Megan Carlisle
Indians in the Making
4-24-07
In the early 1800’s white explorers and trades men were beginning to further discover the Puget Sound and open up relationships with the Natives in the area. The British citizens from the Hudson’s Bay Company and were some of the first who decided to stay in the area and set up a series of trading posts and forts in the region. With this effort they were also some of the first to create real way of doing business with the native people. The communication barrier was one of the hardest to overcome in this new interaction between Indians of the Puget Sound and the newly arrived King George men the cultural differences were vast between both groups, they had there own ideas of what was proper in their exchanges.”
It is easy to understand the confusion on the part of the Indians on these new comers and their ways. They looked very strange “some were unnaturally pale; some had hairy faces; none had heads flattened by cradleboard, as befitted a freeborn person.” and most of all they had entirely different customs and ways of living. The same is true for the British knowing only “proper” society; these strange Indians seemed vastly inferior. Neither culture was wrong, they were just different; if they wanted to trade they had to come to and understanding of what was customary etiquette. “Wanting to communicate yet hampered by language and etiquette differences.” Page 17.
Relations required guess work and improvisation” p 18
Analysis can begin with the premise that all actors were equally concerned with projecting images and deciphering the impacts they made.” P 20
“All parties at Dungeness were aware of impediments to communication but tried to signal their desires and intentions in ways they thought unmistakeable.” P19
“their language was unintelligible” p 14
“They spoke languages as incomprehensible as birds chirping.” 15 Natives on KGM
“Europeans at first seemed so different from known humans that Indians supposed them to be animals or creatures from myth times.” 17