El Norte

by Carrie Gibson

  In the end, Spain approved a measure in December 1788 that would allow goods from Ohio and Kentucky to travel down the river, so long as the traders paid a 15 percent duty—defusing some of the tension though not providing the most satisfactory solution for the United States.94

  At the same time, significant changes occurred in Madrid. Carlos III died in late 1788 and was succeeded by his son, Carlos IV, who was less interested in active governance. Alongside this, his ministers became enmeshed in the power struggles that emerged in the aftermath of the palace changes. In North America, the frontier breakaway groups and potential allies for Spain renegotiated their return to the U.S. fold. Kentucky became the fifteenth state to join the union, in 1792, followed by Tennessee in 1796, with the Franklinite leader John Sevier serving as its first governor.

  THE UPPER LOUISIANA territory, which corresponds to modern Arkansas, Missouri, and points north all the way up to the Great Lakes, was, for the most part, a terra incognita to the Spanish who were supposed to administer it. The French had been the first Europeans to claim it, leaving a trail of small settlements. Cape Girardeau, today in the state of Missouri, was one such place. It was established on the banks of the Mississippi River around 1735 to ship furs, food, and other goods, and was one of a number of river communities. However, the Mississippi’s many bends meant constant threats of flooding, which forced some of these small outposts to be shuffled up and down the river. The French continued to plant settlements along the Mississippi, with Ste. Genevieve established around 1750, and St. Louis, farther upstream, in 1764.95 By the time of the Revolutionary War, Spain had sent officials there, but most of the settlers were not Spanish. They also had to make alliances with many of the Native Americans there; one 1769 report listed twenty-three chiefdoms to which the Spanish were giving gifts, including the Iowa, Little and Big Osage, and Peoria peoples.96 Throughout the Revolutionary period and its aftermath, many Shawnee and Delaware people moved to Upper Louisiana to get away from the encroachment of U.S. settlers. The Spanish permitted them to stay to the south and west of Ste. Genevieve, and by the 1790s there were six villages with a Shawnee population of 1,200 and 600 Delaware, while farther south some Cherokees moved into Lower Louisiana.97 A 1772 report on St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve showed that there were 399 whites and 198 slaves in St. Louis, while Ste. Genevieve had 404 whites and 287 slaves.98

  In 1770, the then Louisiana governor, Alejandro O’Reilly, issued instructions stipulating that “the lieutenant-governor shall cause the Indians to know the greatness, clemency, and generosity of the King. He shall tell them that they will receive the same presents annually; that His Majesty desires their happiness.”99 In reality, Spain had little money to spend on this vast frontier. Indeed, O’Reilly’s predecessor, Antonio de Ulloa, had tried to curb the gift-giving, with a special emphasis on banning the giving of guns, a ban that was not popular with Native American leaders.100 Sometimes they acted on their irritation with the Spanish; for instance, in 1772 a band composed of Little Osages and Missouri people attacked some of the rudimentary forts the Spanish had placed along the Missouri River.101 In this corner of its empire, administrators engaged in none of the mission-building or tribute-taking that had been the hallmark of Spanish rule elsewhere.102 The potential for any sort of wealth was to be found in trade and farming—wheat, hemp, and flax were important crops. A letter to O’Reilly from one of his captains in 1769 noted that the “country is very fertile. It produces with great abundance whatever is planted. In my time there was a vast harvest of wheat and corn.”103

  Farther downriver, the search for profits would cause much consternation a decade later for Governor Miró. Spanish minister Gardoqui had made the acquaintance of another soldier turned speculator named George Morgan in Philadelphia. They agreed on a deal involving a land grant of fifteen million acres near where the Ohio River runs into the Mississippi. Morgan was quick to find eager farmers and settlers—not even waiting for royal assent, and passing around handbills promoting this “New Madrid.”104 Morgan also secured the right to appoint local officials, form a representative legislative assembly, and allow the construction of Protestant churches. Morgan arrived at the land in 1789 with some of the colonists, many of whom were German immigrants, and they began their work on the meandering west bank of the river, about forty-five miles south of its confluence with the Ohio.105

