The Last Stand of the Raven Clan: A Story of Imperial Ambition, Native Resistance, and How the Tlingit-Russian War Shaped a Continent

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.)