Calamitous and immediate.

At the time of the Alaska Purchase, relations between Russian authorities and Alaska Natives were, if not good, then at least correct along much of coastal Alaska. In the Aleutians, Kodiak archipelago and Baranof Island, a significant creole class had developed over the preceding 220 years of Russian-Native contact. The product of marriages between Russian men and Native women, this class worked as the labor behind much of the Russian-American Company's efforts. The creole class displaced most of the need for forced labor and adopted many Russian customs, even if they were not completely Russified.

The sale of Russian America turned the creoles on their heads. Their jobs were gone, and their livelihood in jeopardy. Most of the Russian population of Alaska left the territory shortly after the purchase, and many creoles left with these pure-blood Russians. Some resettled in the Amur River area; others went to European Russia.

The creoles who stayed and the more traditional Alaska Natives along the coast were immediately confronted by American speculators. These speculators devastated the fur seal populations of the Pribilof Islands (which beforehand had been subject to some of the world's first conservation regulations) and by hook or crook managed to acquire much of the land along the coast of the territory.

The Russians had operated under vague rules when it came to land ownership. There was so much land that there was rarely a need for deeds or certificates of title to particular parcels. American speculators, seeking profit, took as much as they could. Even if a particularly family, clan or tribal organization had generations-long ties to a particular fishing spot, it meant nothing in the eyes of American law. First to file was first to own, according to American judges. The few people who lived in organized towns only had title to the land under their homes. Those who lived in Native villages or in the Bush didn't even have that.

The Russians, lacking manpower and firepower, had adopted a policy of acclimatization and adaptation when it came to Russian America. Russian churches conducted services in Native languages and Slavonic both. Native culture and tradition was ignored but not hampered by Russian officials.

Americans, with an evangelical Christian tradition, took the opposite approach. American missionaries acted harshly in schools and churches, burning artifacts, enforcing English, and sometimes resorting to the torture of particularly recalcitrant pupils.

American traders wielded a stiff monopoly, backed with the firepower of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army. In 1869, two years after the purchase, a dispute escalated into violence. A Tlingit man was killed by the U.S. Army in a fight following a Christmas dance at Fort Wrangell. Per Tlingit custom, death must be paid with death (or weregild), and a white trader was shot dead.

The Tlingit of Ḵaachx̱an.áakʼw, near Wrangell, were ordered to turn the murderer over. When they refused, the U.S. Army bombarded Ḵaachx̱an.áakʼw, whose residents counterattacked with their own firearms. The U.S. Army took hostages, and the accused murderer surrendered himself. He was hanged on Dec. 29.

In the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. military intervened against various Tlingit villages, bombarding Kake and Killisnoo, and sending gunboats to enforce American jurisdiction when the Chilkat resisted free passage over the coastal mountains.

It was not until the 20th century that Alaska Natives were even confirmed to be American citizens. Russia had been offering limited citizenship privileges more than a century before the United States did in 1924.