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Maxine Berg conveys the power of place in global history through the multiple perceptions of space and possession in one small remote locality – Nootka Sound on the Northwest coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 20, 2024

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The speaker discusses their research into global history, focusing particularly on the connections between Asia and Europe, with a specific interest in Gujarat, India, and a Scottish soldier in the East India Company named Alexander Walker. Walker's accounts from his travels, particularly during a voyage in 1786 to Tka Sound on the northwest coast of North America, reveal significant interactions between European traders and indigenous peoples, including the Mocha. The speaker illustrates how Walker documented the sophisticated trading practices of the Mocha people and their extensive commerce with neighboring communities, contrasting this with the Eurocentric accounts that often minimized or overlooked indigenous perspectives.

This video video also explores the arrival of European powers, particularly the British and Spanish, and the changes that followed, including the establishment of colonial forts and the impact on the indigenous way of life. The growing demand for sea otter fur highlighted the stark shift in the region, leading to increased encounters characterized by violence and loss of indigenous status.

The speaker contemplates the role of a historian in narrating these events, expressing the need to incorporate both global histories and indigenous perspectives while grappling with their own position as a non-indigenous author. Ultimately, the research seeks to shed light on a localized history that is interconnected with broader global movements and ramifications, fostering a deeper understanding of the long-term effects of colonialism and trade on indigenous communities in British Columbia.

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Here are some key quotes from the video that highlight the main themes and points discussed:

1. **On the Interest in Global History:**
- "I have been doing global history for some years now, and I was very interested in connections between Asia and Europe and connections in trade and material culture."

2. **Introduction of Alexander Walker:**
- "I found there a very interesting character, an East India company soldier named Alexander Walker."

3. **Historical Convideo:**
- "The first European to land at TKA Sound was Captain James Cook in 1778."

4. **On the Trade Dynamics:**
- "The Chinese were not interested in any of the European manufactured goods, but they were very attracted by the sea otters."

5. **Perspective of Indigenous People:**
- "It was not a surprise to these people themselves... they were very sophisticated as merchants and traders."

6. **Transition of TKA Sound:**
- "Within four years, even less than four years, the atmosphere in this place had completely changed."

7. **Consequences of Trade and Colonization:**
- "It became an international trading hub and really destroyed the lives of the indigenous peoples."

8. **Reflections on Identity and History:**
- "I am also not an indigenous person, and this is a story that also must be told from the perspective of the indigenous peoples."

9. **On Global Implications:**
- "I want people who learn about China and who learn about parts of India to also learn about this small place on the far side of the world."

10. **Personal Quandary:**
- "Where do I, as a writer take this story from here?"

These quotes encapsulate the narrative of historical exploration, trade, the impact on indigenous communities, and the speaker's reflection on their role as a historian engaging with these themes.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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First, I'm going to tell you about

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how I came to this subject.

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Um, I have been doing global history for some years now,

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and I was very interested in connections between Asia

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and Europe and connections in trade and material culture.

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Um, I was very interested in an area

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of India called Gujarat, where there were many merchants

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and many textile industries,

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and they were trading, et cetera.

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And I found there a very interesting character,

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an East India company soldier named Alexander Walker.

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He was a career soldier in the East India company.

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And at the time that, of his career in,

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when I was looking at him,

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it was really very much the very late, 18th century,

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the 17, later, 1790s.

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Um, he's,

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he still is a great hero in Gujarat

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and K I was very interested in that northern area

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of Gujarat called K up near the Pakistan border,

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and the wonderful textiles that they made,

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and that were traded, from an early stage

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through the Western Indian Ocean.

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And then, these later came to Europe as well.

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But I wanted to know about more about Alexander Walker.

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And I went to the archives in Edinburgh

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because he was a Scot,

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and his papers were left, to the national,

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the National Archives in Edinburgh.

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And there I found in his papers,

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three versions of an, something

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that he had called an account of a voyage

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to the Northwest coast of North America, TKA Sound,

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which was published, which was, written by him

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many years after he had made this voyage.

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He made that voyage in 1786,

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and he spent a month in this place,

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before traveling on

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with the merchant sea captain he was with.

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Um, I was fascinated

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by discovering this

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because I was born

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in a place 200 miles

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across the island from Tka Sound.

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Tka Sound is on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island,

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on the northwest Pacific coast.

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And I was born in Nanaimo.

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Um, so I knew where this was, so

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that was really interesting.

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But I said, at the time, I am working on India and Europe.

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I can't start working on the Northwest Pacific coast,

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but I'm afraid I was not thinking like a global historian

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when I said that.

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Um, so I went back to this.

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I I was drawn back to this man, to this place,

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in years that followed,

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and I only seriously started

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to work on this in about 2000,

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1415 something, something like that.

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Um, so the,

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the background, the historical background of the place is

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that it was first land.

