Note 14 — Chapter VI · SOCIAL LIFE

Frederick Schwatka, the explorer, seems to have been one of the first to put the story in print, which he did in the early eighties. It appeared in the Alaska News, a newspaper of Juneau, on December 24th, 1896, and the time is fixed as being in the administration of Baron Wrangell. In 1891 Hon. Henry E. Hayden published it in verse in a small volume printed at Sitka. John W. Arctander, in his Lady in Blue, elaborates it to a small volume and ascribes it to Etolin’s time.

There is a strange fact which gives some color to the story. In the Russian American Company’s Archives now on file in the State Department, Washington, D. C., under date of September 23rd, 1833, a letter from St. Petersburg refers to a report of Baron Wrangell of November 30, 1831, which reported the death of under officer Paul Buikof, and implicating one Col. Borusof. Unfortunately the records of 1831 are missing and so the report cannot be had. Baron Wrangell’s daughter, Mary, died during his stay in Sitka.