Syndic No.45 ~ Thomas Pikarski
Fort Ross
Written and Narrated by Thomas Pikarski
California
Fort Ross
She bragged during her campaign
“I can see Russia from my house!”
Yet we’ve always been able to see Russia,
whether baby boomers growing up
with air raid sirens during the Cold War
or through accusations of treason
by our highest government officials
for selling out to America’s worst enemy.
Fort Ross was built off a lonely shore
of the Pacific by Russian trappers
come to build a settlement,
claim this portion of Alta California
for the Tsar, while avoiding Spaniards
at missions throughout the south,
and mine pristine waters for sea otters
that swam in abundance along the coast
all the way down through balmy Baja.
Previously trappers from Siberia migrated
and established a camp at Sitka Alaska.
They encountered a wonderland of game
from which to gain grand harvests of pelts.
Financed by the Tsar they thrived, reaped
many thousands of furs from several species
within Alaska, Canada and Oregon territory.
Understandably hostile Aleut Indians
defied the intruders, waged attacks, raids,
attempting to fend them off. But the Russians,
ruthless in their retribution pressed on,
eventually established an impenetrable fort
from which to conduct extensive commerce
and satisfy a booming world market.
Inevitably pickings thinned up north
and the Russians sought other lands to harvest,
aware that to thrive they’d have to venture south,
colonize, build a fortress from which to continue
their pillage. There are always diminishing returns
in such genocidal affairs: we experienced sardines
by the millions fished clean from Monterey Bay,
California’s last grizzly now a mirage of the past,
and vast herds of Plains buffalo slaughtered,
buffalo that within the span of two decades
teetered on the precipice of extinction.
The Russian occupation at Fort Ross
could not remain profitable
for the innocent little otter
which had formerly feared only sharks
were within a few years all but eliminated
from the entire length of the Pacific coast.
The Tsar had urgent considerations:
the northern territories mostly trapped out,
competition from the Hudson’s Bay Company
keen, Europe in a state of political disarray
with factions at odds all over the continent.
His imperial ambitions curtailed,
officials at Sitka were instructed
to put Fort Ross up for sale.
They went begging but had no takers,
no other nation nor land baron interested.
Finally they convinced an affable John Sutter
to take the property off their hands. It held
a fine fort, outbuildings, scores of livestock,
valuable provisions and useful implements,
building materials, cannons, horses
and acreage that stretched for miles.