The Spanish voyages to the Northwest Coast, 1774-1779: Perez at Nootka, Heceta at the Columbia, Bodega y Quadra in Alaska
Three expeditions sailed from San Blas under the viceroy of Mexico and examined the American coast from Monterey to beyond the 58th parallel - reaching Nootka four years before Cook and the mouth of the Columbia seventeen years before the Boston ship that named it. Spain published nothing until 1802, so the priority was conceded late and by an unfriendly witness: the librarian of the United States Department of State, writing to support the American claim to Oregon.
Why this wins its question: English-language accounts of the Pacific Northwest begin with Cook in 1778, Vancouver in 1792 and Gray naming the Columbia, with the Spaniards appearing as a diplomatic nuisance at Nootka. The documentary basis for the other order of events is neither obscure nor Spanish: it is the 1845 history written by the librarian and translator of the United States Department of State, from manuscript journals he had procured from Madrid, expressly to support the American claim to Oregon. That book concedes, in its own words, that Perez was at Nootka four years before Cook, that Heceta found the mouth of the Columbia on 15 August 1775 and that "the evidence of its first discovery ... is unquestionable", that Bodega y Quadra named Mount Edgecumbe and Norfolk Sound three years before Cook renamed them, and that the Spaniards in 1775 examined the coast from the 37th parallel to beyond the 48th "with minuteness". This object quotes those concessions and the same author's dismissals in the same breath - the Martinez claim he refuses, the 1779 voyage he calls worthless, the longitudes he says were left uncertain, the Spanish names he says fell into disuse - and sets against the last of them a United States Geological Survey professional paper of 1967 which still lists a viceroy of New Spain among the origins of Alaska's federally recognised place names and records that Vancouver's charts incorporated Caamano's maps. It also keeps the cost visible: seven men killed at Martyr's Point, possession taken by formalities over inhabited country, and the Tlingit at Port Remedios who charged the Spaniards for their fish.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The witness used here is hostile to the conclusion, and says so on his own title page. The 1845 second edition reads "THE HISTORY OF OREGON AND CALIFORNIA, AND THE OTHER TERRITORIES ON THE NORTH-WEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA ... BY ROBERT GREENHOW, TRANSLATOR AND LIBRARIAN TO THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES; AUTHOR OF A MEMOIR, HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL, ON THE NORTH-WEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA, PUBLISHED IN 1840, BY DIRECTION OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES", printed at Boston by Charles C. Little and James Brown in 1845, under an epigraph from Coleridge on "THE POSSIBLE DESTINY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AS A NATION OF A HUNDRED MILLIONS OF FREEMEN, STRETCHING FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC". It is a brief for the American claim to Oregon.
Its account of 1774 rests on Spanish manuscripts and states where they came from. A footnote names "the Narrative composed by Perez for the viceroy - the Journal of Friar Tomas de la Pena - and the Observations of the pilot Martinez - manuscript copies of which have been procured from Madrid", adds that Friar Crespi's journal was examined by Humboldt, and records the fact that explains the whole subject's obscurity: "Of this voyage no account was ever given to the world until 1802, when a short notice of it appeared in the Introduction to the Journal of the Sutil and Mexicana."
Between 1774 and 1779 three exploring voyages were made by order of the Spanish government, in which the west coasts of America were examined as far north as the 60th degree of latitude. The first was conducted by Ensign Juan Perez, who sailed from San Blas in the corvette Santiago on 25 January 1774 with orders from the viceroy of Mexico to proceed to the 60th parallel and then survey the coast southward to Monterey, taking possession for the king of every place at which he might land; he left Monterey on 16 June and on 18 July made land at the 54th parallel, naming its northernmost point Cape Santa Margarita and the range behind it the Sierra de San Cristoval - the west side of the island the British afterwards called Queen Charlotte's.
The Nootka priority is granted in the plainest terms by the American source. On 9 August 1774, under the parallel of 49 degrees 30 minutes, Perez anchored at the entrance of a deep bay which he named Port San Lorenzo, "in honor of the saint on whose day it was first seen; it is undoubtedly the same which, four years afterwards, received from Captain Cook, the appellation of King George's or Nootka Sound." The point north-west of its entrance, called by the Spaniards Cape Santa Clara, is the Woody Point of the English; Cape San Estevan is their Point Breakers.
