Company, Crown and Colony: The Hudson’s Bay Company and Territorial Endeavour in Western Canada 9780755625345, 9781350165649

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Figures

1.1 Roderick Finlayson’s journey to Fort Vancouver, 1839 Maura Pringle, Senior Cartographic Technician, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University Belfast 2.1 Northwest North America, places mentioned in the text Maura Pringle 2.2 Vancouver Island, places mentioned in the text Maura Pringle 2.3 The voyage of Norman Morrison, 1849–50 Maura Pringle 2.4 Age–sex pyramid, European population, Vancouver Island, 1855 Maura Pringle 2.5 Victoria, 1854 Image A–04104 courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives 2.6 Victoria, 1858 © The British Library Board (10470.P.2) 4.1 The Hudson’s Bay Company chimney at Fort Rupert Stephen Royle 5.1 Governor Richard Blanshard Image A-01112 courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives 5.2 Richard Blanshard’s journey to Vancouver Island, 1849–50 Maura Pringle 5.3 Governor James Douglas Image A–01227 courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives 6.1 Members of the Vancouver Island Assembly, 1856 Image B–06678 courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives

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16 17 29 38 57 57 134 150 151 161 177

Tables

2.1 Items supplied to surveying party, Vancouver Island, 1852 2.2 Migrants to Vancouver Island, 1848–52 2.3 Fare-paying passengers taken by the Hudson’s Bay Company to Vancouver Island, 1848–54 2.4 Passengers for three voyages to Vancouver Island, 1850–52 2.5 Lands sold in Vancouver Island before 1858 2.6 Agricultural holdings in Vancouver Island Colony sold in 1858 4.1 Exports from Vancouver Island, 1853 4.2 Vancouver Island financial statistics, 1864–65 6.1 Puget Sound Agricultural Company holdings, Vancouver Island, 1853

246 246 247 247 248 252 252 253 253

Acknowledgements

Financial support for the research for this book was provided by the British Association of Canadian Studies, together with the British Association for American Studies and the Eccles Centre at the British Library with the award of the Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship in North American Studies 2007–2008 for research at the British Library in London. I used funds from Queen’s University Belfast to help meet some of the expenses for visits to the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the British Columbia Archives in Victoria and site visits, especially to Fort Rupert, British Columbia, which has the only extant structure from the period. And thanks to the man at the car hire desk at Port Hardy airport, who told me where to look for it. Members of the Indigenous Peoples Speciality Group of the Association of American Geographers helped me with the issue of First Nation names. Many thanks to Edwin Aiken for acting as copy editor and proofreader. Thanks to my family for tolerating my frequent absences.

1 COMPANIES, COLONIALISM AND FRONTIERS IN THE NEW WORLD

Colonies, frontiers, companies and islands: ‘conceptualising, mapping and organising spaces’ This book considers that part of the colonial story belonging to a small, remote island that had a separate administrative existence for only a few years in the mid-nineteenth century: Vancouver Island Colony, now an offshore part of British Columbia in western Canada. This does not mean the issues that this colony faced were different from those confronting larger territories, only that they applied on a smaller scale and for a shorter period of time. Colonialism by the mid-nineteenth century was developing away from encounter, discovering a place was there, and exploration, learning what was there, towards exploitation, profiting from what was there. Thus for Vancouver Island itself, David Rossiter has identified transformation from a situation where resources were ‘procured by Native peoples working in Native territory and sold at small islands of white resettlement’ to an ‘era of staples production … an industrial economy that required imported labour working on pre-empted and privately secured land’.1 Regulation of colonialism was changing too. The early, freewheeling period when merchant companies might perform colonial acts of possession in their state’s name, sometimes without much direct oversight, was ending, for although the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) played a central role in the events to be described here, it operated within an increasingly tightly regulated framework as colonial control developed relatively sophisticated management systems. In the Vancouver Island story a major sub-plot is the way in which the state, often in this British case called the ‘crown’, through the agency of metropolitan colonial administrators, interacted with the commercial company, a relationship complicated by the decisions of the colonial governor on the island. Both the character of the various colonial actors and system under which they operated are of much interest at this period as might be

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appreciated from Zoe Laidlaw’s research into colonial governance.2 Then, as Joel Wainwright has concluded generally from his case study of British Honduras (Belize): ‘colonial power is always woven through a broad web of social relations within which are elements that are only tangentially connected to capitalist state power’.3 That will certainly prove to be the case on Vancouver Island, for the social relations between some of the players were troubled to say the least. Wainwright’s research was on the impact of British colonialism on the indigenous Maya community and he found that: ‘imperial policies – emerging through state and scientific institutions, cultural practices and capitalist ventures – required particular ways of conceptualising, mapping and organising spaces and territories which, in turn, transformed the geographies of indigenous communities, livelihoods, and identities’.4 The organisation, indeed the mapping in a literal sense, of colonial space will be seen in this book, whilst Wainwright’s other themes will also be recognised, for on Vancouver Island certainly there developed postcolonial indigenous communities whose economies and societies had been transformed by European encounter and exploitation. Another aspect of colonialism is the development of settlement and landscape. The story here is of British colonialism as it takes place after the formation of the United Kingdom; however, ‘English’ is the closest approximation offered in the spatial categories found in the book on European colonial possession by Patricia Seed. She shows that by the time the first colonies were established under English rule private land occupation and use were the norm, even where settlements began with collective grants. Seed demonstrated that fenced or hedged plots would then develop, a commonality, which she summarised as ‘building fences, planting gardens, constructing houses – the English signs of possession’.5 Vancouver Island is on the western edge of North America, as far from the bases of early European penetration from the east of the continent as it is possible to get. Thus the island might be depicted as one of the ultimate North American frontiers. Understanding of the frontier, at least in the USA, was long associated with the thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, first developed in the late nineteenth century. He suggested that as the settlers who arrived on the east coast in the seventeenth century were Europeans, however distasteful they might have found the continent from which they were fleeing, they brought with them European social norms. However, the setting of the new world was unfamiliar to them, especially the empty spaces and uncultivated arable land, which forced them to adapt, to become settlers on a frontier, a marrying of established civilization with wilderness. Over time the colonies became the United States, which then began to fulfill its ‘manifest destiny’ to stretch from ‘sea to shining sea’ as the line from America the Beautiful has

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it, and the frontier moved ever further from the original contact points. American characteristics began to overwhelm the European heritage and the citizens adopted more individualistic norms such as self-reliance and developing a distrust for authority, characteristics which are associated with Americans, especially western Americans, today.6 One certainly should not carelessly ascribe American societal norms to Canada, for the Canadian character is somewhat distinct, but the frontier thesis has certainly been applied in a Canadian context,7 and evidence for it might be sought here. More recently, studies of the American west have emphasized the places and peoples involved, their gender, class, race and the environment rather than just the impact of spatial expansion.8 Spatially, the frontier in both the USA and Canada is often considered to have been a progression, if not on a unified front, westwards from the original reception areas on the east coast. There were tongues of progress, if that is what it was, along transport corridors such as trails, rivers and later railway routes. There were also incursions inland from the west coast; it often being easier for settlers from the east of the continent and, especially, migrants from Europe to reach the western coasts of North America by sea, even when ships still had to round Cape Horn prior to the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. Ron Johnston allowed for this in his four-stage model of colonisation at a continental scale, with development channelled through a series of ‘gateway cities’.9 It showed that whilst development takes place principally from the coast closest to the metropolitan homeland, the east coast in the version of the model Johnson presented as well as in both the USA and Canada, there is also a less significant movement inland from west coast gateway cities. Was Vancouver Island’s Fort Victoria such a settlement? The third element in this section is ‘companies’. Trading companies were an integral part of the early colonial endeavour. The states or their monarchs would license companies so they could take the risks of trade and travel in a dangerous world and, although they may have been arms of the state, their activity came at little cost to the national coffers, whilst through duties and taxes the state could participate in any profit – note King Charles II’s phrase about ‘great advantage to us’ in the Hudson’s Bay Company charter below. Douglas MacKay in his history of the HBC listed many antecedent chartered companies, which existed in some cases well before the HBC’s foundation in 1670: the Muscovy Company, the Eastland Company, the Levant Company, the East India Company, the Virginia Company.10 There were others not mentioned there, including those of rival European nations – both the French and the Dutch had East India Companies, for example, and there were others licensed by rulers elsewhere in Europe.11 In Canada, there was a number of trading or colonisation companies such as the North West Company and the

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Canada Company,12 as well as the more significant organisation studied in this book, the Hudson’s Bay Company. Some of these companies held territory and were de facto, even de jure colonial rulers: the Virginia Company, for example, ruled the colony of Virginia from 1606 to 1625; the Somers Island Company, later the Bermuda Company, ruled that archipelago in the seventeenth century until its rights were rescinded; the East India Company ruled St Helena from 1659 until 1834 in addition to its rather larger ventures in India. The present author has written on these and the other company colonies before, especially around a detailed study of the early period of the East India Company rule of St Helena.13 In this book he concluded that company colonies could not succeed, the tensions between the commercial imperatives of the company and the colonial, political and strategic imperatives of the state that chartered it were too great, the conflicts of interest too profound. ‘The duties and obligations inherent in the exercise of sovereignty cannot be borne by a private company’ was the distressing conclusion reached by the leader of the German company colony on New Guinea in 1893.14 One final theme to be explored is that of insularity. Small islands share characteristics such as peripherality, isolation, lack of scale and limited resources, regarding either or both quantity and range. They tend to be powerless politically and militarily and, until the modern development of tourism rescued some, weak economically. Small islands have had a tendency to lose population at least relatively, often absolutely, or in colonial situations they find it difficult to attract migrants. Their scale or lack of attraction might see only a weak leadership, with people of talent seeking better opportunities elsewhere. In situations where a colonial island had particular comparative advantages because of a strategic loc– ation or the ability to produce particular minerals or crops, matters might be different.15 Putting together the themes of colonialism, the frontier, companies and islands, this book will consider how the Hudson’s Bay Company fared with their grant of Vancouver Island and discover how far Van– couver Island Colony and the associated areas of western Canada met the norms of other colonial endeavours. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s role in colonial endeavour: ‘beneficial … to the parties … engaged in trade’ The Hudson’s Bay Company was established under a charter granted by King Charles II in 1670. The lengthy document acknowledged the leadership of Charles’s cousin, Prince Rupert, of a group of investors or ‘adventurers’ trying ‘for the discovery of a new passage into the South Sea, and the finding of some trade for furs, minerals and other consid-

