Dundas Island

Dundas Island
Waters	Pacific Ocean
Archipelago	Dundas Islands
Geographical location	54 ° 34 ′ N , 130 ° 52 ′ W Coordinates: 54 ° 34 ′ N , 130 ° 52 ′ W
surface	148 km²

Dundas Island is an island in the Canadian province of British Columbia and is part of the North Coast Regional District . It lies on the west side of Chatham Sound northwest of Prince Rupert . It is the largest of the Dundas Islands. The islands of Baron , Dunira and Melville Island and other islets between Brown and Caamaño Passage also belong to the archipelago .

history

At Far West Point , where the Tsimshian Reserve is today, the Far West Point Indian Reserve, traces of human activity from the 8th and 9th millennium BC were found in 2006.

Traditionally, both Haida and Tsimshian and Tlingit drove the region around the island. They gathered seaweed there and caught halibut .

The island was named in 1792 by Captain George Vancouver after Henry Dundas (1742-1811), the naval treasurer from 1783 to 1801. He was also called Baron Dunira , which is why the island is sometimes called Dunira Island. Vancouver believed that the archipelago was a single island, which he called Dundas's Island . A geographical dictionary from 1843 already noted the island under the name Dundas Island , but gives nothing but the approximate coordinates.

In 1810 a Russian fleet under captain Ivan Alexandrowitsch Kuskow , accompanied by the American ship O'Cain under the command of J. Winship , sailed south on the coast, where it was near Dundas Island from Tsimshian or Tlingit, both of which had had bad experiences with the Russians. were attacked. The American captain Samuel Hill, who was lying with his brig Otter at Dundas, threatened the Russians to ally with the Indians if they allowed an open fight with the Tsimshian. The Russians sailed north again with 1,400 otter skins.

Web links

Dundas Island . In: BC Geographical Names (English)
Dundas Islands . In: BC Geographical Names (English)

supporting documents

^ The Atlas of Canada. Sea Islands. Natural Resources Canada, archived from the original on January 22, 2013 ; accessed on September 28, 2015 .
^ Andrew Scott: The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names: A Complete Reference to Coastal British Columbia . Harbor Publishing, Madeira Park, BC 2009, ISBN 978-1-55017-484-7 , pp. 171-172 (English).
^ Bishop Davenport: A History and New Gazetteer, or Geographical Dictionary, of North America and the West Indies , New York: SW Benedict 1843, p. 286.
↑ Andrei Val'terovich Grinev: The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741-1867 , University of Nebraska in 2005, S. 149f. (Russian edition 1991).

[1] The Atlas of Canada. Sea Islands. Natural Resources Canada, archived from the original on January 22, 2013 ; accessed on September 28, 2015 .

[2] Andrew Scott: The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names: A Complete Reference to Coastal British Columbia . Harbor Publishing, Madeira Park, BC 2009, ISBN 978-1-55017-484-7 , pp. 171-172 (English).

[3] Bishop Davenport: A History and New Gazetteer, or Geographical Dictionary, of North America and the West Indies , New York: SW Benedict 1843, p. 286.

[4] Andrei Val'terovich Grinev: The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741-1867 , University of Nebraska in 2005, S. 149f. (Russian edition 1991).