ABSTRACT
The Pacific shores of North America stood as far from New England and the Chesapeake as Massachusetts and Virginia did from Europe and Africa, and absence of Northwest Passage or Panama Canal, reaching California from New York was considerably more difficult than reaching Boston from London. Russian fur traders moved east across the North Pacific from Siberia, Spanish missionaries moved north from Mexico, and British and American ships began rounding Cape Horn en route to the waters of the Pacific Northwest. To sustain the chain of presidios and missions in Upper California, the Spanish Empire sought to secure both water and land routes to them. The California missions were controversial in their own time, and they remain topic of dispute today. In 1778, on his third Pacific voyage, British explorer Captain James Cook reached North America's Northwest Coast and spent a month trading with and observing the Moachat peoples living around Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
