When Worlds Collide: From Contact to Conquest on Puget Sound ‘Adapted from a text by Walt Crowley and Priscila Long, October 11 and 12, 2001 ‘There were about 125 different Northwest tribes and 50 languages before European-Americans came to this area. The main tribes of the coastal areas include the Chinook, Lummi, Quinault, Makah, Quileute, and Snohomish. The Plateau tribes include the Klickitat, Cayuse, Nez Percé, ‘Okanogan, Palouse, Spokane, Wenatchee, and Yakama. European and American explorers began to arrive in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1700s. First came the Spanish in the 1770s, then British explorers, American explorers and fur traders, and the Hudson's Bay Company, and finally U.S. settlers. ‘The 1770s Spain had colonized California and much of the American Southwest. They were worried that Britain would try to take their land and resources from the north, where they had territory in Western Canada. So, in 1774 Spanish navigator Juan Pérez sailed up from Mexico in the ship Santiago to the Pacific Northwest to try to keep the British out. On July 14, 1775, they landed on the Olympic Peninsula. In 1778 English Ship Captain James Cook traveled north along the Pacific Coast and visited Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island.The 1780s From 1778 - 1787 British explorers came to the area. Great Britain had already colonized much of the North and East. They wanted to establish colonial holdings in the Pacific Northwest for two main reasons. First, they thought thara was a chanca a Northwast Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific could be found, Second, they saw great potential in the natural resources of the Pacific Northwest. British Captain George Vancouver claimed the Puget Sound for England. Vancouver made a map of the coast of Washington from 1792 to 1794. The 1790s In 1790 the Spanish sent three ships from Mexico to Nootka Sound, under the command of Francisco de Eliza. After establishing a base at Nootka, Eliza sent out several exploration parties. Various Spanish maps, including Caamatio's, were given to George Vancouver in 1792, as the Spanish and British worked together to chart the complex coastline. From 1792 to 1794, George Vancouver charted the Pacific Northwest for Great Britain. Vancouver's charts would lure fur traders to the Northwest. For him the city of Vancouver and Vancouver Island are named, as well as Vancouver, Washington. In 1792 American Captain Robert Gray sailed from Boston in a ship named Columbia Rediviva. He reached the Pacific Northwest, in search of animal furs to take to trade in China. Here, he found a great river, which he named the Columbia. He was so successful that many more ships began to ‘come to the Pacific Northwest to take part in the fur trade business. Local Natives were initially intrigued by these strange men and their wares, and many Natives soon adopted European trousers, hats, and blankets. They leamed to plant potatoes and to ride horses, which spread north from Spanish colonies and preceded two-legged settlers to the Northwest. Most importantly, they eagerly traded salmon and animal fur for metal tools, glass and fabrics.But with this friendly commerce came another Old World import: disease. Between 1770 and 1853, epidemics of smallpox, measles, influenza, malaria, and tuberculosis reduced the Puget Sound Native population from an estimated 20,000 to 7,000. Alien microbes had already killed one-third of the Natives by May 1792, ‘when Puget Sound's first European visitor, British Captain George Vancouver, dropped anchor near Bainbridge Island. As Peter Puget and Vancouver's crew explored the Sound, they noted Indians "much pitted with the smallpox’ and an abandoned village strewn with human bones. The 1800s President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the Pacific Northwest in 1804. The expeditions by Gray, Lewis, and Clark helped the United States claim the area from the British, and their reports and maps helped to open up the Pacific Northwest to more white settlers in the future.