Fort Nikolaevskaia

The crew wintered at the station despite orders given to NEC managers by Grigory Shelikhov to remove, "by force if necessary", competing Russian merchants located near company posts.

Delarov recommended that the LLC employees make their station on Cook Inlet, where his own company had previously "pacified the inhabitants.

Besides the residency of the commanding officer, there 23 dwellings "of different dimensions all huddled together without any kind of regularity..." inhabited by primarily Dena'ina laborers or relatives.

[7] Vancouver went on to describe the trading post as comprising a space of about an hundred yards square, fenced in by a very stout paling of small spars of pine and birch, placed close together about twelve feet high.

They were fixed firm in the ground, yet they appeared to be a very defenseless barricade against any hostile attempts, even of the Indians, as the whole might easily be reduced to ashes by fire on the outside, as could also their houses within the fence, those being built with wood and covered in with thatch.

Coastal Alaskan Natives in general "were outstanding hunters of marine mammals", and used as laborers by the various Russian fur trading companies.

The LLC staff were the most notorious in dealings with the Aleutian and Dena'ina peoples, as the Russians "exploited them, underpaying them for furs and for labor as hunters and servants and even enslaving them.

Acting as an "unprincipled bully" who "robbed his rival, plundered and outraged the natives, and, eventually, threatened the trading-posts and shipyard of the Shelikof Company".

[4] Nikoleavskaia was soon put under siege, though a militia of Russians sent by their Kodiak based competitors, the United American Company, broke off the attacks.