They did. Russian fur traders began settling in the area in the 1740s and an ukase of 1799 created the Russian–American Company, a joint stock company patterned after the British East India Company. The aim of the RAC was not really to people Alaska with Russians, but to extract money from the colony. The economic returns from the fur trade diminished and the tsarist state sold Alaska to the Americans in 1867. One of the biggest legacies of the Russian colonial period in Alaska was the missionary activities of the Russian Orthodox Church which converted a number of Alaska's indigenous peoples. Orthodoxy continued to be a major faith in Alaska after the Russians left since it was a religion that could be under a degree of native control, much to the chagrin of white, mostly Protestant, American missionaries. Although the numbers of Alaskan Orthodox declined under pressure from American authorities and became somewhat syncratic with indigenous beliefs, Alaskan Orthodox was one of the largest Eastern Orthodox parishes in the US. It would not be until around the twentieth century that the Eastern Orthodox population of the US became predominantly European-born because of emigration from Russia.