goldfields

Anyone interested in the Russian presence in early California can do no better than to read California through Russian Eyes, 1806-1848, compiled translated, and edited by James R. Gibson (Arthur H. Clark Company, 2013), the second volume in a series entitled Early California Commentaries. It consists of 32 documents–letters, reports, and journal entries–by Russians who visited and lived in Alta California, from the earliest explorers to the last manager of Fort Ross. (I checked the book out from the Butte County Library.)

The Russians were careful and curious observers of life in California. Dmitry Irinarkhovich Zavalishin was a 20-year-old midshipman in 1824 when he spent several months in California purchasing provisions, learning Spanish, and conversing with various Californios.  Many years later, after the Gold Rush had made California famous, he recounted his experiences for Russian readers. Here he is reporting on the native population:

Compared with other Indians of North America glorified in the novels of Cooper and other writers, California’s Indians were a meek lot. Of course they were sometimes driven to ferocity by brutal treatment,and then they committed atrocities on Californios who fell into their hands . . . Undoubtedly with good treatment and proper upbringing they were capable if development; this was proven by numerous examples in the missions. Even in the wild state they displayed remarkable abilities in many respects. They made many artistic and very durable articles. Their root baskets and hats were waterproof and combined unusual lightness and durability with resilience; head ornaments, belts, the outsides of baskets, and other articles, which were minutely decorated with the different and multicolored feathers of local birds, were splendid examples of art and patience.

Regarding weapons, their bow, strung with sinew, was usually so taut that the strongest among us could not pull it without practice and skill. Their arrows were made from rushes with stone heads daubed with poison; wounds from them, regardless of the poison, were very dangerous, for they had a rough finish and a jagged edge.

A typical European, perhaps, but one who was open to appreciating the people he observed. He was positive that the Russians could get along better with the California Indians than the Spaniards and Mexicans did.

In conclusion, with regards to the Indians I will say a few words about their relations with the Russians. Whoever has studied the Russian national character knows very well that Russians, if they have not been aroused by some special external circumstance, are very good-natured and well-disposed toward everyone, despite differences in religion, nationality, and social status. A Russian disdains neither a savage nor a heterodox . . .  No wonder that the Indians liked the good-natured Russian sailors, especially the generous and affectionate officers.

Sorry that it’s taken me so long to get around to the end of the story. But it is no where near as long as Conchita had to wait to learn the fate of her lover, Nikolai Rezanov.

Rezanov left San Francisco Bay on May 11, 1806. By June 7 the Juno was back at Sitka, where he found the colony about to go under from a combination of starvation and the threat of an attack by Tlingit warriors. The provisions and reinforcements they brought were the salvation of the Russian colony in Alaska.

Rezanov did not hasten to cross the North Pacific and begin his return trip across Siberia. He spent most of the summer in Alaska, supervising the revival of the colony and writing lengthy dispatches to the directors of the Russian-American Company and the Tsar. In his dispatches he revealed his intention to marry Conchita, but couched the news in terms of business and politics to make it palatable to his superiors.

At the end of July he set sail for Okhotsk, on the eastern shore of Russia. Arriving in late August, he started off on the trip across Siberia. He fell ill at Irkutsk (by Lake Baikal) and spent three months there, then resumed his travels, only to relapse again at the trading post of Krasnoyarsk, halfway to Moscow. He would never leave it. He died of fever and exhaustion in Krasnoyarsk on March 8, 1807.

Conchita waited, and it was not until 1808 that she heard rumors, brought by Russian otter hunters, that Rezanov had died on his way to St. Petersburg. Still she hoped, but as the years went by she must have known that he would never return. She moved with her family to Santa Barbara, and later to Monterey, when her father became governor of California in 1814. By 1818, 10 years after she first heard rumors of her fiance’s death, she was living in Mexico. As a young woman of good family and renowned beauty, she received many offers of marriage, but she refused them all.

Without exception, the men who sought my hand were worthy and honorable. After much deliberation and prayer I concluded that I could not and would not be joined in marriage to one whom I did not love . . . I felt that a certain lasting loyalty was demanded of me by a Higher Power–a loyalty to Nikolai and myself.

After the death of her parents, Conchita returned to California in 1829 and became a Franciscan lay sister. When a Dominican convent was established in Monterey in 1851, Conchita joined as a novice, and as Sister Maria Dominga, became California’s first native-born nun. She befriended a 13-year-old novice, and it was to this young friend, Sister Vincentia, that she confided the story of her romance with the courtly Russian. Decades later Sister Vincentia related the story to a priest, who wrote down her recollections of Conchita.

Although she never doubted as to his (Nikolai’s) deep loyalty and intense sincerity in her regard, she told me that from the evening he sailed away out through the Golden Gate she had somehow a deep, hidden, eerie feeling that stayed with her night and day.

Maria de Concepcion Arguello died at the convent in Benicia on December 23, 1854. The legend of Nikolai and Conchita, a compound of Spanish gaiety and passion and Russian melancholy and ardor, lives on in novels, poetry, and opera.

The tombstone of Conchita in the nuns’ cemetery in Benicia.

The tomb of Rezanov in Krasnoyarsk, destroyed by Bolsheviks in 1932.