Boundaries
by Jack Nisbet

Jack Nisbet is the author of The Mapmaker's Eye, Sources of the River, Purple Flat Top, Singing Grass, Burning Sage and Visible Bones. His newest, The Collector, is due out in October.

Old Cox
July 2009

     
            In the fall of 1810, New York businessman John Jacob Astor set a scheme into motion that would challenge Great Britain’s North West and Hudson’s Bay companies for fur trade dominance in the Pacific Northwest. Calling his outfit the Pacific Fur Company, Astor dispatched a team of experienced Scottish agents and voyageurs aboard the vessel Tonquin from New York City; their orders called for them to sail around the Horn to the mouth of the Columbia River, establish a trading post, and then push into the interior to expand their business. It was a bold plan, and Astor was even then negotiating with the North West Company to divvy up the profits of the region. But it’s a long way from New York City to the North Columbia country, and Astor’s well-laid plans led to a tangled web of unintended consequences. One of the most intriguing was the way the voyage of the Tonquin set the stage for the arrival of Hawaiians in our part of the world, and the far-reaching effects of those distant immigrants.
The ship was hardly out of port when a running feud broke about between the fur men and Captain Thorne, a blustery autocrat who “threatened to blow out the brains of the first man who dared to disobey his orders.” Tensions ran high throughout the southern oceans, and when the ship docked in Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands) to refit in late winter 1811, several of men deserted, leaving Thorne and the fur traders short-handed. Luckily, the island had plenty of strong youngsters seeking adventure, and the Astorians arranged to hire some of them to fill out their depleted crew.
They did this by establishing cordial relations with King Kamehameha, a leader who had only just come to power on the big island of Hawaii. As part of the retinue of contract laborers, Kamehameha sent a high-ranked royal observer named Naukane to make sure the Hawaiian workers were treated fairly. Naukane apparently bore some resemblance to a sailor on board the Tonquin named John Coxe and, not surprisingly, the crew soon took to calling the Hawaiian diplomat by that name.
Naukane, or Cox, later claimed to be present at the death of Captain Cook; if so, he would have been at least 35 years old when the Tonquin anchored inside the mouth of the Columbia in late winter of 1811 and the voyageurs began construction of the fur trade post called Astoria. Things did not go smoothly there for post agent Duncan McDougall, who wrote that
Three of our men were killed by the natives, two more wounded by the falling of trees, and one had his hand blown off by gunpowder. The people suffered greatly from the humidity of the climate and the Sandwich Islanders, used to a dry, pure atmosphere, sank under its influence.
Yet the Hawaiians managed to adjust. “Those who adapted themselves best to our new diet were the Islanders,” Astorian clerk Alexander Ross later wrote. They “thought the fish and venison delicious.”
In mid-July, just as the Astorians were completing work on their initial buildings, North West Company agent and surveyor David Thompson, accompanied by six voyageurs and two Iroquois, arrived from Kettle Falls. Thompson had been working in the Interior for four years, and knew the country; he also was acquainted with several of the men Astor had hired, and the two parties spent a pleasant week catching up on the latest news of the trade.
One of Thompson’s North West Company voyageurs, Michel Boulard, had dabbled in the Interior Salish language of the Flathead, Kalispel, and Spokane peoples – exactly the kind of knowledge that would be essential for any Astorian foray upriver. At age 40, Boulard was also somewhat old to be paddling a loaded canoe 750 miles against the current back to Kettle Falls. So on the day Thompson left, he casually revealed in his journal that he had swapped Boulard for Cox to help him man the canoe. Alexander Ross added that Thompson was attracted by both Cox’s strength and his good humor, and nothing more was said about the Hawaiian until Thompson had arrived in Kettle Falls, built a new canoe, and headed upstream for Boat Encampment, at the foot of Athabasca Pass, to retrieve the coming year’s trade goods. Along the way, Thompson observed how his new paddler adjusted to life on the upper reaches of the Columbia.
He had lived wholly on an Island, and knew its extent, but had no ideas beyond it, as we proceeded up the River, and passed the great branches, the stream became lessened, and not so wide, as he did not know from what cause, every day he expected to get to the end of it; as we approached the mountains the cold increased, and the first shower of snow, he was for some time catching in his hand, and before he could satisfy his curiosity it was melted: the next morning thin ice was formed, which he closely examined in his hand, but like the snow it also melted into water, and he was puzzled how the Snow and ice could become water, but the great Mountains soon settled his mind, where all became familiar to him.
