Oregon coast artifacts vs. Drake - Long Reply

[Mike Cleven]

Tony Johnson wrote:
>
> LaXayEm kanawi-Laksta,
>
> Nadja's idea is a good one considering those are presumably my
> relations.  That is Clatsop country.  If I know which site they are
> talking about it is unique because they are not pits in the sense of our
> old rectangular plank houses, but instead a community of round pit
> houses.  That truly is unusual in our country.  It is also unusual in
> the sense that most all of the people buried there were buried
> differently than our old people, and did not have flat heads.  The
> problem with this sight however is that it may be older that the Drake
> expedition.  If he did come to that part of the world he likely met with
> straight "Clatsops" and not the round house folks.  I do have dates on
> those round houses somewhere, but I would have to dig them up.  I could
> of course be talking about a different site, but the talk of pit houses
> in the same area makes me think that it is those round house people.

I'm wondering about those pithouses vis a vis the Athapaskan-speaking
people of the Oregon Coast (I'm sorry; I don't know the ethnography down
that way enough to dare trying to name who it is); would this style of
house-building have some association with them, given the popularity of
this house design among Plateau peoples; could it be that _some_ plateau
group migrated to the Coast at some time; I mean, are there any stories
about this?


> Anyway, honor both Drake and the people there.  Acknowledging, that he
> brought the start of big (and detrimental) changes seems fair, but he
> should be acknowledged.--T.J.

Well, technically - that's just it; _he_ didn't, although colonization
was no doubt on his mind (in a 16th Century vision of it), wherever it
was he landed.  By keeping the region secret from the Spaniards, indeed
with England itself having it forgotten about for quite some time after,
Drake did not initiate the changes that followed upon "contact" with the
mercantile/political/imperial worlds of Europe and Asia.  I'd venture
that, like many early mariners, his sympathies were with those of the
locals rather than those of the Mother Country; having discovered such a
wondrous place, who would want to turn it into London and teach it
taxation?  Drake himself on his "tour" up through South and Central
America made more friends than enemies by not sacking and burning etc.
and it sounds like he got on just fine locally.  The Caribbean and South
Pacific are full of places where the "marauding culture" left behind
some of its best sons, who made effort to fit in rather than change the
place; Pitcairn is the most famous example, but I was impressed on my
visit to Bali last spring at stories of young Dutchmen who gave up
western ways upon seeing the wealth and splendour and beauty (and
pleasures) of the kingdoms of Bali - still to this day a stronghold of
its traditional culture despite mass tourism and some industrialization
and other development.

I didn't mean to run on; only to point out that Drake, at least, is
exempt from condemnation for "bringing" colonialism, which he did not;
in fact he suppressed it (intentionally or not) for at least two
centuries.  Perhaps - I say perhaps - he did this as much or more to
protect the people and culture of the region as he did to conceal it
from Spanish imperialism.  And I can assure you that Spanish imperialism
would have been much more detrimental here than Kingchauch Law would
have; not to excuse one evil by the possibility of another, however.
And it sounds like he was quite the gentleman noble here, rather than a
rapacious cannonball-tossing ogre (as came later during the fur trade).
For anyone interesting in the actual text account of his visit to what
he named "Nova Albion" (for its white cliffshores, a trademark of the
English seascape), the link is

http://www.mcn.org/2/oseeler/WE.htm

which is part of
           *** Sir Francis Drake ***
    ~ an international educational resource ~
    http://www.mcn.org/2/oseeler/drake.htm
    ~ recommended by The History Channel ~

After reading through this I did have a sense of strange incongruities
in it - snowcapped mountains and icy cold winds in June and July, thick
fogs that one could look _down_ on (as if from those mountains) - that
don't really sound much like Oregon or northern Cali, and other
meteorological descriptions which talk less about the place and the
weather; i.e. he's avoiding being too particular about the place, and it
may even be that the landscape/weather descriptions aren't immediate
upon his anchorage, but somewhere else.  As for the cultural
description, the author of the above site holds that the description of
people and customs match up with those of the Pomo of northern Cali,
although others have said the same about the Miwok.  Again, my
impression is that there's odd incongruities in the telling; he makes
not mention of the sweeping fur resources of the California coast, which
surely would have been noteworthy; he paints (or suggests) an extremely
poor and primitive people while still alluding to prosperity.   As for
details - wicker crowns adorned with oyster (?) shell and black feathers
(raven?) that would be up for y'all down that way to know about; doesn't
mean .  Have a read and see what you think.  Even after reading it,
there seemed to be just as many parallels to pre-Contact culture in the
Georgia Strait or Straits of Juan de Fuca.  And as it is the only extant
written account of _some_ patch of the Northwest Coast in 1579, I'd say
it's pretty intrinsic to anyone's appreciation of the history here,
whatever the biases or purposes of the writer.

Two pieces of linguistic evidence come up, however, which may be
critical.  Drake gives "Hiyoh" as "chief" and "Gnaah" as some form of
prayer or entreaty (as in "please take it").  That "Hiyoh" sounds
somewhat familiar from that word list that Dave (?) posted here a while
back - from Meacham, wasn't it?

Sorry to ramble on.......