NORTHWEST COAST CONTACT or RUSSIANS, NATIVE AMERICANS, AND CHINESE, OH MY!
- Jun 7
- 22 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Almost eight centuries after Norse arrival in the east and two-and-a-half centuries after the start of the Columbian Exchange and the Spanish beginning their conquistadoring of the Americas, there were eventually many brief visits to British Columbia and Vancouver Island by outsiders of all sorts. Why I'm offering this here is that only if you really dig into it do you find that whole voyages are commonly forgotten or erased from this history, even from current “untold history” accounts. Expunged even more thoroughly are the overwhelming majority of the people onboard those ships, who were from all over the planet.
Caveat: You can find accounts of Chinese explorers crossing the Pacific to Mexico and then north to Alaska and Japan in the 5th century and after, and also tellings of a host of Spaniards as well as the English pirate Francis Drake making their way up to Oregon or there abouts (some say California, others British Columbia), including encounters with locals, all throughout the 16th century. The details are pretty foggy, often with conflicting stories, landmarks, and ecological descriptions. Not helping this is that folks were prone to embellishment, both to increase their own prestige but also to help procure themselves further adventures and riches… As such, I’m starting with accounts in or very near the lands and waters of BC that seem the most robust. As you will see, there is reason to suspect earlier visits or at least far more extensive trade networks than commonly appreciated.
NOT THE EUROPEANS
First (perhaps), in 1732, the Russian Empire under Empress Anna initiated what is know as the Great Northern Expedition. The aim? To explore and map the Russian Empire, Arctic, and North Pacific, and to seek a potential route to North America. Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov each commanded their own ships and between them about 150 crew, a mix of people from mostly from Asia but Europe as well. Though their ships started out together in Kamchatka they were quickly separated by as storm and thick fog.
Chirikov and crew reached southeast Alaska on July 15, 1741, more than a month after setting out. They were in what is today the Alaskan Panhandle, off of Noyes Island (located at approximately 55°26’N, 133°49’W, roughly half way between Sitka and Ketchikan, though different versions of events abound). So they were almost as far south as Haida Gwaii. From there they went roughly 300km north to modern-day Baranof Island, closer to Sitka. A longboat of 10 men was sent ashore there on Baranof Island to acquire supplies and make contact with any locals. They did not return. After a week with no signs of life, no fires or smoke sited nor sounds of any musket fire, another five men were sent in the ship’s last landing craft. Those men did not return, either. Chirikov’s log appears to mention observing a column of smoke on shore. Unsure of whether whirlpools, man-eating beasts, or the locals got their friends, Chirikov and his ship — now half-full (empty?) of men and by this time many suffering from scurvy and tuberculosis — fled for home.
In “Reflections on the Fate of Alexei Chirikov’s Missing Men”, by the Russian historian and expert on Russian America, Andrei Grinëv, it’s argued that those crew members likely deserted, due to illness aboard the ship and their running out of supplies. The suggestion is that the men joined the locals, the Tlingit, or were taken by them. To support this, both the arrival of strange outsiders and the common practice of taking captives are well documented in local history. Interestingly, this vision is effectively a rejection of most other tellings that prefer there was no desertion and rather that the men succumbed to an extreme environment.
What of the other ship? Bering and crew first encountered North Americans, the Aleuts, at the Shumagin Islands, more than half way along the Aleutian island chain to moder-day Anchorage. There exists a drawing, by Sven Waxell, a mate on the ship, of a person riding in a kayak with a double-sided paddle and sporting a long staff. I haven’t read anything suggesting there was contact or trade. It is said that Bering sighted the Alaskan mainland the day after Chirikov, on July 16th, and that they anchored off of Kayak Island, a long spit of land about 300km southwest of Anchorage. There, Bering’s men went ashore to explore and find much-needed water. The ships naturalist, Georg Wilhelm Steller (a German and the same Steller after whom the Jay and Sea Cow are are named) noted in his journal there being signs of folks living in the neighbourhood. He also writes of, as a result, the crew leaving behind an iron kettle, a Chinese pipe and some silk, and a pound of tobacco.
