4. Buying and Selling Clayoquot

In late summer 1788, we are reminded, the American ship Columbia Rediviva, sailing out of Boston, arrived on the Northwest Coast. Her master was John Kendrick, born about the year 1740 in Harwich, Massachusetts. One of the officers, Robert Haswell, a person of discriminating views, recounted that early on the very pleasant Sunday morning of August 31, 1788, while easing into the southeast entrance to Clayoquot Sound, a great many inhabitants came out to the ship in canoes, bringing an abundance of skins. Prospects of trade seemed fair, “but greatly to our mortification there was nothing in our vessel except muskets.” The Clayoquot were ardent for copper: “copper was all their cry.” In conversation with the Americans, Wickaninnish and other chiefs mentioned several traders—Meares, Barkley, Duncan, Hanna and Douglas. They remembered them all as recent visitors. However, communication was limited: what they said of these traders the Americans could not fathom. The language barrier presented further possibilities of misunderstanding, and there was no interpreter on board the ship. Such knowledge of their language as was possessed by the Americans, the locals could not comprehend.⁹³

Kendrick has black marks after his name for his violent and shaming treatment of Koyah, Haida chief at SG̱ang Gwaay Llanagaay (Red Cod Island—now Ninstints on Anthony Island, Haida Gwaii) a year later, in 1789. The “Kendrick-Koyah affair” is regarded as a shocking violation of Haida cultural mores, for by taking Koyah prisoner and locking him to a gun carriage, Kendrick shamed the chief before his own people. Koyah spent several years attempting to regain his status among his own people by showing that he was not a slave of white traders, and he led several attacks on British and American merchant shipping, the last one likely fatal to him.⁹⁴

At Clayoquot the story was different: Kendrick got along well with Wickaninnish and his people. To further trade, his intention was to set up arrangements with the respective head chiefs of the many villages in and near Nootka, most notably Clayoquot Sound: these embayments were the focus of the bountiful maritime trade in these latitudes. He intended subsequent voyages, building on the success of the initial trade.

To Kendrick can be accorded the odd distinction of being gunrunner to the Clayoquot. He initiated the trade in firearms. Not only did he give Maquinna a swivel gun, but he also furnished Wickaninnish with more than 200 muskets, two barrels of powder and a considerable portion of shot. In a flash, the world had been transformed. As Vancouver’s clerk Edward Bell said, quoted in Chapter 3, “Thus are they supplied with weapons which they no sooner possess than they turn against the donors.”⁹⁵ This was written at Nootka in October 1792. A Spanish authority supports Bell’s charge of Kendrick’s influence in the trade in firearms. However, there is widespread discussion and much dispute about the role of firearms in relation to violence (against other Indigenous persons and against European and American visitors), and so we take Bell’s comments with caution.⁹⁶

Why not, Kendrick reasoned, enter firm arrangements with certain Northwest Coast chiefs so that exclusive trade would exist when his ship returned to their locales? This Yankee, in many ways like Meares, was shrewd and forward looking. He intended to take control of the locus of the trade. Thus he had his eye on all of Nootka Sound and, as if that were not enough, even cast a glance widely south to Clayoquot. His empire building differed from that of the Spanish. The Spanish pressed their claim to Nootka, and especially Yuquot, tearing down Native structures and putting up their own buildings—a hospital, garrison, church and fortifications. They intended to stay. Kendrick wanted what we might call “soft empire”—that is, a place of convenience and a promise of trade in the future. For their part, the chiefs had proffered friendship to Kendrick. They wanted close business connections for the two-way traffic of assured imports and sea otter pelt exports, all at good prices of exchange. Thus it was that in Nootka Sound, Kendrick got busy forming firm bonds of friendship. He entertained with Chinese fireworks at night. He offered sailcloth and black powder as gifts and favours. There was feasting. These formed the preliminaries. He prepared for more serious arrangements. For their part, the chiefs of the Indigenous peoples on the coast saw it as perfectly within their rights to sell whatever was theirs.

With the necessary groundwork completed, Kendrick swapped ten muskets for a harbour known as Chastacktoos (Mahwinna, Maweea or Moweeena; now known as Marvinas Bay), an excellent place for ship repairs to be carried out, as it was safe from all winds.⁹⁷ That was where the Lady Washington lay at anchor. To this was added all lands and waters within nine miles north, east, south and west of that harbour. Maquinna expressed delight, for the terms of this treaty, signed July 21, 1789, attested that he could live and fish in the above-mentioned territory forever, as could his heirs, executors and administrators. The American captain, for his part, also acquired freedom of passage and navigation throughout the land of Maquinna.⁹⁸ No Spanish warship could upset his trade now. The centre point of the purchase came to be called Safe Retreat Harbour.

Here was a prodigious gain, and a mighty transaction. The eighteen-mile square embraced 324 square miles. Maquinna, jubilant, had already shown his pleasure by climbing the rigging of the Lady Washington and pointing to the four directions. Presumably Kendrick was under obligation to provide him some sort of protection as an ally, as well as to engender trade. Perhaps, too, Maquinna and the other chiefs hoped that the rival British and Spanish could be kept out. From our time it seems all very fuzzy as to intent, but it makes clear that the head chief and his subordinate chiefs could do just as they chose: no elected tribal or band council offered countering opinions or raised objections. There was no land registry office and no colonial government.

Kendrick did not stop there and made three other purchases in Nootka Sound. The opinion of Kendrick’s biographer is that this was a brilliant defensive move to block the claims of the British and the Spanish. I find his argument conclusive. Moreover, these properties had valuable fishing grounds, good harbours and land where gold would later be found. This was done by deed and not by treaty (which involves mutually recognized nations or states).⁹⁹

Empire-builder Kendrick now looked southward to expand his trading sphere. If Clayoquot could be added, he would have in total more than a thousand square miles of Vancouver Island. Thus it was that at Clayoquot on August 11, 1791, Kendrick signed a deed conveying to him “a territorial distance of eighteen miles north, eighteen miles south, eighteen miles east, and eighteen miles west of the village called by the natives Opsitsa, which village is to be the centre of the said territorial distances, with all mines, minerals, rivers, bays, sounds, harbors, creeks, &c., and all the islands, with both the produce of land and sea within the limits of said territorial distance. Opisita being the centre is situated in latitude 49° 10’ north, and longitude 126° 02’ west from the meridian of London.”¹⁰⁰ Wickaninnish and five others—Tootiscosettle, Yeassluar, Tatootchtheatticus, Yackgulgin and Hycreguis—signed the deed. These were chiefs, sons and close relatives of Wickaninnish. Now where is the original of this extraordinary contract? Would that we could find it! It has been lost. Can we content ourselves with a printed version, for that’s what has come down to us.

By good fortune the deed survives and can be found on page 8 in Hall J. Kelley’s Discoveries, Purchases of Lands, etc., on the Northwest Coast, Being a Part of an Investigation of the American Title to the Oregon Territory (Boston, 1838). When I first chanced upon this rare book, I realized it was an example, pure and simple, of that boisterous “Oregon fever” that beset American businessmen and land seekers desirous of getting their hands on the far Pacific coast of North America, and using any logic that would help their case. At the time, the Oregon Country stretched from present-day Oregon north to the border with Russian America at 54° 40’ N, and south to Mexico. By the mid-1820s, Britain and the United States remained the sole contenders for the territory.¹⁰¹

The Clayoquot deed signed by Wickaninnish and the other chiefs is similar to four others we find in Kelley and elsewhere, except that it did not include the clause of the Nootka document, which reads “only the said J. Kendrick does grant and allow the said Maquinnah to live and fish on the territory as usual.”

We know that the deeds were in Canton as of May 11, 1795, in the possession of Kendrick’s clerk, J. Howell. Further, they were registered in Macau in December 1796. The originals were sent to Boston, with authenticated copies to follow by subsequent conveyances. However, through the all-too-familiar occurrence of envelopes and packages being lost in the mail, these subsequent shipments did not find their way to their destinations. But for legal history enthusiasts there is a bright light. Kendrick’s own copies found their way to Thomas Jefferson, US Secretary of State, under cover of a letter dated March 1, 1793.¹⁰²

We now move to the key substantive issue, as Kendrick saw it. Under these deeds Kendrick wrote, “tracts of land, therein described, situated on islands in the North West Coast of America, have been conveyed to me and my heirs for ever, by the resident chiefs of those districts, who, I presume, were the only just proprietors thereof.”¹⁰³

Empire followed trade in Kendrick’s logic. His beachhead of forged alliances and commercial connections on Vancouver Island’s west coast were to him only made more secure if the US government acknowledged and even registered these claims. But this was not American sovereign territory, though it was claimed as such. In any event, Kendrick asked Jefferson to get the United States to recognize his ownership of territory. He noted in particular, so as to appease Jefferson (who worried about foreign entanglements), that the Spanish at Nootka had acknowledged his purchase: “My claim to these territories has been allowed by the Spanish Crown, for the purchases I made at Nootka were expressly excepted in a deed of conveyance of the lands adjacent to and surrounding Nootka Sound, executed in September last, to El Senor Don Juan Francisco de la Bodega of Quadra, on behalf of his Catholic Majesty, by Maquinnah, and the other chiefs of his tribe, to whom those lands belonged.”¹⁰⁴

Kendrick thought in imperial terms. He pressed the point that the value of the maritime fur trade to US commerce meant that a base of operations there—a settlement, if you will, under protection of the US government—would be advantageous to the nation. The future-thinking Kendrick intended that the lands he purchased would be of use to the government in some future plan.¹⁰⁵ He held that when he made these purchases he did so under the impression that the United States government would sanction them. He believed that the Spanish crown allowed his claim to those same territories; he specifically maintained that Bodega y Quadra, the Spanish authority at Nootka, accepted the deed of conveyance as legitimate in regards to the Maquinna document. Kendrick spoke of the five deeds as forming one property. Might what he had in mind be a toehold of empire, the first step to a transcontinental America in these latitudes? All would be to his gain, too. Interestingly, he was writing in these terms just as Alexander Mackenzie was making last preparations at Fort Fork, Peace River, for his crossing from there to Dean Channel on the Pacific. Imperial designs were intersecting on the far side of the world.

Kendrick fully expected to be compensated for these private purchases. He also expected that much would come to him as a pathfinder of empire. Who knows what might have eventuated in the next few years, as tensions increased regarding the future sovereignties of the Northwest Coast, had he not been killed, perhaps accidentally, perhaps due to negligence, on December 12, 1794, in Honolulu. Kendrick’s cause was taken up by friends and interested persons, of which more will be mentioned below.

Reverting to the Kendrick deeds, as they are called, the question raised by interested parties is this: did Wickaninnish sign the deed with Kendrick? Or, put differently, was he a party to the transaction? Evidence is found in two places. John Young, sometime prime minister of Hawaii, saw the deeds and testified in 1835 that he distinctly recollected seeing the names of Maquinna and Wickaninnish.¹⁰⁶ And we should not discount the oral evidence of Bostonian Samuel Yendell, of the Columbia, who wrote in 1838, “while at Clyoquot, on that coast, in the village of Wickanannish, I heard it often said that the Indian chief Wickanannish had sold to Capt. John Kendrick his territory.”¹⁰⁷

If we take this as credible, Kendrick had bought Opitsat and much else in the territory, extending eighteen miles in the four cardinal directions. Doubtless Wickaninnish and the other signatories were interested in trade prospects, not territory sales. But when the Anglo-American contest for sovereignty on the Northwest Coast increased in alarming strength, drawing forth many tensions on the international scene, these same Kendrick deeds were gathered as evidence of American toeholds of empire and embraced by Americans in the process of bolstering their case for control of the Oregon Country from Alta California at 38°N to the Alaskan panhandle, 54° 40’ N. None other than Robert Greenhow, translator and librarian to the Department of State, published extensively on this topic. He used Kendrick’s deeds as undefiled evidence of US interests in sovereignty.¹⁰⁸ Greenhow was far from disinterested. In consequence, the view of official scholarship from Washington, DC, had now come to possess Meares Island as part of a sort of proto-empire on the Northwest Coast, the first step to acquiring complete sovereignty as recognized by the comity of nations. We also observe that for the first time a location on Meares Island, Opitsat, had been possessed by geographical science and the calculations of latitude and longitude. Kendrick gave it this measurement on the earth’s surface, giving Opitsat a spatial relationship in regards to the rest of the world.

If, we might reasonably ask, Clayoquot Sound had been part of the United States, would Kendrick, Gray and their successors forever have owned the land? An interesting question, to which we have an answer in American law. The Kendrick and Gray deeds, we find by our study of land purchase law in the United States, would have been null and void at the time. “The prohibition of private purchase of lands from the Indians, which had been part of the colonial and imperial policy [of Great Britain], continued as a fixed policy of the United States,” according to a leading authority on American Indian law (here I use “Indian” as per the custom in the United States). The first Congress under the Constitution incorporated this into the Indian trade and intercourse act of 1793.¹⁰⁹ At face value, this meant that US commissioners had to treat with Indians for their lands; Congress appropriated funds for compensation to Indians. But Clayoquot Sound was not in US sovereign territory in any case. No further comment need be made here about the general tendency in the history of the American frontier to seize, capture and rob Indians of their lands, and many a book has been written on that subject.

Looked at from Wickaninnish’s perspective, he had every right to sell what he wished in the way of land or other resources. He wanted the promise, the security of future trade. I like to think of the Kendrick deeds as demonstrating his personal claims as of 1791. These include his right to sell property as he wished, and with other subordinate chiefs’ consent (and their marks on the document). It demonstrates, undoubtedly, his status as of that date. It shows, too, his willingness to enter into contractual arrangements as of that time, for other considerations beneficial to him. It shows that he was not duped, and that he enjoyed a one-on-one relationship with Kendrick. Further, Kendrick’s nationality was not a consideration here. Certainly it was not a release of sovereignty; rather, it constituted a real estate transaction and a trade alliance. Wickaninnish, in short, was sovereign lord, master of all he surveyed. This is borne out by the insightful remarks of Bell, the clerk of HMSDiscovery, with which we conclude discussion of this particular matter:

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Though Maquinna is the greatest chief in the neighborhood of Nootka Sound yet Wicananish who resides at Clyonquot seems to me to be the Emperor of the Sea Coast between Defuca’s Streights and Woody Point, an extent of upwards of a degree & a half of Latitude, and the most populous part of the Coast (for its extent) but Maquinna is not tributary to him nor does he allow his rank to be inferior to Wicananish’s. Their families are united by Marriage which of course unites their Politicks. Wicannanish’s property is very great and . . . is possessed of about 400 Muskets. With such a force no wonder that small vessels are afraid to enter the Port. He attempted to take the Ship Columbia while she was wintering Clyonquot but I cannot bestow much pity on those who have been attacked when I recollect that they themselves have put the very weapons in their hands which are turn’d against them. Notwithstanding this treacherous piratical disposition the Chiefs behave with some degree of honor to those with whom they make bargains.¹¹⁰

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