The history of slavery in Alaska differs from that of the other states that comprise the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Whereas the contiguous United States mostly saw enslavement of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

ns originating from across the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

, in

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

indigenous people, and some

whites White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view. Description of populations as ...

, enslaved indigenous people from other tribes. The Haida and

Tlingit The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),

tribes held slaves.

"In re SAH QUAH." District Court, D. Alaska. May 8, 1886. 31 F. 327 Judge Dawson, holding; "The life of the slave is entirely at the disposal of his master or his mistress, and it has been customary among them to kill one or more slaves on the death of a master, or on the happening of some other event, such as the completion of a new house. Boring the ears, or putting out an eye, of a slave, or some other mode of marking the flesh, has been and is now a custom with some of the families of these people. The evidence shows that the object of such mutilation is to impress upon the slaves their inferiority, and render their humiliation complete; that they are believers in witchcraft, and that, when a spirit of insubordination becomes manifest on the part of the slaves, the juggler is called upon, and that he, by exorcisms and magical incantations, pretends to drive out the rebellious spirits, and the slaves are compelled to submit."

Russian colonists in Alaska came from a society with traditions of

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

(as in Siberia) as well as of

serfdom Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which deve ...

. The

Russian-American Company The Russian-American Company Under the High Patronage of His Imperial Majesty (russian: Под высочайшим Его Императорского Величества покровительством Российская-Американс� ...

, which effectively controlled Russian interests in the northern Pacific coasts of North America, had the right to employ serfs. In

Russian Alaska Russian America (russian: Русская Америка, Russkaya Amerika) was the name for the Russian Empire's colonial possessions in North America from 1799 to 1867. It consisted mostly of present-day Alaska in the United States, but a ...

, the ''

promyshlenniki The ''promyshlenniki'' (russian: промышленники, singular form: russian: промышленник, translit=promyshlennik), were Russian and indigenous Siberian artel- or self-employed workers drawn largely from the state serf and ...

'' forced

Aleut The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the ...

and

Alutiiq The Alutiiq people (pronounced in English; from Promyshlenniki Russian Алеутъ, "Aleut"; plural often "Alutiit"), also called by their ancestral name ( or ; plural often "Sugpiat"), as well as Pacific Eskimo or Pacific Yupik, are a so ...

men to hunt sea otters as part of the maritime fur trade, taking their women and children hostage. Formally, the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

abolished serfdom with the Emancipation reform of 1861. The

Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representative ...

which took effect on December 18, 1865, abolished slavery within the United States of America. When the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, slavery also became illegal in Alaska. In 1903 there were still documented cases of slavery in the

District of Alaska The District of Alaska was the federal government’s designation for Alaska from May 17, 1884 to August 24, 1912, when it became Alaska Territory. Previously (1867–1884) it had been known as the Department of Alaska, a military designation ...

. Wealthy families could purchase Aleutian girls to do housework, and often prohibited them from participating in child play or from becoming educated. These girls tended to come from the Atta Islands.Girl Slaves in Alaska; Principal of Territorial Schools Tells of Traffic.
''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' December 19, 1903 From 1911 until the passage of the Fur Seal Act in 1966, the inhabitants of the

Pribilof Islands The Pribilof Islands (formerly the Northern Fur Seal Islands; ale, Amiq, russian: Острова Прибылова, Ostrova Pribylova) are a group of four volcanic islands off the coast of mainland Alaska, in the Bering Sea, about north ...

were governed directly by employees of the United States federal government, under conditions which the '' Tundra Times'' described in 1964 as slavery "in milder form perhaps than existed in the Deep South, but slavery nonetheless"; these conditions included being paid for their labor in food rather than in money (until 1950), being forcibly resettled, being denied suffrage, being denied

freedom of assembly Freedom of peaceful assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right or ability of people to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue, and defend their collective or shared ide ...

, and being denied freedom of movement.SLAVES of the fur seal HARVEST
from the ''Cascadia Times''; published Winter 2005; page 18-19. In 1924 the passage of the

Indian Citizenship Act The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, (, enacted June 2, 1924) was an Act of the United States Congress that granted US citizenship to the indigenous peoples of the United States. While the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitutio ...

granted Native Americans full rights of citizenship.

References

{{Authority control Native American history of Alaska Pre-statehood history of Alaska

See also

References