Kenai Fjords A Stern and Rock-Bound Coast: Historic Resource Study

The Kenai Russian Orthodox Mission

The establishment of a Russian Orthodox mission in Kenai included in its district villages along the outer Kenai Coast and Prince William Sound as well as part of the Alaska Peninsula. Originally part of the Kodiak Mission, the Kenai Mission was founded in 1844. The mission served 150 miles of coastline; the villages of English Bay, Seldovia, and Nuchek were the closest to the outer Kenai coast. Bishop Innokenty, in 1842, noted that:

In accordance with article 11 of the Ukase of the Holy Synod of January 10, 1841, I intend to separate several villages and settlements from the Kodiak parish, to organize a new mission at Kenai Bay at the first opportunity and to use all means available for the accomplishment of this plan as soon as possible. [96]

Golovin observed that in 1846, 133 women and 178 men joined the Kenai Mission. [97]

The church formed the new mission to enable priests to travel to outlying villages; under the old arrangement, trips from Kodiak to the Kenai Peninsula proved increasingly treacherous as priests tried to reach as many villages as possible. As was customary, Russian priests regularly traveled in open skinboats accompanied by a song leader and other lay clergy. In 1856 Abbot [Father] Igumen Nicholas, the priest in residence at Kenai from 1845 to 1867, reported that the during one of the trips to the Chugach villages and to Nuchek Redoubt ‘to fulfill the needs of the church for the benefit of all the Christians living here,' the baidarkas overturned and all the supplies were lost. [98] It may have been several years before Abbot Nicholas returned to Nuchek with new supplies.

Although it is known that Russian priests frequently traveled between the chapels and forts at Alexandrovsk and Nuchek, it is not known how extensively they documented visits to smaller villages along the coast. Kenai, a prominent settlement in Russian America, provided a center for the mission documents and records pertaining to the church and its domain. However, a review of a portion of Russian Orthodox Church records from the period provided limited descriptions of Native villages along the outer coast. [99] Most of the larger villages later had small chapels and lay readers of their own to administer services. Trips to villages occurred on a rotating basis; the Kenai mission's lone priest traveled to opposite corners of the mission in alternate years.

Traveling Russian Orthodox priests arrived in villages prepared to perform baptisms, marriages, and often to intervene as a third party mediator in local domestic and business disputes. Church services consumed the majority of time. Acting on behalf of the Russian-American Company and other local interests, priests also assumed the responsibility of village doctor administering vaccinations as a precaution against future epidemics. [100]

Between 1858 and 1860 Abbot Nicholas visited Akhmylik, a Chugach village located between Seldovia and Nuchek. [101] Akhmylik, a possible variation of the name Yalik, corresponded to a village once located in Yalik Bay. On one trip the priest recorded a weeklong stay in Akhmylik village, providing incidental information on the population as well as giving the impression that additional villages existed close by.

May 22. We came to the Chugach village of Akhmylik. The same day I sent a message to the neighboring settlements, calling the people for prayers, confessions and communion. Giving them two days for fasting, I held services, preached sermons, received confessions, and May 25 gave Holy Communion to forty-eight people. After that I baptized the babies, celebrated one marriage, held requiem service for the dead, investigated the quarrels among the Chugaches, and officiated as peacemaker. On May 29 I sailed farther.... [102]

Prior to arriving in Akhmylik, Abbot Nicholas stopped at the mouth of Kachemak Bay to administer services at the Russian coal mining camp. The decision to exploit the coal deposits opposite Port Graham, as originally noted by Portlock and Dixon in the 1770s, and then later by Doroshin, roughly coincided with the establishment of the Kenai Mission. Though these were unrelated events, both brought increased trade activity and Russian influence to the outer coast.

The Kenai Mission remained a permanent institution in Kenaitze, Chugach, and Dena'ina villages after American acquisition of the territory. Its existence increased the independence of village chapels and called for the consolidation of remote villages.