The last stand of the Raven Clan A story of imperial ambition, native resistance and how the Tlingit-Russian War shaped a continent

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Imperial Russia explored the coasts of Alaska, founded a few small colonies, nearly hunted sea otters to extinction in their efforts to corner the fur market, and tried to dominate Native Alaskans. The project was short-lived, however, due to Russia's overreach, poor seamanship, a dearth of settlers, the remoteness of the location, and, in great part, the fierce resistance of the Tlingit tribes. Easter and Vorhees examine the territory's geography, Indigenous identity and society, the interplay of great-power politics, and various battles, sieges, and atrocities with great care. This is a detailed and immersive history of a little-known chapter in the colonizing of the Americas by Europeans and Russia's attempts to get a foothold, with an important emphasis on Indigenous campaigns to thwart violent encroachments. Easter and Vorhees also explore the efforts of Tlingit tribes to preserve their stories and artifacts, reaching to the present. Drawing on contemporaneous accounts and Tlingit oral histories, The Last Stand of the Raven Clan adds a key facet to Northern Pacific and American history.

Indigenous resistance in Alaska was so fierce that it thwarted the Russian empire's colonial ambitions in North America, profoundly impacting the continent's destiny, according to this gripping and ambitious account from historian Easter and travel writer Vorhees (coauthors of The Tsarina's Lost Treasure). Drawing on oral histories of Native Alaskans, as well as Russian diaries and records, the authors recreate a little-known series of conflicts, from the 1784 Massacre at Refuge Rock, when Russian fur traders slaughtered around 300 Native people on Kodiak island (they had refused to allow the Russians to establish a permanent trading settlement after their first meeting was ominously interrupted by an eclipse), to the 1802 Tlingit uprising, when the Tlingit warrior K'alyáan led a surprise offensive that pushed the Russians out of Alaska for several years--an event the authors argue is on par with the accomplishments of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse that came nearly a century later. Easter and Vorhees lay out this vigorous history in novelistic prose that immerses the reader in turn of the 19th century life and combat. ("For the past few days, the Tlingit had been throwing logs into the river, which the current carried out to the bay.... K'alyáan's crew lay flat amid the logs and floated in the current, undetected by Arbuzov's men"). History buffs will be enthralled. (Nov.)

Russian imperialism is checked in an often surprising story of Native American resistance. Beginning in the 1600s and stretching out over the next two centuries, czarist Russia had strong designs on what Boston College historian Easter and travel writer Vorhees call "the northwestern flank of North America." Russia's early ambitions had mostly to do with the lucrative sea otter fur trade, though later, as Russian ships made their way south to California, czarist planners saw the promise of a breadbasket that could supply the people of less fertile Siberia. Those ambitions were stymied and finally halted by the Tlingit people, from their capital at Sitka, Alaska. These Indigenous groups mounted fierce resistance against would-be Russian settlers, some of whom were "drawn from the most depraved thieves and bandits in Irkutsk." Many of the Russians' leaders were of a higher caliber and character than all that, though they were not reluctant to visit atrocities on Indigenous people; in one engagement, many hundreds of Alutiiq and Aleuts died. By way of reply, however, the Tlingit coalition later killed 250 Russians in a localized campaign, a number "comparable to the number of dead cavalrymen at the iconic Battle of the Little Bighorn." It must have been with some relief that Russia sold Alaska off to the United States in 1867 "at two cents per acre." Easter and Vorhees skillfully relate the story of the Tlingit-Russian war to other events, asserting that the Monroe Doctrine was a response to Russian and not British expansionism and noting that the Russians also attempted to bring Hawaii into their empire, only to be thwarted by the intrigues of Yankee sailors. A capable narrative that sheds light on a little-known aspect of Native American history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.