Promyshlenniki

In the Novgorod dialect, they are called povolnik (Russian: повольник), a person who is not bound by constant obligations with any guild, principality, city, monastery, diocese or boyar.

They paid only the trading tariff, and were required to participate in wars with their weapons and ammunition, food and fodder, similarly to American rangers.

"[2] The fierce competition between promyshlenniki led to the overexploitation of sable populations, continually forcing them to go further east.

[5] Promyshlenniki based out of Okhotsk or Petropavlovsk, made provisions for their yearly operations in the Aleutians by killing sea cows of the Commander Islands to extinction.

[4] As these early trappers had "no knowledge of navigation", they consequently "took no observations, made no surveys..." and greatly limited geographical information for outsiders.

[7] These posts began in the Aleutians and moved eastward toward the Alaska Peninsula rather than north to the Yukon delta and Bering Strait.

[10] The offspring of Russian men and Native women gave rise to a small but influential population of Alaskan Creoles.

[10][11] In 1794, with direct authorization from Catherine II, the Siberian governor Ivan Pil sent instructions that managers of Shelikhov-Golikov Company at Kodiak Island should "encourage" single Russian men to marry native women.

Joseph Whidbey visited a Lebedev-Lastochkin Company station at Tyonek, with Vancouver describing the promyshlenniki located there as: [The Promyshlenniki appeared to be perfectly content to live after the manner of the Native indians of the country; partaking with equal relish and appetite their gros [sic] and nauseous food, adopting the same fashion, and using the same materials for their apparel, and differing from them in their exterior appearance only by the want of paint on their faces, and by their not wearing any of the Indian ornaments.