Before Europeans arrived on the Northwest Coast in 1774, the diseases and livestock they had imported elsewhere to North America had already reached local Indian groups (traveling between native peoples rather than directly from Europeans to natives). Even tribes in the Pacific Northwest, quite isolated from sites of European colonization elsewhere, were affected by that colonization. Once Europeans began colonizing North America after 1492, native societies were affected by a more accelerated pace of change. Before Europeans migrated to North America, native societies underwent modification as their cultures evolved, as climates changed, and as contact with one another introduced new cultural elements. Carlos Schwantes's depiction of the "first" Pacific Northwesterners (28-38) is valuable for understanding the three different, broad cultural groupings of natives in the region, but one should not take away from that description the sense that native societies were static or unchanging until white explorers arrived. It is important to keep in mind that direct contact with non-natives was not the only source of change among Indian peoples. (University of Washington Special Collections) From Alejandro Malaspina, Vaije Politico-Clientifico Albredor del Mundo. Neah Bay is now the site of the Makah reservation. Tatoosh and Wife, Neah Bay, 1792 (right).These engravings after early drawings show some of the bold patterning of Northwest Coast native art. But the most important aspect of the maritime fur trade was that it brought natives and non-natives into immediate and close contact, with profound ramifications for both peoples and for regional history. Moreover, early maritime fur traders behaved as explorers because, in seeking more furs (or, more correctly, Indians willing to sell furs more cheaply), they scouted a great deal of the coastline in the region, filling in the many gaps that "real" explorers like Cook and Vancouver had left in their maps.
It is unlikely, for example, that British interest in the region would have been so keen had not Cook's crew discovered the profitability of sea otter pelts in Chinese markets. For one thing, the opportunity to make money attracted non-Indian peoples to the region much more quickly than they otherwise might have come, so that dozens of ships sailed to the Northwest Coast within two decades of the first explorers' arrival. The maritime fur trade, although often overlooked in textbooks, was a crucial phase in the early history of the Pacific Northwest. (University of Washington Special Collections.) A Native cedar plank home on Nootka Sound, 1770s.įrom James Cook, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean.
0 kommentar(er)
