Part 2: A secret agent arrives in America’s muddy northern frontier outpost.
A print of Sitka in 1868, from Emil Teichmann’s published diary, shows the log palisade with cannons aimed at the Tlingit village to the left.
Teichmann’s employer, the London fur merchants Oppenheim and Co., had a longstanding contract with the Russian America Company to buy their Alaska furs. They had sent Teichmann undercover to the new American colony to find out what happened to the previous year’s shipment, the harvest prior to the sale of the Russian company’s assets. On his way north, he learned a shipment of furs had been delivered to a rival company in San Francisco.
Up close, the American outpost was less impressive. A few major structures were built from sawmill boards or nicely dovetailed logs, crafted by imported Finnish laborers — but most were simple round-log buildings. Everything was starting to rot. For two weeks, as it rained steadily, Teichmann negotiated the muddy main street over mossy planks.
That left Sitka’s destiny in the hands of a circle of investors and promoters who had rushed north to cut deals with the departing Russian officials. Foremost among these visionaries was William S. Dodge, Sitka’s first mayor and Alaska’s first elected politician.
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