Cox’s journeys were just beginning. Thompson left him at Spokane House for the winter of 1811-12, under the experienced hand of Jaco Finlay, who had introduced many other newcomers to the Columbia and its tributaries. At some point in the next year or two, Cox accompanied a North West Company brigade back up to Boat Encampment, crossed Athabasca Pass, then paddled the Saskatchewan River route clear to Montreal. From there he sailed to England, possibly hired for the purpose of getting on another fur trade ship, sailing around the Horn, and utilizing his months of experience with the Astorians to help pilot that ship across the Columbia’s dangerous bar.
            There is a bit of a gap in the records here, but it seems very possible that Cox did exactly that, stopping off in his homeland along the way to recruit more Hawaiians (called Kanakas by the fur traders) to work for the North West Fur Company. When the 1823 Snake River Expedition that left from Spokane House listed more than a dozen Hawaiias on its roll, part of the credit must fall to Cox. When Shoshone Indians killed several Hawaiian trappers on another Snake River Expedition, the commemorative names of the Owyhee Mountains and Owyhee River in eastern Oregon can also be traced back to his seminal influence.
            By 1824, the Hudson’s Bay Company had absorbed the North West Company, and a Hawaiian named “John Cox” name appeared in their annual ledger books for the lower Columbia. Over the1824-25 season, he was attached to the Fort George store, on the site of old Astoria. This John Cox had a Chinook wife, and also appears to have owned a native slave girl named Marie, whom he likely inherited through a previous tribal relationship.
            That spring of 1825, Cox would have met naturalists David Douglas and John Scouler when they arrived from England on the vessel William & Ann. The Hawaiian probably helped ferry the naturalists’ collecting equipment from Fort George to newly constructed Fort Vancouver, across the river from modern Portland; his experience on the river and as a leader may well have put him at the head of the transport canoe.
            In October 1825, Cox was part of a group of Hawaiians accused of having stolen blankets from the hold of the William & Ann, but denied any involvement. Cox may also have been part of a grim incident when Hawaiian paddlers delivered John Scouler to the Mount Coffin burial ground at the mouth of the Cowlitz River, then waited while Scouler stole two skulls from burial canoes – an incident that outraged local Chinookan peoples and may have highlighted some of the cultural differences between Coast tribes and the Hawaiian fur trade workers. But in general, Cox and his compatriots seem to have gotten along with everyone. One example occurred in a letter David Douglas wrote to John Scouler in England that conveyed greetings from the officers and men at Fort Vancouver.
            Dr. McLoughlin, Mr. McKenzie offer
            their wishes to you, you are often talked of,
            particularly by your old Friend Capt. Cox.
           
            According to the Hudson’s Bay Company pay lists, John Cox retired in 1843-44 and likely continued to live in Kanaka Village at Fort Vancouver, finding employment as a shepherd. In 1846 the Canadian artist Paul Kane visited the post, met the colorful figure, and painted his portrait in a handsome white greatcoat with red piping. Inscribed at the base of the portrait is Cox’s claim that stretches across the entire span of Northwest History:
Old Cox
Present at the Death of Captain Cook.

            On February 2, 1850, the man named Naukane in his native land, and John Cox in his adapted one, died at somewhere between the ages of seventy-one and eighty-four. We know hardly anything about him beyond the fact that he must have been one of the farthest traveled and most resilient characters ever to set foot in the Columbia District, but there is no question that Cox’s arrival here, followed by the other Hawaiians he attracted to the region, forever changed the social dynamic of the place.

Thanks to Bruce Watson for help with this article; for further reading about Hawaiians in the Northwest fur trade see Leaving Paradise: Indiginous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest 1787-1898, by Jean Barman and Bruce Watson University of Hawai’i Press, 2006

Illustration:   Paul Kane 1846 Old Cox: Present at the Death of Captain Cook
                        courtesy Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas

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