Ivan Evseevich Veniaminov
Veniaminov, Ivan Evseevich
(monastic name, In-nokentii). Born Aug. 26 (Sept. 6), 1797, in the village of Anginskoe, Irkutsk Province; died Mar. 31 (Apr. 12), 1879, in Moscow. Russian church figure, ethnographer and naturalist, missionary, and first researcher to study the Aleuts: he also studied the Tlingit (on lands owned by the Russian American Company, 1824-39).
Veniaminov devoted particular attention to the study of forms of marriage and family relationships, and he held a consistently historical point of view in ethnography. His principal work was Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska Section (parts 1-3, 1840). In 1840 he was made bishop of Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands, and the Aleutians. After he became metropolitan of Moscow in 1868, he withdrew from research activity.