaina workers from Cook inlet, and the Tlingit laborers from southeastem Alaska (Istomin 1992). The Native Alaskans served in the colony as general laborers, porters, fishermen, commercial sea mammal hunters, and skilled craftsmen (see Lightfoot et al. 1991:16-20; Murley 1994). The labor practices and compensation system for Native Alaskan workers at Colony Ross grew out of earlier policies and conventions of Russian merchants in the North Pacific. As Crowell (1994:14) succinctly summarizes, sea otter furs were obtained on Kodiak Island in the late 1700s and early 1800s through "a strategy that combined coercion by force of arms, agreements made with native leaders allowing the exploitation of the labor of commoners and slaves, tribute collection, and some payment with trade goods." The recruitment of Alutiiq laborers was accomplished in the following ways. First, the Company drafted at least half the male 2 The Native Alaskan Neighborhood population between 18 and 50 into complusory service for set periods of time to serve on hunting expeditions and to work in artels (hunting camps). These men were compensated for hunting sea otters, foxes, and other marketable pelts, although Davydov (1977:193 [1802- 1803]) observed that the Company "rarely pays them in European goods (i.e. tobacco, axes, knives, needles, nankeens, varicolored stones, silks or other trinkets). In the main they are rewarded with evrashka or birdskin parkas, kamleikas, seal skins, nets, various objects woven from gut and even sometimes with fat" (see also Lisianksy 1814:194 [1805]). Davydov (1977:194 [1802- 1803]) went on to report that the Russian leaders of hunting expeditions collected the sea otter pelts, then paid the native hunters directly with goods during the trip or gave them promissory notes that could be exchanged later for goods on Kodiak Island. The majority of old men, women, and children on Kodiak Island were also subjected to mandatory service for the Company. Families of native leaders or toions were the only major exceptions to this practice. Old men and boys harvested sea birds for parkas, fished for cod and halibut, carried food to the harbor, harvested salmon, and helped prepare foods for winter storage (Davydov 1977:195 [1802-1803]). Women harvested and dried fish and berries, helped prepare foods for winter storage, and produced craft goods, such as sewing kamleikas (gut or intestine outer garmets) and sea bird parkas (Clark 1984:187; Davydov 1977:196 [1802-1803]). Davydov (1977:195-6 [1802-1803]) reports that old men, boys, and women laboring for the Company were not compensated for their efforts. Another method for recruiting laborers was to demand service from people who had perpetrated crimes against the Company. When the Russian-American Company colonized Kodiak Island and subjugated its inhabitants, all former slaves or war captives were turned over to become part of their work force. As these former slave laborers, called kaiurs (a Kamchatka word for hired laborer) by Company officials, began to decline in number, their ranks were filled with people who had committed offenses against the Russian-American Company (Davydov 1977:190-91 [1802-1803]). The kaiurs were sent to all the Company's settlements in the North Pacific, and it appears that most Russians had several assigned to them. Davydov (1977: 193) described the duties of the kaurs as follows: The kaiurs catch fish in fish-ponds, trap foxes for fur, work in the salteries and brick works, cut wood, carry supplies to the harbor, are used as rowers when Russians travel in three-seater baidarkas and, in a word, are used for all kinds of work. If a kaiur goes lame or loses an arn, or in some other way becomes unfit to carry on working, then he is found work scaring away the crows from the iukota hung out to hunter has several kaiurs in his service. The company uses them for work until old age or the money raised by relatives, or a replacement, buys them out. A final observation about early labor organization on Kodiak Island is that native families were responsible for feeding themselves. The majority of the food stores collected during the year by kaiurs and laborers perform- ing mandatory service were used to support Company employees and Company activities, such as hunting expeditions. As a consequence, food shortages were very common on Kodiak Island, especially during the winter months. Since the Alutiit spent most of their time working for the Company, they had little opportunity to lay in winter stores for themselves. Davydov (1977:175, 196 [1802-1803]) observes that many families went hungry in the winter. Russian managers would occasion- ally assist them if they were starving, but they were still required to do Company work such as sewing birdskin parkas and making nets. Shubin (1994:338-39) contends that when the sea otter season ended on the Kurile Islands, the Native Alaskans stationed at this Russian- American Company outpost had to fish, hunt sea lions, and shoot sea birds to replenish their food supply. The compulsory service policy of the Company was probably exercised to recruit Native Alaskans to work at Colony Ross. California must have seemed at the end of the earth to both Russians and Native Alaskans alike, situated thousands of kilometers from friends, families, and familiar landscapes. Drafting a labor force would have been a monumental task. Shubin (1994:339) notes that the Russian-American Company rotated Native Alaskan workers, mostly Alutiiq men, to the Kurile Islands by recruiting young volunteers and by offering debtors to the Company a chance to pay off their obliga- tions. Khlebnikiov (1990:94 [1820-1824]) stated that some promyshlenniks (Russian laborers) were sent to Ross "for the sole purpose of enabling them to pay their debts more easily." Some kaiurs could have been dispatched to the Golden State as well. Under the terms of its Charter, the Russian-American Company was supposed to compensate Native Alaskans for their labors (Dmytryshyn et al. 1989:xlvii). When Fort Ross was established in 1812, they were either paid on commission or received daily or yearly salaries in scrip, a parchment token that could be exchanged for goods in the Company store (Tikhmenev 1978:144). In the early 1820s, daily compensation for unskilled laborers was about 50 kopeks per person (Khlebnikov 1990:99, 186 [1820-1824]). Those who participated in joint Mexican and Russian sea otter hunts at this time were credited at the rate of two piasters per adult pelt, one piaster per yearling, and four reals per pup (Khlebnikov 1990:182 [1820-1824]). Native Alaskan craftsmen, who served as coopers, blacksmiths, and dry, or some other such task. Almost every married tanners at Ross, were paid an annual wage of between Household Identities 3 120 and 200 rubles in the early 1820s (Khlebnikov 1990:100, 182 [1820-1824]). NATIVE CAUFORNIANS Native Californians were recruited primarily from nearby Kashaya Pomo, Coast Miwok, and Southern Pomo villages to live and work at Colony Ross. The number who participated in the Ross economy is not well documented. The early Kuskov censuses of 1820-1821 (described in detail below) listed primarily women who cohabited with Russian, Creole, and Native Alaskan men, as well as some Native Califomian male prisoners (Istomin 1992). It is unclear, based on available archival sources, to what degree Native Californian women were involved in sea mammal hunts, the preparation of sea otter pelts, the sewing of baidarkas (skin kayaks), and other critical support work for their Native Alaskan mates. Whether or not the Native Californian women who lived at Ross in interethnic households were drafted into mandatory service for the Company is also uncertain. We suspect they were. Native Californian women appear to have been stationed on the Farallon Islands artel, where sea lions, sea birds, and other marine resources were har- vested for food and raw materials for Colony Ross (Corney 1896:74a; Istomin 1992:5,25; Riddell 1955). There is also some evidence that Native Californian women in interethnic households learned to make "Aleut handicrafts, such as sewing the whale gut kamleika [waterproof outer garment] and other things" (Lutke 1989:278 [1818]). Company officials in 1818 were also teaching the "Indian wives of the Aleuts" to weave wool in the production of cloth at Ross (Golovnin 1979:166 [1818]). Not unlike the early years on Kodiak Island, com- pensation for native women at Ross appears to have been minimal. In the early 1820s, women and children left behind at Ross while their Native Alaskan mates were hunting received no assistance from the Russian- American Company. In a letter to Kirill Khlebnikov in June 1820, Karl I. Schmidt, manager of the Ross Colony from 1821-1825, wrote: When the Aleut hunting party was sent to the port of San Fancisco the second time, the men all asked me not to keep them for the hunt once the agreement had expired, because the last time that they had been separated from their families, their wives and children had received no assistance and had gone hungry; therefore, they begged me to help them this time to feed their families. Notwithstanding the shortage of supplies at Ross, I tried to supply them with food as much as possible, but several of the women neverthe- less ran away out of hunger, and the others endured terrible privation. (Khlebnikov 1990:131-32 [1820- 1824]). The Native Californian men listed on the Kuskov censuses were serving time for crimes committed against the Colony (e.g., murder of Native Alaskan men, horse theft) (Istomin 1992). These records strongly suggest that some Native Californians who got on the wrong side of the Company were conscripted as kaiur laborers at Ross. They were probably compelled to perform hard, demanding work as were the kaiurs on Kodiak Island. Istomin (1992:5) notes that at least one Coast Miwok man was serving his time (with his Kashaya Pomo wife) on the Farallon Islands artel. By the early 1820s, Company officials had resolved to intensify agricultural productivity and manufacturing activities at Fort Ross, such as shipbuilding and brick making. To meet these new demands, Ross managers stepped up efforts to recruit Native Californians as laborers (Lightfoot et al. 1991:16-20). As more land went into agricultural production in the 1830s, one hundred to "several hundred" local Indians were em- ployed as agricultural workers during the harvest season (Gibson 1976:119; LaPlace 1986:65 [1839]). The Russians primarily paid these workers in kind for their services, giving them food, tobacco, beads, and clothing (Khlebnikov 1990:193-94 [1820-1824]; Kostromitinov 1974:9 [1830-38]; Wrangel 1969:211 [1833]). Access to manufactured goods and nonnative foods by both Native Alaskan and Native Californian workers may have been somewhat restricted because of high prices and limited availability, similar to the situation on Kodiak Island. Generally, the wages paid by the Russian- American Company were low in relation to the price of goods in the Company store. Wrangel observed in 1833 that Company employees on annual salaries were spending more at the Russian-American Company store than they earned, and many were heavily in debt. He illustrated his point by showing the expenditures of a Russian promyshlennik, Vasily Permitin, who received an annual salary of 350 rubles. Mr. Pennitin, his wife, and five children purchased food (wheat, millet, dried meat, fresh beet, lard, tallow candles, copper utensils, tobacco, soap, tea, sugar, and various textile goods (calico, Flemish linen, flannel, soldier's