THE WORKS OF HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT. VOLUME XXVII. HISTORY OF THE NORTHWEST COAST. VOL. I. 1543-1800. SAN FRANCISCO: THE HISTORY COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. PREFACE. PROCEEDING northward from the more defined regions of Spanish domination in America, on reaching the forty-second parallel the hitherto steady course of our Pacific States History is interrupted, and after the earliest voyages of discovery we are referred to Canada and France, and later to Anglo-America and England, for the origin of affairs, and for the extreme north to Russia. The ownership of this region, always ignoring the rights of the natives, was at first somewhat vague; it was disputed by the several European powers, France, Spain, and England, and after the first two had retired from the field England and the United States held a bloodless quarrel over it. The original doctrine in seizing unknown lands was to claim in every direction as far as those lands extended, even if it was quite round the world. Thus Columbus would have it, and Vasco Nuñez de Balboa thought that all the shores washed by the Pacific Ocean were not too great recompense to his king for having so valiant a subject as himself. France was disposed to claim from Canada west to the Pacific, and back of the English plantations down the valley of the Great River to the Mexican Gulf ( ▼ ) while the English colonies on the Atlantic measured their lands by the frontage, their depth being the width of the continent. But Spain, sending her navigators up the western coast, was enabled by discovery to secure a better title than could be made to rest on the enthusiasm of a Columbus or a Balboa, or even on the pope's generosity. While Great Britain and the United States relied on explorations and occupation, sometimes calling the former discoveries, and also on enforced or voluntary concessions from Spain, France also sent an exploring expedition, followed now and then by a trader; but she advanced no claims after parting with her broad Canadian and Mississippi possessions. Obviously events affecting this area as a whole, before its division into separate domains, belong to each of the succeeding states; so that the History of the Northwest Coast may properly be regarded as preliminary to and part of the History of Oregon, the History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and the History of British Columbia. On the earliest maritime explorations, the voyages of the fur-traders, and the famous Nootka controversy, I have been able to consult many important documents not known to Greenhow, Twiss, and the other writers of 1846 and earlier years. Notable among these new authorities are the journals of Gray, Haswell, Winship, Sturgis, and other American voyagers; also the interesting items on northern trips gleaned from the Spanish archives of California. The famous Oregon Question, growing out of these earliest expeditions and controversies, is here for the first time treated from an historical rather than a partisan standpoint. |