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

The Influence of the Kenai Mission after 1867

Jacobsen's visit occurred just before the Alaska Commercial Company closed the Yalik store and the Russian Orthodox Church resumed its customary practice of visiting Native parishes. Following the death of Abbot Nicholas in 1867, Makar Ivanov had temporarily assumed the responsibilities of the Kenai Mission. Of both Russian and Native descent and trained in Nushagak, Makar Ivanov managed the church in Ninilchik and Tyonek as well as Kenai. [38] Devoted to the mission until his death in 1878, Makar Ivanov probably did not travel to the outer coast. In the interim, these villages may have turned to Alexandrovsk for services and to keep in contact with news from Kenai. In 1880, residents at Nuchek, the farthest point east on the coast in the Kenai Mission, had not seen a traveling priest in nine years. [39] Despite the lack of clergy, local communities in the region continued to gather once a year with the hope that a priest would appear. By 1881 Heiromonk Nikita had officially acquired the duties of the Mission. That year he re-established the practice of regular visitation to outlying villages. [40]

Although the new heiromonk resumed travel and contact to villages, his travel log refers to trips only as far south as Alexandrovsk. Acutely aware that the cost of travel prohibited a more extensive itinerary, the Heiromonk criticized the lack of funding and the effect it had on his actions.

I think the Alaska Ecclesiastical Consistory was unjust in cutting down the travel expenses of the Kenai missionary from $100 to $50, the more so that even $100 was far from being enough for that purpose.... I, being a monk and consequently a single man, willingly sacrificed my own salary without care or thought of the future, but for a married missionary it will be very difficult. [41]

Heiromonk Nikita's travel journal entries documented a period of decline on the Kenai. He wrote of disease, a series of natural disasters, and the collapse of higher fur prices; all of these events were concerns of the church, inasmuch as they affected the livelihood of its parishioners. Dismayed by what he observed, Heiromonk Nikita reported in 1885 that

There is so much poverty and need in the mission. In each village one may always see deformed, destitute people, blind, lame, cripples, walking and creeping on the ground, practically naked, in ragged shirts.... [42]

In a report dated May 28, 1884, the Heiromonk described an influenza epidemic which claimed the lives of nearly all the children two years old and under in Kenai, Ninilchik, Seldovia, and Alexandrovsk. This tragedy occurred at approximately the same time as the eruption of Mount Augustine, known locally as Chernabura Volcano. [43] The ensuing tidal wave flooded the village of English Bay, causing the residents to flee to higher ground. William Dall described the destruction caused by the volcano.

The eruption referred to was accompanied by tidal waves and vast clouds of ashes, which were wafted to a great distance. On the west side of the inlet hundreds of square miles of spruce forest was killed by the load of wet ashes, which descended on this occasion. [44]

All of these factors, as well as a Russian Orthodox Church effort to consolidate Native villages and cut travel costs, may have led to the relocation of residents from Yalik and other outer coastal villages. In 1880, the U.S. Census Bureau contracted the first government census of the new territory and hired Ivan Petroff to travel throughout the villages of the Kenai Peninsula. Enumeration of villages for the outer coast was limited. In total, Petroff included eleven villages on the Kenai Peninsula in the census report. He specifically identified the eastern coast of the peninsula as a separate area and included the village of Yalik. Petroff recorded a population of thirty-two Natives, with no resident creole or white inhabitants. [45]

Several sources have indicated that within the next ten years, Yalik residents had moved from their village. [46] Frank Lowell, who was the 1890 Census's special agent assigned to the Kenai Peninsula, noted in his travel log that English Bay was the southernmost village on the peninsula that he visited. [47] In the census report, Porter stated the following.

Ten years ago a settlement of Chagachigmiut existed in Ayalik bay, a few miles west of Blying sound [the mouth of Resurrection Bay], but upon the advice of a monk in charge of the Russian mission on Cook inlet they migrated to the settlement of Alexandrovsk, on English Bay, beyond Cape Elizabeth. [48]

Many unanswered questions surround this possible confusion between the village of Yalik on Nuka Bay listed in the 1880 census and an unnamed village in Aialik Bay. [49] Archeological evidence and oral tradition support the existence of a village or settlement in Aialik Bay at some time in the last century; Porter, however, probably misspelled the name Yalik or a variant of Akhmylik into a word that closely resembled Aialik. The confused geography could also be explained through Porter's (or Lowell's) unfamiliarity with the coast.