Kodiak is the ancestral land of the
Sugpiaq, an
Alutiiq nation of
Native Americans. The original inhabitants subsisted by hunting marine mammals, fishing, and gathering. The European discoverer of Kodiak Island was the Russian fur trader
Stepan Glotov (1793). The first outsiders to settle on the island were Russian explorers under
Grigory Shelikhov, a
fur trader, who founded a
Russian settlement on Kodiak Island at
Three Saints Bay in 1784; the present-day village of Old Harbor developed near there. In 1792, the settlement was moved to the site of present-day
Kodiak and became the center of Russian
fur trading with the Alaska Natives. In 1793, Grigory Shelikhov, with the help of the governor-general of
Irkutsk, was given twenty craftsmen and ten families of farmers with the obligation of paying government taxes for them, for promoting successful development of Russia-America settlements and the establishment of shipyards and factories. The settlers provided to Shelikhov were not serfs in the full sense of the word. It was not possible to sell, mortgage, or give away the settlers; they were owned by the company for as long as the
Shelikhov-Golikov Company existed. The
Alutiiq were conscripted by the Russian occupants for the purpose of hunting, gathering, and processing food and furs. Native labor was commandeered through hostage taking, physical threat, and punishment. The Alutiiq men were forced to obtain quotas of otter pelts and bird skins which were then stitched into waterproof parkas by the Alutiiq women. The Russian fur traders radically expanded
sea otter hunting operations and forced the Alutiiq men to hunt for longer periods of time at increasingly distant areas as the local population of fur-bearing animals was extinguished. In 1837–1839, a
smallpox epidemic swept through all the
Russian America territory and destroyed an estimated one-third of the Native population. On June 9, Kodiak villagers saw the first clear, ash-free skies in three days, but their environment had changed dramatically. Wildlife on Kodiak Island was devastated by ash and acid rain from the eruption.
Bears and other large animals were blinded by thick ash, and many starved to death because large numbers of plants and small animals were smothered in the eruption. Birds blinded and coated by volcanic ash fell to the ground. Even the region's prolific
mosquitoes were exterminated. Aquatic organisms in the region perished in the ash-clogged waters.
Salmon in all stages of life were destroyed by the eruption and its aftereffects. From 1915 to 1919, southwestern Alaska's
salmon-fishing industry was devastated.
1964 earthquake The island was also hit by the 1964
Good Friday earthquake and
tsunami, which destroyed much of the waterfront, the business district, and several villages. ==Climate==