# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 21/Spain and England's Quarrel over the Oregon Country

SPAIN AND ENGLAND'S QUARREL OVER THE OREGON COUNTRY.
An Introductory Statement to furnish a Setting for the Incidents in the Log of the Princesa used byf Professor Priestly to throw new Light on the Nootka Sound Affair of 1789
The culminating events in the first struggle for the posses- sion of the Oregon Country were staged in Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In our busy age, how- ever, the average reader of the Quarterly without a Bancroft's Northwest Coast at hand may not be sufficiently clear on the details of the incidents out of which the Nootka Con- troversy arose to get the benefit of the valuable source material in the paper by Professor Priestly on the Log of the Princesa or diary of her commander, Jose Martinez.
This Nootka Sound affair in which representatives of the Spanish and English sovereignties were rivals for the posses- sion of our Northwest Coast was in a way the first act in the drama; the second act of which with its more familiar complications was staged a quarter of a century later at Fort Astoria some two hundred and fifty miles to the south.
The joint arrangement closing the Nootka Sound dispute between Spain and England pertained primarily to rights of access to and trade with the natives of this coast region. In the next agreement, composing the second international con- tention for the Oregon Country as a whole, Spain had receded to the background and the United States had become a prin- cipal contender with England. The issue now affected the more substantial right of occupation. The arrangement again was on a joint basis. In the third and concluding settlement the situation had ripened to the exclusive "to have and to hold" phase with the establishment of the 49th parallel as the boundary line between the allotted portions of the claimants ​
14 F. G. YOUNG
who had been developing their respective rights for more than half a century through discovery, exploration, occupa- tion and settlement. The incidents recorded in the Log of the Princesa by one who had the master role introduces us directly to the first of the central series of dramatic situations in the early history of Oregon.
One additional special feature of progressive change in the developing drama on this Northwest Coast should be noted. In the first crisis of affairs affecting this region and staged at Nootka Sound, the participants had all arrived on the scene in ships. In the second crisis at Fort Astoria, contin- gents of both contestants had come overland. In the assem- bling for the final scene out of which came the terms of the treaty of 1846 it was those who had trailed across the con- tinent rather than those coming by the sea route who con- trolled the outcome.
To return to the situation in which our Pacific Northwest first came into the limelight of political history as a bone of contention between Spain and Great Britain. The van of the forces of Spanish adventure and missionary zeal pressing westward in the wake of the discoveries of Columbus had passed through the West Indies and along the southern border of what was to become the United States, had crossed Mexico and turned northward on the Pacific Coast. By 1769, it reached San Francisco Bay with a missionary establishment. Though there was a vast stretch of coast beyond to the north and northwest open to conquest and exploitation it had not the lure of rich kingdoms or legendary treasure cities and Spanish energy for less dazzling prizes seemed spent.
Spanish authorities were, however, concerned that the sub- jects of no other nation should get a foothold in menacing proximity, say within a sweep of 1000 or 1500 miles of their farthest outpost on San Francisco Bay. Furthermore, geog- raphers had for centuries mapped the Strait of Anian as affording a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific ​
SPAIN AND ENGLAND QUARREL OVER OREGON 15
in a latitude that would mean trouble for the Spanish posses- sions on the Pacific Coast, if the entrance to this supposed waterway was not found and commanded by suitable fortifica- tions. Russian explorers, too, had pushed across Siberia and Vitus Bering and others were coming down this Northwest Coast. To anticipate these possible menaces to an unmolested sway over this region a more energetic Spanish King and Mexican viceroy renewed explorations. Accordingly, one vessel was dispatched northward in 1774 and two in 1775. These traced the main outlines) of our coast from about 55 southward. In the latter year, on the afternoon of July 17th, Heceta, in command of one of the ships, the Santiago, dis- covered a bay with strong currents and eddies, indicating the mouth of a great river or strait in latitude 46 9'. He named the point on the north, San Rbque, and the one on the south, Cabo Frondoso. He was looking at the mouth of the Columbia River between capes Disappointment and Adams. As he had not enough men to raise the anchor if it were once lowered, or to man his launch, he continued on to the south without consummating the discovery. Through these voyages in 1774-5, Spain had explored and taken possession of the whole extent of the Northwest Coast from 40 to 55. But the results of these expeditions were not published. Mean- while English maritime enterprise had followe'd the lead of the Cabots. Through activities of exploration and colonization the eastern shore of the North American was occupied by the English with Spain holding only St. Augustine in Florida. During the latter half of the 18th century there was a great renewal of exploring activity by England's navigators. The most intrepid of all her mariners of this period was James Cook. On his third voyage of discoverey in the Pacific he found the Sandwich Islands and proceeding northward arrived off our Oregon Coast in March, 1778. His quest was the northwest passage that had been the objective of Verrazano, Cartier, Hudson, Frobisher, Drake, Franklin and a host of ​
16 F. G. YOUNG
others during the preceding three centuries. Parliament had just offered a prize of 20,000 for the discovery of it.
