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Murray C. Morgan
The John Meares Expeditions
The Last Wilderness
University of Washington Press, 1955
P. 18-22
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Copyright, 1955, Murray Morgan
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The John Meares Expeditions
 The
following year another British trader, John Meares, visited the
peninsula. Meares was an odd one, young, good-looking, impetuous,
brave, a romantic with an eye for a quick pound, an imaginative
man with a weakness for self-glorification and a cheery disregard
for fact when distortion or prevarication offered more immediate
rewards. The Indians called him Aitaaita Meares "the lying
Meares". He was an instrument of destiny.
When Cook's men returned to England, talking of fortunes to be
made in the fur trade between the Northwest coast and China,
Meares listened. He was no man to overlook the possibility of fast
money, even though danger might be involved. Meares had been
unemployed since the end of the American Revolution, when, at the
age of twenty-seven, he retired from King George's Navy, a
lieutenant.
There
was one big difficulty about entering the fur business: the trade
in New World furs was in the hands of two royally chartered
monopolies. Meares dodged this by going to India, organizing
himself as a Portuguese trading company complete with dummy
stockholders, and chartering two ships, which in 1786 sailed east
under the green, scarlet, and gold colors of Portugal.
One
disappeared after selling a load of opium on the Malay Peninsula;
the other reached Alaska, where, during a severe winter,
twenty-three of its crew froze or starved before a rival vessel -
one with a legitimate connection with the South Seas Company -
showed up, gave necessary assistance, but shooed the interlopers
out of the company trading preserve. The ship got back to India
without pelts.
It
says something for Meares' powers of persuasion that by 1788 he
had two more ships, the Felice, which he captained, and the
Iphigenial, commanded by Captain William Douglas. They departed
for Nootka, where Meares proposed not only to barter for furs but
to found a permanent colony made up of Chinese coolies and
Hawaiian women - an experiment that never came to fruition.
On
reaching Nootka, he bought (so he said) some land from the Indians
(they said he neglected to pay, which sounds probable), and he set
some of his men to building a boat. Then Meares went off
exploring. He visited Neah Bay, Where he encountered the
formidable Makahs, of whom he wrote:
About five o'clock we hove
to off a small island.... In a very short time we were
surrounded by canoes filled with people of a much more savage
appearance than any we had hitherto seen. They were principally
clothed in sea otter skins, and had their faces grimly bedaubed
with oil and black and red ochre. Their canoes were large, and
held from twenty to thirty men, who were armed with bows, and
arrows barbed with bone, that was ragged at the points, and with
large spears pointed with muscleshell....
The chief of this spot,
whose name is Tatootche, did us the favor of a visit and so
surly and forbidding a character we had not yet seen. His face
had no variety of color on it, like the rest of his people, but
was entirely black, and covered with a glittering sand, which
added to the savage fierceness of his appearance.
Meares
wrote of appearances. His first officer, Mr. Duffin, was sent in
the longboat to explore the Strait of Juan de Fuca and barely
survived to write of action:
At 2 P.M. came to in a small
cove in three and three quarters fathoms, close to the rocks. .
. . The people here all claim Tatootche for their chief. They
appeared to us to be a bold, daring set of fellows; but not
being near any of their villages I was under no apprehensions.
At seven A.M. came alongside of the boat several canoes, with a
great number of men in each.
Several of the people
attempted to come into the boat; I, at the same time, desiring
to keep them out, not permitting any of them to come in.... One
of the canoes put off a little from the boat; when one of the
savages in her took up a spear pointed with muscleshell, and
fixed it to a staff with a cord made fast to it, at the same
time putting himself in a posture of throwing it, and
signifying, by his gestures, that he would kill me: I at the
time took no notice of him, not thinking him serious.
Upon inspecting, however,
their canoes, I found them all armed with spears, bludgeons, and
bows and arrows; I also perceived a number of armed people
amongst the trees on shore, opposite the boat: I then found they
meant to take the boat; upon which I ordered the people to get
their arms ready, and be on their guard, and narrowly to watch
the motions of the man with the spear, and if he attempted to
heave it, to shoot him.
The words were scarce
uttered, when I saw the spear just coming out of his hand at
Robert Davidson, quartermaster and cockswain; on which I ordered
them to fire, which one person did, and killed the man with the
spear on the spot, the ball going through his head.
The rest of the people
jumped overboard, and all the other canoes paddled away. We
instantly had a shower of arrows poured on us from the shore;
upon which a constant fire was kept on them, but with no effect,
they sheltering themselves behind large trees. I was wounded in
the head with an arrow immediately as the man fell.
We weighed anchor, and
pulled out with two oars, keeping the rest of the people at the
arms. We found the shore on both sides lined with people, armed
with spears, stones, etc., so that it appeared plainly their
intent was to take the boat. A great quantity of arrows and
stones came into the boat, but fortunately none were wounded
mortally.
Peter Salatrass, an Italian,
had an arrow sticking in his leg all the time till we got clear
of them, not being able to pull it out without laying open the
leg, the arrow being bearded, and with two prongs; I was obliged
to cut his leg open to get it out, as it had penetrated three
inches.
The Chinaman was also
wounded in the side, and another seaman received an arrow near
his heart. As soon as we got clear of them, we made sail and
turned out of the bay.
Meares
made no more effort to explore the strait. This did not prevent
him from showing on a chart he published later a great river, the
Oregan, flowing into the eastern end of the strait. He really did
see a snowcapped mountain, and he named it Olympus.
The
name replaced Sierra de Santa Rosalia, which Juan Perez had
applied fourteen years earlier. Meares sailed south and joined the
club of those explorers who had overlooked the mouth of the
Columbia. He returned to Nootka and was on hand for the launching
of his ship, the Northwest America. (Someone forgot to tie the
stern line, and, on hitting the water, she almost left on the
outgoing tide, but was retrieved.)
Then
Meares loaded the Felice with otter furs and sailed off for China,
leaving his associate, Douglas, to manage the little colony. (In
Hawaii the natives stole the anchors from the Felice, but gave
them back.)
Meares
sold the otter furs at a good profit. Then he approached some
legitimate British traders and talked them into backing him. The
following year he dispatched two new boats to Nootka. He didn't go
himself; he was writing the narrative of his voyages, real and
fancied.
As
Meares' two boats, flying the British flag this time, were moving
eastward around the world toward Nootka, Spanish war vessels were
coming up from San Blas. The Spanish claimed the entire Northwest
coast, and they disapproved of visits by ships of rival claimants.
The viceroy ordered Don Estevan Jose Martinez and Lopez de Haro to
go north and scare the British traders away.
Martinez
found the Iphigenia still at Nootka. Since she had Portuguese
papers, he gave permission for her to sail, but he warned Captain
Douglas not to return.
Then
Meares' new vessels, the Argonaut and the Princess Royal, arrived,
flying the British flag. The Spaniards seized them. Captain James
Colnett of the Argonaut expressed himself so vigorously that
Martinez shipped him off to San Blas, and in that mosquito plagued
port he went mad.
The
Iphigenia brought news of these events to Meares in India. He
caught a packet to London, where be hired a press agent and
stirred up Parliament. The government went on record as being
ready to wage war to sustain the right of British merchants to buy
cheap in the eastern Pacific what they could sell dear in the
western part of the ocean. Spain backed down, agreeing that both
nations should have the right to establish posts on the Northwest
coast, promising to return the buildings which Meares said had
been taken from him at Nootka, and undertaking to pay indemnity.
Meares
turned the full force of his considerable talents to the task of
preparing a suitable expense account, and in the fullness of time
produced one that ranks as a triumph of imaginative literature. He
claimed that his ships were hulldown with otter skins when seized;
he inflated the going price for skins; and he reached his climax
with a demand for $210,000, which he got.
Meares
thereupon retired from the fur trade and devoted himself to
publishing his memoirs, whose accuracy was quickly challenged by
other explorers.
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