
Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov (Григорий Иванович Шелихов in
Russian) (1747,
Rylsk,
Belgorod Governorate – July 20, 1795 (July 31, 1795
New Style
Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.) indicate dating systems before and after a calendar change, respectively. Usually, they refer to the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various Europe, European countrie ...
)) was a Russian seafarer, merchant, and fur trader who established a permanent settlement in Alaska.
Career
Starting in 1775, Shelikhov organized voyages of merchant ships to the
Kuril Islands
The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands are a volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. The islands stretch approximately northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the ...
and the
Aleutian Islands
The Aleutian Islands ( ; ; , "land of the Aleuts"; possibly from the Chukchi language, Chukchi ''aliat'', or "island")—also called the Aleut Islands, Aleutic Islands, or, before Alaska Purchase, 1867, the Catherine Archipelago—are a chain ...
, in what is now Alaska, for fur trading. In 1783–1786, he led an expedition to the coastal shores of the mainland, where they founded the first permanent
Russian settlements in North America. Shelikhov's voyage was done under the auspices of his
Shelikhov-Golikov Company, the other owner of which was Ivan Larionovich Golikov. This company was the predecessor of the
Russian-American Company, which was founded in 1799.
In April 1784, Shelikhov arrived in what he named as
Three Saints Bay on
Kodiak Island with two ships, the ''Three Hierarchs, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom'' and the ''St. Simon.'' The indigenous Koniaga, an
Alutiiq nation of
Alaska Natives
Alaska Natives (also known as Native Alaskans, Alaskan Indians, or Indigenous Alaskans) are the Indigenous peoples of Alaska that encompass a diverse arena of cultural and linguistic groups, including the Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tli ...
, defended themselves from the Russian party. In what became known as the
Awa'uq Massacre, Shelikhov and his armed forces, who had guns and cannons, killed hundreds of the Alutiiq, including women and children. They also took hundreds of hostages, many of them children, to force submission by other Alaska Natives. Having established his authority on Kodiak Island, Shelikhov founded the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska along the island's Three Saints Bay. (
Unalaska had been established long before, but it was not considered the permanent base for Russians until Shelikhov's time.)
In 1790, Shelikhov, having returned to Russia, hired
Alexandr Baranov to manage his
fur trading enterprise in Russian America.

A
gulf
A gulf is a large inlet from an ocean or their seas into a landmass, larger and typically (though not always) with a narrower opening than a bay (geography), bay. The term was used traditionally for large, highly indented navigable bodies of s ...
in the
Sea of Okhotsk
The Sea of Okhotsk; Historically also known as , or as ; ) is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the sou ...
, a
strait
A strait is a water body connecting two seas or water basins. The surface water is, for the most part, at the same elevation on both sides and flows through the strait in both directions, even though the topography generally constricts the ...
between
Alaska
Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...
and Kodiak Island, a bay on Kruzof Island (near Sitka, Alaska), and a
town
A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city.
The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...
in
Irkutsk Oblast
Irkutsk Oblast (; ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in southeastern Siberia in the basins of the Angara River, Angara, Lena River, Lena, and Nizhnyaya Tunguska Rivers. The administrative center is ...
in Russia bear Shelikhov's name. Shelekhov travelled via Shelikhov Bay in the Sea of Okhotsk in December 1786-January 1787, after he had been left behind at Bol’shereck in Kamchatka as the winds tore the ''Three Hierarchs'' from her anchors and carried her out to sea. There is a statue of Shelikhov in his native Rylsk.
Family

His father was Ivan Shelikhov. Ivan had a brother, Andrei, who had at least two children: Semen Andreevich Shelikhov and Sidor Andreevich Shelikhov.
Grigory had two siblings: a sister, Agrofena Ivanova Shelikhova, and a younger brother, Vasilii Ivanovich Shelikhov, who went to Siberia with Grigory to assist with the business.
In 1775 Shelikhov married
Natalia Alexeyevna Kozhevina, the daughter of a prominent clan of Okhotsk navigators and mapmakers and their wives. At his death he had five surviving daughters and one son.
Grigory and Natalia had the following children:
*Anna Grigorevna Rezanova, b. 1780
*Ekaterina Grigorevna Timkovskaya, c. 1781
*Avdotia Grigorevna Buldakova, b. 1784
*Aleksandra Grigorevna Politkovskaya, b. 1788
*Natalia Grigorevna Shelikhova, b. 1793
*Katerina Grigorevna Shelikhova
*Vasilii Grigorevich Shelikhov

His 14-year-old daughter Anna married
Nikolai Rezanov
Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov (, – ), a Russian nobleman and statesman, promoted the project of Russian colonization of Alaska and California to three successive Emperor of All Russia, Emperors of All Russia—Catherine the Great, Paul, and Alexa ...
in January 1795.
[Lensen, George A. ''Early Russo-Japanese Relations.'' The Far Eastern Quarterly 10, No. 1 (1950), pp. 2–37.] She died in childbirth seven years later, but had at least one surviving daughter, Olga Nikolaevna Rezanova, who married Kharkiv Governor-General
Sergey Aleksandrovich Kokoshkin.
See also
*
Daikokuya Kōdayū, a Japanese castaway in Russia
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shelikhov
1747 births
1795 deaths
People from Rylsky District
People from Belgorod Governorate
Russian colonization of North America
Russian explorers of North America
18th-century explorers from the Russian Empire
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Alaska
18th-century businesspeople from the Russian Empire
Russian mass murderers
Russian murderers of children
Native American genocide perpetrators