These trips continued for 250 years. The ships rode the Japanese currents, and from time to time may have cruised the Oregon coast.
By 1774, the Spanish began sending exploratory parties north along the Oregon coast. In 1775, a Spanish landing party, seeking fresh water north of the Columbia River in what is now the state of Washington, was wiped out by Indians.
1788 - The American Robert Gray visited coastal Tillamook Indians and in a dispute over a "stolen" sword, one of Gray's men was killed by Indians. Later, three large canoes with thirty armed warriors approached Gray's ship. Gray fired his cannon at the canoes, and bombarded plank houses and people along the shore. Hostilities had broken out in Oregon.
In the early 1800's the Hudson Bay Company was operating throughout Canada from its Hudson Bay headquarters in northeastern Canada. The Company recruited managers from Scotland and frontline fur traders from France, mostly unmarried men, many of whom married Canadian Indians. Their offspring came to be known as, and are still known as, Metis (May-tes'). The Hudson Bay Company coveted, not only northwest furs, but also the territory itself. Metis, many from eastern Canada, moved into the northwest and south along the coast, and began trading with local Indians, including the Cow Creek Umpqua Indians. They and their descendants also intermarried with the Cow Creek Umpquas.
In 1819, North West Company trappers killed several Umpqua Indians. In 1840, Reverend Jason Lee paddled down the Umpqua River. He characterized the Indians as being a "wretched race" --
"Under ... the doom of extinction ... and the hand of Providence is removing them to give place to a people more worthy of this beautiful and fertile country."
In 1852, gold was discovered on Jackson Creek in Cow Creek Umpqua territory. Gold miners flocked into Cow Creek territory creating Indian, non-Indian conflicts and tension.
