St. Peter the Aleut

St. Peter the Aleut was a young native Alaskan of the Aleut people, baptized into the Orthodox faith by the Russian missionaries who had evangelized the Aleutian Islands. His name in his own tongue was Cungagnaq, and he lived in the early nineteenth century, in the years when Russian, Spanish, and other powers contended for the lands and waters of the Pacific coast.

According to the account that has come down through St. Herman of Alaska and others, Peter was seized with a party of Aleut hunters and held captive in California, where, it is related, his captors tried to force him to renounce his Orthodox faith and embrace another confession. When he steadfastly refused, declaring himself a Christian, he was cruelly tortured and put to death about 1815. While the details rest on this single report, the Orthodox Church honors him as a martyr who died rather than deny Christ, and he was glorified as a saint in 1980. His memory is kept on 24 September.