Education

Russian-America's first school began in 1784 when Gregorii and Natal'ia Shelikhov began teaching Russian and religion to Kodiak Native children they were holding as hostages. This school would continue to teach Native and Creole boys throughout the Russian Era. The Lebedev-Lastochkin company also ran a school at Fort Saint Nicholas, where Kenai is now located. Missionaries soon replaced fur traders as teachers at the Kodiak school. 

In 1805, a Russian nobleman, Nikolai Rezanov, founded a vocational school at Kodiak to teach Native and Creole boys the skills necessary to become artisans, clerks, and sailors. At one point, 100 students between 12 and 16 years old studied reading and writing in Russian, accounting, French, geography, mathematics, navigation, and religion at the school. After Rezanov's death, this ambitious educational project closed, but similar schools were later opened in Sitka.

Education for girls was limited. In Kodiak, Natal'ia Petrovna Banner, wife of a local Russian-American Company official, taught teenage Native girls housekeeping, gardening, and sewing European clothes.

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