THERE ARE FEW things I enjoy more than digging potatoes in the snow. I know, I should have dug them sooner but it’s just another example of my fishing problem that left many fall chores undone. And besides, potatoes seem to take on a certain sweetness after a frost. They can remain crisp, while spuds in a root cellar can be soft and sprouting.
These are not just any potatoes. We’re talking about the Ozette potato, solanum tuberosum. It’s a living monument to the history of the Olympic Peninsula that goes back to a time when the Spanish, English, Russians and Americans were racing to plunder the West Coast of North America for sea otter furs that could be traded in China for tea, porcelain and silk. It was all part of a global trade that disappeared with the eradication of the otters that presaged the slaughter of the whales, but I digress.
These European explorers were multi-taskers since the British Parliament was offering a reward of about $24,843 to anyone who discovered the fabled Northwest Passage, a water route across North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Meanwhile, the Russian Vitus Bering was headed south through Alaska, which caused the Spanish to head North to cut them off, establishing a naval base at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island.
In 1789, the English Captains John Meares and William Douglas were arrested at Nootka for violating Spain’s territory. They had been trading sea otter pelts under a Portuguese flag as part of a global tax dodge. England had a claim to the Northwest coast based upon Drake’s voyage of 1579 and the discoveries of Captain Cook in 1778. This was the basis for what was called the Nootka Crisis.
England had just won The Seven Years’ War with France. English Prime Minister William Pitt and the English press campaigned for a war with Spain, but this was a war Spain could not afford.
They sought a compromise with England where both countries would occupy the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Nootka Convention of 1790 established a joint occupation between Spain and England, where sovereignty would be determined by occupation.
This mirrored the 1818 Joint Occupation Treaty between England and America that attempted to avoid a repeat of the War of 1812.
In May of 1792, Captain Salvador Fidalgo arrived at Neah Bay, which he named Nunez Gaona, to build a fort to bolster Spain’s land claims and monitor shipping on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Fidalgo built a barracks, a bakery, corrals for livestock and gardens, which we assume contained potatoes since he had a crew of Peruvian Indians on board.
A member of the nightshade family, potatoes were cultivated in South America 2,500 years before Christ.
The Spanish conquistadores invaded South America looking for gold but they also found the potato.
At the time, potatoes were a revolutionary fast food that was considered an aphrodisiac.
Nunez Gaona is considered the first settlement by Europeans in the Pacific Northwest. Predictably, the Makah were hostile. Nunez Gaona could not survive without the protection of a warship. Neah Bay’s rocky bottom made it a poor anchorage.
The Spanish knew the sea otter trade would die once the otters were extinct. The land was covered with an impenetrable forest that could not be farmed or grazed.
As a Northwest Passage, the Strait of Juan de Fuca was a dead end with no gold. Nunez Gaona was abandoned. The potato remained. It was cultivated by the Ozette and other Tribes across the Olympic Peninsula, where I dig them in the snow to this day.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
