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HomeMy WebLinkAboutHistory of KenaiHi~tory of Kenai The History of Kenai The history of Kenai is much more than just a list of dates and places. The word history itself denotes the stories of the people, their thinking, their view of the world as it existed at a certain time period. For the Kenai area, there appears to be three major historical themes that influenced the way of life in this particular area of Alaska: First, was the arrival of the Dena'ina, an Athabaskan culture that moved onto the central peninsula approximately 1000 A.D.. Nearl7 800 years later, a group of Russian hunters under the auspices of the Lebedev-Lastochkin Company established a fur-trading post in 1791. And the third event that was to reshape the history of Kenai was the discovery of oil in 1957. Even though the Dena'ina language was not transcribed until 1970, archaeological evidence gives us clues as to what the way of life was like during the last 1000 years of native occupation. The Dena'ina, or "The People", were a fishing and hunting subsistence culture with their own well- developed systems of social structure, religion, technology, and politics. The q eshqa, or hunting chief, was the central figure for food collection and distribution in each clan. In order to redistribute the wealth evenly, it was the responsibility of the qeshqa to provide a leveling to benefit the needy. Thus the potlatch system evolved as an important facet of the social structure. As a moral order society, the Dena'ina had agreed upon standards of behavior based upon informal face-to face relations and rituals. As hunters and fishers their lives revolved around the hunting, fishing, and gathering seasons. The Dena'ina were mainly central-based wanderers who would temporarily leave their village sites in search of fish, game, or edible roots and berries, and then return. In Dena'ina cosmology, or their view of the universe, many folklore stories helped to explain wh7 things were the way they were. By incorporating their mythology, in the time.period when animals could talk,, the Dena'ina were able to reinforce values i~t their society, maintain certaitt attitudes, and focus upon certain mode~ of thinking. In 1791, however, the Dena'ina culture was to be influenced by a force ~O great that it would never be the same again. What took hundreds of years tO develop was suddenly altered' by. the first group of Russian fur hunters t. Iio ~ailed their ship "St. George Tile Victorious" to the mouth of the Kenai l~iver, a~chored, and established Fort St. Nicholas on the bluff. (Today, the gussi~i~ Orthodox Chapel sits on i, hat used to be the northwest corner of the It was during this time period that the Russians first began referred to the Dena'ina ~ "Kenaitze". Thi~ name may' have been derived from the Chugach Alutiiq name for the Dena'ina, "Kenaiuit". Or it may have stemmed from the Dena'ina word "ken" which means "area of Hat ground", referring to the topography around the present-day city of K enai. At first the Dena'ina, whose village "Shk'ituk't" was a quarter mile upriver, willingly traded sea ot~er pelt~ with ~e Russiar~, but soon u'ouble arose mainly due to the violent threats of Grigor Konovolov, the manager of the Kenai pos~ After m~y raids by the Lebedev Company in which the Dena'ina men were beaten and the women tortured and raped, an uprising occurred when the Russiam gathered nine native men and shot them tt~rough the head with a single shot. In reprisal, the Dena'ina fought back, attacked the fort, and 100 people were killed. Just ~ the moment when t. he natives were about to set fire to Fort St. Nicholas, some fur hunters from Alexander Baranov's post came to their rescue. The B an:le of Kenai ended the Lebedev rule, but marked the beginning of the Baranov/Shelikhov Russian-American Company's claim on the m'dtorT. It was not until 1845 that the first resident priest, Father Igumen Nicholai Militov, came to Kenai. By the time he arrived the deva~t~g effects of smallpox and influenza had already ravaged the native population. Prior to ~e Russian occup~ion, ~e n~ve people had never been exposed to these two European diseases. Once estimated at 3000, the population had now been cut in half. Father Nicholai ordered vaccine from St. Petersburg and as soon as it arrived, he designated Markary Ivanov to inoculate the survivors. It took over two years for Markary Ivanov to travel on foot to the villages, but he completed his mi~ion. But ~'t~pox had already taken it~ toll; in the 1880 census, the village of Kenai numbered only 44. After World War II, homesteading families arrived in Kenai to claim land. And in 1957, oil was discovered at Swanson River. Two years later, Al~ka became the 49t~h Sta~e. Thus began the economic surge tha~ continue~ to keep K enai and its surrounding area in a pattern of steady grow~. Today, the City of Kenai is formally incorporated, boasts several schools, the major airport on the peninsula, the borough courthouse, the l~rgest librar7, and numerous business.