13 Expedition of Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayetano Valdés

Alcalá and Valdés left Acapulco in March 1792 and arrived in Nutka by mid-May. On June 4th, they sailed through the Strait of Fuca and anchored in the port of Núñez Gaona, where they met Salvador Fidalgo. Fidalgo had traveled from San Blas to Núñez Gaona aboard the frigate Princesa at the end of May 1792, with the intention of fulfilling Viceroy Revillagigedo’s order to establish a permanent settlement in the Bay. Fidalgo created a fortified position in front of the Makah town, making this the first European settlement in present-day Washington State. Viceroy Revillagigedo thought that if Núñez Gaona was equipped to become the new base of the Spanish Monarchy in the Pacific, Nutka could be ceded to the English without too many inconveniences.

FIGURE 11. Macuina, Chief of Nutka, Portrait of Tomás de Suria, draftsman of the Malaspina expedition, 1792.^[1]

The Makah

For more than three thousand years, the Makah (members of the Nuu-chah-nulth) inhabited this bay. Known as the Cape People, their tribe consisted of five groups that all spoke Wakash language. Their ancestral territories extended along the coast from the Copper River Delta in the Gulf of Alaska to the Oregon-California border, and inland from the coastal mountains of British Columbia to the Cascade mountains of Washington and Oregon.

Like the rest of the coastal inhabitants, the sea was very important for the Makah. Although the origin of their name (according to other neighboring tribes) means “generous people with food,” the Makah called themselves Qwi-dich-cha-at, which means “the people who live near the rocks and the seagulls.” They relied on the sea as a primary food source, using long red cedar canoes, which could even have sails, and expert navigating skills to fish for whales, seals, and otters. Whaling especially was a staple practice for both the Makah’s livelihood and culture; they used meat, fat, and bones for traditional rituals and spiritual ceremonies, in addition to inspiring songs, dances, decorative motifs, and personal ornaments. They lived in huts made of wooden planks, and, like their neighbors to the north, they erected impressive totems that were both symbols of protection and emblems of the various clans into which their society was organized.

Returning to the Hispanic expeditions, as previously mentioned, in 1792 Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayetano Valdés and Flores also sailed to Nutka Bay and later circumnavigated Vancouver Island. Traveling with Galiano and Valdés was the Mexican botanist José Mariano Mociño, a young Creole doctor from Temascaltepec who accompanied the explorers on the shores of the island of Nutka. Mexican scientist Xavier Lozoya indicates in his work “José Mariano Mociño. A Mexican Naturalist that travels Nutka, Canada, in the 17th Century” that the Mexicans saw themselves as enlightened scientists, botanists, and naturalists and saw the natives of Canada as subjects to study. Interestingly, the enlightened intellectuals of New Spain discussed the existence of possible similarities between the natives of Mexico and Nutka. In 1786, the scholar José Francisco Ruiz Cañete consulted Captain Cook’s descriptions of Nutka and published the “Origin of the Mexican Indians” in the Gazette of Mexican Literature, directed by José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez. This study highlighted resemblances between the clothes and sculptures of the Nutka peoples, in addition to noting that the Nutka language seemed remarkably similar to Nahuatl. Both Alzate and Ruiz Cañete argued that such similarities were indications of common origin and migration of the American Native peoples. Mociño, who was a friend and admirer of Alzate, knew the hypothesis of these enlightened intellectuals and provided new elements for the discussion in his work, although he declared himself inexperienced and therefore unable to confirm that both languages ​​had a common origin. Expedition draftsman Atanasio Echeverría, who was also Mexican, accompanied Mociño and illustrated the information with beautiful pictures.

De la Bodega y Quadra, who was now commander of the Department of San Blas, sailed again on the Galiano and Valdés expedition as a commissioner sent by the Spanish Crown. His intent was to establish the borders of Nutka Bay, Vancouver, and southern San Francisco with George Vancouver of England, since both nations held a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest. These meetings lead to the implementation of the Treaty of San Lorenzo, which was signed in 1790 between England and Spain. Through it, both powers promised to maintain the peace altered by the Nutka conflict after the actions carried out by Martínez de la Sierra. Therefore, Mociño, who learned a substantial part of the Tlingit language in order to understand the mentality and culture of its speakers, had the opportunity to experience not only the meetings of De la Bodega y Quadra and Vancouver to resolve the crisis first-hand, but also the relations of both the Spanish and the English with Prince Macuina, and the reconciliation of Hispanic settlers with the people of Nutka. All this information was collected by Mociño in his very interesting work Noticia Nutka, a book that the explorer wrote in 1793 on his return from the trip.

