Task:
After reading the accounts below, students will answer the response questions based on their learnings from the previous lessons.
Read the following 3 accounts:
Account 1:
The Origin Of “Canada”
Before the arrival of European explorers, Canada was inhabited by a variety of First Nations peoples and this aboriginal culture continues to play a significant role in the country’s unique national identity. This fact is particularly evident in the names of Canada’s provinces and territories. A prominent example of this is the country’s name which is derived from the Huron- Iroquois word “Kanata” meaning settlement or village. It’s believed that this name was initially used to describe the modern day area of Quebec City by local aboriginals traveling with French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1535. By the year 1547, all of the land north of the St. Lawrence River came to be known as Canada.
Source: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-did-canada-and-its-provinces-receive-their-names.html
Account 2:
Captain Cook Coined the Name “Nootka Sound.” Literally
Most people, when they hear the name, Captain James Cook (1728–1779), might picture the seafaring explorer making the first recorded European contact with Australia, sailing the Bering Strait, or anchoring in Hawaii. The British navigator charted more terra incognita than any other in his time.
But as it turns out, a good portion of Cook’s adult life was actually spent honing his navigation and surveying skills in what is now Canada. We sat down with two Captain Cook Society experts and historians, Robin Inglis and Victor Suthren, to discover why Cook’s time in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island 240 years ago — a stop on his final voyage — deserves to be commemorated today.
Q: Captain Cook’s landing at Nootka Sound was actually a bit of an accident, wasn’t it?
Suthren: Yes. Cook’s job was essentially to see if he could find a Northwest Passage. He was meant to enter the Pacific from the Indian Ocean, and then to go north along the North American coast to see if a Northwest Passage existed. There had been rumours that if you sailed into Hudson Bay or somehow into the Canadian Arctic, there was a strait possibly leading from Hudson Bay to the north Pacific. If that was the case, you had a tremendously easy route to China.
Q: If that was the plan, why stop along the Vancouver Island coast?
Inglis: Unfortunately, he was delayed. He left in 1776 but he was delayed in the South Pacific for a whole year and he didn’t reach North America until March 1778.
Now his instructions said, “Find a place to get wood and water and prepare the ships.” In other words, do some work on the ships to prepare them to go to the north. But they hit a lot of storms and Cook was looking for an anchorage. At one point he found what he called Hope Bay, a huge indentation in the west coast of Vancouver Island. Inside Hope Bay is the entrance to Nootka Sound.
Suthren: Now, the actual name for that bay is Kyuquot and it was inhabited by a village of the Mowachaht people. There’s a long sandbar, and on the right hand side of the sandbar is where you enter into the bay. Upon Cook’s arrival, the Mowachaht people came out in canoes as Cook’s ships, the Resolution and the Discovery, were sailing in. They called out to him using a Nuu-chah-nulth word, which means “go around!”
So Nootka really means, “go around sound.” The Mowachaht were simply saying, “Go this way! You’re going to run into the shore!”
Source: https://www.mint.ca/store/article/article.jsp?itemId=700008
1. Think back to lesson 5.1 about language and how language changes over time. What do you notice about the use of language in these accounts?
2. What do you think the explorers could have done differently to use the Indigenous language in its intended translation?
3. How do you think the Indigenous people and the explorers were different, based on these texts? Think about their goals, demeanor and the overall outcome of the situation.
*Remember to use full sentences and for multi-sentence/paragraph answers, use transition words.
