After Nootka
1790s-1800s American Pacific Northwest
Introduction
https://crackpot.substack.com/t/blackfoot
Buildings are raised on New World ground,
Now Russia rushes to Nootka Sound,
The Peoples wild are Nature’s child,
And friendly now to Russian rule. - Song of Baranov
? - Doomed to fail from the start, the big question buzzing the Spaniards’ bonnets for over 2 centuries of ventures was there a northwest passage to Europe? Nope. Madrid vastly underestimated the size of the continent - imagining some inlet of Vancouver, if followed sufficiently, may drop them onto the St. James River or the British Isles.
0 - From the 1500s until the late 1700s, from Mexico to Point Reyes, to San Francisco and Bodega Bay, to Nootka and beyond the Spanish probed. During the 1790s at the time of the Nootka crisis Americans were sailing with Spanish as bulwark allies against the English.
1 - The American Revolution happens, partly as a consequence France becomes a basket case in the early 1790s - turning the historical Spanish Bourbon French alliance on its head. When the dust settles Napolean would put Spain in a subordinate position.
After European sailors discover Hawaii and its islanders, Hawaii becomes a way point for merchants interested in the northwest fur trade to cut northwest from China rather than west and then north up the coast.
2 - Seal and otter skins sell for a lot of money in China. Market mania ensues. Merchant ships warp up and down the coast, trading metals with the native peoples, who hunt, harvest and provided the valuable skins. English merchant ships war east from India, operating under charters from the East India Company rather than the Royal crown, unlike the Spanish ships. Americans from the south and Russians from the northwest were similarly unencumbered. The Russians exploited trade opportunities above and below the 60 parallel and beyond what the warm weather Spanish established coming north from Monterrey, Mexico.
The stage was set for farce & blunder rather than blood & thunder. Spain officially considered all the northwest their territorial claim and thus felt obliged to defend its claims on principle. Nonetheless, the vast unforgiving territory was neglected and marginal in importance. Unofficially, Spain did not have the resources to defend territorial claims on a coast that it vastly underestimated in size in original, nor did it have any pressing need to revise or concede any challenge. Thus the Spanish sent a mediocre, temperamental in over his head commander named Don Esteban Jose Martinez with inadequate resources, authority nor backing to defend Spain’s interest from the frenzy of fur trading merchants. To do this the Spanish were even ordered to establish Potemkin -sham- settlements. The Spanish Empire was to fallout after Martinez played out.
The repeated pattern of Don Martinez affecting dubious arrests upon merchant ships in the name of the Spanish crown upon making contact in Nootka. Some sloop would wander into the bay, trade shots in salute, receive friendly invitation to parley and inevitable dinner from Martinez. At dinner Martinez would ask to see his guest’s passport. Any resistance by Martinez’s guests - under the quite reasonable protest the far-flung unsettled territory people by natives could hardly be called Spain - led to immediate seizure and a house arrest. Martinez kept the generous dinners going for their stay, but any who strayed from the Friendship Cove risked being killed by natives.
The boomerang effect would put the Spanish crown on its knees under the weight of Martinez’s sins. Don Martinez established himself and the Spanish warships at Nootka in a place called Friendship cove. The hotheaded Martinez alternated between fits of rage and exaggerated displays of generosity. Through his stay, Martinez arrested many passing merchant ships. Acting absurdly according to Spanish pretension - arresting merchants as though the merchants were smuggling goods and flouting Spanish law in the port of Barcelona, rather than operating freely through an obviously unsettled remote coastland ruled by many native tribes thousands of miles away from Europe and the Spanish crown. Martinez murdered a local chief in a fit of rage. Martinez also exhausted his crews supplies to throw generous dinners parties for his prisoner guests, and meticulously accounted for every bit of supplies his men may requisition from the captured merchant ships. By all accounts, it was beyond Martinez’s capacity to realize the ramifications of his actions.
With that historical throat clearing out of the way, we can render this historical saga -
My understanding of the history is that the Russians stood apart for cruelty at this time. History records Russians holding hostages to compel the men to hunt for skins and the return of their family members. Most of the other merchants came to trade, season after season. Perhaps the Russians were too poor or had relatively little of value to offer in trade apart from force, relative to the rich abalone Spain brought from Mexico or iron and ball from England.
The people here were similar in some way to the Sioux and plains. Killing large Seals and whales like the killing buffalo, practiced at grappling with large force of nature sized beasts.
The Sonora was anchored 30 yards from shore, but thick underbrush came right down to the beach. The seamen reached dry land when shrieking warriors sprung an ambush. The warriors seized the water-filled boat, pulled it ashore, and commenced hacking the sailors to pieces while their stunned companions watched from the Sonora. Hezeta-Bodega Expedition 1775
Captain John Salter ported the Boston in farther up from Friendly Cove in March 1803 and began trading at once with the natives. … Salter insulted Ma-kwee-na and hit Ma-kwee-na in the head with the butt of a shotgun after Ma-kwee-na borrowed the weapon and broke a flintlock. Several days later, Ma-kwee-na returned painted and wearing a bear mask, accompanied by many warriors and chiefs. After dining with Captain John Salter, Ma-kwee-na attacked Salter and threw him overboard into a canoe, where some women beat Salter’s brains out with rocks. The warriors then attacked the rest of the crew, killing them. - Massacre at Nootka
Returning to the American continent, the weakening of Spain’s position on the Pacific Coast fed the backbreaking Lewis and Clark’s expedition and the cessation of control of California to the American through purchase, rather than violence. The armored barbarians that tore through the Aztecs and Central America with a holy vengeance in the 1500s under Cortez were two centuries past by Nootka. The conquistadors gave way to exasperated administrators of a bankrupt policy pushing nonsensical terms to corporate eye rolls at the Empire’s end. The inroads made by Meriweather in Clark with the Shoshoni, Nez Perce, Flathead and other such peoples in their journeys cut Spain out of the west.
The Americans had established what the Spanish had exhausted their energies fruitlessly searching for, a northwest passage. Through the better part of three centuries rule with unchecked access from Baja to Anchorage, the best the Spanish managed north the 38th were a few buried bottles and beachside crosses and massacre sites suffered at disastrous losses.
The order to evacuate Nootka came. The vessels were scarecely out of sight when Ma-kwee-na’s people stripped the villages of everything. They highly prized iron nails doomed every structure to quick demo. These could be fashioned into fishhooks. They even dug up the cemetery to harvest the coffin nails. - Flood Tide. page 423
References
Cook, Warren L. Flood Tide of Empire; Spain and the Pacific Northwest, 1543-1819, by Warren L. Cook. 1973.
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