Note From the Project Coordinator

In July 2018, I traveled to Seville with the mission of finding clues about Oregon’s past, trying to contact experts in the history of the Americas who are familiar with the archives that store and preserve colonial era documents.

Three good friends Pablo Martín Pascual, Jesús Jordano Fraga, and David Cox, all connoisseurs of the Andalusian capital, its life and its people, put me in contact with the researcher Olga Gutiérrez, to whom I introduced myself as the Director of the Instituto de Cultura Oregoniana and Oregon Heritage Commissioner. We talked about the lack of historical references during that period of more than two and a half centuries of what are today the states of Oregon and Washington. Captivated by the project, Olga showed immediate interest and commitment. After our first meeting, I entrusted her with the task of trying to identify and locate the documentation that makes up this exciting study. After several months of intense research, Olga sent me a document that compiled all of the materials she had identified in the Spanish archives.

With great excitement I noticed that Olga’s research documented a period of more than two hundred and fifty years, from the first Spanish expeditions to the American Pacific coast, in the middle of the sixteenth century, to the signing of the Treaty of Adams-Onís, in 1819, of present-day Oregon and Washington. The vestiges of a legendary era remained on these coasts and are preserved mainly in the oral tradition of the original peoples, in the Hispanic names of several sites, and in a few archaeological finds. But, in addition to these accounts and the names of places, fortunately much of that history was recorded both by the Hispanic crews of the ships who, while exploring the coasts, wrote expedition logs and drew up plans and maps, as well as by the authorities of the Spanish Crown, in their correspondence, documents, and official cartography. All of this formidable documentation was destined for the Hispanic archives, namely the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain.

After reading the original text, I notified all the parties interested in this venture about the existence of this tremendous source documentation that has the potential of reconstructing the history of the Hispanic presence in Oregon. After identifying, transcribing and synthesizing the primary sources located in the Spanish archives, and after reviewing the specialized bibliography, Professor Jaime Marroquín began to work with Olga to edit this story, evaluate as best as possible the sources and all the evidence collected, and retell all of those events that occurred since the first expeditions of the Hispanic ships along these coasts until the signing of the Treaty of Adams-Onís in an interesting and concise way. In his narrative, he would also emphasize the importance of the viceroyalty of New Spain (present-day Mexico) to the collection of resources, experience, and people necessary to carry out all the Hispanic explorations of the northern Pacific coast.

To complete this story and to be able to correctly interpret the events of the past, it also felt necessary to contextualize the selected sources and interrelate the events described by the Hispanics with the oral tradition and the stories passed on from generation to generation among indigenous peoples. This important interrelation was sponsored and carried out by the anthropologist professor of Oregon State University and member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, David G. Lewis, who, in addition to reviewing and updating the work to evaluate it and adequately represent the tribes referenced throughout this study, also analyzed the effect that the first stage of colonization had on them, from 1543 to 1819.

Thanks also to the international altruistic collaboration of a group of people who love history, as well as the universities and official institutions that encouraged us during the process of research and writing this work, we have been able to complete this historical approach to the Hispanic Origins of Oregon, to try to recover the different chronicles of the events that occurred, and to insist that they are inscribed and understood in their historical context, in order to be able to study this very interesting period of our history. Thus, we can move away from simplistic or Manichean terms and present a future project in which other protagonists of the early history of the former Oregon Territory can also participate with the same objective: to renew historiography and to explain the particularities of a space as diverse as the Pacific Northwest Coast and all those historical events that gave rise to what we are today, seeking a historic conciliation that until now has proven impossible.

And so, with the publication of this study we wanted to start an integration project that pays tribute to all those who sailed, inhabited, and traveled through these territories: The crews of the ships of the Spanish expeditions, the Native Americans who populated this part of the continent, the New Hispanics, the British and Russians who settled here to trade, the Americans who made pilgrimages to these lands, etc. We propose a commemoration of all those people who were the true protagonists of the past of these territories, whose descendants are the Oregonian generations of the present, and whose experiences, sometimes omitted for centuries, constitute the chronicle of the true historical dimension of the American northwest.

¡Vamos adelante!

Matías M. Trejo De Dios