broadcloth) that totaled over 728 rubles for the year (Wrangel 1969:211 [1833]). Khlebnikov (1990:66, 99, 137) made similar observations in the early 1820s, noting that many Russian workers were requesting higher salaries in order to survive at a very meager level at Ross. Yet compared to the Russian promyshlenniks, the salaries paid to most Native Alaskan workers were paltry. For example, in 1824 they were paid half the salaries of their Native Alaskan counterparts in Sitka, an inequality that Khlebnikov (1990:186) justified because of the "advantages of the climate: here [Fort Ross] they can work all day in their shirt-sleeves and without shoes, where in Sitkha, owing to the bad weather, clothing and 4 The Native Alaskan Neighborhood shoes wear out faster." Needless to say, Mr. Khleb- nikov's explanation did not go over well with the native workers. In 1824, "a number" of Native Alaskans stationed at Ross had amassed a total debt of 1465 rubles and 26 kopeks to the Russian-American Company (Khlebnikov 1990:133 [1820-1824]). Khlebnikov (pp. 133-34) indicates that many of the Native Alaskan workers remained in debt to the Company until they died. Native Califomian laborers fared even worse. Wrangel notes that the "bad food and negligible pay" given to Indian laborers had discouraged many from coming to the Colony to work (1969:211 [1833]). Khlebnikov's (1990:70-4) detailed account of the Ross Colony in the early 1820s indicates that a diverse range of goods was shipped to the settlement (see chapter 6 for a complete list). Many of the goods listed by Khlebnikov appear, however, to have been earmarked primarily for trade with Mexican California missions and ranchos and not for consumption in the Ross Colony. Khlebnikov (1990:131-32 [1820-1824]) also describes food shortages in the Colony when supplies of European grains and domesticated meats ran low. The principal food for both Russian and Native Alaskan workers at Ross in the early 1820s was sea lion meat (much of it harvested on the Farallon Islands), and considerable hunting of elk, deer, and "goats" was also taking place in the hinterland of Ross (Golovnin 1979:163 [1818]; Khlebnikov 1990:59,193 [1820-1824]; Kotzebue 1830:124). Similar to the situation on Kodiak Island, we strongly suspect that native workers were largely responsible for supporting themselves at Ross. Food could be bought at the Ross store, but it appears to have been expensive, and many of the Native Alaskan workers were already in debt to the Company. It is very likely that native laborers were compelled to lay in their own supplies, a point we will return to in later chapters. ETHNIC AND GENDER COMPOSITION The most detailed known account of the ethnic and gender composition of the Native Alaskan Neighborhood was made by Ivan Kuskov, first manager of the Ross Colony. The original 1820-1821 census figures and text describing the Native Califomians were translated by Alexei Istomin and published in 1992 by the Fort Ross Interpretive Association. These data indicate that the great majority of the two-person or larger households in the Neighborhood were composed of Alutiiq men and Pomo/Miwok women. While 114 Alutiiq men of adult age (108 Kodiak Island Alutiit, 6 Chugach) and 48 Native Californian women were counted at Ross in 1820, only 18 Kodiak women and 1 Chugach woman were present (Istomin 1992:10-11). The only Native Califomian men listed in either the 1820 or 1821 censuses were 8 convicts from "the Great Bodega (Bay)" and 1 man from "the free will. Of the 57 Native Californian women listed for either the 1820 and/or 1821 censuses, 15 are listed as "Bodegan," one from the "Cape Barro Dearena" (Point Arena), 31 from the "vicinity of Ross," and 10 from the "Slavianka River" (Russian River). Kuskov was cogni- zant of the different Indian languages spoken at Ross, and the homelands of the people who spoke them (Istomin 1992:6). It appears that his designations of "Bodegan, Cape Barro Dearena, vicinity of Ross, and Slavianka River" referred to Coast Miwok, Central Pomo, Kashaya Pomo, and possibly Southern Pomo peoples, respectively. All but 1 of the 57 women were residing in interethnic households, the greatest number made up of Kodiak Island Alutiiq men and Kashaya Pomo women (n=25), Kodiak Island Alutiiq men and Coast Miwok women (n=10), and Kodiak Island Alutiiq men and Southem Pomo women (n=8) (table 1.1). While the numbers are small, there was a tendency for Coast Miwok women to have lived with both Chugach and Kodiak Island men, while Kashaya Pomo women apparently preferred Kodiak Island Alutiiq, Russian, and Creole spouses. The interethnic households listed in the 1820 and 1821 censuses had produced 28 children-17 daughters and 19 sons. FORMATION AND DISSOLUTION OF INTERETHNIC HOUSEHOLDS The Kuskov censuses of 1820 and 1821 document the residence pattern for mixed ethnic couples in the Neighborhood. Native Californian women left their Indian villages at Bodega Bay, along the Russian River, and in the nearby hinterland of Ross, and joined their common-law husbands' households in the Native Alaskan community (Istomin 1992). It appears that local Indian leaders, such as Valenila of Bodega Bay and Chu-gu-an, Amat-tan, and Gem-le-le from the vicinity of Ross, "willingly" offered their daughters as mates to Ross employees (Golovnin 1979:163 [1818]; Kotzebue 1830:124), an action probably calculated to cement alliances with the Russian-American Company and to establish kinship ties among the foreign colonists. The Native Califomians extended full family ties to their alien in-laws, and reciprocal obligations due to kin relations were observed (Golovnin 1979:163 [1818]). These obligations may have extended to the construction of houses for the mixed ethnic couples, the sharing of food, and participation in local ceremonies. In turn, it was traditional for Alutiiq men of the day to give presents to the father and mother of the bride, and to bring their in- laws choice portions of meat and other goods (Davydov 1977:182 [1802-1803]; Merck 1980:108 [1790]). Marriage practices in both Alutiiq and Kashaya Pomo villages in their respective homelands were vicinity of Ross" who came to the settlement of his own relatively flexible and somewhat spontaneous. Among Household Identities S Table 1.1 Composition of Interethnic Households, 1820-1821 (from Istomin 1992:14-37) Men Creole Chugach Kodiak Russian Tanaina Women Coast Miwok 0 4 10 1 0 Central Pomo 0 0 1 0 0 Kashaya Pomo 1 0 25 4 0 Southem Pomo 0 1 8 0 1 the Alutiit, women often chose their own husbands and wielded considerable power at home, although they were usually excluded from important village councils (Davydov 1977:165 [1802-1803]). Spouses often separated by mutual consent and remarried, with the children divided among the parents or granted to the mother (Bolotov 1977:86 [1805]; Clark 1984:192; Davydov 1977:167 [1802-1803]; Merck 1980:108 [1790]). Kostromitinov (1976:10 [1830-1838]) described marriage rites among the Kashaya Pomo as relatively informal, with separations not uncommon if the couples were unsuited to each other. Children usually accompa- nied their mothers during separations. It is not surprising that interethnic households at Ross were also relatively fluid domestic units, with couples often separating after only a short time together. Khlebnikov (1990:194) observed in 1824, that all the Aleuts have Indian women, but these relation- ships are unstable, and the Aleuts and the Indians do not trust each other. An Indian woman may live for a number of years with an Aleut and have children, but then, acting on a whim, will drop everything and run off to the mountains. When husbands were transferred to Sitka and other Russian-American colonies in the North Pacific, the Indian spouses frequently remained behind. In the 1820 and 1821 censuses, which listed 11 husbands (2 Russian, 1 Creole, 8 Native Alaskan) who were transferred to the North Pacific, 2 Native Californian women (Kashaya Pomo, Southern Pomo) accompanied their Alutiiq spouses to Sitka, 2 established new interethnic house- holds at Ross, and 7 returned to their "homeland or native place." The Russian managers maintained some control over the release of Native Californian women from the Ross settlement This pattern suggests that they were obligated to perform some kind of compulsory service for the Company while residing at Ross. In the Kuskov censuses, it explicitly states that women were either "allowed" or "released" to return to their native place (Istomin 1992:6- 7). A total of 11 women (including the 7 mentioned above) were "allowed" or "released" from the Ross settlement in 1820 and 1821 after their husbands moved to the North Pacific, died, or took up with other women (in one case with another Kodiak woman). It is not known how many Pomo and Miwok women moved to the North Pacific with Native Alaskan spouses between 1812 to 1841, or how long they stayed in this foreign environment. In addition to the two women noted above in the Kuskov censuses, Jackson's (1983:240) analysis of the San Rafael Mission Baptismal Register identifies one Coast Miwok woman from Bodega, Talia Unuttaca, who accompanied her Alutiiq husband, Andres Aulancoc, and their daughter to Sitka between 1815 and 1819. When her husband died in 1819, Talia and her daughter returned home to Bodega where she established a union with a local Coast Miwok man from Bodega in 1819 to 1820, bearing another daughter about 1820 (see also Farris, appendix 1.1). Istomin (1992:7) suggests that in cases of divorce or separation the status of children from mixed ethnic marriages was decided by the men, with male offspring frequently returning to Alaska to join their father's relatives, and the female offspring remaining behind with their mothers in California. The Kuskov censuses of 1820 and 1821 listed four interethnic families whose children were separated from their mothers when their fathers were recalled to Sitka or died. In the first case, the Kashaya Pomo woman, Agachpuchiye, "stayed with her relatives," while her son and Kodiak Island husband, Malihknak Savva, returned to Sitka. In the second case, the Kashaya Pomo woman, Katyya, "was allowed to go back to her native place with the daughter," while her son and Alutiiq husband, Alalyakin Danila, returned to Sitka. In the third case, the Kodiak husband, Agchyaesikok Roman, drowned in March 1821, and his wife, a South- em Pomo woman known as Kobbeya, "was allowed to go to her motherland." However, her son, Kiochan Mitrofan, was left at Ross and raised by an Alutiiq man, Alexey Chaniguchi. In the final case, the Southern Pomo woman, Chubaya, apparently left her Chugach husband, Ithoshknak Maksim, for another man. While her son, Alexandr, took up residence with Chubaya in the new household, her daughter, Marfa, was sent to Sitka on a Russian ship. Some Native Alaskan men did run away from Ross to join Native Californian spouses who moved back 6 The Native Alaskan Neighborhood home. Lutke (1989:275 [1818] reported one "Kodiak Aleut" who had run away from Ross to live in a nearby Pomo village for a year. Kotzebue (1830:125) observed in 1824 that many "Aleuts" did not want to leave California because they "find their abode here so agree- able." Khlebnikov (1990:194) also noted in 1824 that "there have been cases in which Aleuts have run off to the mountains with their lovers or in which Russians have given everything they owned to Indian woman, who then proceeded, with complete indifference, to give these gifts to other friends." SOCIOPOLITICAL ORGANIZATION The sociopolitical