Observations of José Cardero

José Cardero was an illustrator of the expedition of Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayetano Valdés y Flores. He had also previously accompanied Malaspina on his journey in search of the Northwest Passage. During this trip, he had learned much from Tomas Suria, whom he appreciated as a teacher and from whom he assimilated all his teachings. The expedition arrived at Nutka on May 13th, 1792, and there they remained until June 5th when they went to explore the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As noted by Sánchez Montañés in her studies on the painters of this expedition, in the first stop of Galiano and Valdés, which was two days in the port of Núñez Gaona (current Neah Bay), the illustrators made portraits of a chief and his wives, as well as a view of the establishment. From that moment on and along the expedition route, following the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the straits of Georgia, Johnston and Reina Carlota, different people appear in the illustrations, first Salish speakers and later Kwakwaka’wakw. There are portraits and compositions illustrating scenes and specific events of the trip. Although many of these drawings are sketches, apparently taken in the raw with quick strokes, many others were finished and even composed later, either in Mexico or in Spain, using the notes of others, thus intermingling elements of different native cultures and sometimes introducing foreign elements. Therefore, they are somewhat unrealistic representations that reflect a different reality from the existing one; the characters represented in the expedition drawings, especially in complex scenes, clearly show stereotypical postures. That is why Sánchez Montañés insists that the drawings must always be analyzed alongside the information that was collected in the many diaries and expedition reports.

At the beginning of this exploration, the expedition members observed the winter villages of the Makah, which signaled the southern division of the people of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth language, who were further into the strait, around present-day Neah Bay. Before anchoring in said bay, then known as the port of Núñez Gaona, they passed near the island of Tatoosh, of which Cardero made a drawing entitled Fortification of the Indians from Fuca Strait. The correct title should be “The Village of Tatooche in Tatoosh Island off Cape Flattery,” as this was not really the local Hispanic settlement. On June 6th, the schooners anchored in the port of Núñez Gaona where they met Salvador Fidalgo, busy with building a settlement and awaiting orders from Bodega y Quadra as well as the results of the negotiation with Vancouver. Although Antonio Serrantes, the pilot of the Princesa and one of Fidalgo’s men, had died at the hands of natives, he had managed to establish a good relationship with the natives. However, it seems that Alcalá Galiano did not like the port very much, mainly because it was very exposed to winds, especially those from the north, which led him to present an unfavorable report on the place. For its part, Bodega, after the interview with Vancouver and the decision to momentarily maintain the establishment of Nutka, also traveled to the port of Núñez Gaona to meet with Fidalgo and inquire about the death of the pilot. In Bodega’s journal he recorded the interview he had with the chief Tlatacu (Tetacus) and his brother Tututsi (Tatoosh) to investigate the death of this sailor, concluding that the sailor had disobeyed the expressed orders not to venture alone with the natives and that the natives of a nearby village murdered to rob him. Fearful of the punishment they might receive for such action, the natives fled, being impossible to capture. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why it was decided to abandon the Núñez Gaona settlement and keep the Nutka one, although Bodega always claimed it was due to the port’s poor location. Apparently, relations with the natives, and especially with their chiefs, must not have been bad since Bodega gave express orders before leaving the settlement that the hut that had been built on land be transferred to the natives without removing a single stick. We should also note that, in addition to its bad location, the problems with England and the supposed distribution of the territories of the Northwest led to the consideration of other alternatives to Neah Bay, and therefore the history of this establishment was made very short, being abandoned on September 29th of 1792.