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The first pers the first European to land,

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at TKA Sound was Captain James Cook in 1778

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on his third voyage.

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Now, that's a very late encounter story.

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Um, we know of many, Spanish

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and other encounter stories from the 16th century

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in North America, the 17th century,

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and Eastern North America, et cetera.

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But this on the northwest Pacific Coast,

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this was very late 1778.

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So there's a very, there's interesting accounts left

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by Cook, from his voyage.

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But then he, left,

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to return, went further up,

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to the, to Alaska,

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and then made to return,

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via the Friendly Islands that's now known as Hawaii.

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And there he was killed.

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Um, his crew went on to China

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and onboard.

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They had a whole number of sea ERs,

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and these sold for exorbitant prices in China.

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So that story got out when the crew eventually,

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returned to London.

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Um, and at that time, a merchant

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who was based in India was visiting.

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He was on, he had been in the East India company

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and he was on some leave,

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and he was in London when the cook accounts,

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they weren't quite published,

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but it was possible to get, some version of them.

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And he read about this and went back

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and mounted a, a really a financial campaign

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to raise the funding to take a merchant voyage from Bombay

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to Tka Sound.

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And his name was James Strange.

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And he went back there, he went,

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and with he, he did not get support from the East India

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company in terms of financing the voyage,

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but he did get a young sign

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named Alexander Walker at that time, age 21

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and 19, soldiers who were

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all had building and mechanical skills.

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And the purpose when they set out there was

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to set up a trading factory at this place.

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Well, in the event they didn't do it,

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but Alexander Walker left an extremely interesting account

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of the month that they spent at Tka Sound.

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And many ships came there in that time,

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the years following from 1786 onward,

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and several

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of the summers there would be over 30 ships in

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the, in that small cove, from

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Britain, from India, from Macau,

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from Boston Traders, who would, come round

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Cape Horn brave the, the terrible storms

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around Cape Horn to get there,

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because these Sea Otter fur were seen as the new

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gold, as it were.

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It was something that could be traded to China in exchange

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for silks and tea and porcelain.

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The Chinese were not interested in any

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of the European manufactured goods.

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Um, they,

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but they were very attracted by the sea ERs.

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The Spanish were already on that coast,

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but they, they had taken an expedition a few years

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before Captain Cook landed,

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but they had not been able to land themselves on

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that part of the coast.

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They were driven back by storms and fog

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and, the weather was appalling.

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They just could not, they couldn't see get through the miss.

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But a number of the canoes

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of the Mocha people who were living in Tka sound at

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that time, they had come out to the Spanish ships.

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Um, they did.

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So again, when Captain Cook came,

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but Captain Cook was able to land.

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And then the other ships that came, including this one

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that was led by this merchant, James Strange

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and his sign, Alexander Walker, canoes came out

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around them, and then they did land.

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They spent a month, there.

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And so Alexander Walk Walker wrote this very ethnographic

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account of the people there

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and how they traded.

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He kept, cook had started

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a small glossary of language,

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but Alexander Walker greatly enhanced this.

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Um, he was very good at languages himself.

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He had several Indian languages, and Persian

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and Sanskrit, et cetera, even in the,

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which he picked up in, even in this, some

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of the years before in his years in India, before that.

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Um, and continued

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to work on these languages when he returned to India.

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So he was, he was very

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interested in not just in making

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money in trading.

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Captain Strange did that side of things.

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Alexander Wa Walker watched and recorded.

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Um, so the Mocha people were very, they,

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they were really in,

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they were in a much wider group of several different,

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we would now call them tribes,

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but communities that were related to,

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to the more charts by kin by,

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tribute.

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There were all kinds of connections amongst them,

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and they were very, very, they were very, used to

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extensive trading commercial activity

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amongst the many different peoples

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who lived up and down the coast.

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Um, so it was not a surprise.

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It was surpri, it was a surprise to Captain Cook

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and indeed to Strange

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and Walker to discover how sophisticated

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they were as merchants and traders.

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But it was not a surprise to these people themselves.

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I started this work with a knowledge

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of the trade

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between the extensive mercantile trade between

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India, China, and Europe.

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But I knew little about the Northwest Pacific coast

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and or the Pacific at at all.

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I had to read an extensive secondary literature

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on this early, the early period of this, I did know

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quite a lot about the trade to China, Europe's trade

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to China, and just how that was conducted.

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Um, this added a whole new dimension of

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Europeans coming

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to this place on the Northwest Pacific coast,

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and then trading on to China.

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From there, I discovered

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not just, the one

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travel account detailed ethnographic travel account

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of Alexander Walker

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and the much more well-known, accounts of,

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James Cook, but there were many, many merchants

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and explorers, state funded explorers

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who came and stopped her on that coast,

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and they too left accounts.

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So I read through many travel accounts.

