Fort Astoria | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

June 23, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Tonquin

“In December, 1777, Captain James Cook, who had been sent into the Pacific on a voyage of exploration by the King of England, discovered several islands which he named in honor of the Earl of Sandwich, He later sailed northward and in March of the next year sighted the American coast in the neighborhood of the present Yaquina Bay.”

“He thus became the first to make a contact between the Oregon country and Hawaii. Cook was followed within a few years by vessels that engaged in trading furs from the Indians along the northwest coast of America which they sold in China.”

“The captains of such ships were quick to learn the value of the Hawaiian Islands as a resting place and provisioning station. Their custom was to stop there on the northward voyage, spend a season in trade, return to the islands for the winter, and afterwards sail back to the American coast to complete their cargo of furs before going to Canton.” (Clark)

“On June 23, 1810, Pacific Fur Company partners sign articles of agreement in New York City. This new enterprise aims to monopolize the American fur trade from coast to coast.”

“The wealthy New York merchant John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) is president, prime mover, and principal stockholder of the fledgling organization, and he will soon dispatch two expeditions to found a transcontinental trading network headquartered on the Columbia River, ‘the first American commercial undertaking west of the mountains.’” (Nisbet)

“To serve as his chief agent, Astor approached Wilson Price Hunt (1783-1842), a St. Louis merchant who hired several Missouri River traders and frontiersmen of his acquaintance as assistants. Because no American furmen possessed the expertise needed to organize a new trading network in the Far West, Astor recruited experienced Canadian traders for his remaining leadership.”

“The first party would sail from New York on the ship Tonquin with the supplies and equipment necessary ‘to establish a fur trading post at, or in the vicinity of the Columbia River’. Partners Alexander McKay, Duncan McDougall, David Stuart (1765-1853) and Robert Stuart (1785-1848) would superintend the establishment of the trade in the Columbia region upon their arrival.”

“The second group, commanded by Wilson Price Hunt and Donald Mackenzie, would depart St. Louis in late October and travel west along Lewis and Clark’s route, selecting appropriate locations for trading posts and establishing friendly rapport with Indian tribes along the way.”

“Astor, who watched the Tonquin set sail on September 8, 1810, would later muse, ‘Was there ever an undertaking of more merit, of more hazard, and more enterprising?’” (Nisbet)

“Commanded by Captain Jonathan Thorn (1779-1811), a 32-year-old lieutenant on leave from the US Navy, the Tonqin was 94 feet long with a burden of 269 tons, and was known as a ‘first-rate ship’”.

“[W]hile planning a post on the Columbia River [Astor] also had in mind to establish friendly relations with the Hawaiian Islands in the hope of securing special commercial privileges there.”

“When the Tonquin which carried his men and goods to the Columbia stopped at those islands, its captain endeavored without success to make a commercial treaty with King Kamehameha.”

“He did, however, succeed in securing needed supplies of food and in enlisting 24 Hawaiians for service as sailors and as laborers at the prospective post [twelve for the crew and twelve for the new settlement]. The agreement was that they were to receive food, clothing and $100 in merchandise for three years service.” (Nisbet) Then they sailed to the Northwest coast.

“When the crew sighted land about three miles away on the morning of March 22, [1811] the captain felt certain they had reached the Columbia. With a fresh gale blowing from the northwest, Thorn thought it would be prudent to examine the notoriously treacherous bar before venturing any closer in the Tonquin.”

“In the early afternoon he ordered his first mate, JC Fox (d. 1811), and four of his crewmen to launch a longboat and sound the channel. According to three eyewitness accounts, the first mate objected to setting out in such stormy weather and rough seas, to which Captain Thorn replied, ‘Mr. Fox, if you are afraid of water, you should have remained at Boston’”.

“Mr. Fox had been well-liked aboard the Tonquin, and his friends watched anxiously from deck as his little boat was tossed about by the boisterous sea, but they soon lost sight of it among the expanse of breaking waves.”

“The following day the Tonquin stood off and on the bar all day ‘with anxious solicitude’, but there was no sign of the longboat. As evening approached, the crew of necessity steered the ship a safe distance from shore, ‘all with long faces, even the Captain looking worried’”.

“The morning of March 24 proved clear, and the Tonquin anchored in a calm area to the north of Cape Disappointment. … Soon thereafter, a fine breeze sprung up, and Captain Thorn decided to weigh anchor and stand in for the entrance to the river.”

“According to his charts, the deepest and most reliable channel lay close in to Cape Disappointment, on the north edge of the shifting sandbars that rendered the river’s mouth so perilous.”