organization of the Native Alaskan Neighborhood is not described in any detail in available eyewitness accounts. Two observations, however can be gleaned from journal entries and census records. First, the Russian administrators recognized status differences among the ranks of the Native Alaskan workers. On Kodiak Island, traditional chiefs held authority over one or a group of villages. These positions were inherited by a relative or filled by someone of noble blood and maintained through mutual respect, gift giving, and by hosting ceremonies, dances, and feasts (Clark 1984:193; Crowell 1992:19; Jordan 1994:14849). The Company worked closely with traditional chiefs, exempting their families from work, inducing them with gifts, and granting them special access to imported goods. In turn, the chiefs or toions made sure that work quotas for the Company were filled by the men, women, and children of their villages. By at least the early 1800s, the Company would choose new toions if they became dissatisfied with the traditional leadership of villages (Davydov 1977:190 [1802-1803]). Several toions were distinguished in the Native Alaskan community at Ross. In his 1822 travel entry, Khlebnikov (1990:99) noted that three toions had negotiated with him about the poor salaries paid to the Native Alaskan workers. Khlebnikov (1990:143 [1820- 1824]) later observed that the oldest toion was recognized as the senior leader and spokesman for the Native Alaskan community. When the elder toion, Matvei, died in 1824, Khlebnikov requested that the native community select another "chief' toion who would act as "an intermediary between the Aleuts and the Company managers." The Kuskov censuses listed two Kodiak Island Alutiiq "toions" who resided with Native Califor- nian women. In the first case, Toion Nanehkun Vasiliy from Ezopkinskoe Village on Kodiak Island was married to the Kashaya Pomo, Kelyaymin. In the second case, Toion Kumyk Moisei, whose Kodiak Island village is not listed, lived with the Kashaya Pomo woman, Uyamin, until 1821, when he departed to Sitka. The second observation is that Kodiak Island and lands tended to live with Native Californian women who spoke the same or related languages. For example, ten Alutiiq men are listed in the Kuskov censuses as hailing from the Kodiak village of Kilyudinskoe (also Kiliudinskoe). Six of them cultivated interethnic relationships with Kashaya Pomo women, while three established households with Southern Pomo (Slavianka River) women. Only one man from Kilyudinskoe lived with a Coast Miwok woman. In contrast, the two Kodiak Island Alutiiq men from the village of Mysovskoe entered unions with Coast Miwok women. Four of the five Chugach men from Chinikatskoe (Chiniyatskoe) and Katmaiskoe villages lived with Coast Miwok women, while the fifth married a Southern Pomo woman. The above observations suggest that some of the sociopolitical practices of the North Pacific were repro- duced at Ross. Tribal toions were recognized by both the Russian administrators and the Native Alaskan commu- nity. These toions were probably leaders who repre- sented different villages and kin-based groups back home. While admittedly speculative, it is possible that the Native Alaskan Neighborhood was organized into several different household groups under specific toions. These household clusters would probably have repre- sented men from the same or related villages in Alaska who tended to live with Native Californian women who spoke the same Pomo or Miwok languages. While the census records do not list the home villages of the Pomo and Miwok women, it is highly probable that Native Alaskan men from the same or related homeland villages were cohabiting with women from the same or related villages from Bodega Bay, the vicinity of Ross, or the Russian River. SPATIAL LAYOUT AND ARCHITECTURE The first known description of NAVS was in 1816, when the Spanish official, Gervasio Arguello, counted thirty-seven huts for the "Aleuts" and forty-seven baidarkas (Bancroft 1886:63 1, footnote 3). The village is identified on the 1817 map of Ross, the only known cartographic rendition of the settlement undertaken by the Russian-American Company. Reproduced by Fedorova (1973:353, 358-60), the map caption describes the village as "14 Aleut Yurts made of planks." The village map illustrates four or five clusters of buildings that were tightly packed 140 to 240 m from the southeast blockhouse on a 210 degrees bearing. No structures were depicted in the area of FRBS, although the brig Rumiantsov, under construction in the Ross shipyard, was located nearby. Interestingly, the first known painting of Ross in 1817 by an unknown Russian artist portrays no visible standing structures in NAVS (Dmytryshyn et al. 1989:308). Either the Russian painter deliberately Chugach men raised in the same villages in their home- censored the depiction of non-Russian architecture in the Household Identities 7 work, or only semi-subterranean native structures were in use at this time and are not visible in the picture. In 1820, Khlebnikov (1990:102) observed that many Indians lived under the same roof with Native Alaskan men in very crowded conditions. A barracks building was built near the "Aleuts' huts" that could accomodate fifty Native Californians during the winter months. Mariano Payeras (1979:2-3), a Mexican-Californian visitor, described the Ross settlement in 1822. In addition to his observations of the Stockade complex, he reported that the outlying houses of the Russians, the "Kodiaks," and "Christian Indians" were built of squared beams set upon one another, with roofs made of planks joined by fillets, and gutters to ward off the rain. He also stressed that the houses had "good" glass in their win- dows. In the Fort Ross Cove area, he viewed a blacksmithy and a shop used to store and work wood as part of the Ross shipyard, as well as garden plots under cultivation up the Fort Ross Creek. In the "back" of the Fort Ross Creek, he viewed a forge and a bathhouse. Duhaut-Cilly (1946: 10-11), a French visitor to Ross in 1828, describes the "pretty little houses of 60 Russian colonists, the flattened cabins of 80 Kodiaks, and the cone shaped huts of as many indigenous Indians." He noted that all buildings were of wood, "but well built and taken care of." Before leaving Ross, Duhaut-Cilly sketched the settlement, illustrating several structures in the vicinity of NAVS. Wrangel's 1833 account of Fort Ross stresses the dilapidated conditions of the buildings, especially the Stockade complex. He briefly describes several outbuild- ings and the Fort Ross Cove area: On this hill, outside the fortress, facing and paralleling its sides, are located two Company cattle barns with pens, spacious and kept in excellent cleanliness, a small building for storing milk and making butter, a shed for Indians, a threshing floor, and two rows of small Company and private houses with gardens and orchards, occupied by employees of the Company. On a cleared spot beyond this outskirt stands a windmill. Below the hill by a landing for baidarkas [kayaks] have been built a spacious shed and a cooperage, a blacksmithy, a tannery, and a bathhouse. Everything is situated conveniently and in accordance with the purposes of the settlement and its local circumstances; but as stated above, most buildings have deteriorated (Wrangel 1969:207 [1833]). In 1839, Edward Belcher, a British Naval Captain, made the following observations on the Native Alaskan Village and the Fort Ross Cove area: Besides these buildings, there are on the slope of the hill, about twenty huts for the Kodiak Indians, of whom the establishment generally employ about fifty to sixty, in their skin boats, some of which are capable of containing one hundred men, and carrying about seven tons. They are constructed similarly to the old English coracle, viz., of strong boat-shaped frames, sharp at each end, over which the skins of the sea-lion are tightly stretched. Those to the northward of the Aleutian chain are covered with the skin of the walrus. On the N.W. are situated the stables for cattle, a large granary, with a threshing machine capable of cleaning one hundred bushels of corn per day; a windmill; and to the southward, in a deep ravine which partly forms the bay, are three large tiled buildings, containing forges, carpenters' shops, and storehouses for boats and fishing craft (Belcher 1843:315). Ilia G. Voznesenskii, a naturalist from the Zoological Museum of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences who was making collections in Russia-America, painted a well-known watercolor of the Ross settlement in 1840-41 (see Watrous and Tomlin 1993:12b-12c). His painting, made from a hill to the north of the Stockade complex, shows several structures near the southeast side of the Stockade that may have been part of the Native Alaskan Village Site. Blomkvist (1972:107), in describing Voznesenskii's painting, identifies these structures as small Native Alaskan dwellings "constructed in the Russian manner from logs of a red pine that resembles larch, the same material used in the construction of all the dwellings of the Company at Ross." Dmytryshyn and Crownhart-Vaughan (1976:106b), in examining the details of Voznesenskii's painting, suggest that the "Aleut" community had "given up their traditional iurts in favor of Russian-style log cabins." After the abandonment of Fort Ross, G. M. Wasseurtz of Sandel, a Swedish traveler, produced a rather crude line drawing of the settlement in 1843 (see Watrous and Tomlin 1993:12d). Several low-lying buildings, appearing as barracks, are depicted outside the the eastern wall of the Stockade complex. As Watrous and Tomlin (1993) note, the perspective of the drawing is skewed, but it appears that some of these outbuildings were remnants of the Russian village, agriculture structures, and dwellings in the Native Alaskan Village Site. Tikhmenhev, who wrote the official history of the Russian-American Company using primary company sources in 1861-1863, many of which have been subse- quently lost, makes the following observations on the NAVS and the Fort Ross Cove area. The fort, armed with ten cannons, was situated on a small hill 110 feet above sea level. The hill inclined toward the sea and ended in a 70-foot cliff. On the slope the Aleuts built their houses, imitating the Russians in their usually careful construction, so that there were very few simple mud huts. Red pine (chaga, a wood similar to larch [redwood]) was used for all structures. So that the Aleuts might have what, in their opinion, were the best possible living quarters, 8 The Native Alaskan Neighborhood Kuskov permitted them to place their houses wherever they wished, disregarding a regular street layout and allowing structural eccentricities. The landing was located in a small bay south of the fort. At the landing were built a dockyard (where in 1818 and 1819 Kuskov built the brigantine Rumiantsov and the brig Buldakov) and a large shed for storing baidaras and building ships in bad weather. The smithy was a short distance away. The hollow between the landing and the fort was bordered with garden plots, most of which belonged to the settlement (Tilchmenhev 1978:134). Hubert Bancroft's study of the Ross Colony provides another description of the settlement derived largely from primary sources. Outside the stockade on the plateau were the huts of the Aleuts and natives, which they built for themselves mostly of redwood, and which they even made more or less effort to keep clean in imitation of the Russians; and scattered