Among the first of these explorers was Captain James Cook, an Englishman who in his early years set the goal for himself of going not only “farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.” In his continuing search for the elusive Northwest Passage, Cook took his ship, HMS Resolution[1] and the collier HMS Discovery around the Cape of Good Hope into the Pacific — his third such venture.
He eventually reached Nootka Sound, midway up Vancouver Island’s west coast. It became instantly clear that this was not the entrance to the Northwest Passage. It did offer, however, a well-protected anchorage — and it was home to uncharacteristically friendly Natives, the Mowachahts. Cook stopped there for a spell to give his crew a rest.
Chief Maquinna appeared unperturbed by the appearance of these unusual strangers aboard the formidable-looking vessel. He encouraged his awestruck people to put aside anxieties and to welcome the new arrivals. Thirty-two war canoes embarked from shore and were soon circling the Resolution in ceremonial greeting with flourishing strokes of the paddles. All the while the lead stroke chanted, one officer writes, “a single note in which they all join, swelling it out in the middle and letting the sound die away in the calm of the hills around us … the effect was by no means unpleasant to the ear.… One young man with a remarkable soft effeminate voice afterwards sang by himself, but he ended so suddenly and abruptly, which being accompanied by a peculiar gesture, made us all laugh. He, finding that we were not ill pleased repeated his song several times.”
The amused sailors reciprocated by bringing out their fifes and drums, which they played at length and with gusto. The trilling sounds of British military marches were not exactly familiar to the Mowachahts, and the audience floating on the waters below received the musical offering with “the profoundest silence.” Lieutenant James King concludes his journal entries with the reflection that through all the encounters Cook’s ships ever experienced with indigenous people anywhere, “these were the only people we had seen that ever paid the smallest attention to any of our musical instruments, if we except the drum.”
Cook notes that the amicable cultural exchanges resulted in “a trade commenced betwixt us and them, which was carried on with the strictest honesty on both sides. Their articles were foxes, deer, raccoons, polecats, martins and in peculiar, the sea beaver [sea otter], the same as is found on the coast of Kamchatka.”
Mowachahts and English were soon totally at ease with one another, so much so that the unrestrained Natives began to help themselves to various bits and pieces of the ship’s ironware. Cook’s gold watch was whisked away from his cabin under the nose of the posted guard. “They made no scruples when stealing,” observed Cook, “but upon being detected they would immediately return whatever they had taken and laugh in our faces, as they considered it as a piece of dexterity that did them credit rather than dishonor.”
The Mowachahts welcomed the visitors into their village where they offered generous entertainment. Chief Maquinna beckoned the officers to his cedar-planked house. Vast drying racks were suspended from the ceilings for the curing of herring and salmon; cooking utensils and varied baskets lay scattered about the place. Exquisitely carved corner posts with figures of birds and animals stood in shocking contrast to the overall mess. A banquet was laid out with a variety of foods, both cooked and raw.
One clearly identifiable dish from which all refrained was a roasted human arm.
Time came to leave Nootka Sound, so there was an exchange of gifts. Cook received a full-length beaver cloak, in return for which he presented to Chief Maquinna a choice sword with a brass hilt. The chief “importuned us to return to them again and by way of encouragement promised to lay in a good stock of skins for us.” Final farewells were had, and the ships sailed away to continue the voyage. “Our friends the Indians attended upon us till we were almost out of the Sound, some on board the ships and others in canoes.”
(En route home, the expedition stopped in Hawaii, where it was greeted with hostility by the Natives. A number of tense encounters were had, and in one punishing skirmish, Cook was killed — a particularly tragic end to one of history’s notable explorers.)
When the Resolution reached Macau months later, word spread of the successes with the Mowachahts. The cargo of luxuriant furs in the holds was sold for handsome sums, further fuelling the fur rush.
On board the Discovery on that fateful voyage was the twenty-two-year-old George Vancouver, who would eventually join his commanding officer in the pantheon of notable explorers. Some years earlier, as Cook prepared his ship for the second voyage of exploration, he had been persuaded by Vancouver’s father to take on the fifteen-year-old boy as a supernumerary. George thus received a thorough training in seamanship, navigation, and surveying. Subsequently, he entered the navy, was commissioned, and before long came to command his own ship. In 1791, he was sent by the British government to make a detailed survey of the entire northwest coast, and to continue the search for the elusive Northwest Passage. Vancouver spent three years in those waters, meticulously charting and surveying the coastline as far north as Cook Inlet in upper Alaska. Before it was over, he had circumnavigated Vancouver Island, passed by the mouth of the Fraser River without recognizing it, and moved south as far as the mouth of the Columbia River at latitude 46° 25' — his discovery, he thought, but not so. Five months earlier, another explorer — Captain Robert Gray, the first American to appear in the Pacific Northwest — had arrived and laid claim to it for the United States.
The Rhode Islander Gray had served in the Continental Navy during the American Revolution and subsequently joined a Boston merchant house. In 1792, he sailed the Columbia into the far north of the Pacific coastline, well into Russian territory. His unwelcome arrival was viewed with displeasure by the unhappy authorities, who viewed it as an unlawful incursion. But they lacked the means to expel the American. Instructions, however, were issue to the Natives not to trade with him or render any form of assistance. Gray did not linger where he clearly was not wanted. He left and eventually came to the mouth of the Columbia River, and adroitly established friendly relations with the Natives — soon beads, buttons, cloth, knives, and other manufactured items were being traded for pelts of sea otter.
Its holds brimming with valued cargo, the Columbia sailed on to China where the pelts were exchanged for silk, spices, and tea. With this fresh cargo, Gray made for home by sailing west around the Cape of Good Hope, thus becoming the first American to circumnavigate the globe. Inspired by Gray’s successes, other New Englanders followed suit, and by the end of the century came to control the otter trade of a large part of the region. The presence of U.S. ships on the Pacific coast solidified and soon the Stars and Stripes flew over the Oregon Territory.
It would be well to note here the story of another American who sailed those Pacific waters. John Ledyard’s brief lifetime had no impact on the events of the day; his legacy merely rests in the journals he kept. His story may be nothing more than a footnote in the pages of U.S. history, but it is one that’s so original and reflective of the fearless American frontier spirit, that it begs our attention. Thomas Jefferson was an admirer of the adventurous young Ledyard, calling him “a man of genius, of some science and of fearless courage and enterprise.”
Ledyard was born in Groton, Connecticut, where he received his early education. At age twenty-one, he entered the newly founded Dartmouth, then called the “Indian Charity School.” The school had been provided with land by the governor of the Royal Province of New Hampshire, and its charter stipulated that the place was “for the education and instruction of youth of the Indian tribes of this land — and also for English youth and any other.” John was from among the handful of “English youth and any others.” He soon decided that the quality of instruction was uninspiring and boring — not for him — so he decided to escape the place.
Among his friends, one stood particularly close, a “youth of the Indian tribes of this land.” This Iroquois friend assisted John in felling a large white pine on the banks of the Connecticut River from which the young men hacked out a thirty-foot-long dugout canoe. Equipped with essentials — including the New Testament and a book by Ovid — Ledyard shoved off to begin a life