Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/23



SPAIN AND ENGLAND'S QUARREL OVER THE OREGON COUNTRY.

An Introductory Statement to furnish a Setting for the Incidents in the Log of the Princesa used byf Professor Priestly to throw new Light on the Nootka Sound Affair of 1789

The culminating events in the first struggle for the posses- sion of the Oregon Country were staged in Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In our busy age, how- ever, the average reader of the Quarterly without a Bancroft's Northwest Coast at hand may not be sufficiently clear on the details of the incidents out of which the Nootka Con- troversy arose to get the benefit of the valuable source material in the paper by Professor Priestly on the Log of the Princesa or diary of her commander, Jose Martinez.

This Nootka Sound affair in which representatives of the Spanish and English sovereignties were rivals for the posses- sion of our Northwest Coast was in a way the first act in the drama; the second act of which with its more familiar complications was staged a quarter of a century later at Fort Astoria some two hundred and fifty miles to the south.

The joint arrangement closing the Nootka Sound dispute between Spain and England pertained primarily to rights of access to and trade with the natives of this coast region. In the next agreement, composing the second international con- tention for the Oregon Country as a whole, Spain had receded to the background and the United States had become a prin- cipal contender with England. The issue now affected the more substantial right of occupation. The arrangement again was on a joint basis. In the third and concluding settlement the situation had ripened to the exclusive "to have and to hold" phase with the establishment of the 49th parallel as the boundary line between the allotted portions of the claimants