This land is beautiful.
The sound located on the Pacific Coast of Vancouver Island with stunning vistas was even name-dropped in The Maple Leaf Forever, an unofficial national anthem of English-speaking Canada for a time.
It feels like a place far removed from a world of concrete and glass and anyone fortunate enough to visit will be awestruck by its beauty as they enjoy not one, but two provincial parks.
But an international incident and political dispute threw this serene land into chaos.
Or nearly did.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I share how this quiet place almost sparked a war between an aging superpower and a rising one… this is… the Nootka Crisis!
For thousands of years, the Nuu-chah-nulth people lived near Nootka Sound.
Thet area developed a complex culture centred on whaling dating back at least 4,000 years.
While they typically hunted grey or humpback whales, braver souls attempted to hunt Orcas.
The abundance of food and the mild climate allowed the Nuu-chah-nulth to develop a highly structured social life and a hierarchy separated into two classes, commoner and chief.
Commoners had autonomy to do as they pleased, but they needed the permission of the chief to hunt, fish and forage within the chief’s territory.
Chiefs in return had to redistribute wealth through the potlatch ceremony and maintain their ability to provide for their nation.
They also created beautiful artwork, made from cedar trees.
This artwork is still celebrated today and can be found in galleries across Canada.
For centuries, the Nuu-chah-nulth prospered in Nootka Sound, but changes were coming.
Half a world away a man who didn’t even know the Nuu-chah-nulth accidently landed in the Americas in 1492.
While attempting to sail to Asia, Christopher Columbus landed on an island (in what is now the Bahamas) he called San Salvador (meaning “Holy Savior”).
King John II of Portugal informed Columbus that his voyage was in violation of a 1479 treaty that recognized Portuguese territory claims along the West African coast.
He believed that Portugal had rights to the land that Columbus had just reached as well.
Wanting to avoid war, Spain and Portugal asked Pope Alexander VI to resolve the matter.
To do so, the Pope issued three papal bulls on May 3 and 4, 1493.
The first gave Spain rights to any land not already held by a Christian ruler. At the same time, it protected the previous rights of Portugal.
The second bull gave Portugal the same rights to lands in the west that they had in Africa.
The third bull, named Inter caetera, allowed Spain to spread the Christian faith by quote “one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any of the islands known as the Azores.”
At least according to Europeans, this gave Spain rights to all the land on what was the west coast of North and South America, from pole to pole.
The Nuu-chah-nulth had never met anyone from Spain, or Europe, but the papal decision assured their land was no longer theirs.
This had long lasting consequences which would be seen nearly 300 years later.
In the late-1600s, Russian ships travelled over from Russia along the Bering Strait to modern-day Alaska. In this new land, they encountered sea otters for the first time, and their incredibly valuable pelts.
After the Russian fur traders hunted the sea otters in one location, they moved down the Alaskan coast towards modern-day British Columbia and thus the Pacific Coast Fur Trade was born.
Meanwhile, the Spanish were moving up the coast of North America towards Vancouver Island.
On Aug. 8, 1774, the Santiago, a Spanish Navy ship under the command of Juan Perez, entered Nootka Sound.
This first meeting between the area’s Indigenous Peoples and Europeans went well.
The Nuu-chah-nulth gave the Spanish furs, who traded European tools and iron in return.
Perez named the area Surgidero de San Lorenzo.
Among the Nuu-chah-nulth who met Perez, one man who stood out.
He was a powerful chief named Maquinna.
It is not known when Maquinna was born but by the time the Spanish made first contact, he controlled Nootka Sound.
Maquinna’s main rival was Wickaninnish from a nearby territory, I covered his story in early 2023.
As the Spanish and Nuu-chah-nulth interacted for the first time, neither could have known that in the future Nootka Sound would become a powder keg that nearly erupted into a massive war.
For now, the Spanish went on their way with their furs, and Maquinna and Wickaninnish continued living as they had before.
Four years later, Captain James Cook arrived and renamed the area King George’s Sound.
The legendary captain in the Royal Navy began his naval career two decades earlier as an able seaman on HMS Eagle.
Within a few years, he was a master under Captain Robert Craig on the Solebay and then rose up the ranks.
He surveyed much of the entrance of the Saint Lawrence River, allowing the British to gain a victory at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1758.
That battle sparked the end of New France and began the British domination of North America.
He then surveyed the coast of Newfoundland and gained his own command on HMS Endeavour.
He took that ship on three Pacific voyages to map the area from New Zealand to Hawaii.
His third voyage took him to Nootka Sound, and he arrived on March 29, 1778.
Cook recorded that the Indigenous name for the area was Nootka.
This turned out to be a misunderstanding.
When asking about the area, an Indigenous man thought Cook was asking where they were in a literal sense and believing he was asking what land they were standing on, said “itchme nutka”, which meant a place you can go around, or an island.
The name of Nootka also applied to the Nuu-chah-nulth at this point.
Relations between Cook and the Indigenous Peoples were cordial.
Maquinna still controlled trade in the area, and his people went onto ships to trade, instead of the British coming to Maquinna’s village.
In return for valuable marine furs, Maquinna received lead, pewter, and tin.
Cook discovered that Maquinna was a savvy trader, who had learned from earlier interactions with the Spanish.
On April 26, 1778, Cook and his crew left the area and continued exploring the Pacific Coast.
Meanwhile, Maquinna did not care who he traded with. \
He had no time for European politics, or their arbitrary beliefs that land belonged to them simply because they sailed there.
If they brought him something of value, and helped him consolidate his power in the area, he would trade with any European who arrived at his shores.
The Spanish saw things differently.
They believed they had a monopoly on trade along the entire coast of North America because of the papal bull of 1493.
They granted limited trading opportunities to the Portuguese, but that was it.
Unbeknown to them the British discovered there was good money to be made trading with Maquinna and selling his furs for a huge profit in China.
In August 1785, James Hanna, a British trader, arrived in Nootka Sound.
He became the first European to sail into the area with the expressed purpose of obtaining furs, rather than to explore.
He received 560 pelts from Maquinna and his people and sold the furs at a 300 percent markup in China.
He returned to England in September 1786 as a rich man, and the London Press reported on his success.
Hanna made a second voyage to the British Columbia coast in late 1786.
This time he met Wickaninnish and traded for furs with him.
He once again sold the furs for a huge profit in China.
Hanna made plans to return to Nootka Sound in 1787 but he died before he could.
And by then his success had spurred others to seek out their fortunes in Nootka Sound.
James Strange arrived in Nootka Sound in 1786, and named the location he anchored to, Friendly Cove.
For a month he traded with Maquinna, and noted he was a shrewd negotiator.
While relations were good, Strange accidentally violated a convention that threatened to end trading almost as soon as it began.
Strange did not understand the hierarchical system of the Nuu-chah-nulth.
Maquinna was the highest ranked chief of the highest ranked house, while Callicum, his brother, was the highest ranked chief of the second-highest ranked house.
While trading with Maquinna and Callicum. Strange, showed preference to Callicum, believing he was the main chief, and gave him gifts before Maquinna.
This offended Maquinna and caused tension that took more gift giving to smooth over.
Hoping to establish a long-term trading relationship with the Indigenous Peoples of the area,
Strange had John Mackay, his assistant surgeon on the ship, stay with the Nuu-chah-nulth for a year.
Strange left, and Mackay settled down to live with Maquinna and his people.
Things started off well.
He became friends with Maquinna and married a local woman.
This happy stay ended suddenly when he broke another custom and angered Maquinna.
Mackay was cast out of the village and forced to survive winter on his own. and wait for Strange’s return.
But Strange never came back.
He had taken his furs to China but didn’t make enough to cover personal investments or expenses of the expedition.
Completely forgetting he had left someone in North America, Strange returned to England.
Thankfully, other Europeans were on their way to Nootka Sound.
Charles William Barkley arrived in Nootka Sound in June 1787 on the Imperial Eagle.
Mackay gave him 700 otter pelts and Barkley departed, but left Mackay behind.
Two months later in August, George Dixon arrived on the King George and agreed to take Mackay with him.
By this point, Nootka Sound was no longer isolated.
The British, Spanish and Americans were all eyeing the area with dreams of securing the maritime fur trade for themselves.
