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Vancouver’s exploration: This part of the North American west coast was explored rather thoroughly in 1792 by the English skipper Capt. George Vancouver, just after he finished his Puget Sound explorations in May of that year, along with the Spaniards, Señors Valdes and Galiano. Vancouver wasn’t as delighted as we are with much of the region, expressing his dismay by naming one area the name it still bears, Desolation Sound. “Our situation here was on the northern side of an arm of the sound, leading to the northwest, a little more than one-half mile wide, presenting as gloomy and dismal an aspect as nature could be supposed to exhibit—vegetation screened from our sight those dreary rocks and precipices that compose these desolate shores,” he wrote. “Our residence here was truly forlorn, an awful silence pervaded the gloomy forests—the whole presented one desolate, rude and inhospitable aspect.” Na-kwawk-to John Walbran: In this fine book, British Columbia Coast Names, Walbran tells of an Indian tribe who lived in the “neighborhood” of the rapids from time immemorial. In 1905, 95 member of the Na-kwawk-to tribe lived in Blunden Harbour with the Chief Siwitti. Walbran wrote that the current velocity at the rapids “on the ebb at springs is said to attain 20 knots.” He also wrote that in June, 1868, 24 Indians in three canoes from the Nakwakto tribe attacked the British trading sloop Thornton, which was nearly becalmed off the Storm Islands in Queen Charlotte Sound. Captain James Douglas Warren and his mate, Steadman, were both severely wounded in the head, chest and side. Fifteen of the Indians were killed and four were wounded in the attack. The first Indian killed was the chief, called a “noted old scoundrel and long a terror on the coast.” He was shot as he climbed over the side of the ship. |
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