Talk:Tonquin (1807 ship)

Demise
As I hope you realize I am trying to be sensitive to the native side of the story. Unlike the sources, I did not use the term massacre and made sure to list the insult first that led to the attack. Adding their side of the story would be good, but I'm thinking maybe an article on the event Tonquin (event) might be more appropriate to cover all sides, including the numerous theories on how the ship was blown up. As to this article I hope I can find some more info on before its last voyage. Aboutmovies 08:39, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Something for the event portion: "At the time, the wives of many Hudson's Bay field employees were Native Americans, including McLoughlin's wife Marguerite. (She was the daughter of a Native American woman and a trader named Jean-Eitenne Waddens and the widow of Alexander McKay, a trader killed in the Tonquin massacre. See Jonathan Thorn)." From John McLoughlin article. Aboutmovies 16:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * More if needed: McKay had been on Alexander Mackenzie’s expedition.


 * I'm thinking there really needs to be a seperate article on the events that led up to and destroyed the ship. See if you agree with these reasons:
 * 1: The attack is probably more important to BC history, but that part of the event will always be below the other parts due to chronological order. Thus it might look to dominate.
 * 2: The article is a ship article, so expanding too much into extraneous things changes the article, but those extraneous events need a place in the encyclopedia.
 * 3: The name legacy (the pass and Valley in Canada) comes from the event, not so much the ship so it would make more sense to move that to a seperate article.
 * 4: Like any background to the attack, such as native histilities towards Europeans that pre-date the Tonquin visit, post destruction history would be irrelevant to the ship article but very important to the attack article. I may have read somewhere that after the destruction there was some sort of retaliation by Europeans, but that may have been in a different situations. If so, it could be added to the event article. As could background about those invovled like Thorn's temperment/treatment of others and the interesting info I found on McKay.
 * So that's my thoughts. I'm not sure what the title should be, but historically I've seen it refered to as the Tonquin Massacre, which might work since from a POV standpoint both sides lost a lot of men. So its ambigous as to who was massacred. Tonquin Incident might work, but I'm thinking people would get confused with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident from the Vietnam War. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Aboutmovies 18:55, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * While trading with the local inhabitants, Captain Thorn tossed some otter pelts at a local chief that was on board the ship trading. This insult lead to the locals returning to the ship the next day to seek revenge.  After just watching this on Discovery I am no sure the demise occurred as quoted. According to the program there are a number of versions coming from both written and oral history. I believe some more research is required on the subject. Webhat (talk) 04:29, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like to know more about any surviving written firsthand accounts of the demise of the Tonquin. Franchere was not a witness (he was at Astoria at the time), and the other accounts cited above do not seem to have any references to firsthand accounts. If there are firsthand accounts, they should definitely be cited. Country Wife (talk) 16:40, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Source for more on the Tonquin
I just finished transcribing the account given in John Hopper's Indian Wars in the Pacific Northwest (1996). It appears to be based on the Akrigg account which I'll add later, but there are differences; spelling and punctuation idiosyncracies and certain small errors in Hopper have been left as-is. ("Tacoutche Tesse" as the name of the Columbia River was Dakelh, I thought, not Chinookan).Skookum1 21:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Interpreter of Tonquin
Sources vary on the background of the ships hired interpreter, with most being based off of Irving Washington's Astoria that states he was of Chinookan and British ancestry. An article I recently read, appropriately titled "The Identity of the Tonquin's Interpreter" found in the Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 98, makes a convincing case using the journal of Fort Astorias that the man was from the Quinalt nation (he is directly refereed to be from that cultural group in the source materials). I've updated the article to reflect this. Voltaire&#39;s Vaquero (talk) 06:12, 10 January 2016 (UTC)


 * i saw bad grammar above in main but I bet wiki  zealots will delete this entry  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.38.155.134 (talk) 12:59, 6 September 2022 (UTC)