This is the scene that welcomed Jose Martinez and John Meares arrival.
And they would create the spark that almost set the powder keg off, as two empires marched slowly towards war.
Esteban Jose Martinez Fernandez Martinez de la Sierra, or Martinez as I will refer to him from now on, was no stranger to Nootka Sound.
In 1774 when Juan Perez arrived in the area and made the first recorded contact with the Nuu-chah-nulth, Martinez was his second in command.
A decade and a half later in 1789, the Viceroy of New Spain, Manuel Antonio Florez, ordered Martinez to occupy Nootka Sound, build a settlement, and make it clear that the territory was part of New Spain.
What Martinez didn’t know was that the British were already claiming Nootka Sound and surrounding area for themselves.
One of those men was John Meares. A British trader who wasn’t afraid to circumvent the rules.
At the time, the East India Company held a monopoly on British trade in the Pacific Ocean.
Meares refused to licence his ship with the company, so he flew a Portuguese flag and registered his ship in a Portuguese colony in China.
Using false papers and ships under foreign flags, he sailed for Nootka Sound in 1788, and arrived in the area on Jan. 22, 1788.
He spent the summer establishing a base of operations and developing a close relationship with Mowachaht, Maquinna’s other brother.
While in Nootka Sound, he constructed a small fort on the shore of Friendly Cove. He claimed Maquinna had been given him the land in exchange for pistols and other goods.
With the help of Chinese workers, he brought over the ocean with him, he built a ship he named the North West America.
It launched in September 1788 and was the first non-Indigenous vessel to be built in present-day British Columbia.
With that task done, Meares sailed back to China and formed the Association Merchants Trading to the Northwest Coast of America to corner the fur market of Nootka Sound.
James Colnett was put in charge of the expedition to Nootka Sound, while Meares stayed in China on other business.
In early April 1789, four ships, the North America, Princess Royal, Iphigenia Nubinia and North West America set sail towards North America.
Amid this flurry of activity Martinez and his ship, La Princesa, arrived in the area Nootka Sound on May 5, 1789, from Spain.
They were shocked to find the Iphigenia Nubinia and two American ships trading with the Indigenous Peoples.
Martinez wasted no time in claiming the entire area under Spanish rule.
The American ships, Columbia Rediviva and Lady Washington were left alone and allowed to operate. Martinez did not extend that courtesy to the British.
He seized the Iphigenia Nubinia only to release it a few days later. Before he did, he warned the ship’s captain, William Douglas, to never return. Douglas listened and left the area immediately.
On June 8, the ship North West America arrived and was immediately seized by Martinez’s crew.
They renamed it the Santa Gertrudis La Magna. Martinez would later claim the ship was abandoned, something Captain Robert Funter, who was on the ship, obviously denied.
On June 24, Martinez claimed the entire Pacific Coast of North America for Spain.
A few weeks later on July 2, the Princess Royal and Argonaut arrived. The Princess Royal reached Nootka Sound in the morning and Martinez ordered Captain Thomas Hudson to abandon the area and return to whence he came, which he did.
When the Argonaut arrived in the afternoon, Martinez seized the ship and arrested Captain James Colnett.
Why would Martinez seize some ships, while ordering other ships to leave, is a mystery.
From the shore, the Nuu-chah-nulth people likely watched with curiosity as this all played out over the course of June and into July.
Martinez had a small fleet at his disposal now and he ordered the construction of a permanent Spanish fort in the sound, to be named Fort San Miguel.
And he wasn’t done seizing ships.
On July 12, the Princess Royal returned to Nootka Sound and Martinez seized it.
He threw his weight around Europeans, and he was about to turn his attention to Indigenous People.
The day after he seized the Princess Royal, Callicum, Maquinna’s brother, arrived aboard to speak with Martinez.
For a reason lost to history, maybe something to do with all the conflict among the Europeans outside his home, Callicum was mad.
What happened next varies depending on the source.
It seems that at some point, Martinez fired his gun towards Callicum.
Some sources say it was a warning shot, and a Spanish sailor near him misread the situation and shot Callicum.
Another source stated that Martinez aimed his gun, but it misfired and shot Callicum.
