Was New Spain Really First?: Rereading Juan Perez's 1774 Expedition to Haida Gwaii1
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract / Resume In 1774, New Spain set its sights on what lay north of San Francisco. Much was at stake since the British and the Russians were both pioneering exploration of western North America. A general assumption maintains the Spanish were the first Europeans to explore that coastal region. Juan Perez, during his 1774 expedition on the Santiago, reveals he thought differently. Perez's version of the encounter and the evidence he provides in his journal, as well as some Haida ethnographic history, suggest that Spain was not first. En 1774, la Nouvelle-Espagne jette son devolu sur les territoires situes au nord de San Francisco. Les enjeux sont importants, car les Britanniques et les Russes ont deja entrepris d'explorer la partie ouest de l'Amerique du Nord. Une hypothese commune maintient que les Espagnols ont ete les premiers Europeens a explorer la region de la cote ouest. Au cours de son expedition en 1774 sur le navire Santiago, Juan Perez indique qu'il pense differemment. La version de Perez de ses rencontres et les preuves qu'il fournit dans son journal, auxquelles il faut ajouter des elements d'histoire ethnographique des Haidas, semblent indiquer que les Espagnols n'ont pas ete les premiers a explorer la region. Introduction As the eighteenth century sailed into its last quarter, New Spain targeted the Pacific Northwest coast of Canada and Alaska for exploration and possible colonization (Carrassco 1971:13; Shaw 1988: 25; Ybarra Y Berge 1945:23).2 In 1774, Juan Perez piloted the frigate Santiago from Monterrey on a six month commissioned expedition to explore and claim the northern most coastline to the 60th parallel for Spain. He ultimately only made it to the 55th parallel, to Haida Gwaii (Beals 1989:79; Perez 1774). His arrival to these islands supposedly marked the first time the Haidas, the original inhabitants of the islands, encountered Europeans (Castellanos 1983:27; Nuffield 1990:62). In accordance with the mandates of his commission, Perez duly noted the details of geography, and most important to this paper, he described the two encounters with the Haida. The particular mandate concerning Yindios, or Indians, included recording as much information as possible about the people the Santiago would encounter, and since the Haida were the first people encountered, not only did Perez record the events, but four other officers recorded the meetings as well. The descriptions of the Haida prove very useful in refuting the claim that Perez and his crew were the first Europeans to visit Haida Gwaii, the Haida name for the Queen Charlotte Islands. In this paper I will discuss Perez's diary as he encounters the Haida along Haida Gwaii and provide evidence of details and discrepancy in the claim of Spanish pre-eminence along the northwest coast. I will argue, based on the two days of encounters with the Haida and Perez's subsequent descriptions of them, that the Spanish were not the first Europeans that visited the archipelago known as homeland to the Haida (Gladstone & Borserio 1993:6; Johnson 1987:102; Stearns 1981:4). I also consult the other officers' accounts to further establish my position. Historical Background Briefly, northern expeditions along of the coasts of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska prior to Perez were not well documented.3 Russia (Fisher 1977:2; Marakova 1975:4; Nuffield 1990:60) and Britain (Pilar de San Pio 1992:85) had accounts of venturing along these coasts but their lack of documentation allowed Perez to privilege the Spanish right for surveying and claiming4 the Northwest coast. Four other officers kept accounts as well: Pilot Francisco Antonio Mourelle, Esteban Jose Martinez, the second officer, and the chaplains Friar Tomas de Ia Pena and Friar Juan Crespi. Though all these officers kept journals, they may have acceded to Perez's notes at times for some of their details (Beals 1989:4). Because of the diaries and letters to the Viceroy Bucareli, it is from this date that the coast from Mexico to Alaska becomes California in subsequent Spanish writings (Carrasco 1988:136; Quijano 1967:455). …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".