Boring the ears, or putting out an eye, of a slave, or some other mode of marking the flesh, has been and is now a custom with some of the families of these people.
The Russian-American Company, which effectively controlled Russian interests in the northern Pacific coasts of North America, had the right to employ serfs.
[5] In Russian Alaska, the promyshlenniki forced Aleut and Alutiiq men to hunt sea otters as part of the maritime fur trade, taking their women and children hostage.
Wealthy families could purchase Aleutian girls to do housework, and often[quantify] prohibited them from participating in child play or from becoming educated.
[7] From 1911 until the passage of the Fur Seal Act in 1966, the inhabitants of the Pribilof Islands were governed directly by employees of the United States federal government, under conditions which the Tundra Times described in 1964 as slavery "in milder form perhaps than existed in the Deep South, but slavery nonetheless"; these conditions included being paid for their labor in food rather than in money (until 1950), being forcibly resettled, being denied suffrage, being denied freedom of assembly, and being denied freedom of movement.