“This channel was narrow, intricate, and constantly changing, and Thorn ‘became so alarmed at the appearance of the breakers that he hove to’. He ordered second mate Mumford to re-launch the pinnace and sound the waters ahead. Mumford succeeded in locating five fathoms of water, but with the surf breaking all around him, he retreated to the ship.”

“Captain Thorn again weighed anchor and stood in for the channel under an easy sail. … ‘We came within pistol range of the long-boat and made a signal to them to come aboard, which they were unable to do, the suction of the ebbing tide carrying them away with incredible speed’”.

“Tonquin began to drift fast to the southward … ‘the mind of the captain was so absorbed in apprehension, and perplexed with anxiety at the danger which stared him in the face, and which he was about to encounter, that he could not be brought to give a thought to anything else but the safety of the ship.’”

“Indeed, the safety of the Tonquin was soon imperiled, for as she made her way across the bar in the face of the outgoing tide, she struck repeatedly on reefs and shoals. Waves broke over the deck. ‘Everyone who could, sprang aloft, and clung for life to the rigging … she struck again and again, and, regardless of her helm, was tossed and whirled in every direction’”.

“The wind suddenly died, leaving the ship at the mercy of the surf, in danger of being dashed against the rocks at the foot of Cape Disappointment. Thorn threw out two anchors to counter the pull of the tide. But ‘darkness soon fell to add to the horrors of our predicament’”.

“When the tide eventually turned, the ship was still intact, and an ocean breeze sprang up to usher her away from the cape’s rocky shore, across the rest of the bar, and into the shelter of Baker’s Bay in the lee of the Cape, where the weary sailors dropped anchor just before midnight.”

“Despite extensive searches over the next several days, Stephen Weeks and Harry [one of the Hawaiians] were the only survivors of either of the small boats ever found. ‘The loss of eight of us [including one Hawaiian] within two days was deeply felt,’ wrote Franchere.”

“‘In the course of such a long voyage, among men who see one another every day, live in the same quarters, share the same dangers, ties form which make such a sudden and unforeseen separation doubly painful.’” (Nisbet) Some of the Hawaiians remained at the Columbia River to build the trading post.

After a few days, fur company officials found a site for the trading post and named it Astoria. This was the base of operations for Astor’s northwest fur trade. (Kittelson)

“The 12 Hawaiians who remained on board were murdered with the other members of the crew when the Tonquin was surprised by Indians while in Clayoquot Sound [at Vancouver Island] a few weeks later.” (Clark)

May 23, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Naukane

During Captain Cookʻs visit to Hawaiʻi on his third voyage of exploration in 1779, then-Lieutenant King (later Captain) noted, “During the following night, the cutter belonging to the Discovery was stolen …”

“This irritated captain Cook, and he gave orders to stop all the canoes that should attempt to leave the bay, intending to seize and destroy them, if he could not recover the cutter by fair means.” (Captain King’s Journal)

“The natives now collected in vast numbers along the shore, and began to throng round captain Cook”. Shortly after, “Captain Cook, the last time he was seen distinctly, was standing at the water’s edge”.

“… he was desirous of preventing any farther bloodshed … whilst he faced the natives, none of them had offered him any violence, but having turned about to give his orders to those in the boats, he was stabbed in the back”. Cook was killed. (Captain King’s Journal)

One of the Hawaiians at the scene was Naukane, son of Kamanawa (Kamehameha’s uncle and one of his closest allies – Kamanawa (left) and Kameʻeiamoku, his twin brother (right) were later memorialized on the Hawaiʻi coat of arms.) (Kittelson)

When Kamehameha moved his Royal Center to Honolulu, his chiefs came with him. Naukane, then in his early twenties, accompanied his father and probably became involved in royal court life. However, fascinated by the growing number of ships calling in the islands, Naukane looked to the sea. (Kittelson)

His chance came in February 1811, when John Jacob Astor’s ‘Tonquin,’ under the command of Captain Jonathan Thorne, called. The captain wanted to hire twenty-four of the Islanders, twelve as seamen and the remaining half to establish a post for the Pacific Fur Company on the Columbia River.

This was the first large group of Hawaiians to come to America. The king appointed Naukane to go with them as a royal observer. (Duncan)

Because Naukane resembled one of the Americans, he became known as John Coxe and retained the name throughout his long and colorful life in the Pacific Northwest (he also went by John Cox and Edward Coxe, or, simply Coxe.) (Duncan)

The Tonquin reached the mouth of the Columbia in March; after a few days looking, they selected a site and by the end of May they had completed Fort Astoria. It was the first American-owned settlement on the Pacific coast of what was to become the United States.