No matter how it happened, Callicum was dead, and his passing caused an immediate rift with the Nuu-chah-nulth and severely hampered any trading relationship Martinez hoped to have.
Maquinna moved his entire village farther away from Nootka Sound and closer to his ally Wickaninnish.
The next day, Martinez’s crew on the Argonaut left the area with their prisoners.
Two weeks later, the San Carlos and Princess Royal left while Martinez and his men remained behind to continue construction on the fort.
As for the two American ships, they were left alone and were able to trade furs throughout the summer.
Yet when two other American ships, the Fair American and the Eleanora, arrived in late summer, Martinez seized the first ship, while the Eleanora barely escaped.
Martinez wasn’t predictable, that is for sure.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1789, Martinez had entrenched the Spanish in Nootka Sound, built a fort, and seized both American and British ships.
When the Spanish supply ship, Aranzazu arrived, on July 29, 1789, Martinez likely expected to receive praise for his hard work, and some much needed supplies.
Instead, he was told that his boss, Viceroy Flores, wanted him to completely abandon Nootka Sound.
All that work had been for nothing, and by October the entire Spanish force left Nootka Sound.
Fortunes can change on a dime, and that is what happened to Martinez.
While sailing down to San Blas in modern-day Panama, Viceroy Flores was replaced with Viceroy Juan Aguayo and his first orders were for the Spanish to reoccupy Nootka Sound.
Martinez, who had been close with Flores and had done his job exactly as he had been ordered but became a scapegoat for abandoning Nootka Sound.
Something he was ordered to do.
He was immediately replaced by Juan Quadra, the senior commander of the Spanish naval base at San Blas.
By the spring of 1790, Juan Quadra sent the Spanish to reoccupy Nootka Sound under Francisco Eliza, Martinez’s former second-in-command.
As for Martinez, he returned to Spain for a few years, and then went back to San Blas around 1795.
He never stopped trying to resettle the present-day British Columbia coast and in 1796 was in Mexico City trying to get backers for his expeditions.
But he never returned and spent his final years commanding supply vessels running between modern-day Panama and California.
By 1798, he was dead.
But his actions in Nootka Sound had set events in motion and they would lead to a crisis.
In January 1790, around the same time Spain was reestablishing its base in Nootka Sound, news reached the British Parliament of Spain’s claim over the region.
Great Britain was only a few years removed from the American Revolution, and no one in Parliament wanted to lose territory on the west coast.
Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger stated that the British had full rights to trade there, regardless of Spanish claims.
In April 1790, John Meares arrived in England from China and was immediately asked about the Spanish presence in Nootka Sound.
Meares confirmed that the Spanish were in the area, but said he had bought land from Maquinna, giving the British, in their eyes, a claim over the land.
The land belonged to the Nuu-chah-nulth, who were completely ignored and sidelined while the land was discussed in Europe.
Believing they had a right to the land the British prepared the Royal Navy for war in May 1790.
The British Parliament also passed a law to establish a penal colony at Nootka Sound.
Things began to escalate as the Spanish prepared their navy for a fight.
Both countries slowly marched towards war when suddenly, a third party changed everything.
France was watching from the sidelines.
For years, they had enjoyed an alliance with Spain.
Spain believed they could rely on them against Britain.
But King Louis XVI’s hold on power was thin at best.
The previous year, on July 14, 1789, the Storming of the Bastille had occurred, and brought about the start of the French Revolution.
For the next three years, France was a constitutional monarchy, limiting the power of King Louis XVI.
The French National Assembly determined foreign policy and entering war was based on the will of the people.
Without the support of the National Assembly, King Louis XVI could not pledge support to Spain.
Without France, Spain knew it could not fight the British Royal Navy on the open ocean and decided to avoid war.
Almost as soon as tensions rose, they decreased as both Britain and Spain chose compromise over conflict.
Without the French Revolution, it is likely a war between Spain and Britain would have erupted and changed Canada forever.
On Oct. 28, 1790, the First Nootka Convention was signed stating the northwest coast of North America open to Spain and Britain.
All the captured British ships had to be returned.
Spain and Great Britain may have avoided war, but the troubles for Spain were not over.
By killing Maquinna’s brother Callicum, they had severely complicated matters and they had to make amends.