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erable commodities.’ Now under Prince Rupert, the ‘Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay’ needed to be encouraged ‘to proceed further in pursuance of their said design, by means whereof there may probably arise very great advantage to us and our kingdom’. The adventurers were granted ‘the sole trade and commerce of all those seas, straits, bays, rivers, lakes creeks and sounds … that lie within the entrance of … Hudson’s Straits, together with all the lands, countries and territories upon the coasts … not actually possessed by any of our subjects, or by the subjects of any other Christian Prince or State’,16 in other words, the drainage basin of Hudson’s Bay. The company could make laws as long as they were not repugnant to those of England and it held a monopoly on trade. This area of almost 4 million square kilometres (over 1.5 million square miles) was to ‘be from henceforth reckoned and reputed as one of our plantations or colonies in America called “Rupert’s Land”’ and was ‘under the government of the said company’. From 1811, 300,000 square kilometres (115,000 square miles) of this huge territory was subcontracted to the Earl of Selkirk, who was seeking to resettle Scots who had lost their lands in the Highland Clearances. This became the Red River Colony and, despite hopes that it would become a major agricultural region, it was never particularly successful. Sir John Pelly, the HBC governor, estimated Red River to have a population of 5,000 by 1838, principally of ‘Indians and half castes’ who were ‘very difficult of management’.17 By the 1850s the HBC had lost interest in Red River’s support and the Scots were outnumbered by the Métis, the ethnic group descendent from French fur trappers and indigenous women. In 1869–70 came the Red River Rebellion under the Métis leader Louis Riel, which saw the area become the province of Manitoba.18 Rupert’s Land itself, except for small areas below 49°N which were incorporated into the USA, was sold by the HBC to Canada following the Rupert’s Land Act of 1868, the Canadian government assuming control in July 1870.19 In the 1857 parliamentary enquiry into the HBC,20 Rupert’s Land was one of three ‘descriptions’ of territories held by the company: ‘land held by charter’. Another was Vancouver Island, also chartered, but in a different and later arrangement. The other was the territory ‘held by licence’, or ‘the Indian Territory’, where licence of exclusive trade had been renewed for the company in 1838 for twenty-one years.21 This ‘Indian Territory’ was reported to be in a sad state by Sir George Simpson, the HBC resident governor in North America prior to 1821 when the HBC were first granted exclusive trading rights thereafter: ‘a scene of violence and outrage, productive of injury to the native population and of the worst consequences, amounting in very many instances to the loss of life amongst the whites actively engaged therein and to a vast sacrifice of

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property to the parties interested, all arising from the violent competition that existed among the traders’.22 This competition was between the HBC and the North West Company.23 ‘At length’, wrote Sir John Pelly, ‘in the year 1821, when the violence of the conduct had nearly exhausted the means of both parties, an arrangement was entered into between them by which their interests became united under the management of the HBC.’24 Since 1821, Simpson observed, the territory had been ‘in a state of the most perfect tranquillity, beneficial as well to the Indian population as to the parties interested and engaged in trade’.25 At the 1821 merger the HBC inherited two North West Company holdings of such ‘Indian Territory’ west of the Rockies in what was then called Oregon Country, well outside its original focus of Rupert’s Land. One, New Caledonia, which was to become British Columbia, was of limited importance until the Fraser River gold rush of 1858. The other, Columbia District, around the Columbia River, could be more easily developed and the company built substantial posts at Fort Vancouver in 1825 and Fort Nisqually in 1833. In 1827 New Caledonia was annexed into a new Columbia Department. Whilst the HBC enjoyed a complete monopoly of trade in Rupert’s Land, in this Columbia Department, although British companies could not compete with the HBC, there was no practical way in the sparsely populated region to restrict the operation of either Americans or Russians (from Russian America, which was only to become American territory as Alaska in 1867). Indeed, it was increaseing American settlement and expansionism into the Columbia that led the HBC to set up Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island in 1843 to replace Fort Vancouver as the company’s regional depot.26 The wisdom of this preparatory move was seen three years later when, after some decades of contested sovereignty claims in the region, the Oregon Question, as it was called, was settled by the Oregon Treaty, with the line of the USABritish North America boundary east of the Rocky Mountains at 49°N being extended to the Pacific but then dipping below the southern edge of Vancouver Island to ensure that Fort Victoria remained in British territory. The HBC and its sister company, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, were allowed to remain in operation on the Columbia River and Puget Sound in what had become the United States under the 1846 treaty but were eventually closed down, with Fort Victoria becoming the regional focus of company activity. At first the company interacted with its new territory from its headquarters at York Factory on Hudson’s Bay using overland routes via rivers, lakes and trails before it became more usual for the west coast to be accessed by ships sailing round Cape Horn. The overland journeys were fearsome affairs; details of one have been reproduced as Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Roderick Finlayson’s journey to Fort Vancouver, 1839

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This journey was made by Roderick Finlayson, who was sent in 1839 from the post at Fort William on the Ottawa River (now in Sheenboro, Québec) to Fort Vancouver (now Vancouver, Washington) via York Factory, where his party collected supplies. His trip involved birch bark canoes of different sizes; the larger, wooden HBC boats called bateaux; portage (overland trips carrying the canoes); and long journeys on horseback. He traversed eight rivers and five lakes and visited at least nine HBC posts on the way.27 These posts would have been the first European settlements in their region and this helps to illustrate the significance of the HBC in the colonial endeavour, its opening up of the Canadian frontier. Some HBC forts, like York Factory itself, did not lead to later urban settlement, but many did including, on Finlayson’s journey, Edmonton and Vancouver, Washington. The journey also helps to illustrate the organisational skills of the HBC, its extensive physical reach, the determination of the company servants in overcoming hardship, and the frontier nature of its operation in what became western Canada and the northwest United States. Roderick Finlayson became an important actor in the story told in this book; he was to build Fort Victoria in 1843 and live there until his death in 1892. In its early years as an HBC trading post, Finlayson was the officer in charge, subject to the control of senior officials on the Columbia River. This regional leadership reported in November 1847 that Vancouver Island was making rapid progress as Finlayson was ‘working with a high degree of haste and judgement’.28 Finlayson’s role along with that of his trading post and, indeed, the HBC in the region were then transformed as Fort Victoria became a colonial capital. ‘The worst instrument that could be selected for colonizing’: the Hudson’s Bay Company accession of Vancouver Island Sir John Pelly, the governor of the HBC, was anxious about the prospects for the company in what became western Canada after the Oregon Treaty in 1846, for he asked the colonial secretary, Earl Grey, whether the HBC would be ‘confirmed in the possession of lands north of the 49th parallel’.29 The reply asked him ‘with as much exactness as may be possible, what is the extent and what are the natural or other limits of the territory in the possession of which they desire to be confirmed’.30 Pelly claimed that any grant of territory would be ‘perfectly valid’, for there was nothing in the 1670 charter to preclude the company holding further territory outside Rupert’s Land,31 and after further exchanges, he was informed by an official that the colonial secretary was ‘ready to receive and consider the draft of such a grant as the Company would desire to receive of lands belonging to the British Crown’.32 Pelly now wrote directly to Earl Grey, pitching for the HBC to receive a grant of ‘all the territories

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belonging to the Crown which are situated north and west of Rupert’s Land’, which they would govern and colonise, with the significant addition of a rider suiting the fur-trading company, for in brackets after ‘colonise’ came ‘as far as may be possible’.33 There was then a meeting between Pelly and Earl Grey at which it was explained to the HBC chair that the proposal ‘was too extensive for Her Majesty’s Government to entertain’ and Pelly was instructed to prepare a scheme which was ‘more limited and definite in its object’ and would also ‘embrace a plan for the colonization and government of Vancouver’s Island’.34 Pelly did not accept this without protest. In a lengthy and rather cold reply directed to the colonial secretary, not the official who had written to him, he described his meeting with Grey as having been a casual conversation and pitched once more for a large grant to be made to the company, claiming that this would better promote colonisation, for placing all this territory under one governing power would ‘simplify’ matters. However, if that was considered too extensive, the HBC ‘are willing that it should be limited to the territory north of 49°N, bounded on the east by the Rocky Mountains, or even to Vancouver’s Island alone’.35 That same day Pelly wrote another, private, letter to the colonial secretary, which, nonetheless, appears in the British Parliamentary Papers like the other. In this, he repeated his arguments that having the whole territory under the unified authority of the HBC would be best, avoiding any ‘diversity of purpose and conflict of interests’ which might otherwise arise (and, indeed, did when Vancouver Island and British Columbia were separate colonies some years later (see Chapter 7)). Further, the larger area was ‘studded’ with HBC posts and the company had great influence with the indigenous peoples, ‘which I thought a matter well worthy of consideration’. The company ‘would accept any grant, even for the island of Vancouver alone … but … I think you will be of opinion with me … it should be more extensive’. He concluded the long letter – ‘I fear, my Lord, you will think me very prolix’ – by repeating his claim for a large grant ‘in a nutshell’, a container that had to hold another thirty lines.36 The reply, not from Earl Grey, but the official, Benjamin Hawes, was briefer at only thirteen lines: Earl Grey had ‘fully considered’ the matter; the HBC grant ‘should be confined to Vancouver’s Island’.37 There was considerable opposition to the HBC even being granted just Vancouver Island. Much related to commercial jealousy, but there were also comments regarding the probable efficacy of such a procedure for the stimulation of colonisation. In the House of Lords, Baron Monteagle said in August 1848 that ‘No trading company was a fitting depository for the functions of emigration or colonisation: he knew of no example to the contrary. Even the East India Company, the greatest corporation of that kind in the world, had not exhibited any great aptitude