Short on supplies, Bering and crew made for home. Nearly back, with half his crew dead and only a dozen men not yet immobilized from scurvy, Bering’s ship was wrecked on a little island just a few hundred kilometers from Kamchatka. The stranded crew wintered on the island. Many died, including Bering. The island, like the straight, would eventually be named after him. When weather improved, the remaining survivors built a little boat from the salvageable wreckage and sailed home. The sea otter furs they returned with were determined to be the finest furs anyone had ever seen, hence the global obsession that eventually sparked from their trip. (It is said that sea otters, Enhydra lutris, have the densest fur in the animal kingdom, up to 10 times the density of the hair on your head, for those who have that. And the consequence of this find and subsequent global demand meant that, though not extinct, even all these centuries later the sea otter still struggles to return. So if you see any, which is unlikely, you’re best to consider yourself lucky and leave them be.)
On the early Asian trade in west coast otter pelts, Ormsby writes in her British Columbia: a History:
In 1783, Pekin obtained peltries from Russian sources. Overnight, the wearing of these lustrous furs became high fashion in China. Merchants clamoured to supply the demands of mandarins and of ladies of quality. The long peltries were used, without piecing, to make full-length mandarin robes. Narrow lengths of furs were wanted to trim exquisitely embroidered sill gowns and to entwine with pearls to make handsome sashes; even the tips of tails were sought to enhance the attractiveness of caps and mittens. Funds obtained from the sales of furs enabled traders to purchase teas, silks, ankeens and “chinoiserie”.
As trans-Pacific commerce emerged, the waters off the western littoral became a zone of international competition. Their proximity to the fur fields and their good fortune in having in their employ the Aleuts, who had mastered the science of killing the shy marine animals by shooting arrows from kayaks, gave the Russians in Alaska the initial advantage in developing the China market.
NOW THE EUROPEANS?
A couple of generations after the Russians, in 1774, the Spaniard Juan José Pérez Hernández and crew visited Haida Gwaii and what would become known as Vancouver Island. The voyage was a direct response to the Russians and aimed to investigate their activities up north, claim the coast up to 60°N latitude (parallel to what is today the Yukon-BC border), and establish friendly relations with the locals (oh, and to save their souls, of course, where possible). Pérez, commanding the frigate Santiago, brought with him 112 passengers and crew — the majority of whom were Indigenous and of mixed Indigenous, African, and/or European ancestry. This was the norm during this period for Spanish ships out of New Spain (which, of course, would not be called Mexico until it declared independence in 1821).
The ship left the central coast of present-day Mexico at the end of January, landed in what are now San Diego and then Monterey, staying in each for about a month. They only headed out to sea in early summer and raced for the North. By mid-July the Santiago was running low on water and steered east looking for shore. On July 17th they arrived off the coast of Haida Gwaii on the central coast of what is today BC. The weather prevented any sight of the island but they were alerted to it by the presence of extensive kelp beds. The following day the ship’s log records “At 11 we saw the coast, nothing more new.” They approached the shore the next day but the weather and fast water kept still them at a distance. It wasn’t until July 20th (though some sources insist the 18th) that the crew spotted smoke followed by three approaching Haida canoes. When the boats got near the occupants sang to the Santiago and crew while casting feathers into the sea, gesturing that they were not hostile and welcoming of the ship’s arrival. The men in the canoes were described thusly: “[They] were of good stature of body, well formed and smiling expressions, beautiful eyes, and good looking; their hair tied in the back and had beards and moustaches in the fashion of the Chinese people.” The Spanish seemed to be just as impressed with the Haida’s fine canoes, beautiful, finely woven blankets, and a “special white wool.” They note that the Haida seemed to wish for the crew to come ashore. Turning down the invitation, the Haida returned to the island about thirty minutes after showing up.