What the Spaniards found there was a people already trading iron. Canoes came out and traded sea-otter and other skins for old clothes, knives, shells and other trifles; and "to the surprise of the Spaniards, they had many knives, arrow-points, and other articles, of iron and copper, though it did not appear that they had held any intercourse with civilized people". The journals' descriptions of the coastal peoples, the source adds, "agree precisely with the accounts of subsequent navigators".
One Spanish claim is refused on the same pages, and is carried here with the refusal attached. The pilot Martinez "many years after, thought proper to remember" that he had observed a wide opening between the 48th and 49th parallels and had named the point at its southern entrance after himself; "Of this observation no note appears in the journals of the voyage", and the source treats the later Spanish attribution of the rediscovery of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to him as resting on a tardy recollection.
The 1775 expedition left a marker that was still standing eighteen years later. On 10 June 1775 the vessels anchored beyond Cape Mendocino in latitude 41 degrees 10 minutes; officers, priests and part of the men landed, took possession with religious solemnities and named the harbour Port Trinidad; and when they sailed on 19 June they left a cross with an inscription setting out that they had visited the place and taken possession of it - "this monument the Indians promised to respect; and they kept their word, for Vancouver found it there untouched in 1793". The people of the place are described as conducting themselves "uniformly in the most peaceable manner".
The cost of the voyage is on the same pages as its results. On 14 July 1775 seven men of the schooner Sonora, sent ashore in her only boat and well armed, were attacked and killed on landing, and the schooner herself was nearly boarded; the place was named Punta de Martires, Martyr's Point, in latitude 47 degrees 20 minutes, called Grenville's Point on English maps, and a small island a few miles north was named Isla de Dolores, Isle of Sorrows - the island that twelve years later took from the Ostend ship Imperial Eagle, after a similar killing, the name Destruction Island.
The decision to go on was taken against the commander and recorded in writing. With scurvy in both crews and the schooner in wretched condition, Heceta wished to return to Monterey and "was opposed by his own pilot, Juan Perez, and by Bodega, the captain, and Maurelle, the pilot, of the schooner; and, their opinions having been given, as usual in the Spanish service, in writing, the unwilling assent of the commander was obtained, and the voyage towards the north was resumed on the 20th of July". A storm then separated the vessels and Heceta turned back while Bodega persevered.
The discovery of the mouth of the Columbia is conceded to Spain, by the United States government's own librarian, seventeen years before the American ship that gave the river its name. On 15 August 1775, in latitude 46 degrees 17 minutes, Heceta came opposite an opening from which a current rushed too strongly for him to enter; he named it Ensenada de Asuncion, its northern point Cape San Roque and its southern Cape Frondoso, and the charts published at Mexico soon after the voyage call the entrance Ensenada de Heceta and Rio de San Roque. "It was, undoubtedly, the mouth of the greatest river on the western side of America; the same which was, in 1792, first entered by the ship Columbia, from Boston, under the command of Robert Gray, and has ever since been called the Columbia. The evidence of its first discovery by Heceta, on the 15th of August, 1775, is unquestionable."
Bodega and Maurelle went on north in a vessel the source calls little, and named the landmarks Cook renamed three years later. Beyond the 56th parallel, on 16 August 1775, they sighted a snow-covered cone which they named Mount San Jacinto, in honour of the saint on whose day it was seen, with Cape Engano below it, and two bays which they named Port Remedios and Port Guadelupe "after the two celebrated shrines in the vicinity of the city of Mexico". Mount San Jacinto "was, three years afterwards, named by Cook Mount Edgecumb; Port Remedios is the Bay of Islands of the same navigator, and Port Guadelupe is the Norfolk Sound of the English geographers."
At the northern landing the ceremony of possession and the fact that it meant nothing on the ground are printed in the same paragraph. The Spaniards landed on the shore of Port Remedios, "where they took possession of the country agreeably to the formalities prescribed, and obtained some water and salmon for the supply of their vessel"; while doing so they were surrounded by people who "appeared to be more savage and determined than those of any other part of the coast, and also to entertain very distinct ideas of their own superior rights of property and domain. Thus the Spaniards were obliged to pay, not only for the fish, but also for" - the sentence runs on past the page read here, but what it has already said is that the owners of the country charged them for what they took.
The summing-up is the strongest single sentence in the case, and it is written by the other side. "Thus, without reference to the voyage of Perez, it is conclusively proved that the Spaniards, in 1775, examined with minuteness the whole western shore of the American continent, from Monterey, near the 37th degree of latitude, northward, to and beyond the 48th degree, and determined the general direction of the west coasts of the westernmost islands, bordering the continent between the 48th parallel and the 58th." The limitation is stated in the next breath and belongs with it: the longitudes were "left very uncertain", though the latitudes "have been found nearly correct".
What was known before is set out rather than brushed aside. The coast south of the 43rd degree had been seen by Ferrelo in 1543 and possibly by Drake in 1578; Juan de Fuca had probably sailed along it to the 53rd parallel in 1592; and the Russians had discovered the part near the 56th parallel in 1741 - "but no definite information had been obtained, respecting any point, on the Pacific side of America, between Cape Mendocino and Mount San Jacinto, previous to the expedition of Perez."
The news did reach London, in garbled form, and the date is worth having. A short notice of the results was published in the official gazette at Madrid and copied, "with many additions, (nearly all of them erroneous,) into the London newspapers"; the version reprinted from the London Annual Register for 1776 reports frigates sent from Acapulco navigating as high as latitude 58 degrees 20 minutes, a garrison established and called the Presidio de San Carlos, and Indians "a very docile sort of people, agreeable in their countenance, honest in their traffic, and neat in their dress" who had never before had intercourse with Europeans. It is dated June 28th, "which was a few days before the departure of Captain Cook from England for the North Pacific."
A United States Geological Survey reference work of 1967 independently carries the 1775 and 1779 voyages. It records that the viceroy Antonio Maria Bucareli, "not satisfied with the results of Perez' expedition", sent two ships in 1775; that the Santiago under Bruno Heceta turned back owing to scurvy while the smaller Sonora under Bodega y Quadra "continued northward to about the area of present-day Sitka, where Bogeda y Quadra landed and took possession in the name of the King of Spain"; that the account was recorded by the pilot Maurelle; and that "on this voyage they discovered and named Bucareli Bay". Of the next expedition it records that La Princesa under Ignacio Arteaga and La Favorita under Bodega y Quadra sailed from Mexico on 11 February 1779, reached Bucareli Bay early in May, explored it for two months "and named many features", and about 1 July sailed north and west to Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet and the Alaska Peninsula before turning back on 7 August.
The two witnesses disagree about that last voyage and the disagreement is left standing here rather than resolved. The 1845 history quotes Fleurieu to the effect that the officers "might have passed the whole time which they spent in their expedition, without our knowledge in geography having sustained any loss by their inaction", judges the voyage "productive of no benefit whatsoever", and notes with disapproval that the officers were all promoted; it dismisses the rest of the Spanish names on that coast as needless to mention "as they have fallen into disuse", while recording that their Ensenada de Regla is Prince William's Sound and their Isla de la Magdalena is Montague's Island. The 1967 federal dictionary says of the same voyage that it named many features.
Some of the names did not fall into disuse, and the body that decides American geographic names still traces them. Geological Survey Professional Paper 567, whose title page states that its principal names "conform with nomenclature established through decisions of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names or are recognized by the Board as standard names for use on Federal maps and other publications", carries in its alphabetical list of the sources of Alaskan names, between the British Admiralty and the Russian surveyors, the entry "Bucareli, Antonio Maria: 1775-79. See Spanish Expeditions." - a viceroy of New Spain listed as an origin of the names on United States federal maps.
The same dictionary records that Vancouver's charts absorbed Spanish work. Its entry for Jacinto Caamano states that he "was sent in 1792 by the Viceroy of Mexico, Count de Revilla Gigedo, in the corvette Aranzazu, to explore the northwest coast of North America from the Strait of Juan de Fuca northward", left Mexico on 20 March 1792, arrived in Bucareli Bay on 12 July, surveyed southward along the coasts of Alaska and British Columbia and returned to Mexico on 6 February 1793; and that "Capt. George Vancouver, RN, met Caamano in the field and apparently obtained copies of some of his maps, especially of places north of Dixon Entrance, which were incorporated in Vancouver's work."
What this evidence does not establish should be said plainly. Neither source is a log: the 1845 history reports manuscripts it obtained from Madrid, which this object could not open, and the 1967 dictionary is a nomenclature reference and not a history of the voyages. The voyages themselves were not disinterested science - the same pages show them ordered by a viceroy to take possession of every place at which the ships landed, over country that was inhabited and whose owners at Port Remedios made the Spaniards pay for their fish - and Spain's own decision to keep the results secret is what left the credit to be taken by others. The 1845 source records that in 1779 Spain went to war with Great Britain and her flag "did not again appear on the coasts north of Cape Mendocino until 1788".