Lavrenti Alexejewitsch Sagoskin

Lavrenti Sagoskin

Lavrenti Alexejewitsch Sagoskin ( Russian Лаврентий Алексеевич Загоскин ; * 1808 in Nikolajewka, Penza Governorate , Russia , †  1890 in Ryazan , Russia) was a lieutenant in the Imperial Russian Navy and explorer in Alaska .

Sagoskin served as a naval officer in the Caspian and Baltic Seas .

In the 1840s there was little information about the western interior of Alaska, which was then still under Russian ownership ( Russian America ). The Russian-American Company , a semi-state trading company of the Russian Empire in the 19th century, dispatched Sagoskin to the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers region to conduct geographic surveys. For the expedition he received training in mineralogy , zoology , botany and entomology .

His tasks were the search for lucrative places for the establishment of trading posts and for possibilities to give the Russian-American company over the Chukchi advantages in trade.

Sagoskin's expedition in the region of the lower reaches of the Yukon and Kuskokwim lasted two years (1842–44). He covered around 5300 km.

After returning to Russia, he worked on the final reports, which he published in 1847 and 1848. He received a national science award for his services.

Sagoskin retired from the Navy in 1848. He then worked as the head of a forestry institute, in the science of crop production and as an archivist. He died in 1890 at the age of 82.

literature

• Lieutenant Zagoskin's travels in Russian America, 1842-1844: The first ethnographic and geographic investigations in the Yukon and Kuskokwim Valleys of Alaska , Arctic Institute of North America, University of Toronto Press, 1967, LCCN  67-002141

Web links

• Alaska History and Cultural Sudies: Lieutenant Lavrentiy Alekseyevich Zagoskin (English)