NRC Expeditions: Background

 

Map showing the routes of the NRC Expeditions

Between 1902-1904 three expeditions were carried out in the name of exploration and discovery that would turn Novasola from an unknown backwater to a land rich in wonders and opportunity.  

Novasola has been inhabited by people for at least 16,000 years but remained relatively unknown to western science until quite recently. Native cultures on the island have evolved since time immemorial to thrive on the island and have adapted to local conditions. Their knowledge of the area, its geography, climate, flora and fauna, passed down through oral tradition, are obvious and were unparallelled for most of history. Unfortunately much of that knowledge was ignored, overlooked, and destroyed by western colonizers, who then had to make their discoveries for themselves all over again.  

The island was first discovered by Europeans in 1760 by Franscisco Ricci during his pacific expedition. He and his crew circumnavigated the island and made sporadic landfalls for resources and trading opportunities with indigenous groups, creating the first maps and written accounts of the region. Ricci’s original intention was to sail north along the coast from California to British Columbia, but a storm blew his ship off course and a long period of poor weather prevented proper navigation. The ship eventually sailed close enough for a crew member to spot what is now East Francis Island. Though he had been the first, it was almost entirely up to luck that Ricci had discovered Novasola. Nineteen years earlier the Great Northern Expedition, the Russian expedition to explore the north pacific and discover Alaska helmed by Vitus Bering, had sailed through what is now called the Ricci Strait. Evidently, they either sailed too far north or the weather was uncooperative for them to spy the island, though Georg Willhelm Steller, the expedition’s naturalist and surgeon, did claim to have seen land to the south during the voyage but was ignored by the rest of the crew because he had a history of making inaccurate claims. If indeed he did see land to the south, it would likely have been the peaks of the Steller Range, the northernmost mountains in the Paramounts later named after him. Russian traders and fur trappers had already begun traveling and exploiting the north pacific including the Aleutian Islands, Alaska and the Ricci Strait, and it’s entirely possible, if not likely, that some had seen or even landed on Novasola but no records were made. In 1778, eighteen years after Ricci’s discovery, James Cook sailed past Novasola in his third voyage and stopped on the west coast. These first encounters with the region would provide the earliest accounts, records, maps, and specimens from Novasola and catapult it into the European worldview: a new land ripe with resources and wealth, ready for colonization. However, apart from some early races for colonization, Novasola would prove strangely overlooked by the western world.  

Soon after the discovery of Novasola was made public many European powers vied for partial or full control of the island, mainly Russia, Spain, and England. Russian traders had already established routes through the Ricci Strait and had colonies or other claims to many parts of nearby Alaska, so unsurprisingly it was Russia that established the first major western presence on Novasola. Soon after 1760 Russians began hunting Novasolan waters and establishing trading posts along the coasts, especially the north and west coasts which hosted more abundant sea otter populations, including Vodograd in 1769. Spain would send numerous expeditions to Novasola, but many failed to reach the island and those that did failed to establish permanent claims. In 1780 England sent an expedition and colonization force to Novasola captained by Morgan Fairweather, which founded the colony of Cape George. During this time there were numerous attempts to better record and catalogue Novasola’s geography and natural resources, however this proved to be difficult and progress was slow. George York Baker, the naturalist for the Fairweather expedition, became seriously ill soon after arriving and was unable to make many discoveries or take many specimens. This was strangely emblematic of a broader pattern; a combination of poor weather, unlucky expeditions, difficult terrain, and hostile native peoples meant that few discoveries of special significance were made and those that were made were mostly by Russians who purposefully avoided publishing to prevent other countries from competing with Russian interests.

The general lack of significant exploration of Novasola was partly due to the extreme conditions, and partly a lack of interest. The mapped areas around the Cape George colony comprised mostly of enormous stretches of brackish wetlands and windswept hills difficult to navigate and unsuitable for agriculture. The seas surrounding Novasola are notoriously rough and wracked with frequent storms, which combined with the island’s remote location made it a difficult destination and caused many ships to be lost or wreck. Most of the reports that made it back to Europe detailed a land of hardship, danger, illness, and foul weather, and England, which by 1800 had official claim to all of Novasola, had little interest in expanding the Cape George colony. The Seven Years War, American Revolution, and Napoleonic Wars drastically reduced the amount of resources England was willing or able to commit to pacific colonization efforts, and as a result Novasola remained an afterthought to the empire.     

In 1846 England signed the Oregon Treaty with the United States, ceding both the Oregon territory and the Novasola territory to the US. Now under American control, Novasola again became a major curiosity and American settlers began arriving in droves, especially to the Twin River Basin which proved to be an extremely productive agricultural area. This colonization increased dramatically not long after when gold was discovered in the Paramounts, leading to a Novasolan gold rush. Along with settlers and workers, Novasola saw an influx of scientists. Naturalists, ethnographers, geologists, and the like began flocking to the island which had previously remained unstudied. The next 60 years saw an exponential increase in the amount of scientific knowledge of Novasola, published and otherwise. Still, Novasolan knowledge would be plagued by complications. Governance of the Novasola Territory for much of that period was chaotic, unpredictable, and often seemingly absent altogether. By 1890 significant portions of the island had either been colonized, developed, or explored and much of the island’s resources and ecology recorded, but there was no order to these records and many were never made public, let alone public outside the territory. As such, Novasola remained a mysterious frontier land of wilderness and myth, often called “the Far Frontier” or “Fastwater Frontier”.  

