monthly means range from 33° (January) to 56° (August), and the extreme recorded temperature from -4° to 87° F. Two-thirds of the days of the year are cloudy; on about 208 days in the year it rains or snows; the normal rainfall is 88.1 in., the extreme recorded rainfall (in 1886) is 140.26 in. The city includes an American settlement and an adjoining Indian village. In addition to U.S. government buildings (marine hospital and barracks, agricultural experiment station, wireless telegraph station and magnetic observatory), there are two public schools (one for whites and one for Thlinkets), the Sheldon Jackson (ethnological) Museum, which is connected with the Presbyterian Industrial Training School, a parochial school of the Orthodox Greek (Russian) Church, a Russian-Greek Church, built in 1816, and St Peter's-by-the-Sea, a Protestant Episcopal mission, built in 1899. Sitka is the see of a Greek Catholic and of a Protestant Episcopal bishop. In its early history it was the leading trading post of Alaska. After the discoveries of gold in the last decade of the 19th century it wholly lost its commercial primacy, but business improved after the discovery of gold in 1905 on Chicagoff Island, about 50 m. distant. There is a very slight lumber industry; salmon fisheries are of greater importance. In the surrounding region there are gold and silver mines.
Old Sitka or Fort Archangel Gabriel, about 6 m. from the present town, was founded in May 1799. The fort was overwhelmed by the Thlinkets in 1802, but was recaptured by the Russians in September 1804. The settlement was removed at this time by Alexander Baranof to the present site. Thereafter until 1867 it was the chief port and (succeeding Kodiak) the seat of government of Russian America; it is still the headquarters of the Assistant Orthodox Greek bishop of the United States. The formal transfer of Alaska from Russian to American possession took place at Sitka on the 18th of October 1867. During the next ten years Alaska was governed by the department of war, and Sitka was an army post. It was the seat of government of Alaska until 1906, when Juneau became the capital.
SITTINGBOURNE, a market town in the Faversham parliamentary division of Kent, England, on a navigable creek of the Swale, 44¾ m. E.S.E. of London by the South Eastern and Chatham railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 8943. It consists principally of one long street (the Roman Watling Street) and the northern suburb of Milton, a separate urban district (pop. 7086), celebrated for its oysters, the fishery of which used to employ a large number of the inhabitants. Brick and cement making is an important industry, and there are corn and paper mills. The export trade in corn and import trade in coal is considerable. St Michael's church, originally Early English, underwent extensive restoration in 1873. An earthwork known as Castle Rough, in the marshes below Milton, was probably the work of Hasten the Dane in 892, and Bayford Castle, a mile distant occupies the site of one said to have been built in opposition by King Alfred. Tong Castle is about 2 m. E. of Sittingbourne. It consists of a high mound surrounded by a moat, and is said to have been erected by Hengest. Fragments of masonry exist about the mound. The story of the founding of the castle resembles that connected with the city of Carthage. Vortigern is said to have granted Hengest as much land as an ox-hide could encompass, and the hide being cut into strips the site of Tong Castle was accordingly marked out. The same tradition attaches to Tong Castle in Shropshire. Tradition also asserts, according to the 12th century chronicler, Geoffrey of Monmouth, that it was in Tong Castle that Vortigern met Rowena, Hengest's daughter, and became so enamoured of her as to resign his kingdom to her father. In the time of Richard II. Tong Castle belonged to Edmund Mortimer, earl of March.
Sittingbourne (Sasdungburna, Sidyngbourn) is mentioned in Saxon documents in 989 and frequently in contemporary records of the 13th and 14th centuries. The first charter was not obtained until 1573, when it was incorporated by Elizabeth under the title of a “guardian and free tenants” of the town of Sittingbourne. A weekly market was granted, two fairs yearly at Whitsuntide and Michaelmas, and many other privileges. This charter obtained until in 1599 a second one incorporated the town by the name of “mayor and jurats” and regranted the market and fairs together with some additional privileges, among others that of returning members to parliament, which, however, was never exercised.
SITTING BULL (c. 1837-1890), a chief and medicine man of the Dakota Sioux, was born on Willow Creek in what is now North Dakota about 1837, son of a chief named Jumping Bull. He gained great influence among the reckless and unruly young Indians, and during the Civil War led attacks on white settlements in Iowa and Minnesota. Though he had pretended to make peace in 1866, from 1869 to 1876 he frequently attacked whites or Indians friendly to whites. His refusal to return to the reservation in 1876, led to the campaign in which General George A. Custer (q.v.) and his command were massacred. Fearing punishment for his participation in the massacre, Sitting Bull with a large band moved over into Canada. He returned to the United States in 1881, and after 1883 made his home at the Standing Rock Agency. Rumours of a coming Indian Messiah who should sweep away the whites, and Indian dissatisfaction at the sale of their lands, created such great unrest in Dakota in 1880-1890 that it was determined to arrest Sitting Bull as a precaution. He was surprised and captured by Indian police and soldiers on Grand river on the 15th of December 1890, and was killed while his companions were attempting to rescue him.
SIVA, in Hindu mythology, a god who forms the supreme trinity with Brahma and Vishnu. As Brahma is the creator and Vishnu the preserver, so Siva is the destroyer. His name does not occur in the Vedas, but in later Hinduism he is an important divinity. Though Siva's personal appearance is fully described in the Puranas, it is in the form of the linga (phallic emblem) that he is almost universally worshipped. Death being a transition to a new form of life, the destroyer is really a re-creator, and thus Siva is styled the Bright or Happy One. He is exclusively a post-Vedic god, though he has been identified by the Hindus with the Rudra of the Vedas, and numerous features of Siva's character and history are developed from those of Rudra. See further Brahmanism and Hinduism.
SIVAGANGA, a town of British India, in the Madura district of Madras, 25 m. E. of Madura. Pop. (1901) 9097. It contains the residence of a zamindar, whose estate covers an area of 1680 sq. m. and pays a permanent land revenue of £20,000. The succession has been the subject of prolonged litigation.
SIVAJI (1627-1680), founder of the Mahratta power in India, was born in May 1627. He was the son of Shahji Bhonsla, a Mahratta soldier of fortune who held a jagir under the Bijapur government. From an early age he excelled in horsemanship and the use of weapons, and regarded himself as appointed to free the Hindus from the Mahommedan yoke. With this object he formed a national party among the Hindus of the Deccan, and opposed in turn the vassal power of Bijapur and the imperial armies of the Mogul of Delhi. By dint of playing off his enemies against each other and by means of treachery, assassination and hard fighting, Sivaji won for the Mahrattas practical supremacy in western India. In 1659 he lured Afzul Khan, the Bijapur general, into a personal conference, and killed him with his own hand, while his men attacked and routed the Bijapur army. In 1666 he visited the Mogul emperor, Aurangzeb, at Delhi, but on his expressing dissatisfaction at not being treated with sufficient dignity, he was placed under arrest. Having effected his escape in a sweetmeat basket, he raised the standard of revolt, assumed the title of raja, and the prerogative of coining money in his own name. But whilst at the height of his power he died on the 5th of April 1680 at the age of fifty-three. Sivaji was an extraordinary man, showing a genius both for war and for peaceful administration; but he always preferred to attain his ends by fraud rather than by force. He is the national hero of the Mahrattas, by whom he is regarded almost as a deity.
See Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas (1826); Krishnaji Ananta, Life and Exploits of Sivaji (1884); and M. G Ranade, Rise of the Maratha Power (Bombay, 1900).
