The Weaving Chronicle: Sitka and the Benefits of Historical Fiction

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I confess I had not paid much attention to the purchase of Alaska in my studies until I read Sitka. Sitka is a fine historical fiction from Louis L’Amour about a young American man who smuggles furs from Alaska to San Francisco while it was still part of the Russian Empire. I was so foggy on the facts about this episode in American history that Mr. L’Amour could have put anything he wanted in his book and I would not have noticed the historical inaccuracies. That is the dark side of historical fiction. However the benefit of books like this is that it can make students curious.

I ended up looking up not only when did Alaska get purchased by the United States but also it made me curious about other Russian colonies in the Americas. I also had to look up what a Porter Percussion Turret Rifle was. It was an early repeating rifle design that used a revolving wheel to store the bullets. This proved to be a poor design because one chamber would always be pointed at the shooter and if something set that cartridge off it could kill you. It proved to be not a very popular weapon, go figure). [1] This is the benefit of historical fiction, it gets the student curious to look up some of these details, to see what really happened. And it reminds old students like me, there is always something else to look at in history.

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I sometimes get pretty uppity about how much I know about American history, and then I talk to some of my friends or read a book (like this one) and I just want to cry, “WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE!” This book made me curious about Russian America or Alaska during the mid-19th century which is what a historical fiction is supposed to do. It was a good adventure and a good reminder of why I love history so much.