The following day, another 21 canoes appeared seeking to engage in trade, each carrying between seven and 30 people. The first to arrive sang, danced, and threw feather into the air, not unlike the day before. It is also noted that the Haida “stayed all afternoon.” Their descriptions were formally documented once again, this time as “stocky, good-looking as well, and white skinned in their features; most of them having blue eyes. Their hair is tied like the Spanish, and some wear a shoulder strap like soldiers, likewise those who wear moustaches and have beards.” Later the captain describes two canoes full of women “with children on their bosom and other older children.” He also records them as being “all good looking, white, and blond, many of them wore bracelets of iron and copper and some headbands of the same. They wear clothes of pelts tailor fit to their body. The lover lip in the middle has a hole, and in it they put a colored shell that strikes on the nose when they speak…”
Uhm, what? Despite being clear and hard to miss, when trying to understand the above descriptions of the Haida I find that there’s almost no mention of this. If the matter is brought up the whole thing is explained away as simple confusion. The argument being that officers like Pérez — born in Palma de Mallorca in the western Mediterranean and who travelled throughout Asia, the Pacific and Caribbean, and lived in Mexico, piloting ships full of rather diverse crews — couldn’t distinguish white, grey, blonde, red, or brown hair from black or between blue eyes and brown ones, or even just light from dark. And they offer this sort of thing pretending the meeting was with one individual and not between dozens or that it was a fleeting encounter through a spyglass, or something, rather than quite intimate and lasting many hours. Still, the most serious discussions I can find approximate to “Haha, those stupid Spanish.” Sadly, the more I look into this history the more of it appears like this kind of weird dismissal where we pretend things didn’t happen or that everyone involved was terribly confused or just stupid. Are these real attempts at understanding even the simplest, most obvious questions any child would have?
On this day the Haida trade bear, wolf, otter skins, and blankets for clothes and knives. The captain also writes of their trading partners appearing, by their hand gestures, to be after larger machetes or swords. He notices that they are already acquainted with such things, noting iron items in some of their canoes. He writes that those look to be “instruments of cutting as well as a half a bayonet, and a fragment of a sword”, indicating earlier contact with folks from Asia and/or Europe. It is also written that two Haida boarded the Santiago and were given gifts of cheese and bread as well as some trinkets and that some sailors also jumped aboard some Haida canoes, too. “Those who went aboard the canoes” he tells us “were hugged and kissed as a sign of friendship.”
Unable to get their ship very close to shore, after just a few days in the area the Santiago left and headed north, aiming for their prescribed 60°N destination. Before making their intended latitude they were turned back by terrible weather and fierce currents. On their trip back south to New Spain they sailed along the west coast of Vancouver Island, believing it was the mainland. They arrived at Nootka Sound, Nuu-chah-nulth territory, on August 6th. The locals initially fled the scene but eventually approached in canoes to trade on August 8th, exchanging dried fish, otter pelts, and woven hats for beads, knives, and cloth. The Santiago was only in Nootka Sound for a few days before her sick and scurvy-ridden crew demanded a return to the south, where they arrived, back in not-Mexico, in November, almost a year after they left.
That said, who even knows? Most details I offer above seem murky. I’ve not read the primary sources myself and some sources I read, all scholarly works offered by professional historians who appear to have accessed primary sources, disagree or contradict. Some say what was traded to the Nuu-chah-nulth, for example, were “European tools and iron” rather than cloth, knives, and beads; others note “California abalone” among the Spanish offerings while some highlight there being “silver spoons” in the mix. One source even claims the spoons were not traded but stolen. It does seem there were spoons, but were they stolen? After spending a whole day studying this one voyage alone I can’t sort all the conflicting details so you’re getting my best guesses. What are we doing, people? What are we doing? I sent a bunch of emails tying to get to the bottom of some more pertinent details but, as ever, I ain’t never got no dang responses. This is what so commonly happens when you lack an email address linking yourself to a university. And, most tragically, I’ve not decided to learn Spanish and travel to Seville to find the original ship’s logs and officers’ journals from this voyage. (Though, of course, if you wish to fund that project please do get in touch…)
AGAIN, AGAIN!
Just months after returning to New Spain (not-Mexico), Pérez turned the Santiago around, joining Bruno de Hezeta y Dudagoitia as second in command. They were accompanied by the Peruvian, Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, who commanded the much smaller schooner Sonora, on another trip back north. They left in mid-March 1775 and arrived in Monterey in April. In mid-July, the ships reached Point Grenville and Destruction Island in the present-day Washington. The ships attracted the attention of a nearby village, home to the Quinault. The locals visited the schooner several times, trading with the crew and offering gifts of food. One English translation of the journal reads:
...nine canoes of tall and stout Indians appeared, who invited the crew of the schooner with great cordiality to eat, drink, and sleep with them. Our commander took care to regale them in the best manner he could, and particularly their chieftains, as well as those who came the most readily on board, giving them whatever they seemed most to desire … they soon returned with fish of many sorts, pagro, whale, and salmon, as also flesh of several animals, well cured under ground.