in the immediate vicinity were a windmill, farm buildings, granaries, cattle- yards, a tannery, and work-shops for the various industries carried on. Beyond lay the vegetable gardens. Down at the foot of the cliff on the beach at mouth of the southem barranca was a small wharf and boat-landing, a shed for the protection of the skin boats, another for storing lumber and for work connected with building of vessels, a blacksmith's shop, and finally a bathhouse where the Russian might steam himself as was the custom in his country (Bancroft 1886:630). SUMMARY In the Native Alaskan Neighborhood resided single Native Alaskan men, some Native Alaskan families, and many interethnic households, the majority made up of Alutiiq men and Kashaya Pomo, Southern Pomo, and Miwok women, and their children. Other Native Californian people, including kaiur laborers and relatives of the Pomo and Miwok women, were probably housed there as well, possibly in a large barracks building. Some vestiges of traditional Native Alaskan sociopolitical practices were probably recognized at NAVS, and Kodiak Island and Chugach men from related village units appear to have cohabited with Native Californian women from the same or similar homelands. Eyewitness accounts suggest that a diverse range of architectural structures may have been constructed in the Native Alaskan Village, and that changes in architectural styles were probably taking place over time. However, most paintings and observations, especially after the late 1820s and 1830s, indicate that small wood houses or Russian plank houses were being built. The houses were reportedly not laid out in planned streets or lots, as was the Russian Village, but were constructed on top of the marine terrace in front of the Stockade, and possibly down the terrace slope descending into the Fort Ross Cove. The Fort Ross Cove was an industrial area containing buildings associated with the shipyard, a blacksmithy, storage sheds for the baidarkas and related hunting and fishing equipment, a forge, and a bathhouse. Most of these structures were probably built to the northeast of FRBS where the cove opens up along the Fort Ross Creek terrace. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES Two primary objectives directed our investigation of the Native Alaskan Neighborhood. First, to examine the participation of native laborers in the broader world system of the early 19th century and whether access to manufactured goods and domesticated foods served as sources of cultural change. The second objective concerns the implications of establishing a commercial colony with pluralistic communities in which people from many different homelands worked and lived together. THE CONSUMPTION OF MASS-PRODUCED GOODS AND NONNATIVE FOODS How was the broader world system represented in the material culture of the native employees in the Native Alaskan Neighborhood? Schiff (1994) suggests that Fort Ross was on the "far" periphery of the Russian-American Company's supply and distribution system in North America. How many and what kinds of goods shipped to Ross were designated specifically for trade with the Franciscan missions in order to obtain food for the Russian-American Company colonies in the North Pacific is not clear. It is also difficult to distinguish which goods were earmarked for local consumption in the Ross community, especially by native workers. Given the Ross Colony's obligations to provision Company ships and supply goods for trade to Spanish/ Mexican communities in California (see detailed ac- counts in Klebnikov (1990 [1820-1824]), the kinds and quantities of manufactured goods and domesticated foods available to local workers may have been quite limited. Access to nonlocal goods was most certainly exacerbated by the poor compensation of the Native Alaskan and Californian (as well as Russian) workers. As detailed above, many of the native laborers were in debt to the Company because of their paltry salaries. Even though Ross was a mercantile colony that partici- pated in the broader world system, the limited purchasing power of the native workers restricted their access to some goods. What kinds of store-bought goods were accessible to these workers and their families at Ross and whether these goods were catalysts that stimulated further changes in their material culture and daily lifeways remains to be seen. Finally, it is important to consider the experiences of Household Identities 9 natives who had participated previously in the Russian- American Company world system. While Kashaya Pomo, Southern Pomo, and Coast Miwok natives were experiencing their first sustained contact with European and North Pacific peoples at Ross, most of the Native Alaskan workers had grown up under Russian colonial jurisdiction for three decades or more on Kodiak Island, the Aleutian Islands, and in southeastern Alaska. Some had worked previously for the Russian-American Company in other North Pacific commercial operations before their transfer to Ross (see Murley 1994). Whether the same consumption patterns as those practiced in other North Pacific colonies were reproduced at Ross or not, and whether differences in the social and physical environment of the California colony led to innovations in the use of mass-produced goods and nonnative food have yet to be detennined. INTERETHNIC HOUSEHOLDS Did the synergistic interplay of interethnic house- holds in the Native Alaskan Neighborhood promote significant cultural change in the material culture of Native Alaskan and Native Californian residents? These households may have been pivotal in the creation and transmission of cultural innovations between peoples from different homelands at Ross. Each spouse brought to a household his or her own perspective on the tech- nologies, social relations, ceremonies, and belief systems they had learned in their respective homelands. Cultural innovations could have taken place when one spouse modified and adopted ideas and practices from the other or when synergistic fusions took place involving the recombination of elements from both spouses' homelands into new cultural forms. These cultural innovations, in tum, may have been disseminated well beyond the local household through kinship relations and friends. Viewed from this perspective, interethnic households may have been at the forefront of both creating and transmitting cultural innovations in this pluralistic community. The investigation of the Native Alaskan Neighbor- hood presents an ideal case study for examining this proposed process of cultural innovation. The cohabita- tion and close interaction of Kodiak Island and Chugach men with Kashaya Pomo, Coast Miwok, and Southern Pomo women generated social settings that were well suited for the creation and transmission of cultural innovations. On one hand, Native Alaskan men, as well as women in related Alutiiq families, could have passed along knowledge of traditional lifeways that revolved around a sophisticated martitime technology (baidarka construc- tion, bone arTow harpoon and dart points, deep sea fishing), construction of semi-subterranean houses, and a range of ceremonies and belief systems from the North Pacific. One firsthand report, mentioned above, de- scribes a Coast Miwok woman who learned how to produce the whale gut kamleika (Lutke 1989:278 [1818]). A study of loanwords in the Kashaya language indicates that some Alutiiq origin words were borrowed, including "women's dress" (taqhma) and "double pronged fish- hook" (cicakh) (Kari 1983:3; Oswalt 1988). Since the Native Alaskans had grown up under Russian jurisdiction, they may have also introduced their own version or interpretation of European "culture" to Native Californian peoples. Oswalt's (1957, 1988) analysis of Russian loanwords in the Kashaya Pomo language suggests that some words were derived from Unangas or Alutiiq speakers who had learned Russian as a second language. The "Russian" culture most familiar to Native Californians may have been those Russian elements that had been incorporated previously into Alutiiq life long before Ross was colonized. Close collaboration with Unangas, Alutiiq, and Tanaina peoples in the Native Alaskan Neighborhood also may have fostered the maintenance and elaboration of some local Pomo and Miwok cultural practices, especially those elements held in common with North Pacific peoples. Practices such as subsistence pursuits focused on coastal and maritime resources, the manufac- ture and use of stone and bone tools, and some native ceremonies may have been encouraged. Okladnikova (1983) suggests that the Kuksu Cult, a ceremony of the Pomo and Miwok people involving the Great Raven Kuksu as one of the creators of earth and humans, was similar to cults of predator birds (eagles, condors, hawks, falcons, ravens) observed among North Pacific peoples from Siberia to Alaska. While some of Okladnikova's statements are provocative (see Craig Bates's notes in the 1983 article), it appears that Native Alaskan workers at Ross would have been familiar with elements of the Kuksu Cult, and perhaps even encouraged its practice there, depending upon their conversion and level of commitment to the Russian-Orthodox faith. On the other hand, the Native Alaskan workers at Ross were stationed many hundreds of kilometers from their homelands in an alien environment. Pomo and Miwok spouses and relatives likely were important sources of information for learning about new kinds of raw materials, weather conditions, flora, and fauna. The intermarriage of Alutiiq men with Native Californian women would have linked the former into broader kinship networks that extended into the hinterland of Ross, ties that would have facilitated the movement of interior resources into the Neighborhood. We expect that Native Alaskan workers were exposed to new foods, new elements of material culture, new views on how to organize and maintain the household, and new child rearing practices. The creation and adoption of new cultural practices in the Neighborhood would have been facilitated by 10 The Native Alaskan Neighborhood support groups of Native Alaskan men and Native Californian women who came from the same homelands. When Kodiak Island and Chugach men arrived at Ross and initiated relationships with local Indian women, they apparently maintained a pre-exisiting support network made up of men from their own or related villages. When Pomo and Miwok women moved to the Native Alaskan Neighborhood they were not isolated or alone, but were probably integrated into a larger support group of women who spoke the same language from their homelands. The transmission of cultural innovations developed in one or more households to others in the Neighborhood would have been facilitated by the social networks that cross-cut the interethnic community. There is also the strong possibility that men and women from related villages created factional groups in the Neighbor- hood that may have had implications for native sociopolitical relationships at Ross and the creation and adoption of new cultural constructs (see Lightfoot and Martinez 1995). The broader transmission of cultural innovations beyond the local neighborhood would have been facili- tated by the constant flow of men, women, and children who moved back and forth between Ross and their home- lands. Pomo and Miwok women who were "released" by the Company from interethnic households went back to their traditional home villages with some or all of their children, especially young girls. The continuous move- ment of women and girls back to