Alaska's History, Revised Edition. Harry Ritter

      St. Michael’s Cathedral, Sitka. LaRoche photo, late 1800s.

      Near the Sitka waterfront stand two wooden structures that powerfully recall Alaska’s Russian heritage: the Russian Bishop’s House, completed in 1842, and the onion-domed St. Michael’s Cathedral, first dedicated in 1848. Both are products of a man whose work as a religious leader, craftsman, and scholar has been as enduring as the buildings themselves: Father Ivan Veniaminov.

      Veniaminov was born in Siberia in 1797, the son of a church caretaker. Young Ivan attended the Russian Orthodox seminary in Irkutsk, where he was not only the outstanding scholar of his class but displayed a restless interest in mechanical crafts. From a local artisan he learned the art of clock making. (Later, as Bishop of Alaska, he built the belfry clock of St. Michael’s.) In 1821 the young priest was ordained and, three years later, he traveled with his wife, son, and elderly mother as a missionary to the east Aleutian Island of Unalaska.

      Tall and athletic, Veniaminov had the practical genius of a Benjamin Franklin. He immediately established a sympathetic rapport with his Native parishioners. Using his craftsman’s skills, the artisan priest set to work on his own house, furniture, and a church. In the process he taught woodworking, blacksmithing, and brickmaking to Native apprentices. An amateur scientist, he compiled observations on local plant and animal life, the weather, and tides.

      Unlike some later American missionaries who tried to suppress Native dialects and customs, Veniaminov respected local traditions—at least when they did not directly contradict Orthodox teachings—and taught that Natives must receive Christian doctrine in their own tongue. A gifted linguist, Father Veniaminov preached in Aleut, prepared (with the help of Aleut headman Ivan Pan’kov) an Aleut dictionary, grammar, and primer, and laid the foundations of literacy among the Aleut people.

      In 1834 he moved to Sitka, where he did similar work among the Tlingit people, winning their trust by inoculating them against a smallpox epidemic in 1836. Among his greatest achievements was his Notes on the Islands of Unalaska District, a treasure of information on the early Aleut and Tlingit cultures. A tireless traveler, in 1838 he journeyed to California’s Fort Ross and San Francisco Bay to inspect Church affairs and Catholic missions.