Early the next day a party from the Santiago went ashore to conduct their mandated possession ceremony, involving the erection of a large cross on the beach followed by a religious ritual, all of which was observed by the locals. Later that morning, Bodega sent a boat to fetch water, firewood, and a pole for a replacement mast (or in some accounts to catch game). Hundreds of Quinault had set up an ambush. Despite being well-armed with guns, cutlasses, and hatchets all the sailors who went ashore were killed and their landing craft torn apart. (One might assume the locals deduced the symbolism and significance of the earlier ceremony. Or maybe the crew got up to something terrible beyond the view of the ship. Hard to say. There’s no account of a volleys of musket fire or a fierce battle on the beach. And this version of events from the ship is obviously one-sided, their view was from quite a distance, and none of their men returned to explain what actually took place.) The Sonora weighed anchor, hoping to escape. Nine canoes full of armed men pursued them. One canoe approached and appeared to offer them items for trade and made signs that they should come ashore. (This seems to have been interpreted as a ploy. But, given that the cultural and linguistic barriers were as great as can be, it seems just as likely, if only to me, to have been a sincere attempt toward reconciliation.) The journal entry says that eventually the locals, knowing the small numbers of men on board, surrounded the ship and aimed their bows at them. It also explains and that the men on the schooner turned their muskets on the Quinault, perhaps just one canoe, killing six.
As soon as they were out to sea, the men of the Sonora joined the others aboard the Santiago “hoping that we should be permitted to use the launch, land with an armed force, destroy the villages of the Indians, and try to recover those of our own people, who perhaps had hid themselves in the woods, or had saved themselves by swimming.” Pérez and others in command were convinced there were no survivors and that revenge would only be tragic. More, the mission was to make friends, not enemies, and doubtless they could not afford to bleed sailors or landing craft like this right at the start of their mission, even if they could justify revenge.
Shaken by the disaster, and with most of their crew already suffering from scurvy and other illnesses, Hezeta, Pérez, and crew limped home in the Santiago. Bodega and the Sonora continued northward, reaching 59° north on August 15th (though some sources suggest they didn’t get nearly that far and my reading suggests that their furthest reconing north came a week later, on the 22nd). Spotting no Russian ships, it seemed the they still had little to no presence in this part of the Pacific. As such the Sonora (apparently having learned nothing) landed and performed their possession rituals, claiming the coast of North America for Spain. My favourite part of the entry here is where a house and some locals are spotted nearby. Those folks, the Tlingit I presume, soon descend upon the cross planted on their beach, take possession yoink, and affix it to their house.
The ship’s crew suffering dwindling supplies, resulting in scurvy, malnutrition, illness, and exhaustion, made for home. At this point came great frustration in their discovering the poor quality of their maps:
In sailing along the coast we took indefatigable pains to observe with precision how it lay, from which innumerable objections offered themselves to M Bellin’s Charts.
This engineer hath chiefly founded himself upon the tracks of two Russian Navigators, Beering and Tschirikow, who were sent upon discoveries in 1741. It is evident however that the Russian maps are not to be depended upon, for if they had been tolerably accurate we should have fallen in with the land to the Westward, more easily than to the East.
Bellin is not less erroneous in laying down the American coast, and indeed it is not at all extraordinary that his errors should be so numerous, as he had no materials for his charts, but his own fruitful imagination; no navigator having verified many parts of the American continent in these high latitudes but ourselves.
The result of this was that the the voyage home took great pains on their trip south to produce the most accurate and detailed maps ever of the Pacific coast of North America.