Astor planned the post to grow into a permanent settlement, with plans to develop a large trade ring that included New York, the Pacific Coast, Russian Alaska, Hawaiʻi and China. The furs collected in the northwest and Alaska, would be shipped to China and exchanged for porcelain, silk and other cloth, and spices that would be brought back, via Hawaii to New York.

Other operators had other posts. In the summer of 1810, Jacques-Raphaël Finlay (Jaco Finley) of the North West Company built Spokane House at the junction of the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers.

Shortly after arriving in the northwest, Coxe started working for Canadian David Thompson of the North West Company. Coxe later spent the winter of 1811-1812 at Spokane House with Finlay. On those expeditions, Coxe became the first Hawaiian to visit the inland Northwest.

Coxe accompanied Thompson “across the Rocky Mountains from western Montana and in the long trail to Fort William on Lake Superior. … John Coxe also took the trail east from Fort William but his road led to Quebec, where he created a sensation with his stories of Hawaiʻi and his demonstrations of Polynesian dance steps.” (Taylor)

By 1813, Fort Astoria and all other assets in the area were sold to the North West Company – they renamed it Fort George. Coxe continued to work there until August, 1814, when all of the Hawaiians at Fort George were sent back to the Islands.

Comfortable with the service from the Hawaiians, in 1817, North West sent a ship “to bring as many of the Sandwich Islanders to the Columbia river as we could conveniently accommodate.” (Corney)

(In 1821, the Hudson’s Bay Company combined with the North West Company, and the post name was changed back to Fort Spokane.)

After he returned to Honolulu in 1815, Coxe probably reverted to his native name, Naukane. He was well received by Kamehameha.

Not only was Naukane the son of one of Kamehameha’s closest advisors, and a member of Liholiho’s entourage, but he had traveled widely. Kamehameha I died in 1819 and Naukane rose in stature when Liholiho ascended the throne. (Kittelson)

Naukane’s expeditions did not end on the American continent. Because of his familiarity with western ways (with travels to America, Europe & South America) and his personal ties, when Liholiho departed on November 27, 1823 to England aboard the L’Aigle to discuss the future of his Islands with George IV, Naukane accompanied the King.

The King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu died of measles in July 1824; apparently Naukane’s travels had built up his immunity, for he was hardly bothered by measles.

King George IV held an audience for the remaining Hawaiians at Windsor Castle on September 11; Coxe was present. The bodies of Liholiho and his queen were returned to Hawaii aboard the frigate Blonde captained by Lord Byron.

With the King dead, Naukane no longer was bound, and he immediately offered his services to the Hudson’s Bay Company and returned to the Northwest. He was only one of approximately thirty-five Islanders working for the company by 1825. (Duncan)

The firm’s base of operations had been transferred from Fort Spokane to a new site farther inland, Fort Vancouver. Coxe worked for a few more years; then the company retired him and gave him a plot of land two miles below the fort. (Kittelson)

Naukane died February 2, 1850. The vast plain between Fort Vancouver and the Columbia became the Hawaiian’s memorial – Coxe’s Plain … “A couple of miles below the fort (Vancouver) there were luxuriant meadows of great extent.”

“A portion of these bore at that time the name of Coxe’s Plain, a name I think which it still continues to bear. Old Coxe, a native of the Sandwich Islands and a very original character, was the swine-herd and had his residence there among the oaks which dotted the verge of the plain.” (Anderson; Barry)

March 22, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Waikiki Beach

In the late-18th century, European and American trade and travel into the North American continent’s interior was largely by water. Merchants used canoes to trade with the tribes for the continent’s most valuable natural resource: furs.

Eastern and central North America had many navigable rivers. For western traders, finding a great western river became an obsession for fur traders and scientific and government expeditions.

The first non-Indian to encounter and identify the river was Spaniard Bruno de Heceta. In August, 1775, Heceta mapped what he called Cape of Saint Roc and Leafy Cape, respectively. He attempted to cross the bar under full sail, but was unable to do so.

In 1778, the great British navigator Captain Cook sailed by the river in the night. While he did not find Heceta’s river, his expedition traded for otter furs. Cook was killed in Hawai‘i early the next year, but his ships carried the furs to China where they discovered a lucrative trade market with the Chinese.

The reports of a potentially trade between western North America and China would spur traders from all nations to the West Coast.

