Ebey's Landing Administrative History

Chapter Three:
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF CENTRAL WHIDBEY ISLAND

This section offers a brief overview of historical developments on Whidbey Island. It discusses the eras and events that are especially important within the reserve, but the story, of course, is much more complicated. Information about American Indians on the island is relatively limited, and much of it is derived from the accounts of Europeans and Euro-Americans.

For the first Europeans to explore the Puget Sound region, the Pacific Northwest represented economic and political opportunity. Nationalism, rivalry for hegemony in the New World, and visions of empire spurred European exploration and resulted in a zone of contention as early as the sixteenth century. Until the environmental movement of the twentieth century, few questioned the exploitation of the resources of Whidbey Island or the Pacific Northwest.

From the time of its discovery by Europeans, the American continent was an arena for the rivalry of European empires. Their claims on the Pacific Northwest dated from 1493, when a papal decree "gave" most of the Western Hemisphere to Spain. Few major powers seriously acknowledged Spain's sovereignty, and the Spanish confined themselves to the southern half of the Pacific Coast, venturing farther north only as they thought necessary to protect their northern territory. The Spanish were unable to defend their unsettled empire in the Northwest. Competitors in the eighteenth century included Russian fur traders, who established a foothold in Alaska. As rivals to Spain in the Northwest, however, the British would soon overshadow the Russians.

The Spanish and British had organized expeditions along the Pacific coast in the early sixteenth century, but systematic exploration began only in the 1770s. One week after America declared its independence from Britain, the British sea captain James Cook set out on his third voyage in search of a northwest passage to Asia. Within two years he sailed the northwest coast, accompanied by his young apprentice, George Vancouver. Their mission was to explore the lands between Spain's settlements to the south and Russia's fur colonies in Alaska, record the natural resources of the region, and take possession of lands not claimed by Spain or Russia. On this trip Cook wintered in Hawaii, where he lost his life in a confrontation with natives. During his expeditions, some of Cook's sailors had purchased a few sea otter furs from the natives. Their subsequent, highly profitable resale in China sparked a "fur rush" to the Pacific Northwest. Although Britain was losing the thirteen colonies, the Northwest promised new possibilities for empire. [1]

It was Captain Vancouver, master of Discovery, who returned in the 1790s to chart the inlets and waterways along the northern Pacific coast. Toward the end of April 1792 Vancouver entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca with two ships, Chatham and Discovery. Shortly afterward he claimed the sound for King George III, and, in the custom of the day, as one historian wrote, "names for newly charted places were passed out in honor of family and friends like gifts from the family tree on Christmas Eve." [2] Vancouver named the sound for his lieutenant, Peter Puget, and Whidbey Island for another assistant, Joseph Whidbey, who explored and mapped the island. [3]