While Francis Drake had been off our Oregon Coast just two centuries before Cook's appearance his lead was not followed up by his countrymen as Cook's was destined to be to the discomfiture of Spanish operations on our Western shores. On Cook's cruise northward, at intervals along shore, he named capes Perpetua, Foulweather, and Flattery on the Oregon and Washington Coasts. He entered Nootka Sound anchoring in what he called Friendly Cove. He there repaired his vessels and "obtained full supplies of water, wood, fish grass and spruce beer." He happened also to purchase a supply of beaver skins from the natives, "holding no thoughts at that time of using them to any other advantage than converting them to purposes of clothing." He found a market for them in China at the rate of $100 for what cost him 6 pence sterling. Intelligence of the opportunity for profit demonstrated in that transaction was passed along, reaching first the English mer- chants operating in China and India, but arriving in due time at the centers of foreign trade of England and America. John Ledyard, an American, who had been a sailor with Cook's expedition was particularly active in canvassing the matter and was probably largely instrumental in getting the company of Boston merchants to dispatch so promptly the Columbia and Washington under Kendrick and Gray.
This economic lure of prodigious profit in fur trade with the natives on the Northwest Coast soon made Nootka Sound, with its inviting conditions for shelter and refreshments, a great rendezvous.
In 1785 came the first ship to trade for furs, an English vessel from China. The next year six additional English vessels arrived, two from Bengal, two from Bombay, and two direct from England. During the summers immediately fol- lowing, this volume of trafficking along the coast was main- tained. The individual participants would change. As a cargo ​
SPAIN AND ENGLAND QUARREL OVER OREGON 17
was accumulated the vessel would proceed to its market in China and possibly load there with tea for its homeward bound cargo. Meanwhile new recruits would be lured into the game.
In 1788 the American ships, Columbia and Lady Washing- ton, sent out by Boston merchants and commanded by John Kendrick and Robert Gray, arrived on the coast. They passed the following winter in Nootka Sound and were on the scene as interested spectators of the complications that were to follow, and possibly had no small part in inciting the Spanish commander, Martinez, to the suspicious attitude through which the trouble developed between him and Colnett and other Eng- lish captains as they arrived with their craft at the entrance of the harbor. At any rate, the factors in the situation were such as we shall see opened an opportunity which Yankee shrewdness with a little sharp practice could utilize toward putting difficulties in the way of a competitor in trade.
Looking at the situation as a whole as it was developing during these later eighties, of the 18th century at Nootka Sound through the profit-lure of the fur trade with the natives, we see the rights of Spain based on prior discovery of this coast completely ignored. In 1788, the Spanish authorities, having been through the reports of the returning French ex- plorer, La Perouse, apprised of the fact that the Russians were fast encroaching from the north, sent out Martinez and Haro in the Princesa and San Carlos to investigate. Martinez and Haro visited the Alaska regions and reported that the Russians intended to found a settlement at Nootka and also that English traders were active along the coast. Consequently, Martinez and Haro were sent back in 1789, equipped to es- tablish a post there and to assert Spanish sovereign jurisdic- tion over the region before it should be taken possession of by any foreign power.
