Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/27



SPAIN AND ENGLAND QUARREL OVER OREGON 17

was accumulated the vessel would proceed to its market in China and possibly load there with tea for its homeward bound cargo. Meanwhile new recruits would be lured into the game.

In 1788 the American ships, Columbia and Lady Washing- ton, sent out by Boston merchants and commanded by John Kendrick and Robert Gray, arrived on the coast. They passed the following winter in Nootka Sound and were on the scene as interested spectators of the complications that were to follow, and possibly had no small part in inciting the Spanish commander, Martinez, to the suspicious attitude through which the trouble developed between him and Colnett and other Eng- lish captains as they arrived with their craft at the entrance of the harbor. At any rate, the factors in the situation were such as we shall see opened an opportunity which Yankee shrewdness with a little sharp practice could utilize toward putting difficulties in the way of a competitor in trade.

Looking at the situation as a whole as it was developing during these later eighties, of the 18th century at Nootka Sound through the profit-lure of the fur trade with the natives, we see the rights of Spain based on prior discovery of this coast completely ignored. In 1788, the Spanish authorities, having been through the reports of the returning French ex- plorer, La Perouse, apprised of the fact that the Russians were fast encroaching from the north, sent out Martinez and Haro in the Princesa and San Carlos to investigate. Martinez and Haro visited the Alaska regions and reported that the Russians intended to found a settlement at Nootka and also that English traders were active along the coast. Consequently, Martinez and Haro were sent back in 1789, equipped to es- tablish a post there and to assert Spanish sovereign jurisdic- tion over the region before it should be taken possession of by any foreign power.

In the Spring and early Summer of 1789, the time was ripe for a denouement at this rendezvous of traders of rival nations in Nootka Sound. Martinez as the representative of His