He was a native of Kodiak Island (Alutiiq or Sugpiaq), and received the Christian name of Peter when he was baptized into the Orthodox faith by the monks of St Herman's missionaries operating in the north.

[2] He was captured by Spanish soldiers near San Pedro and tortured and killed at the instigation of Roman Catholic priests either there or at a nearby location.

[3] Hubert Howe Bancroft, in his multi-volume History of California, only notes that, in connection with an incident wherein a Russian fur-hunting expedition was taken into custody after declining to leave San Pedro; one Russian source accused "the Spaniards of cruelty to the captives, stating that according to Kuskof’s[4] report one Aleut who refused to become a Catholic died from ill-treatment received from the padre at San Francisco.

An account of the martyrdom of Peter the Aleut is contained in a lengthy letter written on November 22, 1865, by Semyon Yanovsky to Damascene, abbot of the Valaam Monastery in Finland.

And indeed, this earlier communication, his official dispatch to the company's main office—dated Feb. 15, 1820, five years after the event—also relates the story of St. Peter's martyrdom, albeit with different details.

The earliest historical sources about the death of Peter the Aleut describe the event as taking place in or near "the mission of San Pedro".

[6][19] These documents also describe the captured Native Alaskan traders as transferred to Fort Ross, by way of sequential stops in Santa Barbara and Monterey.