The Sea Is My Country by Joshua L. Reid

Author:Joshua L. Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Map of the frequency of marine connections to Cape Flattery, 1878–81. Map by Bill Nelson.

A far greater number of incidents of non-Natives crossing the reservation’s maritime boundaries outpaced those of indigenous peoples from 1878 to 1881. Nearly 81 percent—and more than twice the number of specific observed incidents from the earlier period—included non-Natives. As in the early 1860s, non-Natives en route to somewhere else continued to use Neah Bay as an anchorage, coming into Makah waters for shelter or to await changing winds. The Cape Flattery villages drew non-Native vessels for trade, cargo shipments, reservation and territorial business, marine resources, and Makah labor. On February 26, 1879, the steamer Mastick, owned by the Mastick and Company sawmill at Port Discovery in Puget Sound, delivered to the reservation lumber that Makah laborers unloaded. Later that year, Young Siac (Makah) shipped twenty bushels of potatoes grown at Cape Flattery to Ahousaht aboard the Victoria-based schooner Anna Beck. In 1880, Makah hunters shipped out on the US schooner Three Sisters to hunt seals and sea otters off Kuril Island, Japan, and Okhotsk.99 The increase in non-Native vessels coming into Neah Bay reflected the growth in Puget Sound and North Pacific industries and shipping. Taking advantage of these opportunities from their prime location constituted another aspect of being Makah in the late nineteenth century.

Comparing the data from Swan’s two extended residencies at the reservation also reveals the changing nature of Makah relationships with settler-colonial places. The connections between the Cape Flattery villages and non-Native ports reoriented as Washington Territory grew in population and capital. The number of trips to or from the nearby British port Victoria dropped from 132 to 71 from one set to the next as local US ports such as Port Townsend (151 to 261 incidents), Seattle (3 to 26 incidents), and smaller towns in Puget Sound grew in importance. These Puget Sound towns replaced the early influence of San Francisco (55 to 22 incidents) as local networks of capital took hold and more settlers moved to the Pacific Northwest. The data also illuminate shifts in local places, as better connected and more profitable ports such as Port Townsend and Seattle eclipsed the settlements of Port Angeles (108 to 4) and Steilacoom (9 to 0).100

But more than just local ports connected Makahs to the settler-colonial economy of the region. Although Swan’s data from 1878 to 1881 do not represent this well, the People of the Cape also engaged the regional moditional economy through networks of labor. Many Northwest Coast peoples, including Makahs, traveled deep into Puget Sound to pick hops for wages from late summer to fall, thereby illustrating another example of the contradiction between the late nineteenth-century trope of the vanishing Indian and Native workers participating in modern wage labor. Characteristic of a moditional economy, Native hop pickers combined several purposes when traveling upsound, including important pantribal gatherings outside Port Townsend on the way home from the hop fields. On August 30, 1879, Swan noted that a large number of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.