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Um, the most remarkable of all of those were the one,

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that first one by Alexander Walker in 1786.

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There was another one written by,

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a Spanish American from Mexico,

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named, Jose Mariano Mno,

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who is well known as an enlightened figure

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in Spanish history.

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Uh, he was a botanist

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and an a natural historian,

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very interested in the ethnography.

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Ethnography. And he wrote an account that he called, no,

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but this to like Alexander Walker's account,

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this was not published at the time.

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It was many, many years afterwards that

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this was published in the 20th century, in,

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in, for, in both cases.

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So they were, they were sort of lost accounts.

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There were others that had been published,

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closer to the time at which they were written,

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but they were accounts written by merchants who had

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really very little serious interest in the

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inhabitants of T nuclear sound

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and, you know, their ways of life, their,

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their commerce, their,

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interactions with other groups of other indigenous groups.

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The detail on that is really in these two fine accounts

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by, Scottish East India company merchant

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who had come from India, to TKA Sound,

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and from this, Spanish American,

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naturalist who

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had come to TKA in 1790.

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So that those, it, it is very much, much

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of my work has been based in these travel accounts,

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but contextualizing these

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and having, you know,

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there's very much this wider background in global history.

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When Cook first came to the sound, well,

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when the first Spanish,

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the first Spanish visitors came along that coast,

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what they saw through the mist

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and the fog, occasional sightings

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of mountains

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and a lot of trees, great forests cook,

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and then Alexander Walker writing about this

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a few years later with Cook.

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Um, and another six years later,

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another eight years later, with,

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with Alexander Walker, they saw,

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small shorelines, not, and,

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and they, they knew there were inhabitants there.

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They canoes had come out to them.

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They could see, fire, the smoke rising from fires.

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They could see, in some areas they could see,

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the lodges of these people

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because they built huge, really, very big lodges

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that many families, lived in together.

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Uh, and they

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were apprehensive.

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They were afraid.

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Um, likewise, if you, the, the oral histories

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that were recounted that were taken down, well, the,

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the first European, the European,

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first reactions when they saw these shores were reactions

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of these strange landscapes full of mountains and trees,

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and, but smoke coming, out of them.

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So they knew there were inhabitants.

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They saw, structures,

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great wood inhabitation that had been built,

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and they were afraid,

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canoes had come out to them and approached them.

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And that was, there was interaction,

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and some trading commenced.

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So they were able to come to the shore.

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And in the case of Cook in 1778,

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and then James Strange

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and Alexander Walker in 1786, they have

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this really first encounter,

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and they discover the very sophisticated

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commercial knowledge of their,

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the indigenous people in that area.

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But for the mocha people,

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when they first saw these ships appearing,

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and this was, they reported this as a kind of,

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there was an oral history of them that was taken down by,

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Jose Mariano Moo,

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in se in his account in 1792.

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They reported to him.

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They saw these ships coming to towards

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their shores, looking like a, a vast machine

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or a great bird.

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They had no idea what these were.

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And so they too experienced great fear,

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but also thought it might have been a God, one of their gods

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who had come, to them.

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So there was this very much, this atmosphere

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of first encounter in these years, 1778

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and 1786.

19:15.455 --> 19:18.815
But within four years,

19:20.225 --> 19:22.835
even less than four years, that

19:24.165 --> 19:28.345
the atmosphere in this place had completely changed.

19:29.305 --> 19:31.985
Hundreds of, ships

19:32.605 --> 19:34.385
had come into this area.

19:35.445 --> 19:40.065
Um, by this time, it was reported,

19:40.485 --> 19:42.305
say in 1792.

19:42.355 --> 19:46.585
There were 30, 38 ships at one point

19:47.325 --> 19:51.465
in the summer in, in the harbor area.

19:51.525 --> 19:53.865
It was a very beautiful, very good harbor.

19:54.425 --> 19:56.425
I have been there. It's very beautiful.

19:57.525 --> 20:00.785
And so a lot

20:00.885 --> 20:02.905
of peoples had come through.

20:03.395 --> 20:07.145
There had been the, the, it was now the time

20:07.245 --> 20:08.705
of the TKA crisis.

20:09.645 --> 20:12.665
The Spanish had built a Spanish

20:13.785 --> 20:17.745
colonial fort there by 1790.

20:20.185 --> 20:24.205
It was a very, probably better,

20:24.465 --> 20:27.285
it was described as far better than many

20:27.305 --> 20:29.445
of their forts along the southern.

20:30.225 --> 20:34.795
Um, the southern Pacific coast with,

20:35.185 --> 20:37.315
fine, lodging for the captain.

20:37.565 --> 20:39.595
There were gardens. There was a hospital.

20:40.495 --> 20:44.755
Um, the many, 16

20:44.895 --> 20:46.755
or houses laid out.