  Although the Osages and Quapaw did not want to use this bit of land and allowed the arrival of these foreigners, Miró had numerous objections, not least Morgan’s powers and his land speculation, which involved selling lots of 320 acres at a price of $48.106 Miró wrote to protest against the extension of land given to Morgan “as it is contrary to the welfare of the state in general, and to the welfare of that province in particular.”107 Morgan’s plans angered Miró, and he told Morgan that this was no way to treat land that “His Majesty conceded gratis.”108 The thorniest issue for Miró was that the deal had “no clause in it which expresses the least subordination to Spain.”109 Whispering into Miró’s ear during this time was Wilkinson, who tried to turn the Spanish governor against this group of settlers, wanting to instill suspicions and doubts about Morgan. Because New Madrid was located in Spanish territory, Wilkinson realized that traders there would have an advantage over those in Kentucky, as they would not have to pay tariffs to ship their goods.110

  Miró, however, had already accepted that the settlement was necessary, and so permitted the colonists to continue, though he demoted Morgan to vice-commandant of the district of New Madrid.111 A small fortification was built in New Madrid in 1789; it was named Fort Celeste after Miró’s wife, and its staff was to check any vessels coming down the river from U.S. territories and the papers of the people on them.112

  By 1790 only about 300 people had moved from the United States to this area of Spanish Upper Louisiana. With such small numbers, New Madrid had not fared well. Flooding had hurt the livelihood of many colonists, and some, including Morgan, returned east.113 An inventory from 1797 showed more cows (777) than humans (569 white, 46 slave).114

  A British traveler, Francis Baily, described New Madrid in the late 1790s as being “situated on a level plain” with around three hundred houses “scattered about at unequal distances within a mile of the fort.” He noted that settlers were given “great encouragement” by the land grants, and that many people from the United States now made up the majority of the population. He observed that “were it not for a few French and Spanish that are mixed with them, it might easily be mistaken for an American settlement.”115 Baily concluded, however, “I do not like New Madrid at all; I mean, if I had my choice of living in it.”116

  Despite being a tiny settlement on the fringes of the Spanish empire, New Madrid embodied the larger changes afoot in the Louisiana territory: the land speculation, the lack of interest in Spanish rule, the constant drive west. The town, as it found out during terrifying earthquakes in 1811–12, happened to be on a fault line. It was fitting somehow, as the old colonial order in North America had been thrown into disarray over the final decades of the eighteenth century, with the Spanish absorbing the aftershocks. Not only were two nations now abutting each other, but they had contrary political systems: on one hand, an empire still reliant on traditional ideas of monarchical rule; on the other, an experimental republic. However, there remained vast swaths of territory unknown to all these interlopers, and the Spanish were still trying to expand the farthest limits of their empire.

  Chapter 6

  Nootka Sound, Canada, ca. 1760s–1789

  THERE ARE STILL no roads to Nootka. Here, in what were the outer reaches of the territory claimed by Spain, unknown and unmapped, the quiet dark rivers of the sound remain the main arteries for travel, as they have been since the arrival of the Mowachaht people at least four thousand years ago. Today, small cargo vessels call at the many inlets along this part of the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada, ferrying goods to and from the logging camps and salmon farms. Otherwise
, the rolling limestone hills, carpeted with spruce and pine trees, appear much as they did when Captain James Cook sailed the Resolution into a cove along this coast in 1778, during his third voyage. It was a place he described as “so far advanced to the northward and eastward as to be far beyond the limits of European Geography.” Cook felt he had reached “that void space in our maps, which is marked as a country unknown.”1

  Anchoring in the bay at the end of March 1778, Cook and his crew invited some of the locals on board, but they refused. He noticed that their weapons were made with copper and iron, which, he realized, “they could obtain only from the Russians, or from trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company.” They managed good relations and Cook stayed a few weeks to make repairs. He thought the Mowachaht behaved “apparently with much friendship,” in part because they brought valuable seal and otter skins to trade for metal tools.2 This place of refuge was known as Yuquot by the Mowachaht, but the British sailors called it Friendly Cove.

