Fitka Balashoff
1866, Seldovia, Alaska — 1936, Seldovia, Alaska
Buried in Seldovia City Cemetery Plot #111FITKA BALASHOFF was born about 1866. Some genealogists have listed him as the grandson of Vasilii Ksenofontov Bal’shev, born in Russia about 1778. Vasilii’s son Vasilli (1831-1887) was in Kodiak in the late 1800s. Much of the information we have about Fitka comes from Yale anthropologist Cornelius Osgood who spent many months in Seldovia in 1930-1931. Fitka was the primary source for the Seldovia dialect of Dena’ina in the vocabulary recorded by Osgood. He was also a resource for Frederika de Laguna in 1932 when she was exploring Kachemak Bay archeological sites.
Osgood says: “The informant to whom I am most deeply indebted is Fitka
Balishoff of Seldovia who was born in that place about sixty-five years
before my arrival (about 1866). Both his father and mother were Tanaina,
the latter born in a village farther up Kachemak Bay and the former at
Kenai. The only grandparent he could remember was his mother’s father
who came from the country to the south of Tustumena Lake. At the time of
his childhood there were no Europeans in Seldovia, and one of his
earliest memories was that of a ship anchoring outside the harbor. The
natives fled to the woods, overlooking Fitka, who being too young to
run, hid in a corner of the house. When the white men came ashore, they
found him very frightened and let him sit with them to share their meal.
When they departed they left some food which his parents took away
immediately on their return. All this left a vivid impression. Fitka’s
English had indisputable weaknesses but he had an inherent interest in
the ways of his own people which with a retentive memory made him a
valuable informant. His native intelligence would put to shame many of
his white critics, and he had a philosophy of life for a period shared
with a pet porcupine. (Osgood later notes that Fitka’s pet porky
followed him around and slept by his head.) Fitka was a chronic drinker,
but his happy disposition never failed him at his worst. Some days with
apologetic politeness, he said, ‘I guess I pretty drunk - I come back
after.’ And so he did through the weeks of our association. I left
esteeming his friendship and protesting inwardly against the statement
that he was ‘old enough for
died’.”
Fitka died about 1936 in Seldovia and is buried in the Seldovia City Cemetery, Plot #111.