Colin Wintz

Voyage of the Columbia

The accounts of Haswell in the Voyage of the Columbia is a useful account of the trade relationships created in the Juan De Fuca strait and natives of the Northwest and the sailing conditions that ensued on the voyage from Boston around the cape of South America to these Northwest territories. This journal is an abundant resource for historians, sailors, and geographers but as an impatient college student it was a major struggle to engage myself in the text. Nonetheless, I was able set aside my impatience and slowly access the relevance that surrounded the text.

Haswell’s account represents a piece of a puzzle to the major picture that was fur trade. His report portrays a small but relevant fraction of the relations of the maritime traders and the natives that brought to these voyagers sustenance and profit as well as conflict. The Journey Around the World is a personal account giving us an accurate insight into the life and struggle aboard a trade voyage but in turn the perspective of Haswell as an American sailor of high status carries a bias that seems to lash out against the savage nature of the Indians and question the ability of nearby captains.

The detailed directions that Haswell painstakingly narrates seemed erroneous to me while trying configure the events of the journey but provides an indispensable tool for plotting the coordinates of the venture and comparing the experiences and assumptions that the Lady Washington procured to others’ experiences. We can see which tribes Haswell actually encountered and how his assumptions to their physical appearance aligned with historical evidence.