User:Pfly/Sandbox12
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Comekela (born before 1786, died before 1825) (sometimes spelled Komkela and other variations) was a younger brother of Maquinna, an important Mowachaht Nuu-chah-nulth chief during the late 18th century when Western ships first made contact with the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Maquinna and COmekela's people lived around Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Today they are part of the joint Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nations band government. The earliest Western ships visiting Nootka Sound were explorers of European imperial powers, such as Juan Pérez of the Spanish Navy, in 1774, and James Cook of the British Royal Navy, in 1778. By the late 1780s maritime fur trader merchant ships began to visit, seeking sea otter furs, which commanded a high price in China.
In 1786 at Nootka Sound, Comekela took passage on board the maritime fur trading ship Sea Otter, captain James Hanna (his 2nd voyage to PNW), to China via Hawaii. Left the northwest coast on 1 October 1786. Stopped in Hawaii for supplies in mid-December 1786. Arrived at Macao on 8 February 1787. Stayed in China for about a year. Met John Meares in Macao. Sailed with Meares back to Nootka Sound on board Felice Adventurer. Ka'iana and three other Native Hawaiians also, on the Iphigenia Nubiana. Arrived at Yuquot, Nootka Sound, on 13 May 1788. (from Relocating Yuquot)
No first hand account of James Hanna's 1786 visit to Yuquot exists, but according to other sea merchants of the time Comekela took passage to China with Hanna: “They carried away with them a Boy, who was brother to Mokquilla (Maquinna), and brought him to good health to China; this they acknowledged to have done secretly, but with the Lad’s own consent.” (from "Relocating Yuquot", cited to: Robin Fisher and J.M. Bumsted, eds., An Account of a Voyage to the Northwest of America in 1785 and 1786, by Alexander Walker (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 203.
On 4 July 1789 Comekela "came out" to meet the arriving ship Argonaut. (Relocating Yuquot)
Few written sources mention Comekela after that. One is an 1825 account by Dr. John Scouler, a Scottish scientist who was aboard the HBC ship William and Anne. Scouler met a chief named Maquinna (probably? the same one Meares knew) and showed him a portrait of Meares. In talking, Scouler was told that Comekela had been dead for "many years". (Relocating Yuquot)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Callicum_und_Maquinna.jpg
At the Far Reaches of Empire
McDowell, Jim (1998). José Narváez: The Forgotten Explorer. Spokane, Washington: The Arthur H. Clark Company. pp. 167–169. ISBN 0-87062-265-X.
Clayton, Daniel Wright (2000). Islands of Truth: The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island. University of British Columbia (UBC) Press. p. 106. ISBN 0-7748-0741-5. online at Google Books
See also text & sources on page Santa Cruz de Nuca
Relocating Yuquot: The Indigenous Pacific and Transpacific Migrations
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Callicum_und_Maquinna.jpg
info & sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xuku4j/in_the_18th_century_hawaiian_emissary_kaiana/
From: https://www.chinesecanadianmuseum.ca/learn/learning-resources/chronology-1788 "Comekela, the brother of Chief Maquinna from the Mowachaht Nation, would join one of these British expeditions. He left Yuquot in 1786, sailing on a fur trading ship that stopped in Hawaii before arriving at its destination in Guangzhou, China. Comekela would explore Guangdong province in China for one year before returning to Yuquot."
From: https://gallery.library.ubc.ca/movement-on-the-pacific "When Meares arrived in Yuquot in 1788, his crew included approximately 50 Chinese men from Guangdong (Canton) who worked as smiths and carpenters. The Chinese artisans helped build a fur-trading post and the first non-Indigenous boat on the Northwest Coast, the North West America. On this same journey was Comekela, brother of Chief Maquinna of the Mowachaht people. Comekela was returning home after spending a year in Macau."
https://www.douglashistory.co.uk/history/william_douglas12.htm Probably not RS, but at least lots of leads, lots of stuff on William Douglas (sea captain).
Maybe JSTOR: Culture Contact on the Northwest Coast, 1785-1795
Maybe JSTOR: Hawaiians in the Fur Trade of North-West America, 1785-1820
Interesting but old: https://spl.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16118coll16/id/291/ North American Indian Volume 11, Edward S. Curtis, 1906. Apparently in PDF form at: http://worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx?article-title=The%20Nootka%20-%20part%202.pdf
Maybe: https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/stream/pdf/52966/1.0401102/5
CATS:
Category:Indigenous leaders in British Columbia
Category:Nootka Sound region
Category:History of Vancouver Island
Category:Nuu-chah-nulth people
Category:Pre-Confederation British Columbia people
Category:18th-century Indigenous leaders in the Americas