Timofei Nikitich Tarakanov
This task often involved US maritime fur trade merchant ships transporting the hunting parties and their kayaks as far south as Baja California.
O'Cain stayed in San Quintín Bay for over three months while Tarakanov and Shvetsov led indigenous sea otter hunting parties all along the coast between Mission Rosario and Misión Santo Domingo de la Frontera.
[7][5] At the end of the hunting season, in the spring of 1804, O'Cain returned to Alaska with 1,110 sea otter furs, plus 700 more acquired by illegal trade with Spanish officials and missionaries.
[5][7] In 1805 Nikolai Rezanov and other high status aristocrats and naval officers arrived in Sitka, Alaska, which had just been recaptured from the Tlingit and would soon become the capital of Russian America.
Various American maritime fur traders also arrived in Sitka in 1805, including John DeWolf who sold his ship Juno to Rezanov and the RAC.
About the same time another Winship family owned ship, Peacock under Oliver Kimball, arrived seeking a joint venture to hunt California sea otters.
In early 1807 he moved his base of operations south to Bodega Bay, about 50 miles north of San Francisco and part of the future site of the RAC's Ross Colony.
[7] Tarakanov's establishment of a hunting base of operations in Bodega Bay in the spring of 1807 involved negotiating with the local Coast Miwoks for permission.
[8][9] Over the following few years Tarakanov and Ivan Aleksandrovich Kuskov, the first manager of Fort Ross, met with Coast Miwok and Kashaya Pomo leaders multiple times.
The RAC later wrote reports saying they had acquired land cessions through these meetings, but they almost certainly misrepresented how the indigenous people viewed the gifts, negotiations, and agreements.
The RAC and Russia's preparation of documentation showing land rights north of San Francisco Bay was intended for use in potential diplomatic conflicts with Spain, but for various geopolitical reasons it never became consequential.
As the hunters left the bay the Spanish presidio commander, Luis Antonio Argüello, fired upon them, causing a minor panic and a hasty retreat.
[7] Additionally, Tarakanov had gained valuable experience with sea otter hunting on the coast of California as well as with communicating and negotiating with the indigenous Miwok.
Nikolai to work together exploring the coast between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and San Francisco Bay, and reconnoitering for potential outpost locations.
Baranov ordered Bulygin and Tarakanov to make a detailed survey of the coast south of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the mouth of the Columbia River.
This financial success, coupled with Kushov's reconnoitering and Tarakanov's earlier exploration of the Bodega Bay area, led to Baranov proposing to the RAC Main Office in St. Petersburg to seek imperial governmental permission to establish a post in California.
In September 1811 Davis returned with Isabella and took Tarakanov's hunters, along with those from the Albatross, back to Sitka with another large cargo of sea otter furs.
[7] After the return of this hunting expedition Baranov launched a major effort to establish an RAC outpost on the coast just north of San Francisco Bay.
Credit for founding Fort Ross is usually given to the relatively high status Russian Ivan Kushov, but the serf Timofei Tarakanov was a vital part of the effort.
According to RAC writer, employee and future manager Kirill Khlebnikov,[7][16] the Chirikov left Sitka to found Fort Ross in November 1811, although other sources say it was delayed until mid-March 1812.
Kuskov investigated Bodega Bay and the Russian River valley, but found both wanting in defensive potential and lacking a good supply of timber for construction.
From there Il'mena brought hunting parties to the Channel Islands of California, between about Santa Barbara and San Pedro (today part of Los Angeles).
Over a few years multiple RAC hunting parties operated in complex and constantly changing ways throughout the Channel Islands and the nearby mainland coast.
This event is relatively well known in California today, because the massacre ultimately resulted in one Nicoleño woman, known as Juana Maria, living alone on San Nicolas Island for many years.
Reports of the massacre were sent far up the RAC chain of command, eventually reaching the main offices in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire.
It took several years, but in 1818 RAC Chief Manager Ludwig von Hagemeister, ordered Iakov Babin to be taken to Sitka, then to Saint Petersburg to be held accountable for the Nicoleño massacre.
He left behind a committee, headed by Tarakanov, to look after Kad'iak and the many remaining RAC employees and goods on Kauai, Oahu, and other Hawaiian islands.
Still having a cordial relation with most American shipmasters in Hawaii, Tarakanov was able to make a deal with Captain Myrick of the Cossack to take two Russians and 41 indigenous Alaskan hunters from Oahu to Sitka.
Hagermeister believed Tarakanov had not had the authority to make deals with American captains that involving hunting sea otters for them, and reprimanded him for acting "contrary to instructions from superiors".
One of his last jobs in North America was leading a hunting party of about 80 kayaks in the Cross Sound and Glacier Bay areas, assisted by the vessel Finlandiia.
