Overview

During the summers of 1792-94, George Vancouver and the crew of the British naval ship Discovery mapped the northwest coast of North America from Alaska to northern California. Despite the estbalished presence of Spanish and Russian traders, they were the first Europeans to survey this immense region. Their work was so meticulous that the maps were still in use by sailors one hundred years later. To map an area is, of course, to appropriate it. Vancouver's charts were part of a process of economic exploitation and cultural disruption. Native people have been making this point for years, but a different perspective on the European discovery of the Americas has begun to take shape since non-Natives have unearthed the issue and it is no longer possible to celebrate the arrival of Vancouver without mixed feelings. In comparison with the controversy about Columbus' arrival in 1492, Vancouver's voyage in 1792 seemed like a minor sideshow. Caught up in big generalizations about the uniformly disastrous impact of European contact, when he was remembered at all, Vancouver's maps were turned into new metaphors. Historians from around the world gathered at The Vancouver Conference on Exploration and Discovery in the city of the same name to observe the 200th anniversary of his arrival on the Pacific northwest coast. They met to discuss the European and Native experience of this pivotal event. A group of the most engaging papers presented at that conference make up this volume. Without denying the oppression and suffering of the Native people of the Pacific region from the time of their first encounter with Europeans, the authors present a wide range of perspectives on Vancouver and his party. They extend from the technology Vancouver employed to the complex political and power relationships between European explorers and the Native leadership, and among the British, Spanish and Russians themselves.

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