20:47.015 --> 20:49.885
There was a forge, there was a carpentry shop.

20:50.585 --> 20:53.765
All of this very well described by mochi.

20:55.145 --> 20:58.255
Um, but,

20:58.635 --> 21:00.735
the mocha people weren't there anymore.

21:01.885 --> 21:06.055
They many came in wanting it was these Europeans.

21:06.085 --> 21:09.855
They came, they wanted to meet, the indigenous people

21:10.095 --> 21:11.135
'cause they wanted the furs.

21:11.135 --> 21:14.335
Mm-hmm. The only way they could get these furs was

21:14.395 --> 21:18.695
by being sold them by the mocha people.

21:19.235 --> 21:22.895
But the mocha people had in there was violence

21:23.595 --> 21:25.575
in these early encounters.

21:26.435 --> 21:31.055
One of the Spanish captains, a man named Martinez

21:32.125 --> 21:35.575
shot and killed one of the chiefs.

21:36.755 --> 21:41.075
And the, by that time in 1790,

21:42.015 --> 21:46.115
the Mocha people had gone off

21:46.655 --> 21:49.545
to their, their

21:50.185 --> 21:54.475
ti late summer autumn residence further up

21:55.465 --> 21:59.965
the coast, about a day's journey away where they used to go

22:00.575 --> 22:04.085
every year for the salmon fishery,

22:04.395 --> 22:08.285
because they were, they would move back

22:08.305 --> 22:12.485
and forth between the, between Nka

22:12.985 --> 22:15.985
and a place called Tosses,

22:16.035 --> 22:18.105
where they carried out the salmon fishery.

22:18.535 --> 22:22.705
They did the herring fishery in, in tka.

22:23.695 --> 22:27.435
So it was a very accomplished, they had a,

22:28.795 --> 22:33.725
well, it was, a, they had developed a way

22:33.725 --> 22:37.005
of living with the resources that came to them.

22:37.865 --> 22:42.845
Now, one of their key areas of living had been taken

22:44.105 --> 22:48.765
by, by the Spanish,

22:49.205 --> 22:52.335
colonial fort the British.

22:54.025 --> 22:58.915
They claimed that they had had first rights,

22:59.895 --> 23:02.675
and there was,

23:03.395 --> 23:06.155
a wartime footing launched

23:06.895 --> 23:11.155
in 17 9, 17 89 to 90,

23:11.485 --> 23:15.275
where the British launched their fleet from London.

23:15.705 --> 23:16.835
They launched a fleet.

23:18.335 --> 23:20.155
The Spanish could not do so

23:20.265 --> 23:24.115
because they needed the support of the French,

23:24.335 --> 23:26.155
and the French were having a revolution.

23:27.335 --> 23:30.555
So they could not support the Spanish in this,

23:30.975 --> 23:35.435
but it was a wartime setting at that time.

23:36.215 --> 23:40.555
And that's when tka sound became known as

23:41.515 --> 23:45.685
a strategic hub in international

23:46.035 --> 23:47.645
geopolitics between Britain

23:47.945 --> 23:50.845
and Spain, the Spanish,

23:51.435 --> 23:54.525
they did have a very good commander

23:55.145 --> 24:00.085
in the fort at the time, Bottega,

24:00.385 --> 24:05.015
Quadra, who welcomed the Mocha people, the chiefs,

24:05.235 --> 24:08.255
and their close, close associates.

24:08.675 --> 24:12.615
He welcomed them into the fort, and they ate together

24:14.025 --> 24:16.845
and ship captains that came in there.

24:17.035 --> 24:20.405
They were amazed to find this setting

24:21.025 --> 24:25.445
of close connection between the Spanish commander

24:25.785 --> 24:29.485
and his close associates alongside

24:29.825 --> 24:33.045
and together with the Chiefs,

24:33.865 --> 24:35.125
in the area.

24:37.075 --> 24:39.335
But, the,

24:42.265 --> 24:46.905
there was this crisis between the British and the Spanish,

24:48.015 --> 24:49.555
and this had to be resolved.

24:50.055 --> 24:53.515
And this became the subject of what became known

24:53.615 --> 24:55.435
as the TKA conventions,

24:56.215 --> 24:59.635
and a big diplomatic effort

24:59.975 --> 25:04.595
and negotiation was carried out between,

25:05.185 --> 25:07.715
Spanish, Spanish ambassador

25:08.895 --> 25:13.435
and, the English for, for a long time.

25:13.615 --> 25:15.355
It was, captain Vancouver.

25:15.975 --> 25:19.915
He was there for a considerable period,

25:20.435 --> 25:22.035
carrying out these negotiations.

25:22.615 --> 25:24.155
But it took four years,

25:24.655 --> 25:28.715
and it was not until 1794

25:29.385 --> 25:33.035
that the Spanish withdrew from the,

25:33.445 --> 25:34.995
their, their barracks.

25:34.995 --> 25:39.295
The British put up the British flag to

25:39.815 --> 25:44.775
indicate that, they had control

25:44.775 --> 25:47.095
of the area, but they then left,

25:47.675 --> 25:51.215
and they just gave the flag to the chief to

25:51.955 --> 25:55.695
MNA the chief, and he was to show the flag

25:56.215 --> 25:59.295
whenever any other ships came through there.

26:00.155 --> 26:04.425
But unfortunately, for the Mocho people, few ships

26:05.075 --> 26:09.385
after this time stopped at,

26:09.885 --> 26:11.665
TKA sound, the city.

26:12.005 --> 26:15.945
It was become, it had become very difficult to get

26:16.455 --> 26:18.545
easy access to the Sea Otter fur.

26:18.765 --> 26:23.265
By that time, I mean, they were becoming depleted around

26:23.265 --> 26:27.025
that area, and the ships had to go either further north

26:27.445 --> 26:31.465
or further south to get the, the sea otters.

26:32.525 --> 26:35.825
Um, so the, it was

26:36.425 --> 26:40.265
a very sad ending for the story for the mocha people

26:40.645 --> 26:44.635
and the, and chief mna, because he lost status.

26:45.625 --> 26:49.795
They lost their dominance in relation to the other,

26:50.095 --> 26:54.475
groups of indigenous peoples along the coast, where,

26:54.645 --> 26:57.795
where they had once been really supreme.

26:59.915 --> 27:04.255
So it was, it became an international trading hub

27:05.155 --> 27:08.915
and really destroyed the lives

27:09.775 --> 27:12.475
of the indigenous peoples.

27:13.135 --> 27:14.635
You lead me in two directions.

27:16.095 --> 27:20.515
Um, one is, where do I, where do I

27:20.655 --> 27:22.955
as a writer take this story from here,

27:24.295 --> 27:25.935
a writer and a historian?

27:26.995 --> 27:31.455
So that is one question which I am still pondering.

27:32.995 --> 27:37.815
And another issue might be, the historical,

27:38.205 --> 27:41.135
more historical question of

27:42.585 --> 27:44.915
what happened in,

27:46.215 --> 27:48.235
on the Northwest Pacific coast

27:48.575 --> 27:52.595
and in the Northwest to the longer term lives

27:52.775 --> 27:56.155
of the indigenous peoples there as

27:58.195 --> 27:59.385
trade advanced,

27:59.685 --> 28:03.225
and then settler colonialism took hold.

28:04.775 --> 28:08.755
And that has been a very, a long

28:08.975 --> 28:13.315
and very sad story for many groups

28:13.375 --> 28:17.935
of indigenous peoples, in, British Columbia.

28:18.835 --> 28:21.975
In that, that whole area of the coast,

28:22.645 --> 28:25.575
they were forced into reservations.

28:26.895 --> 28:29.885
Their maritime rights, the,

28:29.885 --> 28:34.045
these maritime fishing rights were so important to them.

28:34.435 --> 28:37.445
They were taken logging companies,

28:37.795 --> 28:39.485
took over their forests

28:40.225 --> 28:43.485
and all their ways of making a livelihood.

28:45.065 --> 28:49.085
And it is a very, it remains

28:49.605 --> 28:52.685
a very, very hard life for them.

28:53.435 --> 28:58.385
There have been many terrible stories in recent years of

28:58.655 --> 29:01.705
what went, what happened in the mission schools,

29:02.755 --> 29:06.105
which took the children away from their families

29:06.105 --> 29:10.945
and communities and tried to, integrate.

29:10.975 --> 29:14.905
So-called integrate them into Western

29:15.735 --> 29:19.705
society, but they were always treated as

29:20.665 --> 29:24.065
inferior, and they lost their culture,

29:24.485 --> 29:28.595
and they would never be accepted in,

29:29.535 --> 29:33.115
in Western, circles,

29:33.425 --> 29:34.755
society and circles.

29:35.835 --> 29:39.435
I could say, I'll just say a little about my quandary of

29:39.625 --> 29:42.245
what I do with this subject.

29:42.465 --> 29:46.885
Now. I have written two quite long

29:47.685 --> 29:52.445
academic articles about this, trying to

29:53.235 --> 29:55.995
take this subject,

29:57.095 --> 29:59.875
to make this a subject that is part

30:00.255 --> 30:03.155
of a wider global history story.

30:04.465 --> 30:06.565
Um, it's a story of locality,

30:06.865 --> 30:09.765
but it's also a story of global history.

30:10.675 --> 30:15.135
And so I want people who learn about China

30:15.315 --> 30:17.775
and who learn about parts of India

30:18.315 --> 30:22.815
to also learn about this small place on the far side

30:22.815 --> 30:27.015
of the world where, where Europeans

30:27.475 --> 30:30.255
and others trading from India

30:30.555 --> 30:33.305
and from China encountered

30:33.805 --> 30:38.265
and, affected, deeply affected this place.

30:39.115 --> 30:43.355
There is also the problem of

30:44.095 --> 30:48.795
how, European, his a, a historian based in Europe,

30:50.155 --> 30:52.575
not living in that place.

30:52.675 --> 30:55.775
Now, though, I come from there,

30:57.035 --> 30:59.215
but I am also not an indigenous person,

30:59.875 --> 31:03.895
and this is a story that also must be told from

31:04.595 --> 31:07.815
the perspective of the indigenous peoples.

00:00 - First, I'm going to tell you about how I came to this subject. I have been doing global history for some years now, and I was very interested in connections between Asia and Europe and connections in trade and material culture. I was very interested in an area

00:23 - of India called Gujarat, where there were many merchants and many textile industries, and they were trading, et cetera. And I found there a very interesting character, an East India company soldier named Alexander Walker. He was a career soldier in the East India company. And at the time that, of his career in, when I was looking at him, it was really very much the very late, 18th century, the 17, later, 1790s.

01:02 - he's, he still is a great hero in Gujarat and K I was very interested in that northern area of Gujarat called K up near the Pakistan border, and the wonderful textiles that they made, and that were traded, from an early stage through the Western Indian Ocean. And then, these later came to Europe as well. But I wanted to know about more about Alexander Walker. And I went to the archives in Edinburgh

01:38 - because he was a Scot, and his papers were left, to the national, the National Archives in Edinburgh. And there I found in his papers, three versions of an, something that he had called an account of a voyage to the Northwest coast of North America, TKA Sound, which was published, which was, written by him many years after he had made this voyage. He made that voyage in 1786,

02:15 - and he spent a month in this place, before traveling on with the merchant sea captain he was with. I was fascinated by discovering this because I was born in a place 200 miles across the island from Tka Sound. Tka Sound is on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island, on the northwest Pacific coast.

02:47 - And I was born in Nanaimo. so I knew where this was, so that was really interesting. But I said, at the time, I am working on India and Europe. I can't start working on the Northwest Pacific coast, but I'm afraid I was not thinking like a global historian when I said that. so I went back to this. I I was drawn back to this man, to this place, in years that followed,

03:20 - and I only seriously started to work on this in about 2000, 1415 something, something like that. so the, the background, the historical background of the place is that it was first land. The first pers the first European to land, at TKA Sound was Captain James Cook in 1778 on his third voyage. Now, that's a very late encounter story.

03:58 - we know of many, Spanish and other encounter stories from the 16th century in North America, the 17th century, and Eastern North America, et cetera. But this on the northwest Pacific Coast, this was very late 1778. So there's a very, there's interesting accounts left by Cook, from his voyage. But then he, left, to return, went further up,

04:34 - to the, to Alaska, and then made to return, via the Friendly Islands that's now known as Hawaii. And there he was killed. his crew went on to China and onboard. They had a whole number of sea ERs, and these sold for exorbitant prices in China. So that story got out when the crew eventually, returned to London.

05:14 - and at that time, a merchant who was based in India was visiting. He was on, he had been in the East India company and he was on some leave, and he was in London when the cook accounts, they weren't quite published, but it was possible to get, some version of them. And he read about this and went back and mounted a, a really a financial campaign to raise the funding to take a merchant voyage from Bombay

05:50 - to Tka Sound. And his name was James Strange. And he went back there, he went, and with he, he did not get support from the East India company in terms of financing the voyage, but he did get a young sign named Alexander Walker at that time, age 21 and 19, soldiers who were all had building and mechanical skills. And the purpose when they set out there was

06:26 - to set up a trading factory at this place. Well, in the event they didn't do it, but Alexander Walker left an extremely interesting account of the month that they spent at Tka Sound. And many ships came there in that time, the years following from 1786 onward, and several of the summers there would be over 30 ships in the, in that small cove, from Britain, from India, from Macau,

07:06 - from Boston Traders, who would, come round Cape Horn brave the, the terrible storms around Cape Horn to get there, because these Sea Otter fur were seen as the new gold, as it were. It was something that could be traded to China in exchange for silks and tea and porcelain. The Chinese were not interested in any of the European manufactured goods. they,

07:42 - but they were very attracted by the sea ERs. The Spanish were already on that coast, but they, they had taken an expedition a few years before Captain Cook landed, but they had not been able to land themselves on that part of the coast. They were driven back by storms and fog and, the weather was appalling. They just could not, they couldn't see get through the miss. But a number of the canoes

08:22 - of the Mocha people who were living in Tka sound at that time, they had come out to the Spanish ships. they did. So again, when Captain Cook came, but Captain Cook was able to land. And then the other ships that came, including this one that was led by this merchant, James Strange and his sign, Alexander Walker, canoes came out around them, and then they did land. They spent a month, there.

