| Summary: | Photograph of an engraving Caption on mount: View of the Russian Settlement at Oonalashka. Engraved by Letitia & Eliz. Byrne Filed in Alaska--Cities--Unalaska Letitia Byrne 91779-1849) and Elizabeth Byrne were the daughters of William Byrne, also an engraver, and the sisters of Anne Francis Byrne (1775-1837), painter. They were presumably born in London. As a pupil of her father, Letitia exhibited landscape views when she was only 20. She continued to work until 1848 and had many of her works published. [Source: Dictionary of National Biography, v. 3] Prior to the coming of the Russians in 1741, the natives of the Aleutian Chain, the Unangan, known since the Russian Era as Aleuts, subsisted on the wildlife of the sea and some food gathering. Over the course of many thousands of years they developed a marine-based culture of depth and great artistic expression. The Russian fur hunters arrived at Unalaska in 1758. After an initial attempt to defeat the Russian intruders, the Unangan were forced to hunt fur seal and sea otter. The period of Russian occupation in the Chain was a mixture of suppression and change for the Unangan. In 1759 Unalaska Island had a population of more than 1,000 inhabitants contained in 24 settlements. By 1910 the number of settlements had dropped to 4 and the population of the village of Unalaska was 281. In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska. One of the prime interests for the U.S. Government was the fur seal rookeries in the Pribilof Islands northwest from Unalaska. The Russians had settled these formerly uninhabited islands with Aleuts. The Unalaska Aleuts worked in the Pribilofs hunting seal during the summer and sea otter during the winter. They worked in the warehouses at Dutch Harbor and Unalaska or fished the surrounding waters during the spring and fall. Dutch Harbor and Unalaska became a major coaling and supply station for vessels bound for the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean. This activity declined in the 1920s when oil replaced coal and the Dutch Harbor coaling station closed as well as Unalaska’s. In the summer of 1940, the U.S. Navy appropriated Dutch Harbor. Incorporated as a first class city in 1942 in an attempt to control its own destiny, Unalaskans were soon swept into the midst of World War II. Following the bombing of Dutch Harbor and Unalaska, Unangan were sent to relocation camps in southeast Alaska for the duration of the war. The community underwent drastic physical changes as a result of extensive military construction. Following World War II Unalaska entered an economically depressed period until the king crab fisheries brought about the great boom of the 1960’s. After Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1973, the Unalaska Unangan formed the Ounalashka Corporation to manage the lands transferred to them. [Source: http://www.digitalchain.com/undutcoc/cocunhistory.htm]
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