James colnett, the principal focus of this book, was a British maritime fur trader who sailed the northeast Pacific Ocean in two voyages between 1786 and 1791. He had earlier (1772–1775) served as a midshipman aboard the H.M.S. Resolution on Capt. James Cook’s second voyage of discovery. Colnett is best known to history for his involvement in the Nootka Controversy, which erupted in 1789 in a dispute over the use of Vancouver Island’s Nootka Sound as a base for fur-trade operations. As this incident brought Great Britain and Spain to the brink of war, Colnett’s account of his involvement in it has been published and well scrutinized. In 1940, the Champlain Society of Toronto published The Journal of Captain James Colnett aboard the Argonaut from April 26, 1789 to November 3, 1791. Yet, the record of his earlier (1786–1789) voyage to the Northwest Coast, southeastern Alaska, and the Hawaiian Islands has languished unpublished in the British National Archives in London.
The volume here under review brings to print Colnett’s account of his initial fur-trading venture in command of the 171-ton ship Prince of Wales, sailing in company with an escort vessel, the 65-ton, sloop-rigged Princess Royal under Charles Duncan. Other related documents are included, such as excerpts from the journal of Andrew Bracey Taylor, one of Colnett’s officers aboard the Prince of Wales and five appendices containing, among other things, Natives’ accounts of first contact with Europeans.
The significance of this earlier voyage has more to do with regional ethnography than global geopolitics. Colnett, sailing under the aegis of the London-based company of two brothers, John and Richard Etches, was engaged primarily in a commercial venture. Despite the expedition’s need to show a profit and its commander’s lack of formal training in the then newly emerging science of ethnology, Colnett paid close attention to the Native peoples he encountered in the course of his fur-trading activities. “Of the early European visitors,” remarks Robert Galois in his introduction, “Colnett met the greatest variety of indigenous people, and by the standards of the day, he was a fairly acute observer” (pp. 69–70). The publication of Colnett’s 1786–1789 journal — hitherto accessible only on microfilm or by a visit to London — is most welcome for the light it sheds on the process by which early contacts between Europeans and Alaskan or Northwest Coast Natives unfolded.
In addition to the ethnographic aspects of this voyage, much geographic information was collected as well. Colnett seems to have believed that a Northwest Passage might yet be found linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in temperate northern latitudes (p. 400n). In the course of searching for favorable trading sites, Colnett, hoping that geographic will-o’-the-wisp might turn up, probed to an unusual degree the complex shorelines and offshore archipelagoes from Vancouver Island north to southeastern Alaska. As a consequence, Colnett’s journal contains twelve maps depicting various channels, harbors, inlets, or other such coastal features. These maps have been published with the text, and five other illustrations — two coastal profiles, one each of Native headgear, birds, and fishes — are included as well. Of all the illustrative material, nothing compares to the fifteen superb modern maps depicting the expedition’s sailing tracks. These cartographic gems are crisp, clear, and handsomely designed and printed.
Much of the book’s introduction is devoted to an examination of the process by which Colnett and other fur traders learned to do business with astute Native negotiators, who could be hard bargainers. The Alaskan and Northwest Coast natives were also notorious for their failure to conform to European Enlightenment preconceptions of indigenous populations — whether overidealized or stereotypical. Readers unfamiliar with Alaskan or Northwest Coast ethnography or fur-trade history may find the discussion, at times, a trifle difficult to follow because of the spelling of Native names in a technical or “phonemic” alphabet devised by ethnographers to more closely approximate an authentic pronunciation and to standardize the spelling of Native names. This book is, if anything, primarily a work of scholarship that makes few concessions to a popular readership. Nevertheless, the introductory essay is lucid and well written, offering valuable insights about the interaction of Europeans and the Native peoples with whom they dealt.
Finally, the transcription of Colnett’s journal has been done meticulously, following the original holographic text closely. It has been extensively annotated and supported by an exhaustive bibliography. For some reason, the daily navigation logs have been omitted (except for references in the endnotes). Whatever the case, this publication is a long overdue major contribution to primary source materials of the late eighteenth-century Alaskan and Northwest Coast maritime fur-trade and early contact period.