  Cook was a late arrival in this corner of the world; the Spaniards had been sailing in nearby waters for some time. Spanish administrators had received reports as early as the 1740s about the activity of the Russians, who were inching over from their fur trading posts around the Aleutian Islands. Orders issued from Spain in 1761 called for a diplomat to make inquiries about “the discoveries of the Russians in their attempts of their navigation to California.”3 Russia in this period was growing in might, harboring its own imperial ambitions. As its fur trappers became more familiar with the coastline near Spanish possessions, it became clear that they could sail with ease into this territory and there would be no military garrison to stop them.4

  By the time of the 1765 inspection tour of New Spain by José de Gálvez, there had been sufficient reports of activity to merit sending expeditions up the coast of Alta California, a trip of some three thousand miles from the port of San Blas. A few years later, the then viceroy of New Spain, Antonio María de Bucareli, agreed that these northernmost reaches needed further exploration. He sent Juan Pérez in 1774 on a mission, during which Pérez reached as far as N 55°, around Haida Gwaii island (the Queen Charlotte Islands), which lay to the north of Nootka Sound, though a storm prevented him from calling there.5 In 1775, the Peruvian-born naval officer Juan Francisco Bodega y Quadra was dispatched to explore the northern limits of Alta California, as well as to keep hunting for the now long-sought route from the Pacific to the Atlantic. He returned with no passage and no reports of Russians. Bucareli was aware at this point that Cook was on his third voyage, though the British captain managed to call at Nootka undetected by the Spanish, who would have eagerly seized him.6 Bodega y Quadra made one more trip to the Alaska region in 1779 before he was transferred to the Caribbean.

  By 1786, there had been little action to rid the Spanish Pacific of Russia’s presence. Two more vessels were dispatched in 1788 under the command of Esteban José Martínez and Gonzalo López de Haro, who found evidence of Russian activity around Nootka and heard of plans to build a garrison there.7 They reported back to Manuel Antonio Flores, who had become viceroy of New Spain in 1787, and urged him to put a fort or settlement in Yuquot to make clear Spain’s authority and have a base from which the stretch of coast down to San Francisco could be protected. In addition to the Russian threat, Flores was also concerned that traders from the United States might be seeking a Pacific port.8 He wrote to officials in Madrid, saying, “We should not be surprised if the English colonies of America, republican and independent, put into practice the design of discovering a safe port on the South Sea [Pacific], and try to sustain it by crossing the immense land of this continent above our possession of Texas, New Mexico, and the Californias.”9

  Two other factors were taking shape outside Flores’s purview: in 1787, Russia’s Catherine II canceled plans for a fort at Nootka, and in 1788 a British merchant named John Meares set up a fur trading post there.10 While the Spanish officials may have wanted to ward off any further foreign incursion, the reality was that Nootka was more than two thousand miles from any major port in New Spain. California did not have a large enough Spanish population to draw a significant pool of settlers or soldiers to the north, but Madrid ordered officials in New Spain to put something there anyway.

  Flores sent Martínez back to Nootka in February 1789, and he arrived by May, taking formal possession of the inlet and naming it San Lorenzo de Nuca. A few Franciscans went with him to convert people in Yuquot, with limited success. Also there in the sound to greet him were two vessels led by a trader from the United States, Robert Gray.11 Martínez questioned Gray, who claimed he was on a Congress-backed mission to extend the New England fur trade to the Pacific. Soon afterward, another U.S. trader, John Kendrick, arrived in Nootka after a trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and told Martínez that he and his party were making repairs to their ships and would leave soon.12 A British vessel, Iphigenia, was also in the sound, under the command of Captain William Douglas, who was working for the merchant John Meares. Upon learning this, Martínez began to interrogate Douglas, and later seized his ship and detained the crew.

