George Kennan's Kamchatka Expedition Part 1
Based on: Tent Life in Siberia by George Kennan
Since the 16th century, Russia has inserted itself into Siberia, invading its lands, subjugating its peoples and exploiting its natural resources. The Ermak expedition, that began either in 1581 or 1582, marked the beginning of imperial Russia’s movement east, as well as its unique interests within Siberia . Cossacks, peasants, and merchants all had something to gain from the exploration of Siberia, be it for personal glory or economic gain. Their settlement and the Russian influences they brought began to not only change the appearance of Siberia, but the ethnic demographics, as well as the beliefs and lifestyles of native Siberians. Explorers such as Vitus Bering, who discovered the Bering Strait, Gerhard Müller and Johann Gmelin who wrote about many of Siberia’s indigenous peoples and their living habits, and Georg Steller, who was one of the first European explorers in Kamchatka, were sent into Siberia to explore the region for a Tsar who wanted very much to be included in the Western European scientific development that was occurring at the time. It was these expeditions, as well as the Russian need to harness any economic benefit Siberia could offer, that led the way for the inception of the Western Union Telegraph Line that was to stretch from America to European Russia.
George Kennan (1845-1924), was born in Norwalk, Ohio. At the age of 12, he began working in his father's Western Union office. It was because of his work here that in 1864, when he was 18 years old, Kennan was offered a job as part of the Alaskan-Siberian expedition of the Western Union Telegraph Extension.
Kennan was accompanied on this expedition by Col. Chas S. Buckley, the former superintendent of military telegraphs in the Gulf of Mexico, Major S. Abaza, a Russian who was appointed head of troops in Siberia, James A. Mahood who had civil engineering experience, R. J. Bush, a former military man who had, until the beginning of the expedition been deployed in the Carolinas.
Kennan and his companions set sail on 1 July, 1865 from San Fransisco on the Olga, a Russian trading vessel whose captain had agreed to ferry them to Petropavlovsk, a settlement on the Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, near the mouth of the Amur River.
Image Source: Tent Life in Siberia by George Kennan
Chapters 1 and 2
The Introduction and first chapter of Kennan's Tent Life begin by detailing the origins of his expedition. The line was commissioned by the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1863, and its inception aimed to establish a telegraph line between Alaska and St. Petersburg. Along with Kennan's companions who were commissioned by Western Union, the Olga introduces personalities such the ship's captain, a "bluff Americanized German," and the Dutch second mate whose pronunciation of "Kennan" as "Kinney" and "potatoes" as "potatusses," a habit that establishes somewhat Kennan's attitudes toward those without mastery of the English language. The troop spends 52 days at sea between California and Kamchatka.
"Before us, stretching for a hundred and fifty miles to the north and south, lay the grand coast-line of Kamchatka... two active volcanoes, 10,000 and 16,000 feet in height, rose above the confused jagged ranges of the lower mountains..." (p.24)
Kennan is initially surprised by the immediate beauty of the Kamchatka peninsula, and mentions the volcanoes Avachinsky and Kozelsky
as well as the extinct volcano Villoochinsky.
and Avacha Bay, where the Olga makes port. It is also host to the Three Brothers, three large rocks at the mouth of the bay, which signal closeness to Petropavlovski, the first Russian village that Kennan sets foot in.
"Green grassy valleys stretched away from openings in the rocky coast until they were lost in the distant mountains; the rounded bluffs were covered with clumps of yellow birch and thickets of dark-green chaparral; patches of flowers could be seen on the warm sheltered slopes of the hills; and as we passed close under the lighthouse bluff, Bush shouted joyously, "Hurrah, there's clover!" "Clover!" exclaimed the captain contemptuously, "there ain't any clover in the Ar'tic Regions!" "How do you know, you've never been there," retorted Bush caustically; "it looks like clover, and"—looking through a glass—"it is clover"" (p. 26)
Both Kennan and the American members of the expedition note constantly that they are surprised by the beauty and variety that they find in Kamchatka, versus their initial expectation that it would be a land of emptiness and unpleasantness.
Kamchatka itself is the easternmost part of Siberia, a peninsula that lies between 51 and 62 degrees North latitude. It is almost entirely volcanic mountainous formation. Kennan and Major Abaza, as well as a young American fur trapper named Dodd who was to act as interpreter for Kennan on the journey, then travelled southward along the Kamchatka peninsula, where they encountered such places as the village Avacha.
Avacha Bay
"The vegetation everywhere was almost tropical in its rank luxuriance." (p.44)
Kennan notes certain types of flora and fauna he finds in Kamchatka repeatedly, such as birch forests
fields of rye,
alpine roses
and columbine
as well as blueberries, dwarf cranberries, and yellow cloudberries
and animals like reindeer
wild goats, or mountain goats
and black bears, an encounter with one of which Kennan recounts on page 83
" a large black bear rose silently out of the long grass at his very feet. The excitement, I can conscientiously affirm, was terrific. Viushin unslung his double-barrelled fowling-piece, and proceeded to pepper him with duck-shot; Dodd tugged at his revolver with frantic energy while his horse ran away with him over the plain; the Major dropped his bridle, and implored me by all I held sacred not to shoot him, while the horses plunged, kicked, and snorted in the most animated manner. The only calm and self-possessed individual in the whole party was the bear! He surveyed the situation coolly for a few seconds, and then started at an awkward gallop for the woods. In an instant our party recovered its conjoint presence of mind, and charged with the most reckless heroism upon his flying footsteps, shouting frantically to "stop him!" popping away in the most determined and unterrified manner with four revolvers and a shotgun, and performing prodigies of valour in the endeavour to capture the ferocious beast, without getting in his way or coming nearer to him than a hundred yards. All was in vain. The bear vanished in the forest like a flying shadow"
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"The population of the peninsula I estimate from careful observation at about 5000, and it is made up of three distinct classes—the Russians, the Kamchadals or settled natives, and the Wandering Koraks. The Kamchadals, who compose the most numerous class, are settled in little log villages throughout the peninsula, near the mouths of small rivers which rise in the central range of mountains and fall into the Okhotsk Sea or the Pacific. Their principal occupations are fishing, fur-trapping, and the cultivation of rye, turnips, cabbages, and potatoes, which grow thriftily as far north as lat. 58°. Their largest settlements are in the fertile valley of the Kamchatka River, between Petropavlovsk and Kluchei... The Russians, who are comparatively few in number, are scattered here and there among the Kamchadal villages, and are generally engaged in trading for furs with the Kamchadals and the nomadic tribes to the northward. The Wandering Koraks, who are the wildest, most powerful, and most independent natives in the peninsula, seldom come south of the 58th parallel of latitude, except for the purpose of trade. Their chosen haunts are the great desolate steppes lying east of Penzhinsk Gulf, where they wander constantly from place to place in solitary bands, living in large fur tents and depending for subsistence upon their vast herds of tamed and domesticated reindeer." (p.52-53)
At the time of Kennan's expedition, Russian settlers in Kamchatka were the least numerous demographic. In Petropavlovsk, he meets the more ethnic Russians than he would on the rest of his journey. He notes peasant men dressed in blue shirts and leather pants, all of whom received the expedition cordially and enthusiastically (p.43).
"The windows of the houses were crowded with heads intent upon getting a sight of the "Amerikanski chinóvniki" (American officers); and even the dogs broke into furious barks and howls at our approach" (p.38).
The most lengthy mention Kennan makes about the Russians in Petropavlovsk is his recount of a wedding that he was invited to witness by Dodd, the American interpreter hired to accompany him on the expedition.
"The unlucky (lucky?) man was a young, round-headed Cossack about twenty years of age, dressed in a dark frock-coat trimmed with scarlet and gathered like a lady's dress above the waist, which, with a reckless disregard for his anatomy, was assumed to be six inches below his armpits. In honour of the extraordinary occasion he had donned a great white standing collar which projected above his ears... The bride wore a dress of that peculiar sort of calico known as "furniture prints," without trimming or ornaments of any kind. Whether it was cut "bias" or with "gores," I'm sorry to say I do not know, dress-making being as much of an occult science to me as divination. Her hair was tightly bound up in a scarlet silk handkerchief, fastened in front with a little gilt button. As soon as the church service was concluded the altar was removed to the middle of the room, and the priest, donning a black silk gown which contrasted strangely with his heavy cowhide boots, summoned the couple before him."
In his description of the wedding, however, Kennan regards the experience with what reads as condescension, almost as though he is making fun of the participants and their traditions.
Kennan describes a meeting with the "Captain of the port," Captain Sutkovoi, the resident Russian authority in the region.
"I was surprised to see so many evidences of cultivated and refined taste in this remote corner of the world, where I had expected barely the absolute necessaries of life, or at best a few of the most common comforts. A large piano of Russian manufacture occupied one corner of the room, and a choice assortment of Russian, German, and American music testified to the musical taste of its owner. A few choice paintings and lithographs adorned the walls, and on the centre-table rested a stereoscope with a large collection of photographic views, and an unfinished game of chess, from which Captain and Madame Sutkovoi had risen at our entrance" (p. 33).
Kennan is also generally unforgiving toward the Russian language, stating "The Russian language is, I believe, without exception, the most difficult of all modern languages to learn..." and that it is "a complicated, contorted, mixed up, utterly incomprehensible language" (p.40, 41).
Other non-native populations that Kennan encounters in Kamchatka are German and American immigrants, mostly in the trade profession. Mr. Fluger, a German merchant, invites Kennan and his associates into his home, where Kennan states his surprise at finding relatively new Western literature, enforcing that he had believed that Siberia was far too remote to have contact with what he saw as the civilized world.
