Contested Boundaries

A New Pacific Northwest History

David J. Jepsen, David J. Norberg

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781119065531
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Norteamérica

Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History is an engaging, contemporary look at the themes, events, and people that have shaped the history of the Pacific Northwest over the last two centuries.

• An engaging look at the themes, events, and people that shaped the Pacific Northwest – Washington, Oregon, and Idaho – from when only Native Peoples inhabited the land through the twentieth century.
• Twelve theme-driven essays covering the human and environmental impact of exploration, trade, settlement and industrialization in the nineteenth century, followed by economic calamity, world war and globalization in the twentieth.
• Written by two professors with over 20 years of teaching experience, this work introduces the history of the Pacific Northwest in a style that is accessible, relevant, and meaningful for anyone wishing to learn more about the region's recent history. A companion website for students and instructors includes test banks, PowerPoint presentations, student self-assessment tests, useful primary documents, and resource links: www.wiley.com/go/jepsen/contestedboundaries.

Part I
Clash of Cultures

Figure I.1 Natives in canoes, probably members of the Kwakwaka'wakw group of peoples, watch with interest as Captain George Vancouver's ship, The Discovery, lies grounded at Queen Charlotte Sound north of Vancouver Island in July 1792. The Discovery's consort, the Chatham, was unable to free the Discovery although it dislodged from the rocks at high tide. Image provided with permission from the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections (NA 3988).

1
Early Encounters: Three hundred years after Columbus, explorers stake claims, exploit riches and leave disease

Antiquated notions of “discovery” fail to describe the thunderous clash of cultures that occurred when Europeans first ventured into the Pacific Northwest in the late eighteenth century. Whether arriving by sea or by land, explorers encountered Native Peoples whose initial reactions to the newcomers ranged from fear to curiosity to hostility. Even as they encountered new and unknown barriers, most Native Peoples saw the potential of the European possessions, unaware the price included an end to the life they knew.

On June 4, 1792, the British explorer Captain George Vancouver made Puget Sound a birthday present for his King. Nothing could have been more fitting on George III's fifty-fourth birthday than to take possession for Great Britain of “the most lovely country that can be imagined.”¹

On a sunny morning, half way into their two-month stay in Puget Sound, Vancouver and crew rowed ashore near what is now Everett, Washington. Officers with now familiar names like Peter Puget, Joseph Whidbey, and Joseph Baker dined on fish and toasted the King's health with a double allowance of grog for the entire crew. After lunch, with curious natives watching from a safe distance in canoes, Vancouver's ship Discovery fired off a twenty-one-gun salute, formally taking possession of the Sound and surrounding territory.² It may or may not have troubled Vancouver to know his act of possession would not likely stand up under international law, as Spain had claimed much of the same territory 17 years earlier.³

The possession ceremony marks a critical moment in early Pacific Northwest history. It illustrates how European nations engaged in fierce competition to control a region rich in resources and ripe for trade. It also signaled something far more monumental for Native Peoples who may have suspected the cannons sounded the beginning of the end of the life they knew.

Excursions into the North Pacific represent the last chapter in a 300-year story of North American exploration beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1492. Due to its remoteness, nearly three centuries passed before European explorers ventured into the region. The Dutch sailor Vitus Bering, sailing for Russia, explored the Bering Straits in 1728 and the waters off Alaska in 1741, but made no serious stabs south.⁴ Spanish explorers could claim the deepest history in the region, when Juan José Pérez Hernández explored the coastline in 1774 and traded with Native Peoples. The following year, Bruno de Heceta and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra explored and claimed it for the King of Spain.⁵

Figure 1.1 This illustration of Mt. Rainier at Admiralty Inlet on Puget Sound was sketched in 1792 by Midshipman John Sykes, not a trained artist, and likely redrawn by a professional artist for publication in in the 1798 Atlas to George Vancouver's Voyages. Reprinted with permission from the Washington State Historical Society.

Between 1778 and 1794, Great Britain sent dozens of ships to the North Pacific mostly to trade for furs.⁶ The most notable was the third voyage of James Cook from 1776 to 1780. In search of the fabled Northwest Passage, a navigable route across the continent, Cook explored much of the North American coast from what's now Oregon to Alaska and the Bering Straits. At Nootka Sound, the party acquired a supply of sea otter pelts, igniting a global fur trade that Cook would not live to see. After failing to find the Northwest Passage, Cook headed west to explore what are now known as the Hawaiian Islands, where he died in an altercation with natives. Under the command of Captain Charles Clerke, the party first returned to the Bering Strait to continue the search for the Northwest Passage. Failing to find the passage and with northern seas blocked by ice, the expedition sailed south to Canton, China. To everyone's surprise, Chinese merchants paid a fortune for the pelts. Profits were so high, the crew threatened mutiny in order to return to Nootka to acquire more. According to Historian Carlos Schwantes, this rags-to-riches story triggered a steady flow of traders to the region for a generation and “ended the previous pattern of sporadic and haphazard European contact with the Pacific Northwest and its native peoples.”⁷

Great Britain and Spain soon butted heads over competing claims at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. Fearing a plot to take the island, Spain's Don Esteban José Martínez seized a British fur-trading vessel in 1789, arrested its captain and men and sent them to Mexico City for prosecution.

Spanish actions stirred British passions and almost led to war between the two powerful navies. The countries avoided war, however, after they signed the Nootka Sound Convention in 1790, which limited Spain's territorial possessions, compensated England for damages at Nootka and secured free trade along the Northwest Coast. More important, the convention formalized the possession-taking practice. For centuries explorers seeking possession of territory simply rowed ashore, planted a cross, prayed and buried a bottle co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Pacific Northwest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• List of Illustrations
• Authors' Biographies
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Clash of Cultures
• 1: Early Encounters: Three hundred years after Columbus, explorers stake claims, exploit riches and leave disease
• 2: Trade Among Equals: Natives, British, and Americans jockey for control over land and resources
• 3: Making a Christian Farmer: Native Peoples, missionaries, and saving souls in “Oregon Country”
• 4: Building an American Northwest: To make it their own, American settlers redraw region's physical and cultural boundaries
• Part II: People and Place
• 5: Riding the Railroad Rollercoaster: “Magician's rod” connected east with west, transforming everything it touched
• 6: Seeking Dignity in Labor: Entangled in class warfare, “Wobblies” struggle for First Amendment rights and equities in the workplace
• 7: Dismantling a Racial Hierarchy: Minorities fight for equality in a region grappling with diversity
• 8: Liberation in the West: In a society as unsettled as the land, women gain newfound recognition and rights
• Part III: Crisis and Opportunity
• 9: Beyond Breadlines: The Great Depression, New Deal and the making of the “Federal West”
• 10: Marching through Global Conflict: Region's strategic locale brings explosive growth, while erasing barriers for some and fencing others
• 11: El Movimiento: Chicanos Unite to Improve Economic Standing: Rejecting second-class citizenship, Mexican Americans unite to improve economic standing and reclaim their identity
• 12: The Fractured Northwest: Pocketbook politics compete with environmental preservation in a globalized economy
• Bibliography
• Index
• EULA