THE “ENGLISH” AND MORE “SPANISH”
Shortly after them, the English started visiting, but not really from Europe. In 1776, commanding the Resolution, James Cook (the only name other than Bering’s I’ve ever seen or heard mention of) crossed the planet. With him on this, his third, voyage was his deputy, Charles Clerke, who commanded the Discovery. The two ships carried a total of 182 men. Though records for people below the rank of officer are poor, those men seem to have been English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Swiss, and American. Their voyage took them from England to the Canary Islands, modern-day South Africa, Tasmania, New Zealand, all over the South Pacific, and Hawaii.
If you read almost anything about Cook you’ll read about many of these landings being the “first” and about Cook committing the crime of initiating future voyages or sparking off colonialism or attempting to settle or colonize these places himself. All of that is total baloney. People offer this bull tweed despite knowing that outsiders of all stripes, from the Indonesians to the French and Dutch, reached, mapped, and told of places like Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa and others years, decades, or centuries before Cook. And they propose every maner of wild motivation to Cook despite knowing that, for example, he set out on his first voyage, on a tiny ship with the aim of reaching Tahiti (previously visited by the English) — not to rape, piliage, and claim the whole of the world for God and Empire, you might be shocked to learn, but on the costliest scientific project in history: to observe the transit of Venus so that scholars could attempt to estimate the size of the solar system. And, of course, this little vessel full of artists and naturalists (a third of whom died from dysentery and malaria in port in Indonesia) had the aid of their absolutely indispensable Polynesian navigator, translator, and diplomat, Tupaia.
In this instance, eventually the Discovery and Resolution reached the Americas, resting at Nootka Sound, Nuu-chah-nulth territory, on the west coast of Vancouver Island at the end of March in 1778. They stayed about a month. Cook noted a pair of Spanish silver spoons being worn as a necklace as evidence of the prior arrival of the Spanish. From there they went north to Alaska, back to Hawaii where Cook was killed. From Hawaii the ships crossed to Russia and China (Macau and Guangzhou where they sold the furs they acquired in Nootka Sound) and back to the south of Africa before returning to England in 1780.
This killing of Cook is a whole thing. There are, as always, as many interpretations of events as there are tellings, or so it seems. From what I can discern, the first arrival of the Resolution and Discovery in the Hawaiian islands was the local’s first contact with non-Ploynesians. It was also the first sighting of the islands by outsiders. The consensus seems to be that the ships’ arrival coincided with an annual celebration of a deity who was associated with sheets of white cloth. So when these sails came over the horizon the locals new what they were seeing and how to respond: with great admiration and an abundance of gifts and celebration. Not only were the locals happy to give more than they had to spare but these two large ships and their large crews were also all too happy to have it, years at sea and many thousands of kilometres from anywhere else. Also, it does seem Cook and his men overstayed their welcome. And when they returned from North America, desperate to resupply and repair their ships, this symbol of the deity did so, this time, outside the season of his celebration and with having already so thoroughly deplete the communities food stores and hospitality. Needless to say, things got spicy. Some accounts highlight thefts on one side, particularly that of the ship’s smaller landing craft. This tends to be downplayed but, as far as I can tell, such a thing would have been a very big deal indeed rather than a minor offense as the little cutter was essential to collecting water and ferrying supplies from shore to ship. It also seems to me the locals would not have known they were potentially imperiling the lives of the crew, rather than merely procuring themselves a neat little boat, or some lumber and iron, as compensation for the community’s tremendous and unrequited outpouring of generosity. Others focus more on contraventions of local custom and hierarchy but also what were seen as the crew’s inappropriate sexual advances and thus ample violations of trust, and all the terrible offense brought by all this.
What seems certain is that Cook planned to kidnap the highest status local, Kalaniʻōpuʻu. The crew intended to bring the man aboard Cook’s ship and prevent him from leaving until the crew’s life-preserving craft was returned. This move had been successful in the past under similar circumstances. Though most agree Kalaniʻōpuʻu went willingly, he wasn’t bound and gaged and held at musketpoint, the mere suspicion of what was transpiring caused an uproar. A melee ensued on the beach. Cook and crew (yes, despite their vastly superior germs, steel, and guns) were easily overwhelmed by Hawaiian warriors protecting their leader. Right away Cook took a blunt object to the head and was stabbed several times. A truce was negotiated and the Hawaiians returned (some of?) Cook’s remains which were buried at sea.
