Maquinna

Maquinna (also transliterated Muquinna, Macuina, Maquilla) was the chief of the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Nootka Sound, during the heyday of the maritime fur trade in the 1780s and 1790s on the Pacific Northwest Coast. His people are today known as the Mowachaht and reside today with their kin, the Muchalaht, at Gold River, British Columbia, Canada.

History

Maquinna was a powerful chief whose summer coastal village, Yuquot, became the first important anchorage in the European jockeying for power and commerce as the era of the maritime fur trade began. Yuquot became known as Friendly Cove after the British explorer Captain James Cook visited in 1778. Cook did not record the name of the chief of Yuquot, who may not have been Maquinna in 1778, even though writers have often assumed it was.Imperial Spain had sent two voyages to the region before Cook's visit, including Juan Pérez, who in 1774 had anchored in or near the entrance of Nootka Sound. In response to Russian activity in Alaska and the increasing visits by British fur-traders, Spain, which claimed the coast from Mexico to Alaska, asserted its authority by launching further voyages to the Pacific Northwest, including scientific and surveying expeditions. In 1788, John Meares explored Nootka Sound and the neighboring coasts and claimed to have bought some land from Maquinna, where he built a trading post. In 1789, Esteban José Martínez of the Spanish Navy occupied and claimed Nootka Sound for Spain. He built Fort San Miguel and a settlement called Santa Cruz de Nuca. Ensuing events led to Martínez's seizure of the British subject James Colnett and several British ships, which provoked an international episode known as the Nootka Crisis.

Maquinna (volcano)

Maquinna is an active submarine mud volcano on the Coast of British Columbia, Canada, located 16-18 kilometers west of Vancouver Island. It rises approximately 30 m (98 ft) above the mean level of the northeastern Pacific Ocean and lies directly along the southern expression of the left laterial, strike slip Nootka Fault.

Geology

Maquinna is one of the few mud volcanoes documented in the northeast Pacific. It is 1.5 km (1 mi) across, contains a breached caldera and two small summit craters.

Scientific studies of Maquinna showed strong, co-registered thermal, particulate, and unusual oxygen that extends 50 m (164 ft) above the volcano, indicating a water column. This data suggests the volcano is actively venting warm hydrothermal fluids.

The formation of Maquinna is thought to be high sediment accumulation and horizontal tectonic compression associated with accretionary prism formation adjacent to the west coast of Vancouver Island supporting overpressuring of fluids at depth along the Nootka Fault zone, resulting the formation of Maquinna.