A North Pacific Mystery

In his 1758 Histoire de la Louisiane, French colonist Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz recounts the remarkable tale of a trans-continental journey by the venerable Yazoo Amerindian Moncacht-apé. In the most far-fetched episode in the account, du Pratz has Moncacht-apé encountering voyagers from north of Japan on the shores of the Pacific Northwest—decades before we usually think of varied Europeans, North Americans, and Pacific Islanders coming together on the coasts of today’s Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. In “A North Pacific Mystery,” I use an examination of such arresting incidents in Moncacht-apé’s story to contemplate the appropriate geographic frame for early American history, to muse about the care and handling of ambiguous evidence and implausible hypotheses, and to venture a few rash propositions about enticing but unlikely North Pacific maritime meetings. In particular, I suggest that evaluation of du Pratz’s trans-Pacific speculation makes it easier to envisage North Pacific maritime ventures before the voyages of Vitus Bering and to credit du Pratz’s report of a spectacular instance of Indigenous American exploration.