Unforeseen Consequences
When we try to pick out anything by itself,
we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
--John Muir
Patty and I visited Ebey's Landing with our son Nick and daughter-in-law Anna the day before I felt the first symptoms of sore throat, fever and chills, dry cough, shortness of breath and utter exhaustion. That day, March 9, 2020, 22 people had already died from COVID-19 in Washington and 162 people had been confirmed with infections, but Governor Inslee's "Stay Home--Stay Healthy" order and the closure of all Washington State Parks was still two weeks in the future. I self-quarantined, retreating to our guest room to work through a couple weeks of sickness and recovery from..... well, I may never know, as no COVID-19 testing was available for me.
Of course, the whole ongoing pandemic got me to thinking about the connections between sickness and the ways that events have played out throughout history at Ebey's Landing State Park. The park (and nearby Fort Ebey State Park) takes its name from Isaac N Ebey, a settler who died here on August 11, 1857. Not from a virus.
He was beheaded by a party of Tlingit from Kupreanof Island in Alaska engaging in a revenge killing for the death of their chief the year before at the hands of sailors from the USS Massachusetts. That incident in turn had its roots in the predilection of the Tlingit to raid villages of the Salish Sea for the purpose of violently obtaining slaves.
And here is where the sickness part comes in: according to Leland Donald in Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America, there is no evidence that any Tlingit war party went south of present day Alaska before the 1840's. Why?
Pandemic.
The historical record implicates the voyage of Spanish explorers Bruno de Heceta and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra in the summer of 1775 as the point of introduction of the smallpox virus to the northwest coast of North America. They were tasked with sailing from San Blas, Mexico, to Alaska to investigate rumors that Russian fur traders had set up business in territory that was exclusively reserved for the Spanish by the Treaty of Tordesillas. Embarking with enthusiasm on March 16th, the trip soon was beset with issues. On the third day at sea the accompanying supply boat San Carlos hoisted its emergency distress flag. On investigation it was discovered that the captain had suffered a complete psychological breakdown. On July 11th the ships anchored offshore of the Quinault homeland, traded with tribal members and ceremonialized Spanish possession of the territory that is now Washington. The next day a crew of seven sailors went ashore to procure wood and water. Unexpectedly, they were surrounded and killed by a large number of Quinault warriors. In the aftermath, Heceta decided to to turn around with his ship Santiago, in no small part because many of the 90 sailors under his command were too sick to perform their duties. The ship's log identifies some of the illness as scurvy, a common affliction among sailors of the day, but also hints at a few cases of smallpox as well. Bodega y Quadra continued north with the smaller Sonora and its crew of 16 men, eventually making landfall and contacting local Tlingit at Bucareli Bay. On the 18th of August at present-day Sea Lion Cove State Marine Park just north of Sitka, Alaska (maybe when we finish with all the WA State Parks we'll tackle AK next?) Bodega y Quadra installed an imposing cross as he was directed to do at the northernmost point he reached. Later that same day the Tlingit removed the cross and placed it in their lodge. After more surveying and resupply the crew headed south on September 8th, overtook the recovering Santiago on October 7th at Monterrey and continued back to Mexico.
Apparently, the seeds of pandemic had been planted amongst the Tlingit.
In August, 1794, Vancouver noted in his journal that they saw eight long-deserted villages on Kupreanof Island with sepulchres containing 4-5 bodies each.
In 1820, Kyrill Khlebnikov of the Russian American Company (yes, in the end Bodega y Quadra's cross at Sea Lion Cove didn't keep the Russians away) in Sitka compiled a report from Tlingit informants that described an epidemic nearly 50 years before that had swept the region with only "one or two persons left in each family."
In The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence, anthropologist Robert Boyd says, "Placed in the larger context of the first century of contact in the Pacific Northwest, the first smallpox outbreak initiated an ongoing process of disease introduction, demographic decline, and cultural upset that facilitated the eventual submission of the indigenous populations and cultures to the invading Euroamericans."
Epidemiologists have discovered that any disease will die out (for lack of enough susceptibles) when the total population is less than 300,000. Aboriginal populations of the Pacific Northwest were neither dense nor continuous enough to support the continual presence, and eventual herd immunity, of smallpox. Thus, reintroductions of the disease in 1801-1802, 1836-1838, and 1862-1863 repeated the devastation in each generation. Extrapolated mortality from smallpox ranged from 60-95% of the population. Beyond the sheer grief and trauma of such an impact were profound changes to the lifeways of the people.
So.....why is it that no Tlingit war party ventured south of Alaska before the 1840's? While there is ample record of inter-community raids (primarily to avenge the death of a kinsperson) within a confined area before that decade, afterwards war parties regularly paddled immense canoes up to 600 miles from Alaska to the Salish Sea, procuring slaves to return to their homelands. Fresh from the epic sea voyage, Tlingit groups of 100-200 warriors plus family members would surprise a Coast Salish village, targeting able-bodied men to neutralize their defense, capturing women, children and existing slaves for abduction. After three excruciating episodes of massive losses from smallpox, slavery had become a way of life, supplementing a population and subsistence workforce utterly devastated by disease.
