One had to undertake either an arduous overland journey along the Silk Road, or a long and hazardous sea voyage westward around either the tip of South America or eastward around Africa and across the Indian Ocean.

Such a waterway would have greatly facilitated trade and communication between Europe and eastern Asia because travel between these locations mandated choosing among three unattractive options. This passage, sometimes referred to as the Strait of Anian, was a waterway that supposedly connected the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. The legend of the Northwest Passage particularly enthralled Europeans. Wealth, fame, and adventure beckoned from that unknown geographic space, and their lure was compounded by legend. Yet, for many European explorers, entrepreneurs, and heads of state, this blank space on the map held infinite promise. They had little or no knowledge of what was going on in Europe or its American colonies, just as Europeans and American colonists had little or no knowledge that the Pacific Northwest even existed-it was a gaping hole in their maps of the world (see document 2 and document 3). While some American colonists certainly cherished dreams of westward expansion, no one yet dreamed of a nation that stretched from sea to sea.Īs the movement for independence took hold along the eastern seaboard of what is now the United States, the aboriginal people of the Pacific Northwest went about their business undisturbed.

Here in the Northwest, the story of contact and convergence began around the time of the American Revolution, when American colonists had settled no farther west than the Ohio River valley. But by the time Europeans came to the Northwest almost 300 years had passed, and European explorers had traveled to and mapped nearly all parts of North and South America-except the Pacific Northwest. In some respects, the story of cultural contact in the Northwest resembles that of Christopher Columbus's famous voyages to the New World beginning in 1492. Yet by the start of the 19th century, each group had a much more realistic sense of the other than they had possessed a mere 30 years before. Sometimes this learning took the form of peaceful accommodation, and sometimes it took more violent forms. It focuses on economic and political aspects of the process of learning to live together. Finally, the Living Together segment gives examples of the ways in which each culture learned about the other. Because the meeting of these cultures was both enabled and limited by geography, this section also describes some of the different ways in which each group responded to the natural environment. Essentially, this section explains why Europeans came to the Pacific Northwest in the first place, and why Indians chose to trade and socialize with Europeans. The Meeting portion describes some of the cultural baggage that each group brought to their encounters. The Imagining section provides a glimpse of the ways in which some Europeans and Indians imagined each other before they actually met. This introductory essay is divided into three parts: Imagining, Meeting, and Living Together. This was the era when ships from Spain, England, America, France, Russia and Portugal visited the Northwest Coast and first met the Nuu-chah-nulth, Makah, Salish, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Haida peoples. It was during this brief but pivotal period that Indians and Europeans met and developed a trading relationship that laid the groundwork for future social, political, and economic interactions.

The year 1774 marked the beginning of documented contact between Europeans and Indians on the Northwest Coast, and the year 1812 marked the beginning of a new phase of development, when overland fur traders took center stage. This packet of materials, however, focuses on the period between 17, the first years of contact between Native and European peoples. This story of convergence took place over many decades, and it continues into the present. The convergence of different groups, and of different ways of doing and thinking about things, created a diverse community of people who found ways to live together in a new and altered world. In addition, each group had its own ways of thinking about and representing the events that took place. Each group possessed its own social and political structures, economies, and ways of interacting with the natural environment. It is the story of two groups of people-one European and one Indian-converging on the land that we now call home. The history of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the Pacific Northwest is in many ways a story of convergence. Indians and Europeans on the Northwest Coast: Historical Context

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