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Indentured Servants In The Sea Runner By Ivan Dog

1395 Words6 Pages

Based on an actual incident in 1853, Ivan Doig’s The Sea Runners chronicles the escape of four Swedish indentured servants from a fur trade fort in 1850s Russian-America. As the story unfolds and in order to seek opportunity in the New World, many Europeans, including four Swedes, sign on to an indenture with the Russian-American Company (RAC) in New Archangel located in what is modern-day Sitka, Alaska. After two years, the Swedes have enough and plot their escape. After stealing supplies and a native canoe, they set off for the U.S. city of Astoria, 1000 perilous miles south. They face many adversaries, including storms, rocks, angry Russians, and Koloshes (the name given by the Russians to the coastal indigenous people). Only two of the …show more content…

Even though they were European, indentured servants were not treated as fellow European workers, but as slaves; these indentured servants weren’t seen by the RAC as people, but as tools. “Any workman within an enterprise such as the Russian-American Company amounted to something like one slat in a water wheel. Laboring in a circle, a damp one at that” (Doig 165, 1982). The working conditions were brutal, according to historians Steven Hahn and S.B. Okun. In Jamestown, indentured servants were viewed as property, and could be bought and sold at a moment’s notice. The US had indentured servants for the same reasons as the Russians and welcomed many of them in order to get work done cheaply. Using indentured labor, the Russians were successful in increasing their fur trade. However, it would not last. Over-hunting soon resulted in less revenue, leading to the Russians selling the land under the Alaska Purchase of 1867. Back in 1600’s Jamestown, a similar decline occurred due to business moving to slavery exclusively, not ending business itself. Indentured servitude became more expensive in the United States due to the compensation that companies had to give to indentured servants when their term was up. As costs grew, it was inevitable that slavery would be its

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