We left the Bay Area on Friday June 18th to drive up to Vancouver Island. It should have only taken two days but I left a day early in case we needed the extra time to repair my poor long suffering VW Bus. When I told my mechanic that I was driving the bus up to Montana recently, he cringed and told me I was a brave man. When I told him that now I was driving it up to Vancouver he didn't cringe, but told me later that he cringed internally. He said that he did trips like this in questionable cars when he was young, so I must still be young at heart to do this sort of trip in my beat-up VW Bus.
My van ran well all the way up the Olympic Peninsula and left the United States for the first time since it rolled off the boat from Germany. We took it across to the city of Victoria on Vancouver by ferry and used our extra day to go to the "First Peoples" museum and to an IMAX movie. Then we drove the last few miles north to a campground called "Popeye's" on an Indian (I mean "First Peoples") reservation.
In Canada the natives are called "First Peoples" or "First Nations" instead of Indians. I suppose anything is better than being called a name based on a navigation error by a rapacious white explorer. But when I learned the term "First Peoples" I was amused and wanted to ask about the evidence of a Paleolithic people who lived on this continent BEFORE the current wave of "natives" arrived across the Bearing Strait. There is no evidence that these Paleolithic people were aggressively wiped out by the newcomers but also no evidence to the contrary. They may have been culturally overwhelmed and absorbed into the gene pool. I, However, like to think that they were out-hunted by the advanced technology of the newcomers who had spear throwers, bows and arrows, and kayaks.
Then we white guys arrived ten thousand years later and out-did the previous wave of peoples with our advanced technology of gunpowder and sailing ships. It is a natural social/evolutionary process and we don't have to beat our breasts about it too much. It is not an excuse for genocide and it certainly could have been done in a less rapacious manner. The maps would look very different today if the "First Nations" had been allowed to stand. They could not help but be overwhelmed by European culture and people so change would have come either way. It was a process similar to what the "First Peoples" did to the Paleolithic peoples who came before them. In a wonderful twist, a mummified body of one of those Paleolithic people has recently been found, and his features are European!