As you’ll find, this trip to Hawaii comes up all over the place around discussions around Cook and colonialism. And the above appears to me to be the sort of egregious act for which Cook is so hated. As far as I can tell, Cook:
Founded no settlements, established no trade routes, colonized nothing, nor does it seem he enabled any of that in any real sense (any more than Buzz Aldrin initiated colonization of Mars or travel to the stars)
Was just one dude, a mere human, who seems to have done almost nothing you or I or anyone else wouldn’t have done were we in his boots (that is to say, he was most certainly guilty of observing the norms, customs, laws, and faith he was raised on)
The argument against Cook must surely be that Pacific Islanders would have themselves been treated as Gods had they been first-contacted by the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, Mongol, Qing, or Inca empires. That’s quite the claim. As such, hatred of Cook seems like pure scapegoating to me. On the note of scapegoating, worry not, you won’t find a statue of Cook (a sailor who circled the world a couple of times) placed at the marina, on the private property of a non-profit, across the street from the Empress Hotel here in Victoria. Some illiterate children recently tore it down and threw it in the sea in an incomprehensible orgy of self-important rage. (This sort of thing was trending on the Instagram, you see. Like Pokemon Go or blatant antisemitism, you didn’t want to be seen not doing it…) The statue was not resurrected nor were spankings doled out. Why? Because locals remain fearful of both illiterate children and of Instagram, alas. Similar fear exists around obvious questions and simple conversations… or just asking “Wait, is that true?” Double alas.
Leaving from Macau, James Hanna captained the Sea Otter (with a crew of fewer than 50, including a couple of men from India, the Philippines, and/or China, perhaps) for Nootka Sound in 1785. Hanna and crew returned to China with Comekela, the younger brother of Nuu-chah-nulth chief Maquinna, and repeated the trip the following year. That same year, 1786, James Strange arrived at Nootka Sound from Bombay via Batavia, modern-day Jakarta, Indonesia (with maybe 90 crew, up to 20 of whom may have been Indians and five more Southeast Asian or Chinese). A couple of years later, in 1788, English Captain John Meares visited Nootka Sound. He brought two ships and maybe 80 crew with him, including 50 Chinese artisans from Guangzhou, some of whom stayed to build an otter fur trading post. Along for the return trip home was Comekela, Chief Maquinna’s brother. Also in 1788 Esteban José Martínez led an expedition back to Alaska, as far west as Unalaska Island. He visited Russian posts along the way and returned to Mexico with rumours that Russian traders planned to occupy Nootka Sound.
Further explorations were led by the Spanish-Peruvian Manuel Quimper, Franciso de Eliza, and Alejandro Malaspina, each with their own “Native American” crews, arrived at and mapped parts of the island in 1790 and 1791. George Vancouver also arrived in the area with a pair of vessels the following year and stayed through 1795. Aborad the ships were Archibald Menzies, Peter Puget, and Joseph Whidbey. They circumnavigated the island, which he called “Quadra and Vancouver Island”, and polited some smaller craft around the islands and waterways of the region, intricately charting the coastline and confirming that it was detached from the mainland, forever dispelling the myth of a Northwest Passage to the Atlantic in this region. Along with noting the vast numbers of dead to be found everywhere and the devastation of smallpox on the living, Vancouver insisted again and again that the locals all showed “great friendship and hospitality,” toward them, these English aliens. He recorded that the locals were “uniformly civil and friendly,” all “without manifesting the least sign of fear or suspicion” and showing no physical signs of “their having been much inured to hostilities.” It was for this reason he determined the virus killed everyone and not a cataclysmic war, the battlefields of which it seemed they had stumbled upon.
Following the path laid down by Pérez, the San Blas to Nootka Sound path, many voyages took place throughout the 1790s. Francisco de Eliza y Reventa, Jacinto Caamaño, Dionisio Alcalá-Galiano, Cayetano Valdés all sailed around and through and landed in the area, making contact with the Coast Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth, Haida, Tsimshian, and Tlingit at the very least. The feverish pitch of voyages from the south in this last decade of the 18th century, and the eagerness to chart the local waters, explains why so much of the region bears Spanish and Spanish derived names such as: Cordova, Dionisio, Galiano, Gabriola (a corruption of Gaviota), Gonzales, Haro, Juan de Fuca, Lasqueti, Malispina, Narváez, Quadra, San Juan, Saturna, Valdes, and the like.