villages in the Kashaya Pomo, Coast Miwok, and Southern Pomo homelands must have had significant impacts on such small-scale societies that numbered only a few hundred people. These women may have served as both mediators and translators in their home villages in negotiations and interactions with the Native Alaskan community, the Russian-American Company, and even other European visitors (see Lutke 1989:278 [1818]). Women and children from interethnic households, as well as Native Alaskan men who ran away from Ross with Native Californian spouses, may have disseminated cultural innovations across the homelands of the Pomo and Miwok peoples (Martinez 1994). Native Alaskan workers were typically stationed at Ross for several years before rotation back home or to other North Pacific colonies. Cultural innovations from Ross could have been regularly disseminated to native villages and commercial outposts in Alaska by Alutiiq and Unangas workers who were redeployed by the Company, and by some Native Californian women and their children who moved north with their husbands and fathers. In one example, Kari (1983:3) describes how a Nafive Californian hand game, involving marked and unmarked sticks held or hidden in the hands, was dispersed from Fort Ross to the native peoples of the Aleutian Islands, Kodiak Island, and Southeastern Alaska played by Unangas, Kodiak Island Alutiiq, Chugach, and Tanaina peoples at multiethnic gatherings in Alaska in the 1920s. Again, the transmission of cultural innovations may have been facilitated by the relatively small size of these societies. The Alutiiq peoples numbered less than 6000 in the early 1800s and only about 3000 by the time Fort Ross was sold by the Russians (1841) (Clark 1984:187). HOUSEHOLD IDENITITIES IN THE NATIVE ALASKAN NEIGHBORHOOD Up to this point, we have stressed the great potential for cultural transformations to occur in multiethnic col- onies and how these innovations may be carried back home. We recognize, however, that change does not occur simply because people are exposed to new ideas, goods, and cultural practices. In fact, encounters with other peoples, especially when coupled with policies of "directed acculturation" by the dominant society, can result in the defiant entrenchment of traditional practices and the deliberate rejection of material innovations (e.g., Ferguson 1991; Linton 1940; Kennedy 1955). Any cul- ture contact study of interethnic relationships must con- sider the issues of both culture change and persistence. In this section, we argue that an understanding of change and persistence in the material culture of the Native Alaskan Neighborhood should consider intereth- nic and gender relations in NAVS households. Specifi- cally, we contend that the degree to which nonnative goods and foods were consumed and cultural innovations created and/or adopted may be related to the construction of "public" identities in NAVS households. In a recent paper (Lightfoot and Martinez 1995), we stress the naivet6 of viewing Kashaya, Alutiiq, Unangas, Russian, and other ethnic groups at Ross as homogeneous entities, in which individuals pursued similar interests and shared objectives. Rather these groups were embedded with structural cleavages oriented along lines of kin, gender, age, political affiliations, social relations, and homeland villages. Individuals could have implemented very different identity strategies that maintained, manipulated, or recreated their ethnic backgrounds for various social, political, and/or economic benefits (e.g., McGuire 1982:160; Roosen 1989:13; Shennan 1989:12). Three strategies are discussed below: cultivation of native identities, upward mobility, and the creation of new identities. CULTIVATION OF NATIVE IDENvTiTIES One identity strategy is to resist culture change by preserving traditional values and maintaining distinctive ideologies and cultural practices (see Bragdon 1988:128; Ferguson 1991:28-29; Spicer 1962:567; Stevenson 1989:288). For example, Ferguson (1991) describes how African-American slaves in the south manifested a in the early 1800s. This gambling game was still being separate subculture in the actions of their daily lives (diet, Household Identities 11 tools, furnishings), since it was in the domestic sphere that they had some control. In this strategy, cultural practices that distinguish group members from "other" peoples are often amplified and exaggerated, becoming recognizeable symbols for group membership and participation (Spicer 1962:578; Stevenson 1989:292-93). The retention of mundane cultural practices, such as traditional ways of preparing food or the care of house- hold space, often take on new meaning as they become "invested with a significance which they may have lacked in earlier incarnations" (Cohen 1987:96). In the Native Alaskan Neighborhood, there may have been many reasons for enacting strategies of resistance. Elite Native Californian families and their followers may have perceived few advantages in the breakdown of traditional value and prestige systems in which they played a favored role. Consequently, they may have become strong advocates for maintaining the status quo. Some Pomo or Coast Miwok women may have resented their arranged marriages with Native Alaskan men and pursued a deliberate tactic that cultivated their Native Californian identity in all aspects of their day-to-day life. Still other non-European laborers may have been responding to Russian domination at Ross by steadfastly supporting their traditional practices, a strategy that was probably not uncommon on Kodiak Island where many of the Alutiit detested the Russian presence in the early 19th century (see Davydov 1977:163 [1802-1803]). If separate native identities were cultivated at NAVS, then Native Alaskan men and Native Californian women may have maintained distinct ethnic and gender identities within interethnic households. Men and women would embrace traditional native ideologies and cultural pracfices that set them apart from other people in the Ross Colony. The cultivation of native identities in NAVS households would not preclude the acceptance of cultural innovations. Rather people would be highly selective in the kinds of practices, foods, and goods they adopted, modified, or created, making sure they fit within perceived concepts of what constituted proper "native" behavior (see Kardulias 1990:29; Wilson and Rogers 1993:5). By this method, Alutiiq men and Kashaya women could maintain their distinct identities while reacting to new conditions and undergoing transforma- tions themselves (e.g., Simmons 1988:8). With this identity strategy, we expect that the consumption of European goods or the creation of synergistic innovations in NAVS households would probably be minimal, except those that were perceived as compatible with the cultural practices of either the Alutiit or Kashaya. UPWARD MOBILITY NAVS residents may have consciously manipulated their ethnic identities to assimilate into another group for perceived social, political, or economic advantages. higher status positions by members of lower ranking ethnic groups often entails the adoption of symbols, behaviors, and ideologies that characterize a higher ranking group. This strategy also involves the discard of cultural practices that do not conform with the higher status group. The creation of new identities to gain higher status positions within the colonial hierarchical structure may have taken two forms. Native Alaskan Imitators Native Californians were clearly at the bottom of the Russian-American Company's socioeconomic hierarchy in both compensation and status (Lightfoot et al. 1991:21-22). The formation of interethnic households provided a convenient social context for some Native Californian women, especially those from nonelite families, to alter their identities and to distance them- selves from other Native Californian peoples. Women could have adopted the material trappings of Native Alaskan wives, and relinquished conventions that were incompatible with Native Alaskan ideology. In this scenario, the few Native Alaskan women at Ross may have served as teachers of Native Alaskan customs to local Native Californian women. If this strategy was implemented, then we expect the archaeological remains of native imitators in interethnic households to follow largely the organizational principles of Native Alaskan households, and the archaeological remains of such households to be largely congruent with those of Native Alaskan families at Ross. We suspect that distinguishing these interethnic households from those of Native Alaskan families in the archaeological record would be difficult. These interethnic households would probably contain similar kinds of nonlocal goods and "European" foods as those consumed by other Native Alaskan families. We further suspect that the creation of cultural innovations would not differ markedly from other Native Alaskan families. Colonial Russian Imitators As a consequence of Russian colonial policies, and/ or perceived social and economic advantages, one or both spouses may have imitated Russian cultural practices. Available archival sources suggest that the Russian- American Company at Ross was permissive in indulging its native workers the right to construct their own homes, to harvest and to consume their own foods, and to practice their traditional ceremonies and feasts (see Lightfoot et al. 1991:9). While there is no evidence that Company officials overtly dictated lifestyle changes, subtle persuasion may have taken place to reward native workers who embraced Russian cultural practices. If this strategy was implemented, then we expect the archaeological remains of colonial imitators in interethnic households to approximate, to some degree, the organiza- McGuire (1982:164, 174) notes that the attainment of tion of houses in the Russian Village. We expect to find 12 The Native Alaskan Neighborhood similar kinds of architectural features, tools, and foods to those used by Russian families at Ross, and a diverse range of mass-produced goods and "Russian" foods associated with these houses. While goods in the Company store were expensive and probably limited in availability, we believe that these families would have sacrificed or gone into debt to purchase those nonlocal goods that were accessible. CREATION OF NEW IDENTITIES Native interethnic households, similar to the Creole class at Ross, may have constituted a separate, rather fluid, identity group that was perceived as neither purely Native Alaskan or Native Californian, but something new and different. This separate identity may have been most pertinent to children produced from mixed marriages who may have recognized advantages in creating their own separate identities or had little choice but to do so. The "creolization" of interethnic households would have facilitated the mutual sharing and transformation of cultural practices from both Native Alaskan and Native Californian homelands. If this strategy was implemented, then we expect the archaeological remains of interethnic households to follow distinctive organizational principles that were neither Native Alaskan nor Native Californian in charac- ter. That is, we should find archaeological evidence for the organization of space and material culture that deviated from those of traditional Native Alaskan or Native Californian households. Mass produced goods and "European" foods would probably be present, especially in combination with other Native Alaskan and Native Californian materials. We argue that the creation of