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Day 2: Tripping on the Alaska Marine Ferry to the Aleutian Islands
Kodiak Island
The top berth on the Tustumena ferry was heavenly, the slow steady hum of the engine room two floors below was like a rocking cradle, gentling vibrating me to sleep. We awoke rested, alert.
Coffee first, then oatmeal, using the water heater we brought with us. While we slept, the ferry had moved away from the Alaska range and south toward Kodiak, an eleven-hour sail from Homer. Islands dotted the horizon on the right and left.
Nearly all the ferry passengers disembarked in Kodiak; many live there. Long before the Russians made Kodiak the capital of Russia-America in the late 18th-century, the Alutiiq people lived on the island for seven thousand years. The Russians exploited the hunting skills of the native peoples, forcing them to hunt sea otters that were in high demand for their soft fur.
At the height of the Russia-America Company’s operation in the early 1800s, there were more than 60 Alutiiq villages in the Kodiak archipelago, with an estimated population of 13,000 people. Today some 1,800 Alutiiq people remain. (Learn more about the Alutiiq people here.)
