The Nootka and and Sandwich vocabularies in the Relación de la entrada de San Lorenzo de Nutka (1789)

Nootka is an historical fur-trading centre in Yuquot, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. In 1788, the Spanish king Charles III sent an expedition to Nootka commanded by Ignacio Arteaga (1731-1783). A year later, Spain established a military post, San Lorenzo de Nutka, at Yuquot in 1789 which existed until 1795. The missionaries who arrived with the sailors were urged to learn the vernacular languages in order to evangelize. In chapter 5 of the Relación de la entrada deSan Lorenzo de Nutka, the author copies a short vocabulary Spanish-Nutkeño (115 words) made by friar Lorenzo Socies (?-?) and another short vocabulary Spanish-Sandwich (more than 200 words) compiled by the same friar with the help of a Hawaiian boy, who had been under British Captain James Colnett’s (1753-1806) command but had joined the Spanish sailors during the British-Spanish dispute over Nootka. In this paper we will briefly describe the characteristics of these two vocabularies focusing on the entry words and context.