new cultural innovations in these households would be high, involving the recombination of Native Californian, Native Alaskan, and even Russian elements. THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE NATIVE ALASKAN NEIGHBORHOOD A research design is implemented in the Native Alaskan Neighborhood that examines strategies of identity construction employed by NAVS households, and how these "public" identities are expressed in the consumption patterns of material goods and the creation and adoption of cultural practices. Our theoretical approach incorporates ideas from both practice theory (Bourdieu 1990; Giddens 1979; Ortner 1984; Roscoe 1993) and the Annales historical perspective (Duke 1992; Le Roy Ladurie 1979; Moreland 1992) that considers the relationship between structure and event in culture contact settings (see especially Kirch 1992; Sahlins 1985, 1991, 1992). Two theoretical concepts particularly pertain to this study. First, the organizational principles, world views, reproduced and transformed during social interactions or events. These cultural constructs (structures) would be both the conditions and outcomes of daily practices and social relations in NAVS households. As Ortner (1984:154) notes, all cultural practices "are predicated upon, and embody within themselves, the fundamental notions of temporal, spatial, and social ordering that underlie and organize the system as a whole." The dialectical relationship between structure and action is perpetually being reproduced as individuals constantly respond to new situations and problems (Bourdieu 1990: 55-56; Giddens 1979:53). Sahlin (1985) demonstrates how cultural categories that are actualized in daily practice can become transformed during the process of social encounters with "others." Second, the focus of analysis is on the practice of day-to-day living (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1979:123; Moreland 1992:125; Ortner 1984:154). People are constantly recreating structural principles and playing out ideological constructs in their daily routines. The focus on habitual practices is well suited to archaeological investigation, as they entail the "little routines people enact, again and again, in working, eating, sleeping, and relaxing, as well as little scenarios of etiquette they play out again and again in social interactions" (Ortner 1984:154). Material items in daily practice take on special significance as they become active symbols in broadcasting and even negotiating identity-a person's social relations, political affiliations, and broader world views (Lightfoot and Martinez 1995; Moreland 1992:116). The identity strategies employed by NAVS house- holds should be observable in their daily practices-how they organized space, how they conducted domestic tasks, and how they disposed of refuse. A key consider- ation is the organization and use of space over time-the construction, maintenance, and abandonment of house structures, extramural space, and trash deposits across the landscape. The floor plans of houses, the placement of internal features, the construction materials employed, and the layout of public and private space are all very pertinent to understanding the organizational principles of households and communities (see Donley 1982; Donley-Reid 1990; Fletcher 1992; Lawrence 1990; Moore 1986; Sanders 1990). Food remains, cooking residues, and other by-products of domestic tasks are very useful in defining ethnic, social, and gender expres- sions in the archaeological record (see Gust 1983; Schulz and Gust 1983; Wake 1995). Refuse disposal practices involving the spatial association of different kinds of materials can also provide many insights into the identities and cultural constructs of households (Moore 1986:102). In implementing the research program, the purpose is not to assign ethnic attributions to the residents per se, and idealogical canons of individuals are continually since we already know the ethnic composition of the Household Identities 13 community. Rather, the purpose is to consider how the identities of these Native Califomians and Native Alaskans were being constructed and transformed through daily practice and interaction. By considering the organizational principles of NAVS households, we evaluate whether different strategies of native resistence, upward mobility, and/or creolization were being followed in day-to-day actions. The fieldwork undertaken in the Native Alaskan Neighborhood, including topographic mapping, system- atic surface collections, geophysical survey, and the excavation of extensive profile units and blocks, was designed to delineate the organization of space and daily practices at NAVS and FRBS. The specific goal of the field investigation was to detect and expose architectural features, extrmural work areas, communal assembly places, and refuse dumps across the Native Alaskan Neighborhood. Employing this program, the spatial layout of the Neighborhood was defined and the partial remains of three architectural structures and related extramural space, and three discrete trash deposits composed of dense concentrations of animal bones, marine shells, fire-cracked rocks, and artifacts were unearthed. A critical component of the study of interethnic household identities is the comparison of NAVS and FRBS archaeological remains to Kodiak Island Alutiit and Kashaya Pomo daily practices as recorded in ethnohistorical sources and observed in archaeological contexts (e.g., Lightfoot 1995). The Kodiak Islanders and Kashaya are highlighted for two reasons. They made up the largest proporton of the Neighborhood's popula- tion and their daily practices are well documented in their respective homelands. Native life in nearby Kashaya Pomo villages and Alutiiq settlements on Kodiak Island are employed as baselines for examining change and continuity in the use of space, domestic tasks, and refuse disposal practices in the Native Alaskan Neighborhood. The goal of the comparative analysis is to identify similarities and differences in the organizational prin- ciples of households in the Neighborhood when com- pared to other pertinent case studies of Kashaya Pomo and Alutiiq villages. While the original intent was to focus on the internal spatial arrangement of house structures in the Native Alaskan Village, the discovery of dense bone bed deposits in the fill of abandoned structures precluded the full excavation of house features. As outlined in subse- quent chapters, the bone beds are viewed as discrete dumping episodes of domestic refuse from nearby interethnic households. As a consequence, the emphasis of the project shifted from the organizatin of household space to the study of household refuse practices. The delineation of household identities, as outlined in chapter 17, is based on refuse disposal conventions, the domestic overall settlement layout of the Neighborhood in com- parison to nearby Kashaya Pomo villages and Alutiiq settlements on Kodiak Island. CONCLUSION In the first volume of The Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Fort Ross, California series, it is sug- gested that pluralistic colonial communities may have served as important sources of cultural change, ultimately affecting the architectural styles, subsistence practices, diet, and material culture of non-European workers. In the shadows of the Ross Stockade, Kodiak Island Alutiiq and Chugach men took up residence with Kashaya Pomo, Southem Pomo, and Coast Miwok women. These couples shared their houses, conducted daily domestic and subsistence-related chores, participated in ceremo- nies and dances, cultivated their own social networks and political alliances, deposited considerable amounts of trash, and produced many children. The investigation of this Neighborhood examines the consequences of these interethnic relationships and critically considers the construction of different identity strategies in NAVS households as manifested in their daily practices. REFERENCES Bancroft, Hubert Howe 1886 The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol. 19. The History Company, San Francisco. Belcher, Edward 1843 Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, Performed in Her Majesty's Ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836- 1842, vol. 1. Henry Colburn, London. Blomkvist, E. E. 1972 A Russian Scientific Expedition to California and Alaska, 1839-1849. Article translated by B. Dmytryshyn and E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan. 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Such things as new foods, marital experiences including domestic violence, suicide of a spouse, at least one industrial accident, the marvel of a passing Hudson's Bay party, and more are woven into these tales. Some are in the form of folk history, others are cautionary tales. Together they form a remarkable body of history for a people typified as being ahistorical. In this paper I will sift through a number of the relevant Kashaya texts and try to place into perspective the observations of everyday life contained in them. The Russian settlement at Fort Ross, California, which existed for nearly thirty years (1812-41), was made up of a small number of ethnic Russians, Finns, and Siberians, as well as a sizable contingent of "Aleuts," (actually, a mixture of Unangan, Kodiak Islanders or Alutiit, Tana'ina from Kenai Peninsula, and other Native Alaskans), and an ever-growing number of Creoles (as the mix of Russian and Native American was called). Since they brought few women with them, a number of these men took the local Kashaya, Bodega Miwok, and other Pomo women as wives. At least forty- five California women are named in censuses of Fort Ross by Ivan Kuskov in 1820 and 1821 as living with the settlers (Fedorova 1975; Istomin 1992). The distribution mentioned includes: 4 Indian women "from the region of Ross" and 1 "Bodegin" Indian woman (married to Russians); 1 Indian woman "from the region of Ross" (married to a Creole); and "17 common-law wives from the region of Ross." Ten of these common- law wives were "from the river Slavianka," and nine were "Bodegin" (married to Native Alaskan men) (Fedorova 1975:12). By 1833 Creoles, augmented by the children born at the settlement, had become the largest part of the population. In that year there were 63 Creole children under the age of 16 (Gibson 1969:210). Although there are numerous European observations of life at Fort Ross: Russian, Spanish, German, English, and French (cf. Kostromitinov 1839; LaPlace 1854; Lutke 1989; Payeras 1822; and Von Wrangel 1839), these, quite naturally, only give us the European perspec- tive on life in the settlement. One of the most extensive descriptions of domestic activities within a Kashaya village is provided by Cyrille LaPlace (1854:145-47; Farris 1988:22-23) during a visit in August 1839. The manager of Fort Ross, Alexander Rotchev, invited LaPlace to accompany him on a visit to the neighboring Kashaya village (Metini): the habitations of these poor people consisted without exception of miserable huts formed of branches through which the rain and wind passed without difficulty. It was there that all the family, father, mother, and children, spent the nights lying pell-mell around the fire, some on cattle hides, the majority on the bare ground, and each one enveloped in a coverlet of wool which served equally as a mantle during the day, when the weather was cold or wet. The majority [of the women] were busy with the housekeeping, preparing meals for their husbands and children. Some were spreading out on the