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for colonisation.’38 This can be confirmed by reference to the East India Company’s seventeenth century settlement of St Helena in the south Atlantic, where there was, indeed, a constant struggle to attract sufficient migrants.39 However, despite this problem, urgent practicalities necessitated the employment of the HBC as a colonial agent in Vancouver Island. Lord Monteagle was followed to the dispatch box by the colonial secretary, Earl Grey, who focused on the need for swift action for ‘unless the duty of colonization were promptly undertaken, that island would inevitably fall prey to the irregular appropriation of squatters, of whom a large body comprised chiefly of Mormons already contemplated moving thither. The Government was not prepared to found a colony itself, but had lent a willing ear to the proposal of the Hudson’s Bay Company.’40 James Fitzgerald, who opposed the granting of the island to the HBC, also feared that the ‘island will be taken from us by Mormonites, or other persons, the scum of American society’.41 The Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, are an American religious group established by Joseph Smith in 1830. Following hostility in their initial location in Missouri, Smith relocated his followers to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1839. This new settlement was abandoned in 1846 following further hostility, including the killing of Smith himself. It was thought that Vancouver Island might be the next destination chosen by the Mormons as their new leader, Brigham Young, had singled it out as a potential location for settlement in 1845.42 In the event, the Mormons moved instead to Utah, where they were involved in the Utah War of 1857–58 between followers of the church and the US Government, during which about 30,000 Mormons left their settlements in Northern Utah to live in improvised accommodation elsewhere in the territory. Fears were revived that the Mormons would seek to move to Vancouver Island. The colonial secretary wrote to Governor James Douglas in February 1858 instructing him in the ‘course which ought to be taken in the event of an immigration of the Mormons from the Territory of Utah into British Territory on the NW coast of America’. Whilst many of the Mormons were British by birth, they now lived under another power and were to be treated as any other political exiles and ‘no right of occupation whatsoever are therefore to be granted to them’. They could come as individuals into Vancouver Island Colony provided they did not engage in acts of aggression against the USA and submitted themselves ‘entirely to the laws of England as retained in the Colonial community over which you preside. Polygamy is not tolerated by these laws and if any attempt should be made to continue the disgraceful scandals of that system, I rely in the goodwill of the Legislature and authorities to devise means by which such abuses may be effectually suppressed.’43 A recent study suggests that Douglas was instructed to welcome

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Mormons only because an invasion could not anyway be stopped by force in such a remote location.44 In the end, the Mormons settled their dispute with their government and remained in Utah. The Times editorialised about the grant of Vancouver Island to the HBC at the time of the House of Lords debates, remarking first that it ‘was no small testimony to the expansive grandeur of the British Empire’ that an island just 250 miles by 50 with a ‘climate almost exactly assimilated to that of the mother country should be actually debated for several hours together’. However the island had ‘great presumed resources’, a good harbour and a strategic location and ‘we’, the British, ‘may surely take the trouble of keeping for a little while what is our own’. The issue was how this should be accomplished and the newspaper felt that granting it to the HBC was not the best way for ‘they are fur traders and monopolists, and in neither capacity can they give hearty encouragement to the pursuits of civilized or colonial life. They want beavers and sables to multiply, hunting grounds to be preserved, and hunters and trappers to thrive. Their function is to perpetuate what it should be the aim of a colony to destroy.’45 This rather chilling picture of colonialism’s intent to annihilate the pre-existing society and economy of areas to be taken highlights the essential dilemma of a commercial company becoming the official sponsors of colonisation, a conflict of interests that, as will be shown, both in theory and in practice handicapped the development and operation of Vancouver Island Colony under the HBC. At the time there was discussion about such conflicts elsewhere in HBC holdings. Major John ffolliott Crofton commanded a detachment of troops sent to Red River Colony in 1845 by Sir George Simpson during a dispute over trading rights. Crofton was in company employ, yet with the ‘position of a commissioner to inquire into the charges brought against the company. We will venture to say that in the whole history, even of the Colonial Office, there is no instance on record of such a cruel mockery of justice as this.’46 James Fitzgerald, who sought to colonize Vancouver Island himself (see below) or at least to set up a company to exploit the island’s coal,47 wrote that under their 1670 charter the HBC had had obligations to make settlements and spread civilization but ‘the powers they have exceeded; the duties they have neglected … [they have] no history but that which is written in day book and ledgers. All their functions they have forgotten, except that of trading; all their powers have been exerted for the sole purpose of making money.’ A few pages later he was even more vigorous in his condemnation: If this Company colonise at all they will make a settlement of their own servants, of men completely in their own power, who will be

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unable to move hand or foot but at their bidding, who will labour for the wealth which will flow into the pockets of the shareholders in London, and who will be content to live under a Government the most despotic and tyrannical in the world – and this is to be the result of all our Colonial experience. This is to be our new Colony! The fact is, the whole idea of founding a free Colony, through the agency of a Commercial Company, whose interests are necessarily hostile to those of the Colonists, is an absurd one.48 Fitzgerald had heavyweight support; in 1849 after the grant had been made to the HBC, in a debate in the House of Commons about colonies, Benjamin Disraeli observed that ‘in the case of Vancouver’s Island which possessed resources likely to render it of incalculable benefit, they had surrendered them all into the hands of a company whose interests lay not in peopling but in depopulating the country in order that they might carry on the trade which they had pursued from the days of Charles II downwards’.49 The HBC refuted such charges. In an undated prospectus for the colonisation of Vancouver Island the company stated that they already had a trade monopoly with the local people, that they had numerous employees – ‘servants’ – in the region, ‘great power over the Indian tribes’ and were thus ‘better fitted’ than any other organisation or people to colonize the island. And whilst it was true that they would not wish colonisation in fur-bearing areas, in the mild, maritime areas of the northwest coast ‘the fur trade must soon be, if it is not already, a very secondary matter’. Noting that the indigenous people on Vancouver Island were fishers and root diggers rather than hunters, the conclusion was that their holding the island would not be for ‘a game preserve but for purposes of trade’.50 Fitzgerald’s most substantial publication detailing why Vancouver Island should not be granted to the HBC was about to go to press when the decision to make the grant was announced. In what must have been a hasty rewrite, he recast his final chapter: ‘One of the objects contemplated in this publication was a full statement of the reasons why that grant ought not to have been made … [but] to dwell upon that subject, now that the charter has finally issued would be, perhaps, only [a] waste of time’. He did make the point that ‘the Company were not, under any circumstances, the proper recipients of such a grant’; but at least the conditions had been altered somewhat, with improvements made to the proposed justice system and a restriction of HBC ‘profit’ to only ten percent of moneys received from land sales and royalties. Nonetheless, ‘the company are not to be trusted’ and he made a number of predictions as to what might happen to Vancouver Island under the Hudson’s Bay Company. He asserted that the company did not intend to colonise and

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might interfere in the appointment of government officials. He raised concerns regarding what would happen to income from land sales and whether capital expenditure would be required from the HBC, for without pecuniary interest they might not care to strive for success. The clause of repurchase after ten years could operate only in favour of the HBC, for there was no incentive for the company to invest wisely if they were to get their money back anyway. There was an assumption that the HBC and its sister company, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, would appropriate the best land without cost, which would give them unfair advantage: no ‘man with money in his pocket or brains in his head will go to Vancouver Island’. Fitzgerald thought that this colony’s colonial office would not be the usual one in Downing Street, but the HBC headquarters in Fenchurch Street and that it would be antagonistic towards colonisation: ‘an agricultural settlement they may establish, a few forts, where Scotchmen will grumble for a few years before they go over to the Americans’. He predicted ‘labour and trouble ahead’ for the HBC on Vancouver Island, concluding that ‘children or idiots could have devised no scheme of colonial administration with results more disastrous to our interests than these … The HBC will probably have good cause to regret … asking for fresh territory.’51 James Fitzgerald was amongst those who made alternative proposals for colonisation. He issued a prospectus in 1847 regarding the formation of The Company of Colonists of Vancouver Island. If it had two hundred shareholders, each investing an average of £1,000, the company, at a rate of six men per 100 acres (40.5 hectares), could take 2,000 labouring families to the island, in addition to the shareholders. Then the community would be ‘organised in companies according to their different species of labour or skill; and … their united exertions be directed to clearing, cultivating and stocking the land, building houses and mills, making roads etc.’. This collective effort would overcome a common difficulty with new colonies when the settlers were in an ‘isolated and unassisted position’. Then, ‘when the land is so far cultivated as to place the colony above the possibility of starvation, it will be divided to each member, in proportion to the money he has subscribed, and the quantity and species of work he has done’. Fitzgerald sought the encouragement of the government and then planned to look for the necessary investors.52 He was assured that Earl Grey would consider any scheme for Vancouver Island if it were supported by ‘parties of respectability possessing sufficient means to make success probable’.53 Seemingly, there was no probability that 200 such respectable parties would be found willing to chance the considerable sum of £1,000 on this venture and move to the distant wilderness of Vancouver Island themselves. Fitzgerald withdrew, commenting to the Colonial Office that ‘I know how difficult it is in the

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present state of money affairs in Europe to obtain capital or to form a company.’54 The HBC was left in possession of the field. There was an instruction by Earl Grey that Fitzgerald was to be informed that the HBC would be required to share power with an elected assembly and ‘will be bound to colonise the island. These conditions will, I trust, avert the danger of abuse which he anticipates and secure the advantage in this enterprise of the capital and means possessed by the company who I am assured will be happy to cooperate with himself and others.’55 So, notwithstanding the objections to the HBC and alternative proposals having been made, the HBC was granted Vancouver Island. The Colonial Office explained that: Many parties manifested a desire to colonise Vancouver’s Island. They were invited to send in their plans, but not one of those sent in was accompanied with anything like the show of security that the parties would be able to carry out the object in view. In every instance there was a desire to meet their views; but until the Hudson’s Bay Company made their offer, the communications all ended in this, that the parties all thought the island might be colonised with advantage, but that they had not the means of carrying that object into effect.56 A letter to The Times reproduced some of this language, confirming that other proposals had lacked that ‘show of security’. By contrast, the HBC ‘possessed the capital, ships, and local influence which rendered their exertions likely to be attended with success’.57 This letter was signed ‘An intending emigrant to Vancouver Island’ and, from the personal details given, it must have been written by Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant, who will feature in forthcoming chapters. Grant was a little confused about the status of Vancouver Island and later wrote to the Colonial Office to enquire if he, as a private settler, were to be answerable to the company or to the British Government.58 His letter to The Times continued: ‘Let us now see whether the subsequent conduct of the company justifies the observations of hon. members of our legislature who assert that the Hudson’s Bay Company is the worst instrument that could be selected for colonizing.’59 This book will address that issue.

