From my understanding, Christopher columbus landed on the americas in 1492 while russia had landed on alaska in 1741. So when American settlers started moving West, and Russia began coming from the north. Was there a point where Russians and the early American settlers realized its the same continent or was this knowledge already known when russia decided to crosse the Bering Straight ?
Happy to help, /u/Control987. Let me give you an answer based on something I wrote back in 2013:
As early as 1154 AD, the Tabula Rogeriana, created for Roger II of Sicily, shows Asia ending in water. By 1560, European maps had evolved to include the Strait of Anian, a semi-mythical strait separating Asia from America. It isn't clear where the Strait of Anian comes from, but we know from archaeological evidence that trade routes existed across the strait during this era, extending as far as China.
It would be pure speculation on my part to suggest that just as Chinese goods reached what is now Alaska, information was returned from the coast to China, and thence on to Europe.
Universalis Cosmographia, published in 1507, shows Asia and America separated by a wide ocean. Note that this is before Balboa reaches the Pacific and before Magellan's circumnavigation. Several subsequent maps show narrow straits between Asia and America as far south as San Diego.
By the end of the 16th century, most maps located the Strait of Anian at the northern end of America. Mercator's 1606 map of the polar regions shows a narrow Strait of Anian between Asia and America.
During this period, Cossack fur traders and fur raiders were moving east across Siberia. One of their most valuable markets was China, but overland routes were painfully slow.
During the 1640s, there were several Russian attempts to find a route to the Pacific that did not involve overland travel.
The most successful of these was one by Semeon Dezhnev, who in 1648 took seven ships and up to 121 men (records are unclear) on a mission to try to reach Anadyr from the mouth of the Lena River (main travel route to Irkutsk).
Four of the ships were destroyed before they even reached the Chukchi Peninsula, and another was wrecked on the peninsula itself. What happened to the two remaining boats isn't clear. What is clear is that Dezhnev is the only confirmed survivor of the expedition.
Whether he passed through the Bering Strait or not has never been confirmed. Regardless, records of 177 other, similar attempts exist in the years after Dezhnev's journey.
Records from the Siberian archives show that successful or not, these voyages gave rise to the belief that the continents were separate. There are many islands between Russia and America, and some of these were spotted during the voyages.
On Russian maps as early as 1667, eastern Siberia is shown as bounded by sea on the north and east. By 1710, "The Great Land" is listed on Russian charts east of Siberia.
Because of geographical and linguistic difficulties, it took some time for Russian discoveries to become known in western Europe. Even then, however, it was not known whether the Russian discoveries were a separate island or part of North America. The late 18th century voyages of Cook, Vancouver and others were needed to confirm that there was no Northwest Passage separating the Russian discoveries from the rest of North America.
On a related note, were there cultural/regional stories/tales from people near the Bering Strait of a land to the east (that turns out to be Alaska) before Russia landed in Alaska?