embers some pieces of beef given as rations, or shell fish, or even fish which these people came to catch either at the nearby river [the Gualala or possibly even the Russian River] or from the sea; while the others heated seeds in a willow basket before grinding them between two stones. In the middle of this basket there were some live coals that they shook constantly, on which each seed passed rapidly by an ever more accelerated rotating movement until they were soon parched, otherwise the inner side of the basket would be burned by the fire. Some of these baskets (paniers), or more accurately, these deep baskets (vases [cooking baskets]), seemed true models of basketmaking, not only by their decoration but by the fmishing touches of the work. They are made...so solidly held together by the threads, that the fabric was water-resistant, as efficiently as baked clay and earthenware.... It should be noted that LaPlace was seeing the people of Metini as they were after twenty-seven years of associa- tion with Fort Ross and that their society and social structure had probably undergone a variety of changes over that time. In addition, Kashaya had suffered severely from epidemics that occasionally raged in the vicinity of the Russian settlement. One of the most disas- trous of these was the smallpox epidemic of 1837-1838 which was apparently introduced at Fort Ross and then spread throughout northern California killing many tens of thousands of people (Smilie 1975:67). Even so, a certain amount of LaPlace's negative observation was based on his European background as well as his com- parisons to people he had seen on the Northwest Coast of America and in the Hawaiian Islands. Accounts from the viewpoint of indigenous peoples are far rarer. A few aspects of life show up in the recollections of Peter Kalifomski (Kalifomski 1991; Kari 1983) whose Tana'ina great grandfather, Nikolai Kalifornsky, lived at Fort Ross from approximately 18 The Native Alaskan Neighborhood 1812-1820. However, the richest trove comes from the Kashaya Texts, transcribed and translated by linguist Robert Oswalt (1964). These include accounts touching on various aspects of life at Fort Ross during the Russian occupation. In a very matter-of-fact manner, a number of activities and situations of everyday life are either directly described or form the backdrop of these stories. The overwhelming majority derive from a woman named Lukaria which was quite appropriate, as the Kashaya women were more likely to become deeply involved in the life of the people living at Fort Ross. Round-the-world traveler, Fedor Lutke (1989:278), in 1818 describes unions of Russians and Alutiit and Californian women, which illustrate the adaptability of the Kashaya women: Some of the Promyshlenniks and Aleuts have married these Indian women. Our interpreter, whose wife is one of these people, told us that she had leamed his language very quickly and well, and that she had also leaned Aleut handicrafts, such as sewing the whale gut kamleika (waterproof outer garment] and other things. In one hut I saw a rather comely young woman preparing food, and when I approached her I was surprised that she spoke easily and in clear Russian. She invited me to eat her acorn porridge, and then complained about the rain. When I inquired I found that she had lived for some time in the Ross settlement with a promyshlennik, and then had retumed to her people. In an article on Russian and Alutiiq words that have been absorbed into the Kashaya language, Robert Oswalt (1988:20-22) gives not only examples of Russian words that apparently came directly from the ethnic Russians, but also numerous Russian words that the Kashaya leamed from the Alutiit These are distinguished by certain pronunciation peculiarities of the Alutiit that were taken by the Pomo even though they would have been perfectly able to render the correct Russian fonn (for instance, the Alutiiq replacing the Russian b with a p, whereas the Kashaya have no trouble with the b sound). A brief biography of Talia Unuttaca, a Bodega Miwok woman who married Andres Aulancoc, a Alutiiq at Fort Ross, tells us that they had a daughter Maria in 1815. Talia then travelled with her husband to Sitka where she was baptized by a Russian Orthodox priest named Malancoc. When her husband died in 1819 she returned to Bodega Bay. There she established a relation- ship with a Bodega Miwok man named Jos6 and had a second daughter about 1820 named Rafaela (Jackson 1983:240). The original mission records for San Rafael show that the man she married was named Jose Talio (SBMA-San Rafael marriages). This is very likely the same "Jose Talis" mentioned by Bancroft (1886:718) as KASHAYA AccouNTs Among the many stories in the Kashaya Texts, nine of them clearly touch on the lives of the Kashaya at Colony Ross. The overwhelming majority of the accounts come from Herman James who learned them from his grandmother, Lukaria. This woman was said to have been born eight years before the Russians came, which would have been about 1804. By contrast, only one of the stories told by Essie Parrish, who also learned them from her maternal grandmother, relates to the Russian Period. Brief synopses and commentaries follow. THE FIRsT WHITE FOOD [EssIE PARRISH] The new arrivals offered the Indiansfood. Atfirst the Indiansfeared thisfood would be poisonous and so dumped it out, buried it at times and kept to their traditionalfoods (Oswalt 1964:251). This followed a pattern among the Pomo of fear of poisoning by strangers, which is sill found to a small degree today. However, over time the Indians became used to many of the introduced foods, especially as many of their own native foods were becoming harder to obtain. THE BIG ExPEDIrION [HERMAN JAMES] When a Hudson's Bay Company expedition consist- ing of 163 men, women, and children passed Fort Ross on April 19, 1833 both the Indians and the Aleuts were puzzled by andfearful of it. When the expedition came close to where the Undersea people [Kashaya name for the men of Colony Ross] were living, afew people straggled out and gave the HBC some of what they [Indians and Russians (sic)] had to eat. They gave flour, being afraid. The strangers took it willingly at that time. After three or four days had passed, some Indians, having gone northwards, saw what they had given had been all dumped out on the ground. The HBC members hadn't known what it wasfor. Everything the strangers had receivedfrom the Undersea people, all of the food, had been dumped out. They had apparently just left it there on the trail.... After the expedition had passed, the Indians and Aleuts asked one another who they had been. When they asked the Russians, they received the re- sponse, "How come you don't know that the people you are asking about are your kind of people." "No, we don't recognize those people," said the Kashaya (Oswalt 1964:253-55). Elsewhere (Farris 1989) I have dealt with this story at greater length. One of the telling points is the gulf between the native peoples (Califomian and Alaskan alike) and the Russian authorities, who seemed to have had the attitude that all Indians could be lumped together. Another point is that the food that was offered by the being the "captain of the Tamalles" ca. 1838. Native Alaskans and Califomians to these strangers was Household Identities 19 flour, possibly in the form of a gruel (kasha), which was the staple food provided to the Indians by the Russians at this time (a point which was brought up to the managers of the Russian-America Company by Baron Ferdinand Von Wrangel who visited a short time later [Gibson 1969]). It is confusing to most English readers to read that the Indians were subsisting on flour when it was likely a coarser form of ground seed, not unlike their normal staple, the pinole. THE LAST VENTDETA [HERMAN JAMES] This story begins by relating a tale of afeud between two groups of Kashaya;feuds are suggested to have been common before the coming of the Russians. However, on this occasion, an "Undersea boy," mounted and armed with a rifle, interrupted Kashaya rejoicing over the vengeance killing. The old people then decreed that they were done with the feuding. Some of the Indians then began going into the "cross-house" [the Fort Ross chapel] which belonged to the Undersea people . Thereafter there was no more enemy killing (Oswalt 1964:255-59). This is a tribute to the Russian attempt to keep peace among the peoples with whom they associated by suppressing an age-old form of vengeance feuding which was not infrequently found among the Native Califor- nians. It also suggests that some Kashaya became interested in the orthodox religion. Late in the 19th century, when Orthodox Bishop Nikolai (1897) visited Fort Ross, he was told of Lukaria who evidently still retained an affection for the Russians. HUNT7NG SEA 07TER AND FARMING [HERMAN JAMES] This is a somewhat confused tale of the comings and goings of the Aleuts and Russians to Alaska and else- where. Somehow the story became reversed, with colony people initially at Fort Ross and then going to Alaska with the intention of hunting sea otters. The Indians came to realize how valuable the sea otters were to them. The Aleuts would pursue the hunt despite the consider- able danger and privations (Oswalt 1964:261-65). The only occupation described in this story for the Russians and Alutiit was the hunting of sea otter. This next story suggests that when the rigors of sea otter hunting became too great, the "Undersea people" turned to growing crops in the vicinity of Fort Ross, aka Metini. GRAIN FOODS [HERMAN JAMES] Wheat was planted in all the flat lands near Metini [Colony Ross]. When ripe, the people cut it by hand, tied it up, and lay it there. Then they packed the sheaves in sea lion skins and dragged it to their houses. The grain was taken to a threshing floor "of earth packed down hard by wetting." The sheaves were placed there and horses driven in to tranple the grain. When it was their warehouse. To make it into flour, they took it to a big machine called a 'flour grinder." The sacks were tossed up and the grain was poured into the grinder. The resultingflour was then poured into sacks which were piled in a building to provide foodfor winter. An accident occurred when a woman got too close to the machinery and her hair was caught. She was spun around and killed. The woman was then taken home to be cremated in her traditional way. The story then compares the Indian way of gathering grain [knocking it into a tightly woven pack basket when it was ripe]. This they would store in their own houses to use as pinole during the winter. The Indians observed the Russian methods and used the ground flour but also continued to use their pinole in their traditional way (Oswalt 1964:267-69). The continuity of Kashaya methods of harvesting grain and those used by the agricultural Russians was evidently appreciated by the Kashaya. Their description of the threshing floor being of beaten earth differs from the tightly laid plank floors said to be used for this purpose in all the European accounts. The description of the use of stampeding horses to thresh the grain is substantiated by numerous other accounts of observers both at Fort Ross and in Spanish California. The story of the woman who got her hair caught and was killed brings up an intriguing comparison with a story of a similar tragic death related by the late-19th century romantic author, Gertrude Atherton (1894). The year before Atherton published this story, she wrote an article about a visit to Fort Ross in which