2 SETTLEMENT AND SOCIETY OF VANCOUVER ISLAND COLONY

‘Almost as little is known here as you know in Fenchurch Street’ ‘Examining the country’: exploring In 1842, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) sent James Douglas and six men from the company settlement at Fort Nisqually on the Columbia River to Vancouver Island to select a site for a new trading post (Figures 2.1 and 2.2 locate the places mentioned in the text; Appendix 3 lists the people who appear in the story). Douglas, an HBC chief factor of 38, reported that ‘I made choice of a site for the proposed new establishment in the port of Camosack, which appears to me decidedly the most advantageous situation for the purpose within the Straits of de Fuca.’ The harbour at Camosack, later (Fort) Victoria, was not better than others in the vicinity; its comparative advantage was the agricultural potential of the plains in its hinterland and good timber reserves. Douglas described the other possibilities so the HBC could ‘weigh the grounds of my objections to them as eligible places of settlement’ but admitted that the nearest source of water to the site selected was 800 yards (730 metres) away and he looked to wells being dug to secure a more proximate supply.1 This first report emphasises that European settlements on the island, as elsewhere in western Canada, had to have the potential for their own subsistence, given the difficulties of supply; also that the HBC had an eye to exploitable resources beyond the actual fur trade. After Fort Victoria was established, the company continued to seek opportunities to profit from Vancouver Island and, to that end, regularly organised exploration. In June 1849, Douglas led a party of four on an expedition by canoe.2 Former Vancouver Island governor Richard Blanshard in evidence to the 1857 parliamentary enquiry into the HBC confirmed that ‘There were no facilities for travelling except by canoes; the forests were exceeding thick and very little was known of the inter ior.’3 In 1852 James Douglas made a more comprehensive canoe trip after

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Figure 2.1 Northwest North America, places mentioned in the text Joseph Despard Pemberton who had arrived as a surveyor in June 1851, reported to HBC headquarters that ‘the section of the island as yet explored is very small compared with the whole, of the remainder almost as little is known here as you know in Fenchurch Street’.4 The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society reproduced a despatch from Douglas to the coast of the island ‘for the purpose of examining the country, and of com-

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Figure 2.2 Vancouver Island, places mentioned in the text municating with the native tribes who inhabit that part of the colony’. Another task was to correct the contemporary maps, which were proven to be inaccurate regarding the complicated coastal geography of the Canal de Arro (Haro), the heavily islanded stretch of water south of Cowitchen Head. This Douglas regarded as a significant opportunity as there was a prospect of this waterway ‘soon becoming the channel of a very important trade’.5 Sir John Pakington, the colonial secretary, advised Douglas in late 1852 that the Admiralty were considering conducting a full survey of the region.6 Douglas responded that even before such an investigation was carried out, ‘some competent persons should make themselves familiar with the pilotage of the principal channels and ports of the district with the view of inducing settlers to proceed there for coal or other produce’. He was satisfied that following his own voyages, such channels had been identified to 49°N and that vessels could now make their way that far in safety, which would ease the marketing of produce from the coal mines at Nanaimo. An unnamed HBC steam vessel had towed HMS Thetis from Victoria to Nanaimo in a single day in January 1853, a journey that before the optimal route had been identified would have taken at least two days. Douglas suggested that the colonial surveyor could survey

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the east coast of Vancouver Island whilst the navy worked on the offshore islands.7 Douglas took another expedition to the east coast in August 1853 to ‘enter into closer intercourse with the native tribes’, but there was also a commercial purpose as he ‘ascertained that the settlement may be extended in that direction with great advantage there being such valuable land with timber of the largest dimensions’ as well as indications of coal.8 Later, accompanied by HMS Satellite, he travelled as far as the Cowegan River, making improvements to the charts and concluded that the valley would be suitable for settlement as ‘there is a great deal of open country which can be brought into cultivation at very little expense. The climate is not too dry and the country is much better watered that the Victoria district and on the whole I think there is little doubt of its being the most fertile tract of land in Vancouver’s Island.’9 That year of 1857 also saw the publication of Walter Colquhoun Grant’s long article on Vancouver Island in which detailed information and maps useful for navigation were presented.10 With gold discovered on the mainland, that region, too, needed to be explored and Douglas sent Joseph Pemberton there with a ‘large and efficient corps of surveying officers’.11 Douglas also encouraged others to seek resources and offered a £1,000 prize for the discovery of gold on Vancouver Island, which was not won. He also offered a £50 prize for an essay to ‘set forth in the clearest and most comprehensive manner the capabilities, resources and advantages of Vancouver Island as a Colony for settlement.’12 This was awarded in 1861 to a naval surgeon, Charles Forbes, whose essay was published by the colonial government.13 Later, as ‘from the first settlement of the colony, the desirability of a thorough knowledge of its resources has been felt’, the Vancouver Island Exploration Committee had been set up by Douglas’s successor, Governor Arthur Kennedy.14 The leader, Robert Brown, reported on the first season, when assisted by indigenous people, the committee had had some success in discovering minerals, despite the illbehaviour of the men employed. The ‘first surveyor sent out having failed to fulfil his engagements’ It was early realised that in addition to ‘examining the country’, detailed surveys were required for areas being laid out for colonisation. Walter Colquhoun Grant had approached the HBC in London about settling on Vancouver Island in 1848 only to have been offered the position of colonial surveyor. Although a military man, it seems clear that surveying was not Grant’s vocation and his appointment was something of a convenience to the company and no salary or job specification were arranged before his arrival on the island.15 Nevertheless, Blanshard reported in 1850 that the HBC had started to survey the land reserved for itself

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around Victoria and a tract adjoining for its sister organisation, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC).16 However, despite what transpired to be a substantial annual salary of £100 and the services of a clerk,17 Grant was not a successful surveyor. Archibald Barclay, secretary of the HBC, sent to senior colleagues in the region, including James Douglas, then still to settle at Fort Victoria, a copy of a letter to Grant written five months after he had started work: ‘It is most desirable that as the survey proceeds sketches on tracing paper should be sent home by every opportunity as the Company’s proceedings in regard to colonisation are greatly impeded for want of information respecting the situation and circumstances of the land disposed of.’18 Grant resigned in March 1850, only, despite his incompetence, to be offered a contract at $10 per day to survey Victoria. At that rate, Grant would have earned his former annual salary in little over a month. The HBC reprimanded Douglas for this excess, especially as an outline sketch of Victoria submitted by Grant was, predictably, of little use.19 The ‘first surveyor sent out having failed to fulfil his engagements, it was found necessary to send out another and much time was consequently lost’.20 This was in 1852 when settlers to the colony were not receiving proper title deeds to their land for this want of surveys. Earl Grey was assured that a system had now been put in place, the HBC having spent the considerable sum of £172 3s on the travelling expenses of Joseph Pemberton, Grant’s successor as surveyor, and another £40 on Pemberton’s assistant, Benjamin Pearce. Pemberton’s instructions were first to work on ‘the tract of country with the natives of which Mr Douglas has made arrangements with regard to any right which they may have supposed they possessed, and the coal district at Fort Rupert as soon as a similar arrangement shall have been made with the natives of that part of the island’. Pemberton was also to map ‘the nature and qualities of the soil and sub-soil, the different kinds of timber, and other vegetable productions and, in short, all such particulars as it may be useful for settlers to be informed of’.21 For a little over eleven months work from 1851–52 the combined salaries of Pearce and Pemberton were £390 0s 6d.22 The colonial accounts detail the costs of the surveying department in this season of 1852 and the arduous nature of the work in this frontier environment can be identified from the items supplied (Appendix 4, Table 2.1). Pemberton’s initial engagement ended in February 1854 by which time he reported that he had surveyed land considerably in excess of demand, having done ‘my best for the Company during my said term of service, which was, I think, what the spirit of my contract required’.23 However, a witness to the parliamentary enquiry into the HBC criticised Pemberton for being ‘mostly engaged in determining the latitude and longitude at different points of the island, which was most useless for the

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benefit of the colonists’.24 Pemberton sought re-engagement, but first wished to return to England, nominally to order fittings for the church being built, but principally, as he admitted, for personal reasons. The HBC, satisfied with their second surveyor’s ‘zeal and talent’, so unlike the qualities of the first, did rehire him and let him have his trip home.25 The last letter from Pemberton to the HBC in London during his first period of service is from New York on his journey.26 Amongst those seeking to purchase land once it was surveyed was the HBC itself. There was a need to distinguish company land from that required by the colony’s government, so that the HBC did not make their own investments thereon in case Vancouver Island was to be reverted by the British Government. Sir John Pelly reported in 1852 that Pemberton had forwarded a survey of PSAC lands, also surveys of lands which the Fur Trade of the HBC proposed to take but had ‘omitted to distinguish that which they possessed previous to the Boundary Commission [of 1846] from the whole quantity. The former will be made over to them without purchase, and for any addition thereby they will have to pay 20s per acre as all other settlers’ (see below).27 ‘The said Governor and Company should form on the said island a settlement or settlements’ ‘No settlers have at present arrived’: the failure of advertising The grant to the HBC of 1849 had stated that: ‘the said Governor and Company should form on the said island a settlement or settlements, as hereinafter mentioned, for the purpose of colonizing the said island’. If there was insufficient settlement after five years the crown could ‘revoke this present grant, and to enter upon and resume the said island and premises hereby granted without prejudice’.28 To attract settlers to their new colony, the company mounted extensive advertising campaigns. A prospectus was printed up, giving the terms upon which settlers would be accepted, the price to be paid for land, the requirement to bring out labour and the scale of fees payable as royalties to the HBC on minerals and other products.29 Fees for the prospectus were paid in May, June, August and December 1849. In January 1849 advertisements were placed in The Times and Morning Chronicle; in July, The London & Mercantile Journal; in September, Scottish papers; and in December The Times again. The campaign was helped by some favourable editorial comment, such as in the Edinburgh Weekly Register: ‘when so many young men of the professsional and mercantile classes are unable to push their way at home, it may not be amiss to direct their attention to Vancouver Island’.30 There were further advertisements in May 1851 and March 1852 when Irish newspapers were also targeted. There were other campaigns in the Scottish press throughout 1852.31 The HBC reported in 1852 that the company had

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spent a total of £344 3s 10d on ‘advertising in the English, Scotch and Irish newspapers respecting the colonization of Vancouver’s Island, printing and other incidental expenses’.32 This expenditure was to little effect. Richard Blanshard, who had had the language from the charter on the matter of settlement reproduced in his commission,33 reported in April 1850 that ‘no settlers have at present arrived.’34 Earl Grey in his response said: ‘it is a subject of much regret to the Hudson’s Bay Company that the colonisation of Vancouver Island has not been attended with the success at first anticipated from that enterprise. The attractions of California have probably contributed with other causes to deter immigrants away from Vancouver Island.’ Seeking for a silver lining he ‘hoped that this migration will eventually be beneficial to Vancouver Island in creating a demand for its productions and consequently making it a desirable place for setters’.35 Evidence on the small scale of settlement in 1850 comes from a report of Captain Charles Johnson of HMS Driver that there were just one hundred ‘whites’ at Victoria and another forty at Fort Rupert, all company servants. Only Captain Grant, then still the HBC surveyor, employed non-company migrants, four labourers in his private employ at his settlement at Sooke.36 The following month Barclay informed Douglas that the HBC were sending out eighty people including women and children that autumn. Included in the party would be another surveyor (Pemberton) to succeed Grant whose resignation had been accepted after less than a year.37 Walter Colquhoun Grant’s ‘fresh and vigorous enterprise’ Roderick Finlayson, who served the HBC on Vancouver Island from 1843 stated that: One of the conditions of settling the island was that the company would import settlers from England, sell them land there in England at £1 per acre and take out labourers with them, pay their expenses out, and a map having been prepared for the purpose and exhibited at Hudson Bay House in London on which they were to select their locations. Only one settler, a Captain Grant, took up land in this way.38 As was seen, Grant was also the surveyor, but giving that up allowed him to concentrate on this agricultural venture. Grant had sought men from Moray or Strathspey to join him and had written in 1848 to his cousin in Scotland to ‘put … [him] up to any trustworthy person’,39 for this, ‘patriotic Highlander … [had] formed the idea of establishing a Scotch Colony, and intended bringing out a Gaelic schoolmaster and a Scotch piper’.40 Unfortunately, the schoolmaster died during the voyage detailed

