The Tlingit made it impossible for the Russians to keep it. When the Russians fired up the cannon to lay waste to their villages, the Tlingit moved camp across the island, and then sent warriors to grease up and swim out to the ships at night and bash holes in their hulls with rocks. Without cannon the Russians couldn't conquer, and without ships the Russians didn't have cannon. The Americans never tried AFAIK. They just moved in and traded, which suited the Tlingit fine because they liked the trade goods.
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Sounds like a movie waiting to happen. You being a tlingit ancestor in the making, I find it better to ask you, what do you recommend for reading on your history to be most accurate?
I am clueless as to written material on the history of Tlingit interactions with Russians or the early American settlers. Sheldon Jackson was one of the earlier American settlers, and there is a college in Sitka bearing his name, so perhaps searching his works might turn up good material. All the things I have related here were oral history I heard from friends I grew up with.
I am not Tlingit, but grew up amongst them.