In the Spring and early Summer of 1789, the time was ripe for a denouement at this rendezvous of traders of rival nations in Nootka Sound. Martinez as the representative of His ​
18 F. G. YOUNG
Catholic Majesty was there to take exclusive possession on the traditional basis of priority of discovery and he was fittingly equipped. English seamen representing different commercial enterprises plying their vocation as fur traders were arriving. Their undisputed freedom of ingress and egress enjoyed during the several years preceding was in their planning maturing into the right of permanent occupation. In the pre- ceding pages I have tried to indicate how the converging lines of tendency of Spanish and English expansion on this coast promised inevitable friction. It is now in place to show how the train was laid for the explosion at Nootka in the summer of 1789.
In 1788 a company of English merchants at Bengal, India, fitted out two ships, one of which was the Iphigenia. They were put under the command of John Meares and William Douglas. "In order to evade excessive port charges in China, and also to obviate the necessity of obtaining licenses from the East India and South Sea Companies," says Bancroft, "one Cavalho, a Portuguese, was made nominally a partner in the concern, and through this influence with the governor of Macao the vessels were furnished Portuguese flags, papers, and captains. All of these were to be used as occasion might demand, either in Chinese ports or in case of embarrassing meetings with British vessels, where the real commanders would appear in the Portuguese version of the ships' papers as super cargoes." Furthermore, it was provided that in case of real trouble with any Russian, English or Spanish vessels they should, as victors, take possession of the vessel and crew, bring both "to China that they might be condemned as legal prizes, and their crews punished as pirates." It was these Portuguese instructions that puzzled the Spanish commander when he had seized the Iphigenia as an English vessel. She was no longer flying the Portuguese colors, as a license to trade had been obtained from the India Company. Bancroft suggests that Kendrick with whom Martinez had ​
SPAIN AND ENGLAND QUARREL OVER OREGON 19
been spending a few days up the Sound had worked on Martinez's suspicions through the clause in the papers of the Iphigenia requiring the captain to take Spanish vessels and carry their men to Macao to be tried for piracy. To enter a Spanish port with such instructions, and uncertainly translated as they were for Martinez, led him to take the steps he did and to exhibit the subsequent vacillation with the Iphigenia. Though Martinez acted on the principle that discretion is the better part of valor with the Iphigenia, his attitude had be- come suspicious. He found it necessary, with Captain Hudson of the Princess Royal, to establish that the right of priority was with the Spanish through Perez's voyage in 1774 rather than with the English through Cook's discoveries of 1778.
The fact that the North West America, the first vessel ever built on the coast, was built on soil claimed by the Spanish may account for some of the insistence of Martinez that it should be delivered to him for a consideration.
When the Argonaut, under Captain Colnett, appeared at the mouth of the harbor it looks a little arbitrary for Martinez to order her towed into port and anchored between the two Spanish ships. But this English vessel belonged to the same concern that had been using the shores of Nootka Sound for a shipyard, that had erected structures there and her own papers actually contained instructions "to establish a permanent trading post or factory," the site of which would naturally have been Nootka. Colnett with such a commission from his superiors, and a weak mind, would have difficulty in not betraying his designs to the Spanish commander and lead him to demand Colnett's passport, instructions and invoice of cargo. Furthermore, Martinez waiting for Colnett to find these, "noted that the cargo of the Argonaut contained supplies of expected vessels and material for building others." Further, Colnett admitted "that he came as a governor of a colony." This meant complications that only tact and diplomacy could have straitened without an explosion, but Colnett flies off the handle. ​
20 F. G. YOUNG
The return of the Princess Royal, Captain Hudson, ten days later was in defiance of the warning Hudson had received, so seizure was the natural outcome.