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Book Review
| The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741–1867. By Andrei Val'terovich Grinev. Translated by Richard L. Bland and Katerina G. Solovjova. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. xiv + 386 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, glossary, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00, £41.95.)
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Andrei Grinev's monograph, a substantial revision of his similarly titled Russian publication of 1991, is a welcome addition to the literature on Tlingit-European contact during the Russian colonial period in Alaska. There are three major sections: the Tlingit Indians before contact with Europeans; the history of Tlingit relations with Europeans in Russian America; and the influence of European contacts on Tlingit culture in Russian America, followed by the texts of thirty-eight documents from Russian archival collections and an extensive bibliography of works in Russian, German, and English. |
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Section one draws upon standard ethnographic works to summarize features of the traditional culture of the Tlingit, the principal Native people inhabiting what is now southeastern Alaska. It differs from the usual American summaries in that Grinev incorporates interpretations found in the Russian scholarly literature of the Soviet era. The author's Marxist training is most evident in his treatments of economic relations and social structure. |
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Section two presents a concise history of Tlingit international relations from 1741, when Russian mariner Chirikov lost a watering party in the heart of Tlingit territory, to 1867, when Russia sold its North American possessions to the United States. Grinev makes good use of primary sources to trace the development of Tlingit relations with Russians and the Russian-American Company, providing a more detailed account than is commonly found in the ethnohistorical literature. His discussion of Tlingit relations with British and American traders is less detailed, but sufficient to convey an idea of the complexity of the fur trade in the region. The author also incorporates information from the Tlingits' own traditional stories to provide glimpses of their attitudes toward the foreign interlopers and of the shifting alliances and rivalries among the various Tlingit tribes and clans as they adjusted to changes in the political and economic landscape. |
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Section three attempts to assess the impact of European, especially Russian, contact upon specific aspects of Tlingit culture. Here Grinev's interpretations range from the obvious to the insightful to, occasionally, the questionable. An example of the latter is his conclusion that a certain Tlingit leader was literate in Russian at a very early date when, based on the evidence cited, it seems more likely that the man was merely considered a trustworthy letter drop (p. 258). |
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Translators Bland and Solovjova are to be congratulated on a rendering that for the most part reads smoothly despite the complexity of the text. Still, there are minor errors ranging from the annoying to the comical (e.g. HBC factor John Work becomes J. York, pp. 195, 218; St. Andrew the First-called becomes St. Andrew the Primordial, p. 327). More serious is the repeated mistranslation of the word sitkintsy (Sitkans) as Stikines (pp. 177, 182, 184, 213, 225, 226), which muddles Grinev's discussion of conflict between those two groups. |
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Such problems aside, the book provides a good overview of Russian-Tlingit relations and suggests many topics for further research. One can only hope that those who take up the challenge will be as diligent as Grinev in delving into the primary Russian source material. |
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| Katherine L. Arndt
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Elmer E. Rasmuson Library,
University of Alaska Fairbanks |
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ISSN 1939-8603
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