THE MEN WITH WOODEN FEET. The Spanish Exploration of the Pacific Northwest. Signed / Limited.
Toronto: NC Press Limited. 1985. First Edition (& 1st printing). Octavo, original brown boards lettered in silver on spine panel. 168 pp., Notes, Vocabulary, Index. Frontispiece and 17 additional full pages of plates. This copy is inscribed by the author on the title page "To John Ross / With best wishes / John Kendrick / A Gift from Stu Weldon"; there is also a notice affixed to the front free endpaper which states: "The Galiano Historical and Cultural Society edition of THE MEN WITH WOODEN FEET 1985 / Copy Number 190 of 500". Corners very slightly knocked, a very good clean copy in like dust jacket. Item #314541
¶ The first Europeans to reach the Pacific northwest were Spanish - Perez in 1774 and Bodega y Quadra the next year. According to oral history, the barefoot native peoples thought the Spaniards had wooden feet.
Captain Cook stayed several weeks at Nootka on his way to Bering Strait in 1778. The next year the Spanish set up an outpost at Nootka and were the first Europeans to live ashore on the Canadian west coast.
In 1792 Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayetano Valdés sailed north from San Blas, Mexico, in the Sutil and Mexicana. Galiano circumnavigated Vancouver Island effectively disproving the existence of the Northwest Passage. His ships met Capt. George Vancouver's several times and they collaborated on surveys and explorations.
Cook and Vancouver's journals were published in London at the time, and have been the subject of many books since. But the journals of the Spanish navigators, including meticulous descriptions of the culture of the native people, are mostly in manuscript form in archives in Spain and Mexico. THIS IS THE FIRST BOOK IN ENGLISH WHICH COVERS THEIR VOYAGES IN DEPTH. As well, there is a detailed description of native artifacts from the Makah Museum in Washington State and a lively present-day testimony to the accuracy of the transcription of native languages by a Spanish scientist named Moziño.
Price (CAD): $75.00