Writing the Journey: June 1999 | Department of English

"A Tomb of One's Own: The Female Gothic and Sarah Rogers Haight's Night in the Necropolis"

John Ehrhardt
Southern Illinois University
ehrhardt@siu.edu

It is widely known that among the most prominent features of much eighteenth-century European writing concerning the Americas are the tendencies to marvel at, inquire into, and categorize all manner of animate and inanimate "exotica" and to reflect on European civilization through the construction of the unenlightened but noble "savage." One might legitimately ask, however, to what extent the travel accounts of eighteenth century explorers from the fringes of Europe (Russia and Britain, for example) describing the fringe of the Americas (Alaska) confirm the aforementioned tendencies. My paper "North to Alaska: Comparisons Between Russian and British Descriptions of Native Alaskans and Alaska in the Latter Half of the Eighteenth Century" carefully compares the languages of Russian and British travel writing in Alaska with an eye toward understanding the extent to which Enlightenment discourse, commerce, and contact with Native Alaskans converged to impact Russian and British travelers' awareness of their own respective cultural identities and of global cultural diversity.

On the Russian side, I examine the writings of the Russian participants in the Bering expedition's investigation of the Aleutian Islands (174142); the journals of explorers Petr Krenitsyn and Mikhail Levashov (1768-69); the journal of Grigorii Shelikhov, the Russian merchant who established the first white settlement on Kodiak Island in 1784; and the journal of Gavriil Sarychev, who explored Alaska's southern coast in 1791 as part of the Billings-Sarychev expedition. On the British side, I analyze the journals of James Cook and William Ellis (1776-1780); the journals of George Vancouver and John Sykes of the Discovery (1791-95); and, most interestingly, the journal of Martin Sauer, an Englishman who served alongside Sarychev as Joseph Billings' secretary during Billings' command of the Russian vessel Slava Rossll. I have found that both Russian and British descriptions of Alaska and Native Alaskans in the second half of the eighteenth century fail to live up to present day expectations. Russian explorers in Alaska through the 1770s, oblivious to Western ideas concerning savagery and civilization, rarely found anything shocking, bizarre, or even interesting about Alaska and Native Alaskans. Alaska and its people were simply a source of furs, and the Russians had seen similar things in Siberia for centuries. By the 178Os, however, Enlightenment discourse had arrived in Russian Alaska with better educated Russians. Native Alaskans, once simply "foreigners" in Russian eyes, became the "savage" antithesis of Russian "civilization." But, although the newly "enlightened" Russians wished to pass the supposed benefits of Russianness to native Alaskans, they rarely found anything exciting or noble about them. British explorers, in their turn, arrived in Alaska with James Cook's third expedition of 1776-1780. While Cook and other British explorers who came to Alaska after him were clearly more interested in and sympathetic to native Alaskans than the Russians, British explorers' descriptions of Alaska and its natives lack the wonder, excitement, and vivid detail of their descriptions of more southerly locales, particularly the Eden-like isles of the South Pacific. The British noted the barbaric treatment given the "pleasant" Alaskans by the "rude" Russians, but, as was the case with the Russians, the British found no paradise in Alaska. I contend that the Russians went to Alaska hoping to get rich, not hoping to fmd a New World paradise unjaded by the burdens of history. The Russian nation, the Brandenburg Ambassador to Moscow told the brilliant scientist Leibniz, "is totally incapable of searching for curiosities because it does not apply itself to anything that does not smell of money and does not appear to be of obvious practical use." The British were more open to the cultural and scientific discoveries to be found in Alaska, but the harsh conditions of the north and the simple tribal societies of coastal Alaska had little to hold their enthusiasm. My comparison between Russian and British accounts of travel in Alaska sheds light on how motives, prior experience, and expectations shaped the "enlightened" European opinion of Alaska in the eighteenth century.

John Ehrhardt
Southern Illinois University
ehrhardt@siu.edu

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Updated May 23, 1999