Kennan, in his journey from Petropavlovsk to Kloochay, makes contact with only one of the two groups of native peoples in Kamchatka, the Kamchandals. Upon his arrival in Okoota, he describes physically, if not with the anthropological detachment and fascination of a Westerner who has had little contact with people who do not look and believe like he does, what this group of people looked like.
"The inhabitants of these native settlements in southern Kamchatka are a dark swarthy race... The men average perhaps five feet three or four inches in height, have broad flat faces, prominent cheek bones, small and rather sunken eyes, no beards, long, lank, black hair, small hands and feet, very slender limbs, and a tendency to enlargement and protrusion of the abdomen. They are probably of central Asiatic origin, but they certainly have had no very recent connection with any other Siberian tribe with which I am acquainted..." (p.63-64)
"From the fact of their living a settled instead of a wandering life they were brought under Russian subjection much more easily than their nomadic neighbours, and have since experienced in a greater degree the civilising influences of Russian intercourse. They have adopted almost universally the religion, customs, and habits of their conquerors, and their own language, which is a very curious one, is already falling into disuse" (p. 64)
Like many other native peoples in Siberia, Russian subjugation of the region, brought by Russian settlers who would enforce Russian laws. By the 1800s, efforts to Christianize native Siberians, both by settlers and Russian Orthodox missionaries, had been met with relative success. In many of the Kamchandal villages Kennan visits he notes the presence of Orthodox churches in the middle of characteristically Kamchandal villages.
In every village, despite his regarding the Kamchandals as a relatively simple people, he takes time to note their hospitality and good nature toward him and his companions. Though they regard the explorers with some curiosity, never are they hostile or suspicious, and in every village someone opens their home to the party.
"It would be easy to describe their character by negatives. They are not independent, self-reliant, or of a combative disposition... they are not avaricious or dishonest, except where those traits are the results of Russian education; they are not suspicious or distrustful, but rather the contrary; and for generosity, hospitality, simple good faith, and easy, equable good-nature under all circumstances, I have never met their equals" (p. 64)
On their initial journey on the Avacha River on the way from Petropavlovsk to Okoota, Kennan recounts his impressions of their boat's crew, and here he also speaks about the Kamchandals with an air of superiority.
" Our native crew, sharing in the universal dissipation which had attended our departure, and wholly unaccustomed to such reckless drinking, were reduced by this time to a comical state of happy imbecility, in which they sang Kamchadal songs, blessed the Americans, and fell overboard alternately, without contributing in any marked degree to the successful navigation of our heavy whale-boat... It was considerably after noon when we left Petropavlovsk, and owing to the incompetency of our Kamchadal crew, and the frequency of sand-bars" (p. 57)
"As a race they are undoubtedly becoming extinct. Since 1780, they have diminished in numbers more than one half, and frequently recurring epidemics and famines will soon reduce them to a comparatively weak and unimportant tribe, which will finally be absorbed in the growing Russian population of the peninsula" (p.64)
In the years following his expedition, Kennan's prediction concerning the relative proportion of Kamchandals. as well as native Siberians in general, does decline due to an increase in Russian immigration, as well as forced relocation, into the region.
Kennan also notes interactions with various Starostas, or head men, of the villages that he visits. In Milkova, a mistranslation of Kennan's job title led to the population to believe that they were to be expecting the Tsar of Russia, rather than a telegraph operator. Despite this, their enthusiastic reception by the elders of the village, the excited manner in which Milkova's inhabitants regard them, and their dress, noted as similar to the Russian peasants and native peasants in Petropavlovsk (blue shirts and leather pants for the men, calico dresses and head scarves for the women), provide not only a look at the Kamchandals themselves, but how they positively regarded the Russian Tsar and thus their country.
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"For nearly half an hour Dodd and I sat quietly on the beach, absent-mindedly throwing pebbles into the still water, watching the illumination of the distant mountains by the rising sun, and talking over the adventures which we had experienced since leaving Petropavlovsk. With what different impressions had I come to look at Siberian life since I first saw the precipitous coast of Kamchatka looming up out of the blue water of the Pacific!" (p. 99)
Upon their arrival in Kloochay, Major Abaza consults with many locals about what route the expedition should take toward the Okhotsk Sea. Upon deciding that they would continue through the Yolofka Pass in the central mountain range on the way to Tigil, the party is allowed to rest before continuing their journey. Kennan's journey from Petropavlovsk to Kloochay documents not only his own journey, but helps to paint a picture of the geography and people that could be found in the various places that he visited. Though Kamchatka is only a small part of Siberia, it was not exempt from feeling Russian imperial influence, and the picture that Kennan paints of his experiences in Kamchatka help to contextualize what it was to be Kamchatkan, Siberian, Russian at the time, and how that has influenced life there today.
