Ninilchik (Alaska)

Ninilchik is located on the western side of the Kenai Peninsula on the coast of Cook Bay , 61 km southwest of the city of Kenai and 160 km southwest of Anchorage .

According to the United States Census Bureau , this statistically isolated area has a total area of ​​207.6 square miles (538 km²), of which 207.6 square miles (538 km²) of land and 0.04 square miles (0.10 km²) of water (0.01%).

Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord - Orthodox Church in Ninilchik.

Before the Europeans arrived in Alaska, the territory of Ninilchik was used for hunting and fishing by the ethno-linguistic Atabascan group of den'in.

The exact date of the foundation of the village is unknown, it is assumed that it was founded before 1844 ^[1] . The first to become permanently in the village were Russian colonists who moved there from Kodiak Island in 1847 before the sale of Alaska . These were Grigory Kvasnikov, his wife Mavra Rastorgueva (daughter of Agrafena Petrovna Afognak), their children, as well as several other families (Oskolkov, Alekseev ^[1] ). The men were mostly Russian, and their wives were creoles from Kodiak and Eskimos-alutik ^[2] . Their dialect of the Russian language of the mid-1800s (plus a few words borrowed from the languages ​​of the indigenous inhabitants of Alaska) was the main language in Ninilchik until the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867 . Several native Ninilchik Russian speakers are still alive in 2016. As of 2013, there were no more than 20 people with a dialect, all of them over 75 ^[3] . This dialect is studied and cataloged by Russian and American linguists ^[4] .

Relatives of Agrafena Afognak to one degree or another are the majority of the inhabitants of modern Ninilchik. Wayne Liman wrote the book “Children of Agrafena”, which tells about the fate of the inhabitants of Ninilchik ^[5] .

By 1890, the population of the village reached 81 people. Until 1917, priests came from the Russian Empire to serve in the village Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, there was also a Russian school attached to the church. In 1917, the Russian school was closed, the main reason - the pressure of Protestant missionaries on the US government ^[6] . At the initiative of the missionary and politician Sheldon Jackson, teaching in schools in Alaska was transferred to the Protestant church .

Since the 1930s, Americans began to actively explore this area. An English-language school opened in which Russian speech was not approved. So, the old men of Ninilchik recall that if teachers caught a child speaking in Russian, then they forced him to wash his tongue with soap ^{[7] [6] [3]} .

In 1950, a highway was built across the Kenai Peninsula , including through Ninilchik.

According to the 2010 census, the population was 883 people.

According to the 2000 census, there were 772 people; there were 320 households and 223 families in the area. The population density is 1.4 per km². Racial composition : white - 82.25%, Native Americans - 13.99%, Asians - 0.52%, representatives of two or more races - 3.11%.

Of the 320 households, 59.4% were married couples (29.4% with children under 18 years of age), women lived without husbands in 6.9% of families, and 30.3% did not have a family. On average, 2.41 people conduct households, and the average family size is 2.87 people.

• Ninilchik Village Tribe and the Ninilchik Traditional Council