Timofei Nikitich Tarakanov

Timofei Nikitich Tarakanov (c. 1774 – after 1834[1]), also written Timofey Tarakanov, was born into serfdom in Kursk, Russia.[2] His owner, Nikanor Ivanovich Pereverzev, sold him to the Russian-American Company (RAC) shortly after the company was created in 1799. He worked for the RAC in western North America and Hawaii from about 1800 to 1819.[2] Tarakanov played an important role in the expansion of Russian operations south from Russian Alaska into Spanish California, usually as hunting party leader of indigenous sea otter hunters, mostly Aleut and Alutiiq people working for the RAC. This task often involved US maritime fur trade merchant ships transporting the hunting parties and their kayaks as far south as Baja California. Tarakanov played a key role in the founding of Fort Ross, California, and helped build and run Fort Elizabeth on Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. He was granted manumission from serfdom and returned to his home near Kursk in 1819.[3]

Very little is known about his early life. He was born into serfdom around 1774.[4] Tarakanov probably became a serf-employee of the Russian-American Company (RAC) around 1800 or 1801. How he traveled from Kursk to Alaska is not known. He probably went to Kodiak on Kodiak Island, the capital of Russian America at the time. RAC records identify him as a promyshlennik, a term that came from the Siberian fur trade and which the RAC used for employees that were lower class Russians, sometimes Alaskan Creole people of mixed Russian and indigenous ancestry.[3]

  1. ^ "Timofei Tarakanov". National Park Service. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
  2. ^ a b Zorin, Alexander (2012). "About Timofei Tarakanov: Revealing the Documents of the State Archive of Kursk Region". In Kidd, John Dusty (ed.). Over the near horizon : proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on Russian America. Sitka: Sitka Historical Society. pp. 41–46. ISBN 9780615704197.
  3. ^ a b Owens, Kenneth N. (September 2006). "Frontiersman for the Tsar: Timofei Tarakanov and the Expansion of Russian America". Montana: The Magazine of Western History. 56 (3). Montana Historical Society: 3–21, 93–94. ISSN 0026-9891. JSTOR 4520817. Retrieved 11 November 2023.
  4. ^ Bainbridge, David (2020). Fur War 1765 - 1840; Volume 2: Tenacity - Remarkable people of the Fur War. Rio Redondo Press. p. 99. Retrieved 22 April 2024.