  Then, on June 24, another British schooner, the North West America, sailed into Nootka. Martínez took possession of it, though he allowed the Iphigenia to leave. A final ship, the Argonaut, arrived in July, and Martínez detained its captain, James Colnett, who claimed to be Meares’s representative and on a mission to trade fur. Colnett argued that Nootka, by virtue of Cook’s voyage, belonged to Britain. Martínez disputed this, not least because he had participated in the 1774 expedition of Juan Pérez.13 A distressed Colnett, under guard by the Spanish, was later described in a report as being “so deranged, that he attempted frequently to destroy himself.”14 Colnett and the Argonaut were taken south to San Blas, as was another British ship that arrived later, the Princess Royal.15

  Martínez received orders from New Spain by autumn 1789 to pack up the colony and leave, in part because there were not enough vessels to supply California and Nootka, and Flores had been satisfied that enough had now been done to ward off foreign interlopers. He also had no desire to pay for an actual garrison in such an outpost.16 Martínez followed the orders but reiterated in the strongest terms that the British were a threat in Nootka.17

  When news of the ships’ capture reached Britain it stirred up public anti-Spanish feeling, and the animosity between a handful of British fur traders and Spanish soldiers soon captured national attention.18 By early 1790 the British prime minister William Pitt the Younger realized he could use the issue to advance free trade in the Pacific, as well as stifle any attempts by Spain to advance its territorial claims.19 Around the same time, Francisco de Eliza was sent to the colony to rebuild the small fort that Martínez had taken down and establish once again Spain’s claim in the face of British hostility.20

  John Meares presented a memorial to the House of Commons in London on May 13, 1790, reasserting Britain’s right to be in Nootka, as well as recounting his own activities there. Meares said that “immediately” upon his arrival he “purchased from [Chief] Maquilla [Maquinna] … a spot of ground, whereon he [Meares] built a house for his occasional residence … and hoisted the British colours thereon.”21 He then went on to explain the presence of the U.S. ships in 1789, and the arrival of Martínez that May and his subsequent actions, which Meares deemed “unwarrantable and unjustifiable proceedings … in open violation of the treaty of peace subsisting between this country and the Court of Spain.”22 Britain demanded that Spain renounce its claim over Nootka or face the consequence: war.23 The British had also started to ask U.S. diplomats for permission to cross the United States’ North American territory should they want to make a retaliatory raid on the Spanish in Louisiana.24

  While all this was taking place, the French Revolution had erupted in 1789, and amid the disruptions in Europe the task of ending the dispute fell to diplomats rather than soldiers. By October 1790, the first Nootka Convention was hammered out between London and Madrid. It was a loss of fa
ce for Spain, which was forced to return the captured ships, pay compensation, and accept the restoration of British claims to territory in Nootka and the resumption of trade.25 It was also a public concession of Spain’s historic claims to the Pacific coastline.26

  That document was the first of three, with the second reinforcing the payment of the first, and the third arranging the joint abandonment of Nootka. Before the last treaty was agreed on, however, there would be one more mission. It was part diplomatic, part scientific, and involved the return of Bodega y Quadra.27 Known as the Expedition of the Limits of 1792, it was aimed to settle the question of territorial rights, but this time it was to be undertaken in conjunction with the British, who were represented by Captain George Vancouver. After leaving England in 1791, and sailing around the northwest waters, Vancouver arrived in August 1792, a few months after Bodega y Quadra. They did not know each other’s language but one English midshipman spoke enough Spanish to translate.28 They exchanged letters and dinners but never came to an agreement on what to do, except to turn the matter back over to their respective home countries and give the island the name Isla de Quadra y Vancouver, which appeared on maps until the 1820s.29

  After this, the third and final convention, in 1794, stipulated that neither side could claim the island nor erect any sort of permanent settlement. The following year representatives from both sides went to Nootka to put the matter to rest. The British flag was raised and lowered, and the Spanish fort was destroyed. Both parties sailed away, leaving the fortunes of the island to the Mowachaht and the fur traders.30

  The villagers soon dismantled what was left of the Spanish settlement, and all traces of it disappeared. The Spanish were reminded once again—as they had been in Santa Elena in the 1500s and along most of the Atlantic seaboard—that without a significant settler population it was almost impossible to keep control of territory in North America.31 Little remains of this episode beyond a tiny marker that sits on a rocky outcrop near the Yuquot harbor, erected in 1903 to commemorate the meeting of Bodega y Quadra and Vancouver at the edge of their known world. It is now so weather-beaten by wind and rain that the words inscribed on it have almost completely worn away.