she describes meeting with an old woman who was "half Indian, half Russian" (Atherton 1893). This woman told Atherton many stories of Fort Ross at the time of the Russians. Although Atherton does not give the woman's name, it is almost certainly Lukaria. Atherton's story of the Russian heroine decapitated by the windmill is clearly fiction, but finding an antecedent in the Kashaya folk history enhances the impression that some such event actually occurred. The sense of cultural continuity is echoed in the observations of Cyrille LaPlace (1854; Farris 1988) who visited in August 1839, toward the end of the Russian Period. LaPlace even remonstrated to his host, Alexander Rotchev, that the Russians were having very little obvious effect on the customs of the local Indians. Rotchev's reply was that they were, perhaps in more subtle ways, because the Indians were becoming increas- ingly sedentary and attached to the Fort. THE WIFE BEATER [HERMAN JAMES] This is the tale of a man [not specified whether Russian, Creole, or Aleut] and an Indian woman living together. He awakes one day very angry and gets mean, eventually striking his wife with an axe. A sheriff then threshed, they loaded it in sacks which were taken off to iook the husband away and locked him up. He was shut 20 The Native Alaskan Neighborhood in a "place where a little house was standing," locked up for a week. Hazel switches were brought to the settle- ment. The man was then brought out with his hands and feet tied and was whippedfor a long time-"half a day"-until hefell down unconscious. When he recov- ered, he repented and said that he now saw the "path of righteousness." He told a public gathering that he had done wrong and would be goodfrom then on. Even so, the Indian woman left the man. Interestingly, she continued living in the settlement, but stayed alone, as did the man (Oswalt 1964:269). It appears that ill-treatment of the Kashaya wives was not at all condoned and that wife-beating was severely dealt with. The description of the jail as a little house standing by itself is very interesting. Current interpretation at Fort Ross has a cell within the Official's Quarters inside the Stockade, which I believe grew out of an unfortunate misreading of some documents describing the buildings at Fort Ross. A closer reading showed that what was actually stated was that the jail was adjoining one of the warehouses inside the Stockade. The severity of the whippings obviously made a deep impression on the Kashaya (see also the next story), and they were undoubtedly impressed with the sense of justice of the Russians to punish one of their own in such a fashion. THE SUICIDE OF A WIFE [HERMAN JAMES] An Indian woman was married to an "Undersea man." They had been quarrelling. The man walked out of the house threatening to kill his wife if she was still there upon his return. He then left for work. The Indian womanfinished eating, fed her children, went into the bedroom, and put on good new clothes. She then went off on a walk to the coastal cliff, but wasfollowed by her child. When asked what she was doing, the mother said she was going "to die today." Although the child tried to grab her dress, the mother threw herself down onto the gravel beach. The child ran home. Others then came and carried her body back to her house. She was buried rather than cremated [this change in custom is particu- larly noted in the story]. When the husband returned home he was taken to the whipping place and whipped for a very long time-"almost a whole day." He fell unconscious and died. He, too, was buried (Oswalt 1964:271). This story also seems to impress one with the view that wrongs against the Indian wives were taken very seriously. This woman was evidently well on her way to being acculturated. She was apparently living in one of the Russian style houses in the sloboda (village) adjacent to the Stockade. The mention of her going into her bedroom to put on good new clothes, evidently a dress, before committing suicide is noteworthy. Also, there is the statement that after her death she was buried rather than cremated. It is not clear where she would have been across the gulch from the Stockade, but this is mere conjecture. If so, she had clearly separated from her peoples' ways. Two UNDERSEA YOUTHS FREEZE TO DEATH [HERMAN JAMES] This was said to have occurred about ten years after the Russian arrival [i.e., circa 1822]. It speaks of what must be Creole children growing up. Two young men decide to go hunt coots and travel a long way down to the mouth of the Russian River [11 miles from Fort Ross]. They get soaking wet in their endeavor, and a heavy, cold rain worsens their situation. It appears that the boys become e-xhausted and ultimately die of exposure in the middle of the night (Oswalt 1964:273ff). This could be seen as a cautionary tale against the dangers of wearing too much clothing. The Kashaya were said to have worn very little clothing. A modem- day Kashaya, Otis Parrish, son of Essie Parrish, explains that the Indian view of cold was that one learned to ignore it, that it affected only the outer layer of one's body, but did not penetrate. Considering the frequency with which the lack of clothing is noted among the Native Californians, it is evident that they were capable of withstanding very cold weather and had ways of psychologically dealing with the cold rather than resort- ing to heavy clothing. TALES OF FoRT Ross [HERMAN JAMES] A boat with a white sail appeared off Metini. A boat landed and the "Undersea people" appeared. It was on this occasion that they got this name. When they landed they built houses close to where the Indians were. After awhile the Indians began working for them but after 30 years living there they returned home (Oswalt 1964:277ff). Since the Russians would have initially arrived at the beach at Fort Ross in baidarkas or perhaps long boats, the image of the people appearing to come out of the sea would certainly have contributed to the name given them (the Undersea People). This story continues on through the period of the next occupants, a German immigrant and his family named Benitz (1843-67), and the eventual forced departure from Fort Ross of the Indians under a subsequent owner. It paints a broad, though sketchy, picture of Kashaya history from just before the arrival of the Russians and Alutiit and carries it beyond as if to demonstrate the enduring nature of the Kashaya people in their homeland. Despite many comings and goings, the Kashaya remain. CONCLUDING REMARKS The series of nine stories paraphrased above give a rare vision of life in a Russian settlement as experienced by Native Californians and as related by their decendents. In an earlier paper (Farris 1989), I was able to demon- buried. Presumably it would have been in the cemetery strate the validity and accuracy of at least two stories told Household Identities 21 about Fort Ross, even to pinning down the event (the passing of a Hudson's Bay expedition). This would lend credence to the accuracy of other parts of the Kashaya oral history. It is hoped that as we delve more deeply into the archival material related to Fort Ross, we may find additional corroboration of some of the events portrayed, particularly the deaths, and perhaps the whippings. It may even be possible to ferret out the names of the individuals featured in these stories. The point of the exercise is to deepen our knowledge of the everyday lives of the people living in this settlement. This will supple- ment the move towards expanding our archaeological search beyond the walls of the Stockade and see "Fort" Ross as it really was, a village of many cultures learning to live together. REFERENCES Atherton, Gertrude 1893 The Romance of Fort Ross. The Californian Illustrated Magazine, December 1893, pp. 57-62. 1894 Natalie Ivanhoff: A Memory of Fort Ross. In Before the Gringo Came. J. Selwin Tait & Sons, New York. Bancroft, Hubert Howe 1886 History of Califomia, vol. m, 1825-40. In The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. XX. The History Company, San Francisco. Farris, Glenn J. 1988 A French Visitor's Description of the Fort Ross Rancheria in 1839. Newsjfrom Native California 2(3):22-3. 1989 Recognizing Indian Folk History as Real History: A Fort Ross Example. American Indian Quarterly 13(4):471-80. Fedorova, Svetlana Gr. 1975 Ethnic Processes in Russian America. Translated by Antoinette Shalkop. Occasional Paper, no. 1. Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum. Gibson, James 1969 Russia in California, 1833: Report of Govemor Wrangel. Pacific Northwest Quarterly 60(4):205-15. Istomin, Alexei 1992 The Indians at the Ross Settlement according to the Census by Kuskov in 1820 and 1821. Fort Ross Interpre- tive Association. Jackson, Robert H. 1983 Intermarriage at Fort Ross: Evidence from the San Rafael Mission Baptismal Register. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 5(1 &2):240-41. Kalifomsky, Peter 1991 A Dena'ina Legacy, K'Tl'egh'i Sukdu: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky. Alaska Native Language Center. University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Kari, James 1983 Kalifomsky, the Californian from Cook Inlet. Alaska in Perspective 5(1):1-10. Kostromitinov, Peter 1839 Bemerkungen uber die Indianer in Ober-Kalifomien. In Beitrage zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches und der angranzenden Lander Asiens, edited by K. E. v. Baer and Gr. v. Helmersen, pp. 80-96. Saint Petersburg, Russia. LaPlace, Cyrille 1854 Campagne de Circumnavigation de la Frigate l'Artemise pendant les annees 1837, 1838, 1839, et 1840 sous le commandement de M. LaPlace, capitaine de vaisseau, vol. 6. Firmin Didot Freres, Paris. Lightfoot, Kent G., Thomas A. Wake, and Ann M. Schiff 1991 The Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Fort Ross, California, Vol. 1: Introduction. Contributions of the University of California Archaeological Research Facility no. 49, Berkeley. Lutke, Fedor 1989 September 4-28, 1818. From the Diary of Fedor P. Lutke during his Circumnavigation Aboard the Sloop Kamchatka, 1817-1819: Observations on California. In The Russian American Colonies, Three Centuries of Russian Eastward Expansion 1798-1867, vol.3. A Documentary Record, edited and translated by Basil Dmytryshyn, E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan, and Thomas Vaughan, pp. 257-85. Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland. Nikolai, Bishop 1897 Trip to Fort Ross. Orthodox Russian Messenger, March 2/14, 1897. English translation by Waldemar Aktsinov. Ms. on file at Fort Ross Visitor's Center. Oswalt, Robert 1964 Kashaya Texts. University of California Publica- tions in Linguistics, no. 36. 1988 History through the words brought to California by the Fort Ross Colony. Newsfrom Native California 2(3):20-2. Payeras, Mariano 1822 Diario de su Caminata con el Comisario del Imperio, Noticias sobre Ross, 1822. Ms. at Bancroft Library, Berkeley. SBMA-San Rafael Marriages n.d. Marriage Register of the Mission San Rafael Arcangel. Copy at Santa Barbara Mission Archives, Santa Barbara. Smilie, Robert S. 1975 The Sonoma Mission, San Francisco Solano de Sonoma. Fresno: Valley Publishers. 22 The Native Alaskan Neighborhood von Wrangel, Ferdinand P. 1839 Statische und etnographische Nachrichten uber die Russischen Besitzungen an der Nordwestkuste von Amerika. In Beitrage zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches und derAngranzenden Lander Asiens. Edited by K. E. v. Baer and Gr. v. Helmersen, pp. 66-79. Saint Petersburg, Russia.