Before being abandoned, Cardero made a picture of the establishment, to which he added a drawing of the great war canoe of Tetaku. As Sánchez Montañés indicates, the drawing of the port more or less translates to reality, with two cabins in addition to the schooners, the Princesa’s frigate and some native canoes. The great war canoe, however, is really an add-on since this canoe was seen and described in detail in the expeditionary diaries in another place—the port of Córdoba—which was as far as Chief Tetacus had accompanied the Mexican schooner across the Strait of Fuca, where there was a village belonging to another group, and of which he was probably the chief through marriage. Tetacus himself made a drawing on paper of the Tetaku with its eagle prow and explained to the expedition members that he had seen a similar bird, with a very large head and two horns on it, descend from the heights to the sea in order to catch a whale to then rise once again. It must have been, according to Sánchez Montañés, a Thunderbird, the bird that is always identified with the main Nuu-chah-nulth chiefs, whose iconography is clearly inspired by the Steller’s Eagle or Pigargo, the largest of the sea eagles.

This famous war canoe of the Makah chief must have been very striking for painters since it reappeared many kilometers to the north in another supposed view of the port of Núñez Gaona. The image does not correspond to this port in reality and is really New Spain’s settlement of San Lorenzo de Nutka, with the fort of San Miguel built on the island of San Rafael, in the southeast part of Los Amigos Cove (“Friendly Cove” in English). The painting shows shops built by the men of Fidalgo (including a warehouse, bakery, blacksmith shop, and structure of the future dwelling of the officers), one of the expedition corvettes, several native canoes and, again, the war canoe of Chief Tetacus. This, according Sánchez Montañés, gave rise to the error of titling the plate as Port Núñez Gaona, when it really is the bastion of San Miguel, which shows the need to always interpret the drawings of these expeditions with the texts of the diaries written by the expeditionaries.

FIGURE 12. Port of Núñez Gaona, by José Cardero, c. 1792. [Currently Friendly Cove; it was actually the town of San Lorenzo de Nutka, in front of the San Miguel Bastion built on the island of San Rafael. Cardero incorporated into this image of the northern limit of the dominions claimed by Spain the famous canoe of Chief Tetacus].^[2]

Observations of José Mariano Mociño

Other writings and descriptions of great interest derived from this expedition are those made by Mociño who, after months of living with the natives, transferred to his Description of the Island of Mazarredo, in which the Nutka anchorage is located not only information about its inhabitants, but also their way of subsistence, their environment, their religion, and their customs and uses, such as that of the small copper cylinders that hung to the ears:

(…) from childhood, 3 or 4 holes are usually opened throughout the lower pulp of the ears and one or two in the middle calf of the noses ( ..) of the first several threads or straps hang that are knotted separately to little more than one inch from the ear, from this one they usually add some reddish copper plates in the shape of a cylinder of an inch and a half to two inches in length’ others wear up to three or four earrings together strung one with another without order or proportion, and without trying the ornament to be the same on both sides.

Mociño even collected how they experienced their first contact with the Hispanic expeditionaries, when Pérez Hernández arrived there in 1774, and was anchored at the tip that he himself called San Sebastián (or Cook Arrecifes), indicating how:

(…) the sight of this boat at first filled the natives with fear, who until now testify to have been overwhelmed with terror from the moment they saw on the horizon the stout machine that was gradually approaching its shores, believing that Quautl would come to them and make a second visit, and they were even suspicious if it was to punish the evils of that town. As many as they could left and hid in the Mountains, others shut themselves in their cabins, and the most daring took their canoes to recognize from close up the mass that jutted out into the Ocean. They approached fearfully but without animosity when boarding, until after time, attracted by the friendly signals with which the Spanish crew called them, they had to arrive on board and admire as many new and extraordinary objects as that ship presented. They received some gifts and, from their part, they gave the captain otter skins. In the latter’s diary, which I have read the original, it is recorded that neither he nor any of his sailors jumped on land, and it is expressly inferred from it that they did not recognize the ports that five leagues away to the north would have given them much relief. Finally, they set sail to the south without exactly demarking even the coastline, contenting themselves only with determining the latitude of that entrada that they call San Lorenzo. They later missed, among other things, some spoons, which of course excited the greed of the natives, in whose possession Captain Cook found one of them four years later.