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Nothing much-more wandering along the coast-a pelt here, a pelt there-until mid-August, 1806, when Hill at last struck across the Pacific for Macao, China. At least he thought the brig went back to Nootka in November.Īnd then? Again we can picture a shrug. Maybe it had been in November, shortly before the Lydia had returned to Nootka, as promised, for more pelts. Well, then, when had the encounter with the Columbia River Indians taken place? Jewitt looked back across eight or nine years at the blur. All that boring search for pelts from one foggy anchorage to the next-no blood and thunder in that. We can imagine Alsop digging away: how about some details? And we can imagine Jewitt shrugging. Lewis and Clark would certainly interest American readers, for in this year of 1814, when Alsop was interviewing Jewitt, Nicholas Biddle and Paul Allen had finally published their official History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the Sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. While the traders were there, visiting Indians showed the mariners medals given them by Lewis and Clark, who, they said had arrived by land with a small party and then, only a fortnight earlier, had started home, again by land.Īlsop pounced. So he continued pumping Jewitt about the last stages of the story and in the process learned that during the course of sailing tediously back and forth along the coast, the Lydia had crept about ten miles into the Columbia estuary in search of a convenient stand of timber from which to cut a new mast and spars. Alsop, however, wanted to get his hero home to his loved ones. English-born, he cared next to nothing about Lewis and Clark. His story was blood, thunder, and life with the Indians. During those many decades it has become a standard item of students of the Lewis and Clark expedition for the following reasons.Īs stated, Jewitt left off his diary with his rescue. Jewitt, published by the Bellona Press of Ramona, California).
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Although the style is turgid and the tone elevated, the Narrative kept being reprinted until as late as 1975 (Robert F. Using Robinson Crusoe as a model, he then published in 1815 a Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Alsop plucked the needed drama out of Jewitt bit by bit. To borrow the words of Richard Alsop of Hartford, Connecticut, a rich merchant with literary ambitions.
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It was dull-terse because of necessity and vapid because the ill-educated sailor had "small capacity as a narrator," On finally reaching Boston by way of China late in the spring of 1807, Jewitt made arrangements for a printer to issue A Journal Kept at Nootka Sound. His entries, however, ceased with his rescue, and thereby hangs our tale. Throughout his captivity, young John Jewitt kept a secret diary, using berry juice as ink. The salvation was effected without bloodshed, and on departing for further trading operations along the Northwest Coast, Captain Hill said he would return to Nootka within a few months to pick up whatever pelts the Indians gathered during his absence. Those two languished as prisoners until rescued on July 19, 1805, by Captain Samuel Hill of the brig Lydia, out of Boston. Massacred all the crew except the ship's twenty-year-old, English-born armorer (blacksmith) John Jewitt, and the sailmaker, John Thompson. Resentful of several years of mistreatment by white traders, the Indians In the spring of 1803, a trading ship hunting for sea-otter pelts sailed into Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.