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below,41 one of a catalogue of matters that went astray. James Douglas expected Grant to bring twelve or fifteen ‘emegrants’ aboard Harpooner; that a man normally so correct, misspelled ‘emigrants’ may be an indication of how unusual a word it was.42 However, Grant actually sent just three farmers, a labourer and four tradesmen: blacksmith, house builder, carpenter and gardener,43 and it would seem from Johnson’s statement above that four of these men had left Grant’s employ within a short time, assuming they had not deserted en route to Vancouver Island as sometimes happened. Grant asked Douglas to refund monies expended upon bringing labourers to Vancouver Island but was refused as the obligation to import labourers could be relaxed only for those purchasers of land already in the colony, which, it was hoped, might induce HBC people to remain.44 Grant, himself, travelled via Panama and arrived destitute of funds, requiring advances of seed and cattle. Moreover, his payment of £300 to the HBC for land had been refused and his friends declined ‘to advance a farthing to his account’.45 Another problem was the location of this land. Grant had expected to have free choice, but could not take land near Victoria as it had been appropriated by the company: ‘I was obliged to go 25 miles [40 kilometres] off, where I have been living a totally solitary life ever since.’ He was so distant from the fort that he demanded protection against the indigenous people, which was not vouchsafed to him.46 So depressed did he become with the society of only his own men ‘and a few rascally Indians’ that he contemplated suicide had he not taken the chance of a trip to the Sandwich Islands (Hawai’i).47 In 1851 he left again, this time to try his luck in California, leaving one of his labourers in charge. That this might cause trouble was predicted as this person was of the Muir family, who had been involved in considerable strife with the HBC at Fort Rupert (see Chapter 4): ‘the previous failure of the Muirs at the coal mines and their present discontent does not auger well’.48 On Grant’s return his holding was found to be ruined and he sold out.49 Finlayson summarised Grant’s woes as him having found the country ‘different from what he expected’, too thickly wooded and difficult to clear and he ‘gave up the attempt as impracticable’.50 Grant’s own account is a trifle more heroic. Vancouver Island was ‘a grand field for fresh and vigorous enterprise’,51 and calling himself the ‘first colonist’ without mention of his aborted post as HBC surveyor, he described how he brought into cultivation about thirty-five acres at Sooke, raising cattle, horses, pigs and poultry. He built houses, a barn, a saw-mill and claimed to have established ‘a friendly intercourse with the native tribe of savages, who were only about sixty in number’, so much for his demand for protection. Rather than running off to the goldfields he characterised his absence as a desire ‘to visit a far country’ but he did indeed return to find his property damaged and he left.52

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Both Grant at Sooke and later James Cooper (who came out on Tory in 1851) at Metchosin, two men described by the latter as ‘the only persons who complied with the prospectus of the Company’,53 had had to take land away from the fort and Finlayson reported that both ‘spent all their means and the venture proved entirely unsuccessful.’54 After his return, this self-styled ‘first colonist’ hardly encouraged further settlement in his former home, writing for publication that: The general aspect of the country throughout the island from the seaward is peculiarly uninviting. Dark, frowning cliffs sternly repel the foaming sea, as it rushes impetuously against them, and beyond these, with scarcely any interval of level land rounded hills, densely covered with fir, rise one above the other in dull uninteresting monotony; over these again appear bare mountains of trap rock, with peaks jagged like the edge of a saw, a veritable Montserrat, forming a culminating ridge, which may be said to run with little intermission, like a backbone, all down the centre of the island … nor does a nearer approach present one with any more favourable features in any aspect of the country.55 ‘Not pushing on the colonization’ ‘It was now difficult to get settlers to come out’ to Vancouver Island and in evidence to the parliamentary enquiry on the HBC, Charles Fitzwilliam opined that the principal reason was ‘the distance at which it is from the mother country’.56 Another blamed the ‘mal-administration of the government’ of the HBC, but as this was James Cooper who was in dispute with the company (see Chapter 6), perhaps he was biased.57 Gradually a few settlers did come. Douglas was told about one Eliza Chancellor in May 1851, who was to have land at the usual £1 per acre once a survey was carried out and the title forms arrived, having been sent aboard Norman Morrison.58 Title was significant, for in July 1851 Admiral Moresby penned a critical report to the Admiralty about Vancouver Island detailing complaints from settlers without title deeds to their land, the price of which was anyway excessive, whilst the conditions attached to land purchase, especially the requirement to bring settlers rendered the formation of a proper colony ‘hopeless’. In short it was ‘in vain to struggle against the monopoly of the HBC’.59 Sir John Pelly had to respond to these criticisms and blamed the California gold rush, which had become a ‘discouragement to persons who might otherwise have desired to settle at Vancouver Island, as it was evident that there could be no confidence placed on hired labourers fulfilling their engagement.’ This also ‘operated as an obstruction in the intentions of the HBC to establish cultivation sufficient to secure food for new settlers on their arrival’. Meanwhile, the

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HBC and PSAC had sent out labourers ‘to commence cultivation in order to test the capability of the Island and encourage its settlement’,60 although in confirmation of Pelly’s report, Finlayson later confirmed that ‘most of them afterwards left for California gold diggings’.61 HBC ‘encouragement’ was not largesse and new setters had to meet their financial obligations to the company as with Captain Cooper in 1851 who ‘may have thought that as he was much encouraged to go out and settle in the Island he would not be immediately pressed for payments’ of his freight charges. The company could arrange instalment payments, but only ‘consistent with the ultimate security of the debt.’62 Cooper’s antipathy to the HBC on Vancouver Island might be traced to this treatment. The HBC reported to the government on their progress with colonisation and by 27 April 1852 had sold 1,478.5 acres (598.3 hectares) to eleven persons on Vancouver Island, receiving thus £1,478 10s at £1 per acre. Of this, £147 17s went to the HBC as their ten percent share and the remainder was held in trust for colonization purposes. Another nineteen people had made application for land. The PSAC had established four substantial farms but these were yet to be surveyed and paid for. The HBC had sold portions of its reserve of 3,084 acres (1,248 hectares) held before the 1846 Boundary Treaty to ‘some of their retired servants’.63 Not all were actually retired, for: The company, in order to preserve their grant of the island from the crown induced their officers to purchase land and establish farms by getting labourers to work for them for half shares. In this way Mr Douglas, myself [Finlayson], the late Mr Work and several others bought land at $5 per acre, as near the fort as the reservations would permit and this way settlements were formed and the conditions of the grant of the island from the Crown complied with.64 Douglas pointed out that he had paid full market price for the land on which his house stood and ‘my example has … induced many other parties to become settlers’. In return he sought relief on the freight charges he had paid for furniture sent from London.65 In 1853 there was a campaign for a reduction in the price of land (see below).66 Douglas was obliged to write to the Colonial Office about this as unfavourable publicity had been created in American newspapers. There was a party in the colony, of which Cooper was a member, which wished ‘to take the colony into their own hands, trusting by that means to see the accomplishment of their ultimate object of providing free grants of land which in that event they expect to gain.’ They complained also about ‘the slow growth of the colony in wealth and population which

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they ascribe to the indifference of the HBC in not pushing on the colonization of the island with sufficient activity’.67 By contrast, later in 1853 Douglas reported favourably upon the harvest and coal production and claimed that ‘the settlement of the country has made some progress during the past year’; although he concluded that sentence with reference to the difficulty of attracting and retaining labour given ‘other prospects, which yield a larger present return for labour than the slow, though more certain, profits derived form the cultivation of the land’.68 Historian Arthur Morton has suggested that the British Government had realised their best hope for colonisation was through the company. However, the wisdom of this decision had been questioned as the HBC was not thought to be interested in facilitating settlement in actuality, whatever the contractual commitment. The Hudson’s Bay Record Society even stated that Sir John Pelly ‘must have had his tongue in his cheek in accepting such terms [for colonisation] for there seemed little prospect of settlement taking place’ even if the land were to be free, which it was not (see below).69 There is evidence that the HBC did not properly prepare for the arrival of migrants. For example, a party from Tory in 1852 reported that company officials ‘were not at all friendly to newcomers and they could get neither food nor shelter’.70 The McKenzie family, also on Tory, recalled that they arrived on ‘a cold winter day and no one to greet us and we were so eager to be welcomed. It was as if everybody had hidden away from us’. Eventually an HBC clerk lodged them in a loft without partitions.71 Further, William Coutts Keppel, in a widely-read magazine, wrote that ‘it was … no part of the policy of the Company to form such a settlement as that contemplated by the Charter. Indeed their acts have sufficiently shown that it was quite the reverse’.72 Another contemporary wrote: It was not the interest of a commercial company who monopolized a highly lucrative sale of European goods, and an equally profitable barter of furs, to make known the fine climate, valuable resources and ample capabilities of the country. Such tidings would bring about colonization and competition and a decrease and ultimate extinction both of the fur-bearing animals and fur-hunting Indians.73 Keppel even claimed that the HBC ‘religiously kept a secret which would have saved them all the trouble of inviting emigrants for the emigrants would come of themselves. They knew of the existence of gold for years, but they never alluded to its existence.’74 Perhaps only after the HBC had lost control could Alfred Langley write that the island had become a colony where ‘a steady, industrious and prudent settler would in a few years render himself comparatively independent, that he might look from the

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window of his comfortable farmhouse over broad and cultivated acres and well stocked farmyard’.75 ‘I can hardly denominate them as colonists’: migration to Vancouver Island ‘The coming gales’: voyages The obligations of the HBC to stimulate settlement be it well-stocked farmyards, mining camps or towns required a supply of migrants. The HBC kept records and three data sets can be interrogated relating to organised migration to Vancouver Island in the early period of company rule. The first (Appendix 4, Table 2.2) comes from the HBC Governor, Andrew Colvile, who had to make a return to the Colonial Office concerning migration and settlement in accordance with the terms of the company’s grant. The migrants, Colvile reported, were chiefly agricultural labourers engaged by the HBC, with others being farm bailiffs, miners and mechanics. It was expected that many labourers would become settlers on the expiration of their contact when they would receive a bonus of £25 to be paid in land pro-rata at the usual price of £1 per acre. The second data set (Appendix 4, Table 2.3) comes from the company accounts and details fare-paying passengers taken to Vancouver Island. For 1848–52 the numbers of individuals recorded are fewer than those shown in Table 2.2. Perhaps some of the migrants were not fare-paying passengers in the usual sense. Additionally, some migrants did not take part in the voyages that rounded Cape Horn detailed in Table 2.3, but made alternative arrangements to cross the Atlantic to the east coast of the Americas and then travel overland, usually through Panama as Walter Colquhoun Grant did, picking up vessels on the west coast for the second oceanic leg of their journey to Vancouver Island. Table 2.3 has the merit of naming the ship used, which enables details discovered elsewhere in the documentary record to be attached to the voyage. The year given in the tables is that when ships set sail, during the northern hemisphere autumn, arriving the following year after voyages of several months. Children paid half the adult fare and, thus, to the company accountants Table 2.3 represents the passage of 551.5 adults, which, given the total ‘passage money’ recorded was £12,717 5s, represented just over £23 per adult head. Accounts for payments for this amount were passed on by the HBC to the British Government in addition to £5,035 9s 7d for maintenance after the conclusion of the voyage and £7,890 for wages paid for the first year. The total came to £25,642 14s 7d, but for some reason the HBC claimed only £25,550.76 The third data set comes from ships’ logs and other material relating to some of the voyages (Appendix 4, Table 2.4). There is most information about the voyage of Tory in 1850, described by the HBC to the Colonial

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Office as comprising a ‘considerable number of agriculturalists and other servants for Vancouver Island’.77 Several passenger lists exist, allowing a consolidated set of information to be compiled. This includes ages for all males bar two cabin passengers, although fewer ages are recorded for women. This data shows this was a voyage of young people; the mean age of men in steerage rounds up to 23. They were older in intermediate and cabin class at a mean of 30 in both cases. Of the 93 men, 16 were accompanied by wives (17.2 percent); 9 of 74 in steerage (12 percent). All those in steerage were labourers engaged by the HBC on a five-year contract. Only one man of the few passengers on Norman Morrison in 1851 had a wife, but the following year when the same ship carried 144 passengers, of the 59 men, 36 had wives (61 percent), this seemingly being a voyage more of migrants than contracted labourers. It is worthwhile examining what is known about these voyages for the sea crossing was a considerable barrier to migration and the HBC, like any emigration agents, had to find people whose imperatives to migrate were stronger than their dread of the discomfort and dangers of the crossing. One contemporary thought that prospects for settlement on Vancouver Island were bleak ‘considering its remote position and great distance from the mother country’.78 This author has carried out research on Atlantic migration voyages in the eighteenth century, the fear of which were exemplified by a poem by ‘D.’, a migrant for North America from Cookstown in Ireland in 1773, in which he positioned himself still on land but gazing at his ship, thinking apprehensively of the ‘boist’rous main’ whilst ‘the hoisted sails expand their bosom with the coming gales’.79 Whilst steamships were being adopted during this period, the vessels in Table 2.3 were all sailing ships and the conditions that gave rise to such dread in ‘D’. would not have been much better for the Vancouver Island migrants a couple of generations later and their journeys were so much longer. Admiral Moresby wrote in July 1851 that the passengers aboard Tory who had arrived in May had ‘scarcely recovered from a voyage of nearly seven months’.80 Tory carried around ninety passengers including clerks, engineers, a surgeon, three bailiffs for the PSAC properties and seventy or more labourers. Also on board was James Cooper, emigrating as a settler with his family, who was tasked to report on the conduct of passengers and crew.81 Moresby said ‘I can hardly denominate them as colonists, the greatest part being servants of the HBC intended for the preparation of farms under an agreement with individuals on the reserved districts of Victoria and Esquimalt.’82 One labourer was Charles Bayley, 20, son of Thomas and Eliza Bayley, his father engaged as a PSAC bailiff. Charles had worked as a shipbroker’s clerk and agreed to teach reading to other labourers on the voyage using books sent to form a library in Fort Victoria. Some, usefully, were about exploration and the

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construction of farm buildings.83 Another passenger was an HBC clerk, William Macdonald, who started his voyage with an extra £10 in his pocket, slipped to him by HBC Assistant Secretary, William Smith, before the ship left Gravesend. Macdonald went on to represent Victoria in the Canadian Senate from 1871–1915. Severe gales in the Bay of Biscay necessitated an unscheduled call at Saint Iago in the Cape Verde Islands, but the south Atlantic was calm enough for musical evenings with the piano of the captain’s wife accompanied by a second class passenger’s flute until the weather became stormy again near and around Cape Horn. The Pacific leg was notable for the food – ‘cheese and biscuits full of weevils, water scarce and putrid’ – and Macdonald obviously enjoyed his first dinner at Fort Victoria, where, with James Douglas and Roderick Finlayson, he consumed mutton, fish and grouse with the delight of fresh vegetables.84 ‘Everything was very miserable indeed’: Norman Morrison For some voyages there is more detail. The ship’s log and the journal of Dr John Helmcken survive from that of Norman Morrison in 1849. Helmcken wrote: ‘I had to board her at Gravesend arriving there somewhere about October 1849 … A great deal of fuss was made about this first voyage to a new Colony and some famous men were on board drinking wine and speaking good wishes to her.’85 The log starts precisely, at 14.00 on 18 October when Brownfield, the Gravesend pilot, came aboard.86 Figure 2.3 plots the subsequent route from the log. Norman Morrison nearly came to grief in the English Channel in a collision with a ship of the East India Company when the log records that under all possible sail … while filling on the port tack saw a ship close aboard and trying to luff across our bows. Seeing she was too close to do so and we having no steerage way, laid all flat aback and put the helm down but she came right aboard of us while in that position striking us about the starboard cat head and carrying away the cat head and anchor stock, fore tack, bumpkin headsail and boards, standing and flying jib booms, spritsail yard and gear afterward falling alongside and staving our starboard quarter gallery.87 Helmcken, lacking technical language, reported more colourfully that ‘It was a queer experience and by no means a pleasant one for a little more mismanagement and … all events would have gone to pot.’88 They then faced the usual gales in the Bay of Biscay with water coming aboard, followed by one of the most fearful occurrences on any voya–

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Figure 2.3 The voyage of Norman Morrison, 1849–50 age, deadly infectious disease. A passenger, one George Balls, came down with smallpox. ‘This caused no little alarm’, wrote Dr Helmcken in a presumably understated journal entry and on 29 October Balls was slung in a hammock forward on the upper forecastle deck, so the wind would blow over him, away from the rest of the ship. The other travellers were vaccinated. William Burgess displayed symptoms of smallpox the next day and was also stationed on the upper forecastle. Balls died at 01.21 on 17 November according to the log. He was buried at sea that afternoon with the captain reading the divine service. The rest of that day the ship was cleaned ‘inside and out’.89 Even so, from 21 November several more passengers and crew came down with smallpox and the upper forecastle

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was cleared out to become a hospital. Eventually twenty people contracted smallpox. Every attention was paid to the sick from a distance, the patients also aided each other more closely and there were no more deaths. The smallpox did not halt the usual ceremonies attendant on crossing the equator on 29 November, the log recording with satisfaction that Neptune condescended to be present. The last mention of smallpox was on 11 December and by the time Norman Morrison arrived at Cape Horn the epidemic was over but other problems replaced it: ‘the weather was beastly – foul wind – fearful gales – hailstorms – a few hours only of daylight! Such seas – beastly chopping irregular ones. I had seen the huge rollers off the Cape of Good Hope, but these chopping seas were ten times worse and more dangerous’.90 The log is less emotional but barometer readings begin to be registered more frequently, every two hours, and the pumps were manned continuously. ‘The vessel pitching violently from a heavy head sea’, was how those aboard Norman Morrison would have remembered Christmas Day 1849.91 The seas came in opposite direction to that of the wind, so that they seemed as tho’ they would sweep over us from stem to stern but the good ship rose to them and then we were in a valley. This went on for some hours and was far less dangerous than if they had come astern, the wind not being strong. We had precious poor grub off Cape Horn – could cook very little. I tell you pea soup and pork were relished there and so was porridge, these being the chief articles of diet, with an occasional hardboiled dumpling. Everything was very miserable indeed.92 In the Pacific, A. McFarlane, engaged to teach Gaelic at Captain Grant’s settlement at Sooke, died of colon cancer at the age of 46, according to Helmcken’s post-mortem. He was buried at sea on 22 January 1850 and Helmcken acquired the fishing rod with which McFarlane had hoped to catch salmon. Later, food and water became an issue, the log recording frequent inspections of water supplies, the ration being reduced until it was ascertained that sufficient potable water remained. The emigrants in steerage complained of their food and pitched it overboard, but this was ‘the very same we found so good in the cabin. The Captain used to enquire into all their complaints and pacify the grumblers, but really they had nothing to complain of’, recorded Helmcken.93 The log lists the rations doled out and reports on a muster of steerage passengers at which ‘Captain W.’ pointed out that they received more food than the crew and admonished them for their ‘profane language and disgusting conduct to each other’, threatening to reduce the rations unless matters improved.

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He then asked if there were any other complaints and as, unsurprisingly, there were none they were ordered below.94 Later there were problems about the crew refusing to attend divine service, an issue that became conflated with complaints about overwork. Nine refused to obey orders, one ‘amidst much profane language and oaths said he would not be treated as a bloody slave’.95 The disquiet lasted for a couple of weeks, after which the log reverts to a routine listing of weather conditions and position. Helmcken recorded that ‘Wishart was not a social man, he had been soured somehow or other, but nevertheless he was kind and good to all and a thorough seaman.’ Strict discipline was kept, ‘Wishart never relaxed this, he was a commander.’ He ‘took charge of the ship and no matter how hard the weather he would remain on deck night and day and was always ready at a moment’s notice’. What Wishart did not do was to interfere in the passengers’ fights, but generally, Helmcken recorded, there was little trouble. Inevitably there was boredom: Helmcken spent many hours making birdcages from strips of bamboo. Others ‘managed to spend their time somehow or other but there was little jollity among them or in the cabins either I suppose.’96 Land was sighted on 21 March 1850 for the first time since Pernambuco had been seen on 3 December. At Cape Flattery Helmcken had a good look at the coasts of the country destined to be my home. Truly they were forbidding although grand. Nothing but mountains on both sides wooded to the top, their appearance weird and gloomy … scarcely a foot of level land could anywhere be seen and we used to ask each other, how can any of this be cultivated? … Nevertheless it was land and we were glad to see it after five months of water.97 Norman Morrison anchored in Esquimalt on 23 March after a voyage of 156 days. This ship made other voyages; in 1851 twenty labourers were sent as steerage passengers as well as a brickmaker and five seamen, all under contract for five years. In the cabin were clerks and other HBC officers, also, at a fare of £50, the sister of a Vancouver Island resident who paid half the passage of the wife of a steerage passenger to tend to her during the voyage. Six months provisions for the passengers after arrival was included in the bill of lading, which confirmed that all would not have been ready on the island to deal with this influx of population.98 Douglas reported to Barclay in January 1852 that Norman Morrison had arrived with the passengers in good health and that during the voyage just one labourer had died – of consumption – and only two children were ‘carried off’.99 On this ship’s next voyage, the following season, the HBC

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sent some bailiffs ‘and a considerable number of men of the agricultural class’ and there were stern instructions to Douglas to prepare for their reception and employment by laying out allotments of 400–600 acres (162–243 hectares).100 ‘Mutiny’ and ‘barratry’: the voyage of Colinda The most difficult voyage was that of Colinda, Captain John Powell Mills, in 1853. Archibald Barclay informed Douglas that in steerage it was planned there would be forty Norwegian and a Swedish labourers, forty-three miners, a blacksmith and a carpenter. Cabin passengers were to include two women relatives of HBC men on the island. Taking into account family members, there was to be a substantial passenger list of 234.101 Matters did not work out as planned as Douglas was informed.102 The ship had been chartered by the HBC to carry goods and 212 passengers (not Barclay’s promised 234) including coal miners and company servants direct from London to Victoria without touching land, presumably to ensure that opportunities for jumping ship did not arise. Usually only professional appointees were trusted to take the shorter, alternative route to the east coast of Central America, usually Chagres, journey over the isthmus to the west coast and join a ship going north. Richard Blanshard did this in 1849, with sad consequences for his health, as detailed in Chapter 5. Another was the surveyor Joseph Pemberton in 1851, who was so horrified with his experiences that he wrote lengthy reports to the HBC recommending improvements. At Chagres the passengers were landed first, then their baggage. This took hours; Pemberton describes how the passengers rushed back and forth under the hot sun, searching heaps of luggage for their own. Everywhere were ‘sharpers’ and boatmen, some armed and threatening. All was confusion and passengers had to abandon the luggage they had found in seeking for the rest: ‘some recover all, some not’. He advised the HBC to establish a goods shed at Chagres. Having crossed to the other coast by canoe and mule, the baggage had to be reloaded: ‘You secure a sufficient number of men to carry all your luggage at once. I had six or seven. Once started at the hotel, they run each in a different direction. You follow and shout and push the stragglers and if very lucky get all your things together on the beach.’ Then a boat had to be hired to convey the luggage to the ship and the boatmen were liable to offer a cheap price, row a sufficient distance from the shore and then stop rowing until they were paid double. Bribes were required to get luggage through customs and on board. Pemberton brought a charge of bribery there and won his case. His problems were not over, his ship to San Francisco, the steam vessel California, was filthy, dangerously overcrowded and with awful food.103

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Captain Mills, notwithstanding his instructions to remain at sea, put into Valdivia in consequence, he declared, of a mutiny of passengers.104 This was put down by marines sent by Admiral Moresby which Douglas felt was ‘a most satisfactory piece of intelligence for us as we now feel assured that the vessel is within reach of succour and may yet arrive at her destined port’.105 Colinda was then taken to Valparaiso where the passengers were brought before a naval court for ‘mutinous and piratical conduct’. They were acquitted, Mills failing to prove his suit. Almost all passengers then refused to proceed under Captain Mills and deserted; Colinda carried just seventeen passengers to Vancouver Island. There was also a dispute over cargo that Mills had disposed of at Valparaiso and, given that he had delivered neither most of the people nor part of the goods contracted, the HBC on Vancouver Island sought redress at a Vice Admiralty Court and obtained an injunction against the ship. James Douglas, who was, of course, the vice admiral, was worried whether the interference of this court was proper.106 Mills formally complained of his treatment at Victoria, he was held in jail for three months for barratry (an unlawful practice committed by a ship’s master),107 and Douglas was ordered by the Colonial Office to respond. He had had the chief justice, David Cameron, write, too, about the suits and the court proceedings. Douglas reported that he received power of attorney from Colinda’s owner, Mr Tomlin, in London in September 1854, authorising him to replace Captain Mils and put in another master, Captain James Reid, who was supplied with capital to fit out the vessel for sea. On its progress to England, Colinda took coal to San Francisco with authority to acquire another charter from there to London. ‘Having by that means saved the “Colinda” from sale and confiscation’, Douglas reported that the owner was gratified. He denied that Colinda was employed opportunistically by the HBC beforehand to convey coals to California, ‘nor employed in any other manner in their service or for their benefit – she lay idle in this port until chartered in the beginning of the month of March last by Captain Reid for the delivery on the way to London of a cargo of coal at San Francisco’. Thus Captain Mills’s accusations were unfounded.108 ‘Our operations here got considerably disarranged’: desertion It is notable that on Colinda most of those who had been employed to come out to Vancouver Island as labourers were Scandinavians. The same was true of Princess Royal in 1854 when cabin passengers included a schoolmaster and his wife, a new manager for the mine at Nanaimo with, in steerage, twenty-three miners and their families. In addition there were ten Norwegians to be used on the islands for general labour.109 The HBC had traditionally recruited many company servants from Scotland, especially Orkney. However, as we have seen, by 1852 Orcadians had begun

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to look to becoming settlers in Australia rather than company servants in North America. The HBC tried engaging labourers from Dorset to replace the Scottish islanders but, whilst having useful experience in agriculture, these men had proved ‘ill-adapted for the general service of the Company’ and Barclay thought in 1852 that the HBC would have to ‘look to Canada alone for labourers’.110 The passenger lists suggest that Scandinavia was an alternative source. However, as seen, getting migrants on board ship did not always guarantee delivery; even getting them to the Fort Victoria quayside did not necessarily benefit the colony. Captain Johnson of HMS Driver, who had delivered Governor Blanshard in 1850, reported that: ‘Mr Douglas informed me that the progress of the establishments on the Island had been very much retarded by the numbers of their servants deserting for California, the crews deserting from their vessels at every opportunity and the servants going in canoes to Nisqually then to California.’111 For example, in May 1851, despite having had their wages increased, four seamen from Norman Morrison deserted whilst at Victoria. The remaining crew then refused to set sail in an undermanned ship. Douglas had to come and reason with the sailors, but they refused to obey orders and were imprisoned in the forecastle. Given the necessity for this ship, the company and colony’s lifeline back to England at this period, Douglas had to accede to the men’s demands and four new sailors were secured. The men returned to duty and the ship’s log records the rather lame reprimand they received from the governor, who was prepared to ‘look over’ their conduct ‘upon condition of good behaviour’.112 In 1852 seven seamen from Norman Morrison deserted one night and ‘made their escape from the colony’. Douglas later confirmed they, indeed, went to Nisqually.113 He put four others in confinement for refusing their duty and ordered a well-manned canoe to pull round Norman Morrison all night to prevent further desertions.114 ‘Nearly all the other able seamen refused to work and were kept in confinement most of the time the ship was in harbour, which led to much inconvenience and considerable loss of time.’115 After the seven men had escaped, Douglas had Captain Wishart gather the crew together to discover their sentiments regarding the homeward voyage and had to offer them a gratuity equivalent to about six months wages if they would stay in service to try to ensure that the ship would not have to be abandoned. A full crew complement was twenty-six and fifteen men accepted, enough to make to homeward voyage possible provided passengers would be willing to help.116 On the next voyage of Norman Morrison on 23 January 1853 the second and third mates went absent without leave at Victoria; on 3 February Wishart had to apply to Douglas for a warrant to arrest the third mate who was brought aboard ‘in a beastly state of intoxication’; a state in which the steward was found on 14 February. The first officer became in-

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toxicated in turn on 5 March, like the third mate having to be brought back to the ship by the constable. He refused to obey Wishart’s orders and was locked in steerage, blaspheming and cursing. That night two seamen deserted followed the next day by the first and third mates and two days later by three other able seamen.117 Within a fortnight that month of March 1853 Douglas penned three irate notes to Barclay complaining that seamen had had to be dragged on board from a pot house; that the mate was a drunkard, the second officer negligent and deficient in seamanship, whilst the crew went on strike. The HBC on the island had had to give in to their demands as there were no men to replace them. Notwithstanding that, several still deserted and Douglas forwarded their names so that no pay should be issued.118 Even Roderick Finlayson, when in charge of Fort Victoria in 1849, had been subject to temptation, being told that if he went as a trader to San Francisco to profit from the gold rush he could expect to clear $100 per month, a sum that represented his annual salary from the HBC. Loyal company man, he did not desert, but others did: ‘our operations here got considerably disarranged, by numbers of our men leaving for the California diggings, including the sailors from our ships, when pay had to be considerably increased to induce them to remain’.119 Finlayson, as the officer in charge must have been the anonymous compiler of Fort Victoria’s post journal, which recorded the action taken after one such desertion. On 24 August 1849 he was: Raised from bed with the reported desertion of nine men from the Mary Dare [an HBC ship stationed in the area] decamped in a fine canoe belonging to old Rabasca and [as they] had no doubt gone toward Nisqually a party was immediately appointed and set off in pursuit. Mr Roderick Finlayson, having hands only, volunteered his services left thus about 8 o’clock a.m. accompanied by Mr Joseph McKay, Mr Mowatt and the following men: Lagacé, Cate, Grand, Thomas with a number of Indians to complete the crew of two canoes. They will take the route by Smith’s Island and endeavour to intercept the deserters before they are clear of Admiralty Inlet, otherwise Mr Finlayson will proceed onwards to Nisqually and endeavour to secure them there with the aid of the United States authorities. The work of the place going on as usual the Mary Dare taking on cargo for the new establishment … Little doing in the way of trade.120 Grant summed up: ‘of the 400 men who have been imported in all during the past five years, about two-thirds may be said to have deserted’.121 High wages in Oregon and California and the attraction of the Califor-

