Fire in the Snow

Lives of the Wild Saints #6

St Herman of Alaska
America. Eighteenth - Nineteenth Centuries

Around here, back then, nothing was written down. It was not the way. This was a culture of storytellers. Their memories were prodigious; within them they carried a whole tradition. This was what the culture was made of: stories.

When the Russians came, and later the Americans, many of them said that nothing was remembered truly here, because it was not written down. But this is not the way it was. Everything was remembered. And because the stories were remembered, it was forbidden to change them in the telling. They were passed on purely. They say that Alutiiq storytellers to this day do not write their own lines, do not bring their own light to the words. The words must be handed on as they were first told.

This is how we know what happened to Father Herman.

It’s only possible to tell some of his stories, because they are so many. His stories have not ended, of course, though he passed in 1836. People still meet him. I have met some who have seen him, by night and by day. None of their ancestors would have found this a strange thing, I suppose. Perhaps this is why he did not seem as strange to the Alutiiq of Kodiak Island as he did to some of his own people.

The Russians had never sent any monks overseas before. When they decided to do so, in 1793, Father Herman was one of ten who made the journey over the strait. The strangest thing was how quickly their new faith sank into the frozen ground of Kodiak. St Innocent of Alaska, who came later, used to say that the people here accepted the Christian story so readily because in many ways they were already living it. They already knew of a Great Creator. They lived lives of patience, chastity, silence, respect, all among towering stone peaks and wild seas. They would give their last piece of food to someone who was hungry. As for the other things - the branding of prisoners, the killing of slaves, the polygamy, the idolatry, the shamanism - well, perhaps these too made them Christians sooner. All we know is that they walked towards these strange, black-robed men and found a new home.