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| Sailboat going through rapids, 184- PDP00047 |
Adventure might be one reason the explorers sailed from Spain, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China - but they weren't the ones paying the travel bills. Their governments, businesses and families paid the explorers' way so they could claim new lands for their countries, trade for furs to make into hats and coats, earn money or maybe even find a dreamed-of sailing route across the top of the North American continent - the fabled Northwest Passage.
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| Re-creation of Bering's ship sighting the Aleutian Mountains, 1741 PDP00777 |
On the first
expedition Bering determined that Russia was not linked by land to North
America.
On the second expedition Bering looked into colonization and trade possibilities, and undertook scientific investigations. When his ship ran aground on an island off the coast of Alaska, he and his crew were forced to winter there. Imagine how cold and hungry they must have been - so much so that Bering died that winter. For food the crew caught and ate hundreds of sea otters, and brought their beautiful silky furs back to Russia in the spring. Wealthy Russians and Chinese people prized these furs, and soon an active Russian fur trade was born.
Russia tried to keep their source of furs secret, but Spain was already colonizing the southern Pacific coast of the continent (one of their main outposts was San Francisco), and the Spanish were keen to claim as much of the coast as possible. In 1774, 1775 and 1779 they launched ships which sailed their way north up the coast to what is now British Columbia.
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| Re-creation of a Haida group sighting the Santiago PDP00778 |
The next European country to send ships was Great Britain, which sent Captain James Cook to try and find the Northwest Passage. In 1778 Cook landed at Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Chief Maquinna greeted him there and gave him his royal robe of otter skins - and his people traded for much of the brass and iron on Cook's ship in exchange for more furs.
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| Re-creation of Captain Cook's landing at Friendly Cove I-29455 |
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| Re-creation of Chief Maquinna offering his royal robe of otter skins to Captain Cook PDP00779 |
Here is the story of first contact, told by a descendant of Chief Maquinna's people, Mrs. Winifred David:
"When Captain Cook first landed in Nootka Sound, the Indians didn't know what on earth it was. So the Chief, Chief Maquinna, he sent out his warriors ... in a couple of canoes to see what it was. So they went out to the ship and they thought it was a fish come alive into people. They were taking a good look at those white people on the deck there.""One white man had a real hooked nose, you know. And one of the men was saying to this other guy, 'See, see, see ... he must have been a dog salmon, that guy, there, he's got a hooked nose.' The other guy was looking at him and a man came out of the galley and he was a hunchback, and the other one said, 'Yes! We're right, we're right. Those people, they must have been fish. They've come alive into people. Look at that one, he's a humpback [fish] ..."
"So they went ashore and they told the big Chief, 'You know what we saw? They've got white skin. But we're pretty sure that those people on the floating thing there, that they must have been fish. But they've come here as people.' And they couldn't understand each other, you know. They didn't know what those white men were saying ..."
"So, the Chief told them to go out there again and see, you know, try to understand what those people wanted and what they were after. And they went out again and Captain Cook, he must have told his crew to give those Indians some ... pilot biscuits, and they started saying among themselves that they're friendly. Those people up there are friendly. We should be nice to them. And they started talking Indian and they told them to go around the Sound, you know ... saying: nu tka ?icim nu tka ?icim they were saying. That means, you go around the harbour."
"So Captain Cook said, 'Oh, they're telling us the name of this place is Nootka.' That's how Nootka got its name."
Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Sound Heritage. Victoria. Vol. VI, no. 1.
