[1] He was the first recorder of the Awa'uq Massacre in the Russian America of Shelikhov-Golikov Company.

[2][3] Henrik Holmberg followed in 1851 to document an evolved origin story and several other stories as told by Arsenti Aminak (his memory of Russian conquest at Awa’uq that Aminak survived as a young boy).

[4] In 1839 he became a student of the Mining Inspectorate of Finland, in 1841 was registered as an extra conductor and in 1850 went to pan for gold to Russian America.

After his return to Finland in 1852 he issued "Etnographische Skizzen über die Völker des russischen Amerika" (in Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae.

Holmberg worked in the historical museum of the Helsinki University and published a description of the Finnish archaeological finds from the Neolithic and Bronze Age, List and illustrations of Finnish antiquities (1863), the first detailed work on this subject.