![]() Subsequently, Spain made claims of “prior discovery” for the northwest coast of North America through various voyages in the 16 th and early 17 th centuries. Basing his claim on the papal bull, Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean, in 1513, claimed on behalf of the Spanish Crown, all the shores washed by the Pacific Ocean, including the entire west coast of North America. Spain claimed that its sovereignty of Nueva Galicia had been granted by the papal decree in 1493, issued in the wake of Christopher Columbus’s discoveries of the previous year, and the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed between Spain and Portugal in 1494. Should any foreign settlements be encountered, he was to avoid them and sail farther north, where the ceremony of taking formal possession should be performed. He was not to make any settlement on land he should simply mark with a wooden cross and take formal possession of any site deemed suitable for occupation. The Viceroy governing New Spain, Antonio Maria Bucareli y Ursua, ordered Pérez to go 60 0 North (about the latitude of present-day Cordova, Alaska) and return to Monterey. On the day before Christmas, 1773, at the Spanish navy base at San Blas, Mexico, 175 miles southeast of Mazatlan, Pérez received instructions from the Spanish crown to conduct a survey of Nueva Galicia (the Spanish name for the Pacific Northwest) and officially reassert the claim of these unknown northern reaches for Spain. In some respects, the story of the settlement of Neah Bay begins in 1774, with the expedition of Spanish Navy Ensign Juan José Pérez Hernández. Click on the image to open an expanded view. ![]() From Record Group 23, Published Nautical Charts of Coastal Areas of the United States and its Territories (NAID 563731), Chart #645, 1st Edition. Coast Survey, Cape Flattery and Nee-Ah Harbor, Washington, 1853. This strait is the wide waterway stretching from the Pacific Ocean on the west to the San Juan Islands on the east, with Vancouver Island to the north and the Olympic Peninsula to the south. Neah Bay, home for the Makah Nation for over 3,500 years, lies five miles to the east of Cape Flattery, just inside the south entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. This settlement was in fact, the first European settlement in the Continental United States, West of the Rockies and North of San Francisco. Two hundred and twenty-five years ago, in 1792, Spanish Navy Lieutenant Salvador Fidalgo y Lopegarcía established the first permanent European settlement in the present state of Washington, at Neah Bay (latitude: 48.368122 N) on the Olympic Peninsula at the southwestern coast of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. ![]() Greg Bradsher, Senior Archivist at the National Archives at College Park. Part I of the blog series 225 Years Ago: Spanish Explorations of the Pacific Northwest and the First Spanish Settlement in Washington State, Núñez Gaona (Neah Bay), 1792
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |