Clan mothers and godmothers: Tlingit women and Russian Orthodox Christianity, 1840-1940

Utilizing archival as well as ethnographic field data, this essay traces the history of the Tlingit women's conversion to Russian Orthodox Christianity. Their initial limited exposure to Orthodoxy, which occurred during the Russian-American Company era and was structured by larger trading, military, and socioeconomic relationships between the Russians and the Tlingit, is contrasted with their massive conversion to Orthodoxy in the 1880s, two decades after the purchase of Alaska by the United States. While examining the various political, social, and religious aspects of that conversion, the essay also explores the native women's own interpretations of Orthodoxy, which has remained the favorite denomination of the more culturally conservative segment of the Tlingit community throughout the twentieth century.