So it is this rainbow coalition who interacted here in person on the North Pacific coast to initiate the most recent so-called invasion. I hope you’ll agree that “James Cook in 1778” doesn’t even vaguely capture who actually came and went or from where they came. And it certainly doesn’t tell you what anyone was up to or what the relations were like between various parties. I hope you can see how anyone offering anything like “English explorers” or “the Spanish” or anything of this sort are not merely misinformed but must be engaged in deliberately obfuscating and erasing of all of this history — because it’s all there in anything more detailed than the opening paragraph of a Wikipedia page. Too, I hope you can see that from up and across the Pacific alone how much opportunity there was for the transmission of ideas, goods, plants and animals, and microorganisms. Perhaps more than all of that, with so much extremely interesting history I am compelled to ask where are all the NFB films and Netflix series? As it were, “where are the goddamned operas?” I wonder what other histories, adventures, and peoples have been nearly or totally erased from our origin story?
EUROCENTRIC MUCH?
Just to get specific, sources such as the Canadian Encyclopedia, like effectively every other source, offer up what look to me like a completely bonkers accounting of everything from who visited to the consequences of those visits. This universally available and authoritative digital source, offers in their section on the Nuu-chah-nulth, for just one example, that illness and cultural conflict at this time arose from contact with “Westerners”. Really? How and why could you work so hard to erase all of the above and, at the very least, the ethnic backgrounds of the overwhelming majority of those who visited — who were anything but Western? The truly bold might ask if the Eurocentric perspective is the one insisting on the sole authorship and supremacy Europeans or that of questioning such a ludicrous set of assertions? Sillier still, erase almost every culture if you must but why then also reverse all of what we know and pretend there wasn’t as much kisses and hugs, adoptions and intermarriage as there was conflict? And with that, why pretend the communities and cultures who were overwhelmingly dominant in every way were not, in fact, dominant but both inherently inferior and brutally subjugated — especially in the first two (or five or eight) centuries? Your claim is that 20 sickly guys on a boat, three of whom were of Spanish ancestry and none of whom were from Europe, were just having their way were they across thousands or millions of square kilometres and with thousands or millions of far healthier and better equipped people? Where was that so? Where exists even one example of that? Was that what Cook was up to in Hawaii? Like the fantastical visions of the so-called “invasion” of Canada, none of this picture of west coast exploration even attempts to make contact with what we can be sure the real world looked like or even the little bit we have some half-decent accounting for. You’re welcome to hold these bonkers beliefs but don’t impose them on others, certainly not in your school curricula, text books, and encyclopedias.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
First Peoples’ Cultural Council, 2020 - First Peoples’ Map of BC
Stanford University Press, 1988 - Journal of a Voyage With Bering, 1741-1742; Steller 1743
Scientific Russia, 2021 - Captain Aleksei Chirikov
University of Wisconsin Press, 2005 - Reflections on the Fate of Alexei Chirikov’s Missing Men
Ormsby, 1958 - British Columbia: A History
Journal of the Haida Nation, 2000 - Spanish Eyes & Iron People
Open Oregon Educational Resources, 2024 - The Expedition of Juan José Pérez Hernández
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 2025 - Pérez Hernández, Juan José
The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 2006 - Was New Spain Really First?: Rereading Juan Perez’s 1774 Expedition to Haida Gwaii
UBC Library Open Collections, 2016 - Journal of a voyage in 1775 to explore the coast of America, Northward of California
HistoryLink, 2004 - Spanish Exploration: Hezeta & Quadra Expedition of 1775 to Formally Claim the Pacific Northwest for Spain
US Naval Institute, 1941 - The Earliest Explorer: Traders of the Northwest Coast
You’re Dead to Me, 2022 - Captain Cook’s First Voyage
UBC Library Open Collections, 2019 - James Strange's journal and narrative of the commercial expedition from Bombay to the North-west coast of America
Oregon Encyclopedia, 2024 - Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s
The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2006 - Nuu-chah-nulth