Without any early warning system, the threat of "northerners" hung over the Salish Sea in the grey fall of 1856. On November 19th, residents of Steilacoom alerted the US Army garrison to Tlingit war canoes seen in Puget Sound. The Army alerted the navy gunboat USS Massachusetts (in Puget Sound to identify and recommend locations for navigational markers and lighthouses), and its commander Samuel Swartwout set off in pursuit. The next day, the Tlingit landed and camped near the sawmill and S'Klallam community at Port Gamble; Commander Swartwout ordered a force of 18 armed sailors ashore, and sent messengers to the Tlingit chiefs offering a tow to Victoria, an offer that was declined. The following morning, the USS Massachusetts began shelling the Tlingit camp with the ship's deck guns, inflicting heavy casualties, indiscriminately killing men, women, children and a beloved clan chief. Engaged by the landed sailors, the warriors retreated into the forest; the ship's crew proceeded to destroy the Tlingit canoes and burn their provisions. The surviving Tlingit were taken prisoner, allowed 24 hours to bury the more than two dozen who had died, then transported back to the Russian Alaska border.
Regrouping in their homeland, a party of more than 100 Tlingit from Kupreanof Island returned on August 11, 1857 to avenge the death of their chief and the others killed in the Battle of Port Gamble. Seeking a person of equivalent standing to their murdered chief, they settled on Isaac Ebey.
Ebey was a colonist who had arrived in the Puget Sound country in 1850 and availed himself of the opportunity to obtain 642 acres of prime farmland (he grew wheat, potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbages, parsnips, peas and barley) in the middle of Whidbey Island under terms of the Oregon Donation Land Claims Act (Washington did not become a separate territory until 1853). With legal training he had received in his native Missouri, Ebey involved himself in territorial politics and was elected Colonel of the Territorial Militia of Island and Jefferson Counties, raised for the express purpose of suppressing Native American resistance to the terms of the 1855 Treaties. Multi-tasking before it was cool, he was also appointed US Customs Collector for Washington by President Pierce, a job that required him to row over to Port Townsend whenever a cargo ship sailed into port.
On the evening of August 11th, though, he was at home with his family in his cabin just above Ebey's Landing. The Tlingit beached their canoes at the Landing, climbed the bluff to his house. Hearing his dogs bark in the night, Ebey opened the door and stepped outside.....
As he was executed, his wife Emily and their children Anna, Sarah, Ellison and Eason raced away to the safety of a blockhouse built by Isaac's brother Jacob on the ridge above--today's trailhead entrance to Ebey's Landing State Park. Traumatized beyond recovery, Emily never returned to their home, although
eventually Ellison and Eason divided the farm between themselves and farmed there for the rest of their lives.
In a macabre postscript to the story, Captain Charles Dodd of the Hudsons Bay Company traded "6 blankets, 3 pipes, 1 cotton handkerchief, 6 heads of tobacco and 1 fthm. cotton" for Ebey's scalp from the Tlingit at Kupreanof Island three years after his death. This was returned to Ebey's brother, eventually passed to his sister Mary and thence to her daughter Almira, who still had it at her home in 1914 when interviewed by a Whidbey Island historian.
One hundred years later, August 11, 2014, a delegation of five Tlingit from the village of Kake on Kupreanof Island visited Port Gamble and Ebey's Landing. Tribal elder Ruth Demmert addressed the hosts from the local historical society and park managers, saying "We come in peace." Standing on the site of Isaac Ebey's murder, they discussed the details of that night so long ago, when the unforeseen consequences of an introduced virus culminated in violence that would haunt their respective families for generations to come.
Ebey's Landing's Prairie Ridge and Bluff Trails are on my short list of favorite wide-view treks in Washington. Gazing out over the fertile fields of Ebey's Prairie you can peer through the gap of Admiralty Inlet between Whidbey and Marrowstone Islands and see the skyscrapers of downtown Seattle. From high above Parego's Lagoon there is an infinity view west to the snowy spires of the Olympic Mountains and out through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, passageway to Mexico, China, Japan and beyond. North are the rugged shores of the San Juan and Gulf Islands, jealously guarding the long adventurous watery passage to Alaska.
There is surely no better place to ponder the interconnectedness of all people, nations, and viruses past and present. Though our present chapter is still far from complete, it does seem like the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the ability of the world to adapt and follow through on policy and behavioral changes. In the end, the recommendations of the scientific consensus prevailed, more or less, and governments worldwide enacted the policies necessary to save lives.
Having come close once, dare we hope that a newfound global intentionality can now successfully rebuild as a more sturdy, sustainable, fair and resilient world ready to address the threat of climate change?
Photo of bas relief of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra Courtesy Museo Naval, Madrid
Photo of Tlingit War Canoe courtesy Alaska State Museum, Juneau
Drawing of USS Massachusetts courtesy US Navy
Photo of Isaac Ebey courtesy Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma