Lettered in Slavonic, English and Tlingit
In 1862, Tlingit (indigenous people in southeast Alaska) leaders asked the Russian Orthodox Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska to come to Juneau from his headquarters in San Francisco, so they could become Orthodox Christians. As there were no Russians in Juneau, the bishop asked how the Tlingit had come to this decision.
He was told that a young Tlingit man had had a vision of a short, white-bearded old man telling him to go to Sitka and be baptized. (The Tlingit in Sitka had their own Russian Orthodox chapel with services in the Tlingit language—unlike the American missionaries who were under orders from the United States government to suppress native languages and customs and use only English.). The young man went to Sitka and was baptized.
Not long afterward, he became very ill. Nearing death, he called for the elders of the village and told them the white-bearded old man had come again, giving the message that the Tlingit people should be baptized.
After the young man died, the elders had the same vision, with the same white-bearded man. As this vision, or dream, spread, the Tlingit people became very eager to be baptized. When they saw an icon of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, they recognized him as the white-bearded old man who had come to them in their dreams.
The Tlingit leader Yees Gaanaaix and his wife were baptized, followed by seven hundred Tlingit people, all coming into the Orthodox faith. The Russian Orthodox church in Juneau was dedicated to Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker in 1984. As the Tlingit people work on the sea, primarily as fisherman, the have a special love for Saint Nicholas, the protector of all who go to sea. The Juneau church is the oldest in continual use in southeast Alaska.