![]() ![]() I will investigate ideas of property and possession, and how indigenous views were conveyed and discounted in the accounts. ![]() I will present perceptions of this space as conveyed in the first European sightings and experiences of the Sound in the 1770s and 1780s I will trace how these perceptions changed over the brief period of Euro-American interaction with indigenous peoples on the coast, and as the space became perceived as a trading hub and a recognized space in European strategy in the Pacific. My sources for investigating these factors are the journals and accounts left by European traders and explorers, and I will set these in context. The objectives of my article are first to briefly summarize the ways in which Yuquot and Nootka Sound was an indigenous space, and second to set out the factors which connected different parts of the world to this space. More attention to local spaces and methodological reflection in new microhistories will address or challenge the categories, theories, and frameworks of global history. 3 Those histories emphasize the power of place, and this needs to be built into our global histories. Applying the work on specific localities and the economic and social interactions in these places, as developed by the early German and Italian microhistorians, can also lead us to understand how these spaces were perceived by their inhabitants and their visitors. Historical methodologies built on microhistory can help us to understand this history. A place that was so frequently visited and well-known in the last decades of the eighteenth century today has one family in residence. As a result, the power and wealth of its indigenous chiefs was undermined. Yuquot was soon abandoned by traders and by-passed by voyages of exploration. 1 Home to several thousand Mowachaht people who were often visited by many indigenous groups tributary to them by kin or diplomatic connection, it became a frequently visited harbor for over four hundred European and American ships within ten years. Nootka was one of those “small spaces” signified by David Bell that needs to be studied in its own right: it was one of those “intense, dynamic, laboratories of change,” though not in the way indicated by Bell for the history of Paris. Two quests, the maritime fur trade and the search for the Pacific Northwest Passage, encouraged Europeans and Atlantic traders to risk the long journey and treacherous waters of Cape Horn to reach the northwest Pacific, as well as others sailing from Bombay, Bengal, and Macao to make the journey from the East. ![]() From the early 1770s it became a focus of interest for the Spanish and Russians, soon to be followed by the British, the Americans, and other Europeans. Yuquot, in Nootka Sound, was first and foremost the long and ancient residence of the Mowachaht people. An international incident centered on this place brought Spain and Britain to the brink of war. In 1790 the Nootka Crisis brought the attention of the public in many parts of the world to a small cove on the northwestern edge of what is now Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
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