In 1898, then-Vice President Theodore Roosevelt suggested to President William McKinley that the US federal government expend the effort to centralize all its information on the Novasola Territory. At that time the federal government did not even have a proper, up-to-date map of the territory, let alone reliable information on its topography or resources. Roosevelt, a major outdoor enthusiast and hobby naturalist, was always fascinated with Novasola and dreamed of exploring America’s wildernesses, including the Fastwaters, especially to hunt the native big game. It’s entirely fitting with his character that Roosevelt made explicit mention of the “vast herds of uncountable quadrupeds naive to gunpowder” said to be roaming the island in his petition to McKinley. McKinley, seeing the obvious benefit to a full Novasola scientific and strategic inventory, immediately ordered a series of expeditions and gave Roosevelt special authority over much of the process.

The Novasola Territory exploratory expeditions, or the NRC Expeditions as they would later be called, would be the first comprehensive overland exploration of Novasola. Though much of the island had previously been explored and mapped by Captains Primo Ricci and Fairweather, and others, mostly settlers, pioneers, and miners, no one had compiled all the maps and information into one dataset. What’s more, much of the available information on Novasola was limited to coastal regions. Three expeditions were approved to provide Washington with a comprehensive record of the territory. These expeditions would record the island’s geography, biodiversity, and ethnography, creating a modern and accurate map and cataloging the island’s natural resources, flora and fauna, and indigenous cultures, through exploration and by compiling existing knowledge. The expeditions were to be carried out by a large group of scientists, explorers, and support personnel, collectively called the Novasola Research Corps (NRC). Much like Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, the NRC was created as a special unit of the army, despite serving generally scientific aims.

Planning for the expeditions began in 1989, and one of the first tasks was to hire a commander for the Corps. Roosevelt soon hired Army Captain Virgil Dyer, whom Roosevelt had met in North Dakota and had fought in the Battle of the Little Bighorn years earlier. Dyer was known to be rugged, capable, reliable, and steadfast, had first-hand experience interacting with and forming positive relationships with native tribes as well as battle experience, and had extensive experience with cartography and land surveying. He was an obvious choice. Dyer was given much authority over the NRC’s personnel, goals, and planning. He would employ scientists in the fields of geology, hydrology, biology, chemistry, cartography, ethnography, as well as a number of army personnel, and support staff including everything from boat pilots, carpenters, postal workers, cooks, blacksmiths, and so on. The NRC was subdivided into research categories, with each division made up of one to five experts in that field. In total, over 50 people would serve as full members of the Corps and many others would work with or alongside the Corps, including a large number of work animals.

NRC members, 1904

In three expeditions the Corps catalogued and researched the island, making numerous discoveries as they travelled, and between expeditions the Corps would research, locate, and compile any existing information, as well as prep for the next journey. The Corp’s first expedition left from Cape George on April 8, 1902 and covered much of the island east of the mountain divide, finding mostly grassland, chaparral, wetlands, and temperate forests, and lasted until mid-November that year. A second trip explored much of the western lands, finding dense taiga and temperate rainforest, which left from Cape George on April 2, 1903 and lasted again until early-December. A final trip departed May 15, 1904 and lasted until September 15 which explored parts of the Paramount mountain range. Each expedition would require vast amounts of resources and forward planning. During each expedition all Corps members were meant to keep daily journals, though in the end this would not be enforced. After each expedition was complete the Corps would send their findings back to Washington D.C. to be reviewed by the president. By the end of the third trip most of Novasola had been explored, and a single detailed and accurate map could be compiled, as well as many local or regional maps. The amount of ground covered by the Corps during the short duration of the expeditions was and still is staggering. Because much of the mapping and planning was done in the months prior to departure, the Corps could afford to travel swiftly through many of the better-known areas, travelling by boat mostly but also much on foot and horseback. The Corps described or collected a solid majority of Novasola's endemic animal and plant life, recorded encounters with most surviving indigenous tribes or nations, and catalogued much of the territory's major regions and navigable waters.

While this exhibit is focused on the works of Richard Reichwald, the NRC’s ornithologist, it is valuable to understand the NRC Expeditions and their importance in Novasolan history. Until the expeditions little information about Novasola could be found outside the region. The information complied by the Corps changed the way the US understood and viewed Novasola and would indirectly lead to Novasola’s statehood almost 60 years later. It also serves as a record of Novasola at the time. Novasola, as an island and subject to colonization and manifest destiny, has lost so much. Many native species are now extinct, and numerous indigenous tribes and cultures were destroyed or lost. The region has changed significantly, and the NRC Expeditions provide the best and most thorough accounts and primary source information about Novasola at the turn of the 20^th Century, a crucial moment and turning point in American history.