NORTHWEST COAST CONTACT
- Jun 18
- 21 min read
Updated: Aug 28
EARLIEST VISITS?
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 near and 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 what is today Mexico and then north to Alaska and back over to Japan in the 5th century and after. There are 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 and often include 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.
NOT THE EUROPEANS
First (perhaps), in 1732, the Russian Empire under Empress Anna initiated what is known 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 a 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-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 modern-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 ship’s naturalist, Georg Wilhelm Steller (a German and the same Steller after whom the Jay and Sea Cow 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 acquire his name. 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. On the early Asian trade in west coast otter pelts, Margaret 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 silk 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 at investigating their activities up north, claiming the coast up to 60°N latitude (parallel to what is today the Yukon-BC border), and establishing 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. Though records are not good, given the remoteness of the ports and towns on the west coast of New Spain, and how far those sites were from Old Spain, the majority of crew on this ship and ones like it are likely to have been zambos, folks of mixed Indigenous/African descent; mestizos, mixed Indigenous and Spanish ancestry; criollos, people born in the Americas but of Spanish descent; and mulattos, those of African/Spanish descent.
At the end of January the ship left the central coast of present-day Mexico (which, of course, would not be called Mexico until they declared independence in 1821). They landed at the Spanish settlements that are today’s San Diego and Monterey, staying in each for about a month. They only headed out to sea in early summer and raced north. By mid-July the Santiago was running low on water and desperately looking for shore. On July 17th they arrived near 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 still kept 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 greeting the crew.
The following day, another 21 canoes appeared. Each craft carried between seven and 30 people seeking to engage in trade. The first to arrive sang, danced, and threw feathers 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 lower 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 direct or indirect 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. Sailors jumped aboard some of the Haida canoes, too. “Those who went aboard the canoes” we are told “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, 1774. When the Santiago arrived, locals initially fled the scene but eventually approached in canoes to trade on August 8th, 1774, 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, 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 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, and 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 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 volley 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 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, by the text alone of course, just as likely 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 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 continued northward with his crew in the Sonora, reaching 59° north on August 15th (though some sources suggest they didn’t get nearly that far and my reading suggests that their furthest reckoning north came a week later, on the 22nd). Spotting no Russian ships, it seemed 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 were spotted nearby. Those folks, the Tlingit I presume, soon descended upon the cross planted on their beach, took possession *yoink* and affixed 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 crew of the Sonora took great pains 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, what are now South Africa, Tasmania, and New Zealand, all over the South Pacific, and Hawaii.
If you read or hear almost anyone offering anything about Cook you’ll be led to believe that many of these landings were firsts, when they weren’t. You’ll also be told Cook committed the crime of initiating future voyages or sparking off colonialism or attempting to settle or colonize these places. 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 to the Russians and Spanish, reached, mapped, and told of places like Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Alaska, the Pacific Northwest of North America and others years, decades, and in some cases centuries before Cook. Too, those same commentators propose every manner of devious motivation to Cook and crew despite knowing that, for example, he set out on his first voyage with the aim of reaching Tahiti (previously visited by the English) — not to rape, pillage, 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 accurately estimate the size of the solar system. And, it must be said, this little vessel full of artists, astronomers, botanists, and naturalists (a third of whom died from Old World dysentery and malaria in port in Indonesia) had the indispensable aid of Polynesian navigator, translator, and diplomat, Tupaia — who also died from illness in port.
In this later instance, Cook’s third voyage, the Discovery and Resolution reached the Americas, resting at Nootka Sound, Nuu-chah-nulth territory, on the west coast of present-day Vancouver Island at the end of March in 1778. They stayed about a month. Cook noted a pair of silver spoons being worn as a necklace as evidence of the prior arrival of the Spanish. From there they went north to Alaska and back to Hawaii where Cook was killed. This killing of Cook is a whole thing. For more of those details check out the endnotes in the book. 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.
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 New Spain 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. They 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. Aboard the ships were Archibald Menzies, Peter Puget, and Joseph Whidbey, whose names are found on our maps today. They circumnavigated the island, which he called “Quadra and Vancouver Island”, and piloted 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” between the Pacific and Atlantic. Along with noting the devastation of smallpox on the living and of vast numbers of dead, Vancouver insisted again and again in his journals 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 temperamental or physical signs of being inured to hostilities. It was for this reason that, though Vancouver and his men felt sure they’d stumbled upon a tremendous battlefield and the remnants of an epochal cataclysm, he determined the consequences were not due to conflict but, indeed, entirely as a result of smallpox.
Following the path laid down by Pérez, the San Blas to Nootka Sound route, many voyages followed throughout the 1790s. Francisco de Eliza y Reventa, Jacinto Caamaño, Dionisio Alcalá-Galiano, and Cayetano Valdés all sailed around and through and landed in the area, too, 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.
INCONCLUSION
So it is this rainbow coalition who interacted here in person on the north Pacific coast. I hope you’ll agree that “James Cook in 1778” doesn’t even vaguely capture who actually visited 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”, "the British", “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 any resource more detailed than the opening paragraph of a Wikipedia page. Too, I hope you can see that, from up and across the Pacific alone, not only was there so much opportunity for the transmission of ideas, goods, plants and animals, microorganisms, and DNA but that those opportunities were as fully exploited, intentionally and otherwise. Perhaps more than all of that, with so much extremely interesting history and drama, I am compelled to ask where are all the NFB films and Netflix series? As it were, “where are the goddamned operas?” There are not less than a dozen untold stories here with far more impact on people's lives than nearly anything going. I wonder what other histories, adventures, and peoples have been nearly or totally erased from our origin story?
Just to get specific, sources such as The Canadian Encyclopedia, like effectively every other source, offer up what look to me like a completely fictional accounting of everything from who visited to the consequences of those visits. This universally available and authoritative digital source (who highlights itself as up-to-date, rigorously accurate, and the premier accounting of Canadian history to Canadians) gifts us 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”. They even propose that malaria (not flu, measles, tuberculosis, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, or bubonic plague…) was brought to the region by those same Westerners and significantly contributed to the decimation of the Nuu-chah-nulth population. Really? I can’t help you if you think malaria came to or survived in BC and wiped out the population here. You’ll just have to live with that belief and remain utterly lost.
But, it really begs asking, how and why could anyone work so very hard to erase all of the above stories and people (and the ethnic backgrounds of the overwhelming majority of them) who visited in the first century of direct contact. Western? In what sense? By what definition? You see, you don’t only have to erase all of history but to get there it also helps to redefine every critical term as you go. All the Asian, African, and Indigenous Americans, and all of the vast multicultural mix either did not come, you see, or were, apparently, all Westerners (as anyone could plausibly understand that term). I don’t know. You might ask if the Eurocentric perspective is the one insisting on the sole authorship and supremacy of Europeans while reimagining the whole of the world as Europe and all the people therein as European (while insisting they’re engaged in an institutional and national effort toward decolonization and rectifying what they see as rampant Eurocentrism)? No, these are the people pushing all of that.
Erase almost every culture if you must, but why then also reverse all of what we know? Why pretend there wasn’t at least as much kisses and hugs, essential and much-appreciated trade, adoptions and intermarriage as there was conflict? Personally, I don’t even know how you really even bring up the conflict given that conflict was the background for all time and what was really novel and interesting was all the world-altering gifting and sharing. From there, why pretend violence was one-sided or, more commonly, not a requisite part of the very partnerships that kept foreign minorities alive in a land replete with complex, often ancient and adversarial, relationships? And with that, why pretend the communities and cultures who were overwhelmingly dominant in every way were not, in fact, dominant? Why pretend they were inherently inferior and brutally subjugated — especially in the first two (or five or eight) centuries after so-called contact? Like, really? The argument we’re going to make is that 20 or even 120 guys on a boat, three of whom were of Spanish ancestry and none of whom were from Europe (and half of whom were immobilized, dying of TB and/or scurvy), were just having their way? Across thousands or millions of square kilometres and with hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of far healthier and better knowledgeable, skilled, and equipped people? In their home territory? 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 alleged “invasion” of present-day Canada, none of the most common picture of west coast exploration even attempts to paint anything a realistic portrait of what the real world surely must have looked like.
Ultimately, of course you’re welcome to hold whatever bonkers beliefs you wish, but I’d like to know why those what is clearly nonsense is then imposed on everyone else, especially so egregiously in the school curricula, teaching guides, textbooks, encyclopedias, and throughout the carefully curated works in our libraries? It’s nuts. But just you wait.
You haven’t yet seen the giant bowl of jumbo Oh Henrys at the end of the rainbow… That comes in the next section.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
First Peoples’ Cultural Council, 2020 - First Peoples’ Map of BC
Camosun College, 2022 - Traditional Territories in 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, 1785 - A voyage to the Pacific Ocean: performed under the direction of Captains Cook, Clerke, and Gore
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
