Editing Kenai, Alaska (section)

=== Fur trade ===
In 1786, [[Pytor Zaykov]] built [[Fort Nikolaevskaia|Nikolaevskaia krepost]] (Fort Nicholas) for the [[Lebedev-Lastochkin Company]] on the site of modern Kenai, being the first European settlement on the Alaskan mainland.<ref name=LLC>Solojova, Katerina and Aleksandra Vovnyanko. ''The Rise and Decline of the Lebedev-Lastochkin Company: Russian Colonization of South Central Alaska, 1787–1798.''&nbsp;The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 90, No. 4 (1999), pp. 191-205.</ref> Hostilities surfaced between the natives and settlers in 1797, culminating in an incident in which the Dena'ina attacked Fort St. Nicholas, later dubbed the battle of Kenai. Over one hundred deaths occurred from all involved parties. In 1838, the introduction of smallpox killed one half of the Dena'ina population.