Awa'uq Massacre


The Awa'uq Massacre or Refuge Rock Massacre, or, more recently, as the Wounded Knee of Alaska, was an attack and massacre of Koniag Alutiiq people in April 1784 at Refuge Rock near Kodiak Island by Russian fur trader Grigory Shelekhov and 130 armed Russian men and cannoneers of his Shelikhov-Golikov Company.

Massacre

Since 1775 Shelekhov had been trading with Alaska Natives in the Kuril and Aleutian islands of present-day Alaska. In April 1784 he returned to found a settlement on Kodiak Island and the coast of the mainland. The people occupying the area initially resisted, and fled to the secluded stack island Refuge Rock of Partition Cove on Sitkalidak Island. It was across Old Harbor in the Kodiak Archipelago.
The Russian promyshlennikis attacked the people on the island by shooting guns and cannons, slaughtering an estimated 200 to 500 men, women and children on Refuge Rock. Some sources state the number killed was as many as 2,000, or 3,000 persons. Following the attack of Awa'uq, Shelikhov claimed to have captured over 1,000 people, detaining some 400 as hostages, including children. The Russians suffered no casualties.
This massacre was an isolated incident, but the violence and taking of hostages resulted in the Alutiiq becoming completely subjugated by Russian traders thereafter. Qaspeq, was an Alutiiq who had been taken as a child as a hostage from Kodiak; he was raised in servitude by the Russians in the Aleutians. Having learned Russian, he became an interpreter for them with the Alutiiq. Qaspeq had once betrayed the location of a refuge island just offshore of Unalaska Island.
More than five decades after the massacre, Arsenti Aminak, an old Sugpiaq man who had survived the massacre, reported his account of these events to Henrik Johan Holmberg Holmberg was collecting data for the Russian governor of Alaska.
Aminak said:

Aftermath

The years 1784–1818 were called the "darkest period of Sugpiaq history," as the Russians treated the people badly. They also suffered high mortality from infectious diseases unwittingly introduced by the Russians. In 1818 there was a change in the management of what was then known as the Russian-American Company, referring to Russians operating in North America.
yearAleutian Islands
Kodiak Island, Cook Inlet,
Prince William Sound
Kodiak Island only
Cook Inlet,
Prince William Sound only
1741
8,000
1784
10,000
1791
6,000
6,510
599
1804
4,850
1806
1,898
1813
1,508
1817
4,098
2,544
1821
1.700
1834
2,000

In 1827 collection of yasak tax was banned by Catherine the Great.
1797-1821Average/yr
1797-1821		1821-1842Average/yr
1821-1842
Sea otters72,8942,91625,4161,210
Beavers34,5461,382162,0347,716
River otters14,96959929,4421,402
Fur seals1,232,37449,295458,50221,833
Foxes102,1344,08590,3224,301
Sables17,29869215,666746
Wolverines1,151461,56474
Lynx1,389564,253203
Minks4,80219215,481737
Polar foxes40,5961,62469,3523,302
Wolves121520110
Bears1,602645,355255
Sea lions271Ø0
Walrus tusks 1,616656,501310
Baleen 1,173473,455165

in 1889, with Oncorhynchus salmon hung up for drying