Prologue

This book takes us back to the beginnings of globalization, when the Pacific Northwest was terra incognita, and thus, a promise of wealth for colonial powers.

In order to establish new settlements in indigenous lands, the first transoceanic empires employed three main practices, and not necessarily in the following order: scientific explorations, diplomacy, and war. In the former Territory of Oregon, the eventual winners of the different imperial competitions for the dominion of the region were, of course, the United States of America. For its citizens, the Pacific Northwest became a symbol of the success of America’s expansion west. As it is well known, the Oregon Trail allowed so-called Anglo-Saxon immigrants and some of their slaves to depart from the Missouri River ports, go through the current states of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and settle in the Pacific Northwest.

The fame of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which first charted the road to  Oregon, has obscured the previous history of the vast Territory of Oregon, including the three centuries during which its southern lands and its Pacific litoral were the rugged northern frontiers of the kingdom of New Spain, and its northern part was coveted by Russia and England. From the middle of the seventeenth century on, the Pacific Northwest became a strategically important territory due to the richness of its fur trade, its maritime connection with Asia near the Artic, and, especially, its proximity to the main Pacific route of commerce between East Asia, the Hispanic states of the Americas, and Western Europe. Due to global wind and ocean currents, sailing from Manila to Acapulco implied arriving first to the coasts of northern California, and from there sailing south to the famous Mexican port and Lima. Chinese silk, among other oriental products, were carried by land from Acapulco to Mexico City and then to the port of Veracruz, from where the remaining products from Asia and the new ones coming from the Early Americas, including the all-important silver, departed to Santo Domingo and from there to Seville.

New Spain provided the people, resources and practices needed to carry out the colonization and exploration of the Philippines. The Mexican kingdom was at the center of the first truly global and transoceanic route of commerce. The Pacific Northwest territories became important for the security of this commercial route, especially after the tragic Bering expedition from Russia crashed in the coasts of Alaska in the 18th century, triggering concerns among Hispanic authorities. The exploration of the northern Pacific coasts of the Americas, as well as the short-lived attempt at establishing a colonial town in Nootka, near the current island of Vancouver, were Spanish and Mexican endeavors directed towards an eventual colonization of the coasts of today’s Oregon. New Spain’s administration organized and provided the  resources necessary for expeditions whose crews were rather cosmopolitan. They included Spaniards and Mexican creoles among the officers and scientists aboard, while the rest of the crew were mestizos  and people of indigenous descent coming from New Spain, East Asia or the Mediterranean.

After Mexican Independence, Californian vaqueros started working in Oregon. Their presence was indispensable on the ranches and rangelands of the south, as the endurance of the word buckaroo in parts of the state attests. Moreover, the profound indigenous roots of Mexico makes it possible to venture that migrations to the Pacific Northwest coming from Mexican and Central American towns are, from a deep historical perspective, a return.  One of the largest branches of Oregon’s Native American languages comes from the vast Uto-Aztec linguistic family, which extends from the Pacific Northwest to Central America. In any case, from colonial times on, Hispanic presence has been constant in the Territory of Oregon; its history is entangled with that of the development of the US Pacific Northwest.