bow the neck to Russian tyranny. Safe
in the mountain fastnesses behind the fort, they refused to act as
slaves. How they regarded this invasion of their hunting-ground by
alien Indians--Indians acting as slaves--may be guessed.[4] Whether
rival traders, deserters from an American ship, living with the Sitkan
Indians, instigated the conspiracy cannot be known. I have before me
letters written by a fur trader of a rival company at that time,
declaring if a certain trader did not cease his methods, that "pills
would be bought at Montreal with as good poison as pills from London;"
and the sentiment of the writer gives a true idea of the code that
prevailed among American fur traders.

The fort at that time occupied a narrow strip between a dense forest
and the rocky water front a few miles north of the present site.
Whether the renegade American sailors living in the forests with the
Kolosh betrayed all the inner plans of the fort, or the squaws daily
passing in and out with berries kept their {308} countrymen informed of
Russian movements, the blow was struck when the whites were off guard.
It was a holiday. Half the Russians were outside the palisades
unarmed, fishing. The remaining fifteen men seem to have been upstairs
about midday in the rooms of the commander, Medvednikoff. Suddenly the
sleepy sentry parading the balcony noticed Michael, chief of the
Kolosh, standing on the shore shouting at sixty canoes to land quickly.
Simultaneously the patter of moccasined feet came from the dense forest
to the rear--a thousand Kolosh warriors, every Indian armed and wearing
the death-mask of battle. Before the astounded sentry could sound an
alarm, such a hideous uproar of shouts arose as might have come from
bedlam let loose. The Indian always imitates the cries of the wild
beast when he fights--imitates or sets free the wild beast in his own
nature. For a moment the Russians were too dumfounded to collect their
senses. Then women and children dashed for refuge upstairs in the main
building, huddling over the trapdoor in a frenzy of fright. Russians
outside the palisades ran for the woods, some to fall lanced through
the back as they raced, others to reach shelter of the dense forest,
where they lay for eight days under hiding of bark and moss before
rescue came. Medvednikoff, the commander, and a dozen others, seem to
have hurled themselves downstairs at the first alarm, but already the
outer doors had been rammed