In 1788, Britain sailor John Meares also failed to find a river; he give Cape Disappointment its name to commemorate his failed search. (This is what Heceta called Leafy Cape.)

In April, 1792, British naval expedition Captain George Vancouver passed by the river mouth and noted muddy water flowing into the sea. Noting the sand island and waves breaking on the bar, he discounted the entrance as the mouth of a small river as it looked like most of the rivers emptying into the Pacific north of San Francisco.

On the morning of May 11, 1792, American merchant Captain Robert Gray sailed across the bar and into the Columbia River estuary, the first documented non-Indian to do so.

That was the river’s discovery via sea; by land, after acquiring the ‘Louisiana Purchase’ in 1803, under the directive of President Thomas Jefferson, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the ‘Corps of Discovery Expedition’ (1804–1806,) was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific coast undertaken by the US.

“Ocian in view! O! the joy.” When Captain William Clark wrote these words in his journal on November 7, 1805, he was not standing at the Pacific Ocean but the Columbia River estuary. It would be another couple of weeks before he and Captain Meriwether Lewis would stand at what they had “been so long anxious to see.” (NPS)

Clark and members of the Corps of Discovery explored the headland in their final push to the Pacific Ocean. “I Set out at Day light and proceeded on a Sandy beech … 2 Miles to the inner extremity of Cape Disapointment …”

“… this Cape is an ellivated circlier point covered with thick timber on the iner Side and open grassey exposur next to the Sea and rises with a Steep assent to the hight of about 150 or 160 feet above the leavel of the water … this cape as also the Shore both on the Bay & Sea coast is a dark brown rock.”

“I crossed the neck of Land low and 1/2 of a mile wide to the main Ocian, at the foot of a high open hill projecting into the ocian, and about one mile in Sicumfrance. I assended this hill which is covered with high corse grass. decended to the N of it and camped. I picked up a flounder on the beech this evening. …” (Clark, November 18, 1806)

The Lewis and Clark Expedition would have an immediate effect on American interest in the Northwest. Fur baron John Jacob Astor was excited by the expedition’s success in recording the lands, resources and peoples.

Astor sought to create a global network of land and sea transportation for fur pelts, goods, information and services between China, Russia, Europe, the American east coast and the mouth of the Columbia River.

In June, 1810, Astor and others signed articles of agreement of the ‘Pacific Fur Company.’ They hoped to best the flourishing Northwest Company (who travelled by land,) which was a most powerful concern, by having a great depot at the mouth of the Columbia, in other words, by using the sea.

One of the vessels selected for the pioneer voyage was the ‘Tonquin,’ under the command of Captain Jonathan Thorn. Before getting to the American Northwest, they supplied at Hawai‘i.

They were unable to secure either water or provisions on the Island of Hawaii; on February 21, 1811, Thorn anchored the Tonquin off Waikiki. Here he met Kamehameha I and paid Spanish dollars for hogs, several goats, two sheep, a quantity of poultry and vegetables.

Needing additional manpower, Canadian partners aboard the Tonquin proposed to enlist thirty or forty native Hawaiians, because they had never seen watermen to equal them, not even among the voyageurs of the Northwest.

“Remarkable for their skill in managing light craft and able to swim and dive like waterfowl,” were the words used in describing the Hawaiians. Thorn objected to a large number; twelve were signed for the company and twelve for the ship. The trade-men were to serve three years, were to be fed and clothed and at the end of the term were to receive $100 in merchandise.

On February 28, 1811, the Tonquin sailed for the Northwest coast, and March 22, 1811, arrived off the mouth of the Columbia, where they encountered heavy seas. Thorn sent out several boats to find the river channel; two of them capsized and eight men died. One of the men was a Hawaiian.

Local history says that the “the neck of Land low and 1/2 of a mile wide to the main Ocian, at the foot of a high open hill” noted by Clark (five years before) was named Waikiki Beach in honor of this unnamed Hawaiian who was buried on the beach (Washington State Parks.)

In 1811, Astor’s Pacific Fur Company established Astoria, the first non-native trading post and settlement at the mouth of the Columbia River.

The Astor expedition to the Columbia-Pacific region would also be responsible for opening up the key overland route for western settlement in years to come.

In 1812 on a journey from Astoria to New York City, Robert Stuart, a partner in the Pacific Fur Company stationed at Fort Astoria, discovered South Pass, a low pass over the Rocky Mountains. This route could be made by wagon from the Missouri and Mississippi valleys and became known as the Oregon Trail. (Lots of information here is from NPS.)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger