This post will cover the western settling of Alaska. As with my previous RPG scenarios, which you can find here. I’ll give a synopsis of the history of alaska from Russian colonization to present day. This will cover Chugach standards 6.3-6.7; the history of Alaska from native settling to present. This includes Native settlers, Russian colonization, the US purchase and then the development of Alaska by the US.
Alaska was first settled by Native settlers that traveled across the Bering Land Bridge. Arriving thousands of years before the earliest of western settlers, roughly fifteen thousand years before. These settlers were known as Amerid migration group, they continued south and settled across the Americas becoming known as the American Indians.
The next set of migrations to the Americas began around 12000 BP, settling in modern day Alaska and Canada. These indigenous people became known as the Yup'ik, Athabaskan, Tlingit, Aleut, and Inupiat. Western and Southwestern Alaska being home to the Yup’ik, the Interior is home to the Athabaskan, Southeast Alaska is home to the Tlingit, Aleutians are home to the Aleut and the north slope is inhabited by the Inupiat. The most recent records of permanent inhabited settlements, in the far north, are between 3,500 - 4000 years ago.
The Russians was the first European power to discover Alaska first and were the first to claim Alaska in 1648. The Alaskan colony was established to specifically hunt the sea otter for their pelts. As time went by the Russians with the (forced) help of the Aleut, who they had brutally subjugated, hunted Sea Otters to near extinction. This put Russia in a bad position economically with it’s north american colonies. Fearing loss of their oversea colonies to the British empire without compensation. Russia then sold Alaska in 1867 to the US for 7.2 million, 2 cents per acre. The US also not seeing much use in Alaska was greatly unsatisfied, calling it “Sewards Folly’ after the man who spearheaded the purchase. However, doubts were quickly dismissed when George Kormake officially discovered gold on August 19th 1896 in the Klondike River. Igniting the second American gold rush. Settlers from all over the US headed “North to Alaska!” attempting to find great fortune.
Due to the gold rush thousands of people flocked to Alaska colonizing and finalizing it as a territory of the US. Officially incorporating it into a territory in 1912. Three decades later during World War II south Alaska became a large base of operations for US forces. Reclaiming portions of the southern Aleutian islands from the Japanese. After the war Alaska obtained statehood in 1948. The result of hard fought campaign by Alaskans in the US congress.
Oil was formally “discovered” on the north slope of Alaska by the Atlantic-Richfield Company in 1968. As a reaction to the 1973 oil crisis, the Trans-Alaskan pipeline was built between 1974 and 1976 to transport it to market and boost US energy independence. This strained the already tense land-right situation occurring between local indigenous groups, the state and federal government. This land-right issue was settled with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), signed in 1971 by president Richard M. Nixon. This act was intended to solve these issues by transferring land claims by indigenous groups in exchange for the creation of 13 Native owned regional corporations and numerous local corporations. This was a difficult task to make both parties equally happy and is still being fought over today. In any case this meant that the Atlantic-Richfield Company was able to buy the rights to drill for oil on the north slope, along with the construction of the pipeline.
Giving Alaska a major resource export that has continued to supply the state with money to this day. In fact the oil fields were so massive that they managed to provide 20% of the nation's domestic oil output at the height of oil production.
In RPing terms, you (GM) can choose any part of Alaska’s history to RP on. However, because the history of Alaska is so large, I won’t be able to cover it all with just one RP scenario. So instead I’ll create an example scenario, but don’t feel like you can only play that one. It also could be that you want to do an RP series starting at the beginning of known Alaska history. Anyway the goal of this RP is to complete the klondike trail and find your fortune. This will require traveling over the klondike trail, going down the river and surviving the harsh climate of the north. The players will play as miners and settlers while the GM will help guide the players by filling in as NPC (non-player characters).
Player Roles:
- General Information:
- Settler
- Miner
- Native
GM Role
- The GM role will be to keep the players moving by creating challenges, playing important NPC (town mayers, random traveler encounters,) Natural concerns (weather, animal attacks ETC)
Character Sheets will follow a normal format:
Name (Your character's Name, make sure to keep in historically accurate):
Age (Your characters age, keep in mind the average lifespan of people back then) :
Gender (Male or female):
Company/nation/pirate:
Position:
Skills:
Appearance (Writing up two to three paragraphs that describe your character is common):
Personality (Same as the appearance for descriptive):
Biography (Same as the descriptives for personality or appearance):
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