Fort Stikine

Originally built as the Redoubt San Dionisio or Redoubt Saint Dionysius (Russian: Форт or Редут Святого Дионисия, r Fort or Redut Svyatogo Dionisiya) in 1834, the site was transferred to the British-owned Hudson's Bay Company as part of a lease signed in the region in 1838, and renamed Fort Stikine when turned into a Hudson's Bay Company post in 1839.

The post was closed and decommissioned by 1843 but the name remained for the large village of the Stikine people which had grown around it, becoming known as Shakesville in reference to its ruling Chief Shakes by the 1860s.

By a decree of Emperor Paul I known as the Ukase of 1799, the Russian Empire asserted ownership of the Pacific coast and adjoining lands of North America as far south as the 55th degree of latitude, with Novo-Arkhangelsk (modern Sitka) founded shortly thereafter.

[2] Arvid Etholén and a party of employees of the Russian American Company (RAC) were sent to the Nass on the Chichagof on 3 April 1833 by Chief Manager Baron Wrangel.

Arriving back at New Archangel on 28, Etholén reported the alarming news that Stikine people, while receptive to a Russian outpost, were also supportive a British station being established in the area.

An additional exploration was ordered by in 1834 McLoughlin, with Ogden and several HBC staff, including William Fraser Tolmie, returning to the area on the brig Dryad.

I neither allow to enter the river Stakeen in consequence of the instructions received from Chief Director Baron Wrangel.During the ensuing confrontation and what would become a naval standoff, with the ships Chichagof and Orel dispatched from New Archangel, Ogden and his men were driven off and Hudson's Bay Company stores, intended for trade and the establishment of the upriver post, were seized.

[citation needed] When news of the confrontation reached Fort Vancouver, McLoughlin was outraged and quickly sent word to the company headquarters in London.

The HBC spent several years pressuring the British government to secure indemnities from the RAC on Russia for damages relating to the seizure and actions contrary to the treaty of 1825, Baron von Wrangel was forced out of office in disgrace because of the great cost in both money and prestige to the Empire.

Creating the subsidiary Puget Sound Agricultural Company to meet these provisions, HBC stations such as Forts Vancouver, Langley, Nisqually and Cowlitz were critical for manufacturing the produce required by the Russians.

[9] Author Debra Komar wrote an investigative history into the death of McLoughlin Jr. named The Bastard of Fort Stikine (Goose Lane Editions 2015).

Choquette was to earn the respect of Shakes and also the hand of his daughter Georgiana (or Georgie) as his wife, with the marriage consecrated according to the elaborate ceremonials of Tlingit custom.

[11] Choquette was to maintain this post in an uneasy relationship with the Hudson's Bay Company, as well as his store upriver, which relocated at various times depending on fluctuations in the activity of the rush.

It was the second US Army post established in Alaska, the first being Fort Tongass on Tongass Island, immediately north of 54°40', but which was abandoned by 1870 as being of little real strategic or commercial value, as it was Fort Wrangel which controlled the main access inland and was therefore more viable as a customs port for the region, and Britain had shown no signs of military support for the claims that British Columbia had been making for its rights to the leased portion of the Panhandle, which had in any case been overtaken by American fishing, cannery and mining operations in the immediate aftermath of the Purchase.

The following morning, Scutd-doo, who was the father of the deceased, entered the fort and shot the post trader's partner Leon Smith fourteen times.

After the Cassiar rush was over, Fort Wrangel remained as one of the main US military installations in the region, and was again to play a strategic as well as a commercial role in relation to the Stikine's use as one of the lesser routes to the Klondike from 1897 and the mounting tensions of the Alaska Boundary Dispute, which was resolved by arbitration in 1903.