Читать книгу Raven's Cry - Christie Harris - Страница 9

“IN THE YEAR ’91”—1791—THE SECRET WAS OUT.

It had been out for several years. Captain Cook had stumbled on it. And when his journal was published, the world had gasped.

Russian merchant adventurers had been getting sea otter skins from the native Aleuts in the North Pacific for years. And they had been selling them to the mandarins of China for fabulous prices, keeping the trade a secret.

By mere chance, Captain Cook’s seamen had picked up a few pelts along the North Pacific coast of America and had then sold them in China for such staggering sums that they had threatened mutiny when their captain refused to sail back across the Pacific for more furs.

It was almost unbelievable. Chinese merchants would pay hundreds of dollars for one sea otter pelt.

“And you can buy prime pelts for a few glass beads,” astounded merchants told their partners. A glitter brightened their eyes. “Why, a man could be wealthy in no time!”

Englishmen and Americans rushed ships into the marine fur trade. And on each voyage they picked up two fortunes instead of one. First, they bought furs for a trifle and sold them for a fortune in China; then they filled their empty holds with Chinese tea and silk and porcelain to sell for another fortune back home.

It was a time for the founding of family affluence. Too many people saw that. Competition grew fierce along the North Pacific coast. Rival traders bribed the native people with liquor. They imprisoned chiefs to force a village to sell its furs. After all, they told their shipmates, these were only savages; they did not really matter; they didn’t have fine feelings like civilized human beings.

“Besides,” captains said, “we’ll never run into this particular bunch of heathens again.”

The savages responded with “treachery.” Occasionally they became so “bloodthirsty” that they had to be taught a lesson.

Captain Kendrick of the Lady Washington taught them one such lesson “on the sixteenth day of June, boys, in the year ’91.” The old New England ballad tells the story, but only one side of the story.

The other side is just as exciting; and it starts a little earlier. The native story begins at a time when the only sailing ships venturing along the wild northwest coast were those of explorers, like Captain Cook, who were searching for the fabled Northwest Passage to the Orient. And, like the ballad, it begins “at Queen Charlotte’s Island, in North America.”

So, if you would like to know the other side . . . “Come listen to my story, while I relate the same.”