Cedar and Oak: Early Maritime Trade in the Pacific Northwest

This program will examine maritime cultures in the Pacific Northwest from the pre-European contact period through early contact, focusing on trade relations. We will first examine pre-contact Native trade routes, relationships and practices. Next we will explore the global context of early European and American trade in the region. We will finish by focusing on accounts of the trade relations between indigenous people and European and Euro-American sailors.

Throughout the quarter, we will consult primary historical documents, scholarly academic interpretations, oral traditions and local informants. We will compare the two maritime cultures, and will examine conflicting and complementary historical accounts, with the intention of developing our ability to cross between and study in differing cultural perspectives. To that end, we will live and work aboard tall ships for two weeks, one of which will be the Lady Washington, replica of the first American ship to reach the Pacific Northwest coast. The Native maritime experience will be represented by travel aboard cedar canoes constructed for participation in large canoe gatherings which celebrate and recapture indigenous maritime traditions of the region. All maritime travel and training will be conducted and supervised by professional mariners.

Our work will be, first and foremost, to practice crossing boundaries. Our work will be scholarly and experiential, global and local, personal and abstract, physical and intellectual, academic and communal, native and non-native, and historical, with implications for the future. We will develop awareness of continuing racism and cross-cultural conflict and thus hope to develop a basis for better cross cultural understanding.

During the first five weeks of the quarter we will sustain a rigorous academic load of reading, seminars and formal writing. We will also engage in workshops on technical aspects of maritime travel such as weather, sea conditions, piloting and physics of sailing based in multiple knowledge traditions. During weeks four through nine, much of the work will shift to the water. Students will spend two weeks aboard the tall ships and also some time canoeing and continuing land-based classwork. Aboard the tall ships, students will not only function as crew in a technically and physically challenging environment, but they will also act as public historians, sharing their historical knowledge with school children and visitors. We will culminate the quarter with a week's canoe journey during which there will be time to reflect upon the various traditions experienced during the quarter, the consequences of early contact, and implications for the future.