The ancestors of today’s Native Americans migrated from Asia to North America at least 12,000 years ago, becoming the earliest known people in the Mukilteo area, while later possible visits to the Washington coast by early Polynesians, a Chinese navigator in 458, Sir Francis Drake in 1579, and Juan de Fuca in 1592 remain uncertain. In the 18th century, Russian fur traders came down from Siberia and Spanish navigators came up from Mexico, mapping and claiming parts of the coast, but Captain George Vancouver became the central explorer of the region when his British expedition mapped the western coast of North America from California to Alaska between 1791 and 1795. On May 30, 1792, Vancouver’s ship Discovery anchored off the point later associated with Mukilteo, which he called Rose Point, and the next morning Vancouver made measurements there while the expedition’s naturalist, Archibald Menzies, explored the beaches, collected plant specimens, and made observations. Rose Point remained the English-language name until 1841, when United States Naval Lieutenant Charles Wilkes named it Point Elliot on a map produced for the American government as part of a broader effort to strengthen United States claims in a region where trade was still largely dominated by Britain’s Hudson’s Bay Company. Resistance by Native Americans to immigration into Washington Territory after 1853 led to a series of ten treaties, and the second of these, the Point Elliott Treaty, was signed at this site on January 22, 1855; although Wilkes had written Point Elliot, the treaty misspelled the name, and the Point Elliott form remained after Congress ratified it in 1859. In 1860, Morris Frost and Jacob Fowler made the first official land claims in Mukilteo, whose founders chose the Snohomish name Muckl-te-ho, written in English as Mukilteo, instead of Rose Point or Point Elliot; the name probably meant long neck of the goose in reference to the narrow spit of land there, though it may also have referred to a good camping ground or meeting place.