Iroquois Indians mingled with men of the South Seas in its employ, and with Canadian voyageurs and Scotch factor served out their lot, even if this meant, as it sometimes did, death in the wilderness.
The Hawaiian strain seems to have vanished quickly and to have left no appreciable reminder behind, but there can be no doubt that over an extended period of time they were present widely scattered in the Oregon country in numbers which must have been a goodly percentage of the entire foreign population and that they served in an important economic capacity. This vanished factor of the colonial and pre-colonial periods is worth some little study, which cannot here be made, but whose posibilities may be briefly indicated.[1]
It would be interesting to state just who were the first Hawaiians to visit the Northwest Coast, exactly when, and in whose ship. Certainly it can be said that there was no connection before 1778 in which year Cook's voyage linked the Hawaiian Islands to the Pacific Northwest. For the next half century, however, the times were few when Hawaiians were either not present in the Oregon country, or going to it, or returning from it. They furnished valuable recruits to the explorers and traders who followed in Cook's wake, and to the whalers who followed them. A plan to massacre Gray while he was delayed at Nootka Sound in ship-building was averted through the keenness and loyalty of a Kanaka servant.[2]
In Meares' Voyages made in the years 1788-89, the English captain relates how, sailing from Canton on his second voyage he had with him several Kanakas whose curiosity to see the world had taken them to China and who were going to return home with him via the North-
- ↑ An article entitled "Early Relations of the Sandwich Islands to the Old Oregon Territory," by Guy Vernon Bennett in the Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. IV, pp. 116-126, is a good example of what may be done in this little known field. It summarizes commercial, religious and political relationship, and uses reliable sources.
- ↑ Op cit., p. 120.
