The Adventures of John Jewitt. John Rodgers Jewitt
refused to give up the offenders—generally a difficult operation, since it meant pretty well the entire village.
John Jewitt and the capture of the "Boston" in 1803.
But the most famous of all the piracies of the Western Indians is that of which an account is contained in John Jewitt's Narrative. The ostensible author of this work was a Hull blacksmith, the armourer of the Boston, an American ship which was seized while lying in Nootka Sound, and the entire crew massacred, with the exception of Jewitt, who was spared owing to his skill as a mechanic being valuable to the Indians, and John Thompson, the sail-maker, who, though left for dead, recovered, and was saved by the tact of Jewitt in representing him to be his father. This happened in March 1803, and from that date until the 20th of July 1805, these two men were kept in slavery to the chief Maquenna or Moqulla, when they were freed by the arrival of the brig Lydia of Boston, Samuel Hill master. During this servitude, Jewitt, who seems to have been a man of some education, kept a journal and acquired the Aht language, though the style in which his book is written shows that in preparing it for the press he had obtained the assistance of a more practised writer than himself. Still, his work is a valuable contribution to ethnology. For, omitting the brief but excellent accounts by Cook and Meares, it is the earliest, and, with the exception of Mr. Sproat's lecture, the fullest description of these Indians. It is indeed the only one treating specially on the Nootka people, with whom alone he had any minute acquaintance. Some of the habits he pictures are now obsolete, or greatly modified, but others—it may be said the greater number—are exactly as he notes them to have been eighty-six years ago. Besides the internal evidences of its authenticity, the truth of the adventures described was vouched for at the time by Jewitt's companion in slavery; and though there is no absolute proof of its credibility, it may not be uninteresting to state that, thirty years ago, I conversed with an American sea captain, who, as a boy, distinctly remembered Jewitt working as a blacksmith in the town of Middleton in Connecticut. When the book was first published, in the year 1815, several editions appeared in America, and at least two reprints were called for in England, so that the Narrative enjoyed considerable popularity in the first two decades of the century. Writing in 1840, Robert Green Low, Librarian to the Department of State at Washington, characterises it as "a simple and unpretending narrative, which will, no doubt, in after centuries, be read with interest by the enlightened people of North-West America." Again, in 1845, the same industrious, though not always impartial, historian remarks that "this little book has been frequently reprinted, and, though seldom found in libraries, is much read by boys and seamen in the United States." As copies are now seldom met with, this is no longer the case, though on our cruise in 1863 it was one of the well-thumbed little library of the traders, one of whom had inherited it from William Edy Banfield, whose name has already been mentioned (p. 25). This trader, for many years a well-known man on the out-of-the-way parts of the coast, furnished a curious link between Jewitt's time and our own. For an old Indian told him that he had, as a boy, served in the family of a chief of Nootka, called Klan-nin-itth, at the time when Jewitt and Thompson were in slavery; and that he often assisted Jewitt in making spears, arrows, and other weapons required for hostile expeditions. He said, further, that the white slave generally accompanied his owner on visits which he paid to the Ayhuttisaht, Ahousaht, and Klahoquaht chiefs. This old man especially remembered Jewitt, who was a good-humoured fellow, often reciting and singing in his own language for the amusement of the tribesmen. He was described as a tall, well-made youth, with a mirthful countenance, whose dress latterly consisted of nothing but a mantle of cedar bark. Mr. Sproat, who obtained his information from the same quarter that I did, adds that there was a long story of Jewitt's courting, and finally abducting, the daughter of Waughclagh, the Ahousaht chief. This incident in his career is not recorded by our author, who, however, was married to a daughter of Upquesta, an Ayhuttisaht Indian.
Apart, however, from Jewitt not caring to enlighten the decent-living puritans of Connecticut too minutely regarding his youthful escapades, it is not unlikely that Mr. Banfield's informant mixed up some half-forgotten legends regarding another white man, who, seventeen years before Jewitt's captivity, had voluntarily remained among these Nootka Indians. This was a scapegrace named John M'Kay,[27] an Irishman, who, after being in the East India Company's Service in some minor medical capacity, shipped in 1785 on board the Captain Cook as surgeon's mate, and was left behind in Nootka Sound, in the hope that he would so ingratiate himself with the natives, as to induce them to refuse furs to any other traders except those with whom he was connected. This man seems to have been an ignorant, untruthful braggart, who contradicted himself in many important particulars. But entire credence may be given to his statement that in a short time he sank into barbarism, becoming as filthy as the dirtiest of his savage companions. For when Captain Hanna saw him in August 1786, the natives had stripped him of his clothes, and obliged him to adopt their dress and habits. He even refused to leave, declaring that he had begun to relish dried fish and whale oil—though, owing to a famine in the Sound, he got little of either—and was well satisfied to stay for another year. After making various excursions in the country about Nootka Sound, during which he came to the conclusion that it was not a part of the American continent, but a chain of detached islands, he gladly deserted his Indian wife, and left with Captain Berkeley in 1787. To "preach, fight, and mend a musket" seems to have been too much for this medical pluralist. His further history I am unable to trace, though, for the sake of historical roundness, it would have been interesting to believe that he was the same M'Kay who twenty-four years later ended his career so terribly by blowing up the Tonquin, with whose son I was well acquainted.
In all of these transactions the head chief of Nootka, or at least of the Mooachahts, figures prominently. This was Maquenna or Moqulla (Jewitt's Maquina), who, with his relative Wikananish, ruled over most of the tribes from here to Nettinaht Inlet. He was a shifty savage, endowed with no small mental ability, and, though at times capable of acts which were almost generous, untrustworthy like most of his race, and when offended ready for any act of vindictiveness. Wikananish was on a visit to Maquenna when the Discovery and Resolution entered the Sound, and among the relics which Maquenna kept for many years were a brass mortar left by Cook, which in Meares's day was borne before the chief as a portion of his regalia, and three "pieces of a brassy metal formed like cricket bats," on which were the remains of the name and arms of Sir Joseph Banks, and the date 1775—Banks, it may be remembered, being the scientific companion of Cook. In every subsequent voyage Maquenna figures, and not a few of the outrages committed on that coast were due either to him or to his instigation. Some, like his attempt to seize Hanna's vessel in 1785, are known from extraneous sources, and others were boasted of by him to Jewitt. The last of his proceedings of which history has left any record, is the murder of the crew of the Boston and the enslavement of Thompson and Jewitt, and in the narrative of the latter we are afforded a final glimpse of this notorious "King."[28]
Changes since Jewitt's time.
When I visited Nootka Sound in 1863, fifty-eight years had passed since the captivity of the author of this book. In the interval many things had happened. But though the Indians had altered in some respects, they were perhaps less changed than almost any other savages in America since the whites came in contact with them. Eighty-five years had passed since Cook had careened his ships in Resolution Cove, and seventy since Vancouver entered the Sound on his almost more notable voyage. Yet the bricks from the blacksmith's forge, fresh and vitrified as if they had been in contact with the fire only yesterday, were at times dug up from among the rank herbage. The village in Friendly Cove—a spot which not a few mariners found to be very unfriendly—differed in no way from the picture in Cook's Voyage; and though some curio-hunting captain had no doubt long ago carried off the mortar and emblazoned brasses, the natives still spoke traditionally of Cook and Vancouver, and were ready to point out the spots where in 1788 Meares built the North-West America and the white men had cultivated. Memories of Martinez and Quadra existed in the