08:57 - And so Alexander Walk Walker wrote this very ethnographic account of the people there and how they traded. He kept, cook had started a small glossary of language, but Alexander Walker greatly enhanced this. he was very good at languages himself. He had several Indian languages, and Persian and Sanskrit, et cetera, even in the, which he picked up in, even in this, some

09:35 - of the years before in his years in India, before that. and continued to work on these languages when he returned to India. So he was, he was very interested in not just in making money in trading. Captain Strange did that side of things. Alexander Wa Walker watched and recorded. so the Mocha people were very, they, they were really in,

10:13 - they were in a much wider group of several different, we would now call them tribes, but communities that were related to, to the more charts by kin by, tribute. There were all kinds of connections amongst them, and they were very, very, they were very, used to extensive trading commercial activity amongst the many different peoples who lived up and down the coast.

10:51 - so it was not a surprise. It was surpri, it was a surprise to Captain Cook and indeed to Strange and Walker to discover how sophisticated they were as merchants and traders. But it was not a surprise to these people themselves. I started this work with a knowledge of the trade between the extensive mercantile trade between India, China, and Europe.

11:28 - But I knew little about the Northwest Pacific coast and or the Pacific at at all. I had to read an extensive secondary literature on this early, the early period of this, I did know quite a lot about the trade to China, Europe's trade to China, and just how that was conducted. this added a whole new dimension of Europeans coming to this place on the Northwest Pacific coast, and then trading on to China.

12:08 - From there, I discovered not just, the one travel account detailed ethnographic travel account of Alexander Walker and the much more well-known, accounts of, James Cook, but there were many, many merchants and explorers, state funded explorers who came and stopped her on that coast, and they too left accounts. So I read through many travel accounts.

12:51 - the most remarkable of all of those were the one, that first one by Alexander Walker in 1786. There was another one written by, a Spanish American from Mexico, named, Jose Mariano Mno, who is well known as an enlightened figure in Spanish history. he was a botanist and an a natural historian, very interested in the ethnography.

13:30 - Ethnography. And he wrote an account that he called, no, but this to like Alexander Walker's account, this was not published at the time. It was many, many years afterwards that this was published in the 20th century, in, in, for, in both cases. So they were, they were sort of lost accounts. There were others that had been published, closer to the time at which they were written, but they were accounts written by merchants who had

14:12 - really very little serious interest in the inhabitants of T nuclear sound and, you know, their ways of life, their, their commerce, their, interactions with other groups of other indigenous groups. The detail on that is really in these two fine accounts by, Scottish East India company merchant who had come from India, to TKA Sound, and from this, Spanish American, naturalist who

14:59 - had come to TKA in 1790. So that those, it, it is very much, much of my work has been based in these travel accounts, but contextualizing these and having, you know, there's very much this wider background in global history. When Cook first came to the sound, well, when the first Spanish, the first Spanish visitors came along that coast, what they saw through the mist

15:34 - and the fog, occasional sightings of mountains and a lot of trees, great forests cook, and then Alexander Walker writing about this a few years later with Cook. and another six years later, another eight years later, with, with Alexander Walker, they saw, small shorelines, not, and, and they, they knew there were inhabitants there.

16:14 - They canoes had come out to them. They could see, fire, the smoke rising from fires. They could see, in some areas they could see, the lodges of these people because they built huge, really, very big lodges that many families, lived in together. and they were apprehensive. They were afraid. likewise, if you, the, the oral histories

16:51 - that were recounted that were taken down, well, the, the first European, the European, first reactions when they saw these shores were reactions of these strange landscapes full of mountains and trees, and, but smoke coming, out of them. So they knew there were inhabitants. They saw, structures, great wood inhabitation that had been built, and they were afraid, canoes had come out to them and approached them.

17:32 - And that was, there was interaction, and some trading commenced. So they were able to come to the shore. And in the case of Cook in 1778, and then James Strange and Alexander Walker in 1786, they have this really first encounter, and they discover the very sophisticated commercial knowledge of their, the indigenous people in that area.

18:15 - But for the mocha people, when they first saw these ships appearing, and this was, they reported this as a kind of, there was an oral history of them that was taken down by, Jose Mariano Moo, in se in his account in 1792. They reported to him. They saw these ships coming to towards their shores, looking like a, a vast machine or a great bird.

18:48 - They had no idea what these were. And so they too experienced great fear, but also thought it might have been a God, one of their gods who had come, to them. So there was this very much, this atmosphere of first encounter in these years, 1778 and 1786. But within four years, even less than four years, that the atmosphere in this place had completely changed.

19:29 - Hundreds of, ships had come into this area. by this time, it was reported, say in 1792. There were 30, 38 ships at one point in the summer in, in the harbor area. It was a very beautiful, very good harbor. I have been there. It's very beautiful. And so a lot of peoples had come through.

20:03 - There had been the, the, it was now the time of the TKA crisis. The Spanish had built a Spanish colonial fort there by 1790. It was a very, probably better, it was described as far better than many of their forts along the southern. the southern Pacific coast with, fine, lodging for the captain. There were gardens. There was a hospital.

20:40 - the many, 16 or houses laid out. There was a forge, there was a carpentry shop. All of this very well described by mochi. but, the mocha people weren't there anymore. They many came in wanting it was these Europeans. They came, they wanted to meet, the indigenous people 'cause they wanted the furs. Mm-hmm. The only way they could get these furs was

21:14 - by being sold them by the mocha people. But the mocha people had in there was violence in these early encounters. One of the Spanish captains, a man named Martinez shot and killed one of the chiefs. And the, by that time in 1790, the Mocha people had gone off to their, their ti late summer autumn residence further up the coast, about a day's journey away where they used to go

22:00 - every year for the salmon fishery, because they were, they would move back and forth between the, between Nka and a place called Tosses, where they carried out the salmon fishery. They did the herring fishery in, in tka. So it was a very accomplished, they had a, well, it was, a, they had developed a way of living with the resources that came to them. Now, one of their key areas of living had been taken

22:44 - by, by the Spanish, colonial fort the British. They claimed that they had had first rights, and there was, a wartime footing launched in 17 9, 17 89 to 90, where the British launched their fleet from London. They launched a fleet. The Spanish could not do so because they needed the support of the French,

23:24 - and the French were having a revolution. So they could not support the Spanish in this, but it was a wartime setting at that time. And that's when tka sound became known as a strategic hub in international geopolitics between Britain and Spain, the Spanish, they did have a very good commander in the fort at the time, Bottega, Quadra, who welcomed the Mocha people, the chiefs,

24:05 - and their close, close associates. He welcomed them into the fort, and they ate together and ship captains that came in there. They were amazed to find this setting of close connection between the Spanish commander and his close associates alongside and together with the Chiefs, in the area. But, the, there was this crisis between the British and the Spanish,

24:48 - and this had to be resolved. And this became the subject of what became known as the TKA conventions, and a big diplomatic effort and negotiation was carried out between, Spanish, Spanish ambassador and, the English for, for a long time. It was, captain Vancouver. He was there for a considerable period, carrying out these negotiations.

25:22 - But it took four years, and it was not until 1794 that the Spanish withdrew from the, their, their barracks. The British put up the British flag to indicate that, they had control of the area, but they then left, and they just gave the flag to the chief to MNA the chief, and he was to show the flag whenever any other ships came through there.

26:00 - But unfortunately, for the Mocho people, few ships after this time stopped at, TKA sound, the city. It was become, it had become very difficult to get easy access to the Sea Otter fur. By that time, I mean, they were becoming depleted around that area, and the ships had to go either further north or further south to get the, the sea otters. so the, it was a very sad ending for the story for the mocha people

26:40 - and the, and chief mna, because he lost status. They lost their dominance in relation to the other, groups of indigenous peoples along the coast, where, where they had once been really supreme. So it was, it became an international trading hub and really destroyed the lives of the indigenous peoples. You lead me in two directions. one is, where do I, where do I as a writer take this story from here,

27:24 - a writer and a historian? So that is one question which I am still pondering. And another issue might be, the historical, more historical question of what happened in, on the Northwest Pacific coast and in the Northwest to the longer term lives of the indigenous peoples there as trade advanced, and then settler colonialism took hold.

28:04 - And that has been a very, a long and very sad story for many groups of indigenous peoples, in, British Columbia. In that, that whole area of the coast, they were forced into reservations. Their maritime rights, the, these maritime fishing rights were so important to them. They were taken logging companies, took over their forests and all their ways of making a livelihood.

28:45 - And it is a very, it remains a very, very hard life for them. There have been many terrible stories in recent years of what went, what happened in the mission schools, which took the children away from their families and communities and tried to, integrate. So-called integrate them into Western society, but they were always treated as inferior, and they lost their culture, and they would never be accepted in,

29:29 - in Western, circles, society and circles. I could say, I'll just say a little about my quandary of what I do with this subject. Now. I have written two quite long academic articles about this, trying to take this subject, to make this a subject that is part of a wider global history story. it's a story of locality,

30:06 - but it's also a story of global history. And so I want people who learn about China and who learn about parts of India to also learn about this small place on the far side of the world where, where Europeans and others trading from India and from China encountered and, affected, deeply affected this place. There is also the problem of how, European, his a, a historian based in Europe,

30:50 - not living in that place. Now, though, I come from there, but I am also not an indigenous person, and this is a story that also must be told from the perspective of the indigenous peoples.

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