To resolve the matter, Alessandro Malaspina was sent to Nootka Sound in 1791.
Malaspina was a veteran of the Royal Navy of Spain and had spent his career traveling the world experiencing cultures from across the planet.
A veteran of many oceanic journeys, Malaspina knew the power of gifts.
As soon as he reached Nootka Sound, Malaspina gave generous gifts to Maquinna and the Nuu-chah-nulth people.
After a month of negotiations and gifts, Maquinna agreed that the Spanish could remain owners of the land they occupied when Martinez first arrived half a decade earlier.
A year later in the summer of 1792, Britain and Spain met at Nootka Sound to negotiate details of the Nootka Convention.
On the Spanish side was Juan Quadra, while George Vancouver represented the British.
The two men were friendly to each other but were unable to reach an agreement.
Quadra wanted the boundary between Spain and Britain to be the Strait of Juan de Fuca which today is the international boundary between Canada and the United States.
Vancouver wanted the British rights to extend as far south as the Columbia River.
He was also unhappy about the new Spanish outpost in Nootka Sound, and believed the area belonged to the British.
The men left without an agreement.
Things changed the following year when Spain went to war against the new French Republic and Britain became their allies as part of the First Coalition.
To maintain this new alliance, Britain dropped its territorial claims in Nootka Sound.
Finally, six months later on Jan. 11, 1794, both nations agreed to abandon plans to permanently settle in Nootka Sound. They were both allowed to visit and erect temporary structures, but neither nation could build a permanent outpost or forts there.
Thus ended the Nootka Crisis officially, But the ramifications of the crisis lasted much longer.
For centuries, European nations operated on the notion that landing somewhere meant the area belonged to them, even if humans were already living there. Planting a flag was enough to claim territory.
The Nootka Crisis undermined the notion that a territory could be owned simply by quote unquote “discovering” it, or because the Pope said you could have it.
To claim a territory, a nation had to physically be present on that territory.
The British saw the outcome of the Nootka Crisis as a success. It marked their emergence as a superpower as they became the dominant nation of the 19th century.
It was an especially welcomed victory after the defeat of the American Revolution.
Spain saw the Nootka Crisis as an embarrassment. They had been a dominant power for the previous 300 years, and this marked the beginning of the end.
Spain also saw France’s refusal to join them in an alliance against Britain as a betrayal.
Claims over the Pacific Northwest were later acquired by the United States in the Adam-Onis Treaty in 1819.
The United States argued that it had claim to Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland through the treaty and it led to the Oregon boundary dispute with Britain.
This dispute went back and forth between the two governments until 1846 when an international border was established and has remained unchanged ever since.
But what about the Nuu-chah-nulth? What happened to them after the Nootka Crisis?
The irony of the Nootka Crisis is that almost as soon as it was resolved, both Spain and England wanted little to do with the area anyways.
The Napoleonic Wars diverted their attention away from Canada, and the Nuu-chah-nulth were left to themselves.
By the 1810s, the only European presence in the area was the Hudson’s Bay Company and they were more concerned with trading furs than settlement.
It was not until the Fraser Gold Rush in 1858 that Europeans began to look at Nootka Sound once again.
This time, they were not going to leave, and a dark period began for the Nuu-chah-nulth.
During the late 19th century, the Nuu-chah-nulth suffered heavily from the arrival of Europeans. Their land was taken, the animals they relied on were hunted to near extinction and infectious diseases like smallpox killed 90 per cent of Nuu-chah-nulth population.
By the early-20th century, only 3,500 Nuu-chah-nulth were left. Many were put into Residential schools where their language and culture were torn away from them through forced assimilation.
Their sacred potlatch ceremony was also banned.
But the Nuu-chah-nulth persevered and held onto their culture through this dark time.
In the 1970s, the Nuu-chah-nulth rejected the name Nootka that had been imposed on them by Europeans and chose the term Nuu-chah-nulth, meaning “all along the mountains and sea” to have a collective identification term and foster unity.
This alliance forged among the First Nations of Nootka Sound allowed them to present a unified voice to all levels of government.
Today, there are 13 Nuu-Chah-Nulth band governments with a combined population of 8,147.
