The
Awa'uq Massacre or
Refuge Rock Massacre, or the
Wounded Knee of Alaska was an attack and
massacre by
Russian fur trader Grigory Shelikhov and 130 Russian armed men and
cannoneers of
Shelikhov-Golikov Company against the
Qik’rtarmiut Sugpiat tribe of Koniag
Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) people of
Kodiak Island in 1784 in
Russian-controlled Alaska. It occurred on the secluded
stack island Refuge Rock (
Awa'uq in
Alutiiq language) of Partition Cove on
Sitkalidak Island, near and across
Old Harbor, in the
Kodiak Archipelago,
Alaska. The Russian
promyshlennikis slaughtered 500 men, women and children on Refuge Rock, though some sources state the number was 2000, or between 2,500–3,000. Following the attack of Awa'uq, Shelikhov claims to have captured over 1000 people, detaining 400 as hostages. There were no Russian casualties. This massacre was an isolated incident, and the Alutiiq were completely subjugated by Russian traders thereafter. One interpreter,
Qaspeq (literally: "
kuspuk"), was an Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) who had been taken as a war captive from Kodiak as a child and raised in servitude in the Aleutians. Qaspeq had once betrayed the location of a refuge island just offshore of Unalaska Island.