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nian gold districts had ‘not only operated to prevent persons of capital setting in Vancouver Island but also obstructed the Hudson’s Bay Company and Puget Sound Company in their endeavours to bring land into cultivation, and provide means of subsistence for settlers’. In 1852 the HBC hoped coal would attract people in ‘to promote the settlement of the island and attract shipping to its harbours.’122 However, Andrew Colvile wrote that funds to encourage settlement were limited, and that Australia and California ‘hold out such temptations that we must be content to proceed at a very moderate pace in the colonisation of Vancouver’s Island. In fact, it must be done principally by retiring servants from the several companies and concerns.’123 ‘A pretty complete view of the statistics’: population These emigrant voyages, whatever their leakages of migrants, did see the population of Vancouver Island slowly grow in quantity if not always in quality. Douglas was concerned about the type of person coming: Drunkenness is now [1852] … prevalent in this Colony and will, I fear, continue to be so until a better and more respectable class of persons are sent to the country or a great improvement takes place in the moral tone of the great bulk of the present population … The colonists being with few exceptions of the poorer classes and destitute of means stand greatly in need of the fostering care and material aid of the mother country.124 Grant estimated there were about 450 European residents in 1853; 300 in the south between Victoria and Sooke; 125 at Nanaimo and another 25 at Fort Rupert,125 who did ‘not go very far from the [stockade] walls’.126 This note of caution regarding European spatial behaviour was penned by Governor Blanshard and, in one of few instances of agreement, his rival and successor James Douglas tried to consolidate settlement in properly surveyed and registered holdings and not let settlers ‘straggle’ into unsafe areas.127 In 1855 an official census of Vancouver Island was taken,128 described by a modern historian as ‘political document, drawn up by Douglas for transmission to London, aimed at showing the extent of agricultural settlement and commercial activity on the island’.129 However, this is not to cast doubt on its accuracy, for Douglas was a meticulous man. Indeed, he reported that ‘I have taken a great deal of trouble in compiling these tables which while still in some respects incomplete they nevertheless exhibit a pretty complete view of the statistics of the Colony.’130 The census, which did not include indigenous people, recorded a total of 774 residents, 232 (30 percent) in Victoria, 151 (19.5 percent) at Nanaimo and by

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now just 12 at Fort Rupert, all adult males without families. There was also a company sawmill with 7 residents. In addition there were 32 rural settlements including a relatively substantial one on San Juan Island (29 people), later to be lost to the USA. By far the largest of the agricultural settlements were those of the PSAC, especially at Constance Cove (34), Esquimalt (30) and Maple Point (76). Most other farms had populations in single figures. The small scale of Vancouver Island Colony identified here is not the only evidence of its immaturity. The population pyramid drawn up from the 1855 census (Figure 2.4) indicates a youthful population with the 15 people in their fifties (1.9 percent) forming the oldest group. The other remarkable feature is the preponderance of males in the 20–40 age bracket, 269 as opposed to 98 females. This is a measure of the work camp nature of this pioneer settlement, with many men contracted to work for the HBC or the PSAC. Had colonisation been successful, there would have been more families and less gender imbalance. There were in total 243 houses with 183 outbuildings and stores, a church at Victoria, three schools: at Victoria, Colvile Town (Nanaimo) and the largest of the PSAC settlements, Maple Point. The population of Vancouver Island itself increased with the gold rush of 1858, although it dropped for a time afterwards as the economy subsequently slumped. Duncan Macdonald stated that the non-indigenous population in the early 1860s was 2,884; 2,350 of whom lived in Victoria,131 but this is surely too low for Douglas’s successor, Arthur Kennedy, reported that whilst the total for Vancouver Island had fallen from 8,000 in 1864, the population (exclusive of indigenous people) was 6,000 in 1865. The decrease Kennedy assigned to restlessness, depression in trade and the want of progress in settlement ‘owing to the peculiar condition of matters relating to crown lands’.132 When gold fever infected the Thompson and Fraser Rivers in 1858, population problems changed. In April, Douglas reported to the Colonial Office that the floating population of the colony with few exceptions had wandered to Thompson’s River and, unless the mines were a failure, there would be great difficulty in securing local non-indigenous labour. ‘Indian labourers can, however, be engaged in any number required though it would not be advisable to employ a large proportion of that class of labourers as they are a rather unruly force, requiring a very close, constant superintendence.’ His solution was that more men be sent from England.133 Further, Douglas was positively encouraging that summer to a German pastor in San Francisco who enquired on behalf of a party of his countrymen who were considering migrating.134 By contrast, Douglas complained to the British Consul at San Francisco in June 1858 that a ‘number of that class of persons commonly called “rowdies” in California

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Figure 2.4 Age–sex pyramid, European population, Vancouver Island, 1855 have taken up their quarters in this Colony’ and he required detectives to be sent to keep them under surveillance.135 Most people passed through Victoria to the diggings, although a steadier income might be available for people who remained in Victoria supplying the miners rather than facing the risk and uncertainties of panning for gold themselves. Many did stay and Victoria mushroomed. Even so, ‘quiet and order’ prevailed in May, Douglas wrote, despite a shortage of accommodation, scarcity of food and ‘temptations to excess in the way of drink’. Indeed, merchants in Victoria were ‘rejoicing in the advent of so large a body of people in the colony’.136 The later Cariboo gold rush again caused agitation and Arthur Kennedy stated in 1864 that ‘the great want in this as in all other countries is a fixed population, and this can scarcely be expected till the excitement attendant upon the first discovery of gold has subsided’.137 This, like other such booms, was only temporary, and by 1865 the island reverted to the situation where ‘the great want of the colony is population’.138

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‘Young men beginning life with a small capital’: the Wakefield theory Although it was known that there were possibilities for coal production and that trade in this and other commodities might become significant, successful colonisation of Vancouver Island required the establishment of an agricultural community. Thus, land had to be made available for settlers and the manner in which this was accomplished relied upon the Wakefield theory. This was put forward by Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796–1862), a British politician who was a driving force behind the colonisation of South Australia and New Zealand.139 Wakefield’s reasoning was informed by the contemporary discourse on population pressures, this being the era of the Irish famine amongst other disasters. Wakefield proposed his ‘systematic colonisation’ based on observations that the UK suffered from an abundance of labour but a shortage of land whilst the colonies had abundant land but lacked labour (and capital); thus migration should be encouraged. Granting colonial land free of charge to emigrant settlers, Wakefield regarded as not being the best way of proceeding, for this would engender speculation in land as people granted holdings without cost might not use them, hoping to profit from speculation, from being able to sell on the land. Better, Wakefield thought, to charge for colonial land, and at a price sufficient to ensure that purchasers must utilise it to see a return on their investment. Proceeds from land sales should be put into a colonial fund to facilitate emigration. Selling the land ensured the emergence of distinctions between the landowners and their labourers. However, the latter would benefit from good wages to be found in a labour-poor setting and, in due course, could aspire to buy their own land. On Vancouver Island people working on contract for the HBC would be assigned land at the end of their period of employment. Joanne Archer has recently concluded that ‘Wakefield’s theory was more than just an exercise in the facilitation of people from one side of the world to the other; it was also an exercise in social engineering, an attempt to create a model society.’ However, regarding her case study of Australia, ‘Ultimately Wakefield’s plan did not work out the way he expected. Social mobility was high, there was a constant labour shortage, and the land could simply not support the type of settlement he envisioned.’140 Archer, of course, benefits from hindsight. It should also be investigated what contemporaries were writing. Karl Marx, as might be expected, was antipathetic: By this plan [systematic colonization], Wakefield cries in triumph, ‘the supply of labour must be constant and regular, because, first, as no labourer would be able to procure land until he had worked for money, all immigrant labourers, working for a time for wages and in combination, would produce capital for the employment of more

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labourers; secondly, because every labourer who left off working for wages and became a landowner would, by purchasing land, provide a fund for bringing fresh labour to the colony.’[141] The price of the soil imposed by the State must, of course, be a ‘sufficient price’ – i.e., so high ‘as to prevent the labourers from becoming independent landowners until others had followed to take their place.’[142] This ‘sufficient price for the land’ is nothing but a euphemistic circumlocution for the ransom which the labourer pays to the capitalist for leave to retire from the wage-labour market to the land. First, he must create for the capitalist ‘capital’, with which the latter may be able to exploit more labourers; then he must place, at his own expense, a locum tenens on the labour-market, whom the Government forwards across the sea for the benefit of his old master, the capitalist.143 Other contemporary commentators thought the system would not be appropriate for Vancouver Island even before it was opened up for settlement. Sir George Seymour wrote in 1847 that the HBC settlement at Fort Victoria would be a ‘nucleus of a colony which may be extended as circumstances require’, but the Wakefield principle of selling all land at a uniform price might not be appropriate as in New South Wales it had ‘checked the sale of land and turned emigrants who would have been farmers into squatters holding … territory under licence’. He thought that Vancouver Island needed rather ‘a liberal principle in the granting of land.’144 By contrast, in 1849 James Ward wrote of the need to promote emigration as the British population was increasing at 1,000 per day and pauperism was rising. In his discussion of the Wakefield theory he stated: That our colonization ought to carry out society entire, and to plant it in the wilderness in such a way that the new community should exhibit all the attributes of civilization belonging to the old, without the evils which arise from the excess of population … He [Wakefield] reasons thus: there is a certain ratio between the supply of labour in the market, and the surface [i.e. area] of land under cultivation, by which the greatest quantity of produce will be raised. If you miss this ratio, you fall into the evils of an underpopulated country on the one hand, in which land is merely scratched; or on the other, of an overpeopled country, in which competition reduces wages to a minimum, and the land will not produce sufficient to feed the people.145 It is significant that Ward put Vancouver Island in the title of his book: Perils, Pastimes and Pleasures of an Emigrant in Australia, Vancouver’s Island and

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California although there is no reference to the island in the text, for he was encouraging the Wakefield theory to be adopted there, which, indeed, it was. Roderick Finlayson, resident on Vancouver Island from 1843, taken there for the more old-fashioned purpose of trading with the indigenous people, wrote that the system of colonisation of Vancouver Island was that recommended by Mr Wakefield as it had ‘answered’ in New Zealand and elsewhere.146 The end product was later described as ‘a social class of small yeoman farmers and a landed squirearchy’.147 The basic lineaments of the process were laid out by Walter Colquhoun Grant, the first ‘squire’. The company ‘were to sell land at the price of £1 per acre to all intending settlers, who were moreover obliged to bring out five men at their own expense, from England or other British possession, for every 100 acres [40 hectares] which they purchased, being at the rate of one man for every 20 acres [8 hectares]’.148 Grant himself brought out a blacksmith, house builder, carpenter, gardener, labourer and three farmers.149 In his 1862 book Duncan Macdonald wrote that ‘Emigration has always been and will continue to be an important feature in the colonial policy of England. To people her vast territories with her own hardy and indefatigable race, planting new bulwarks against ignorance and despotism, will always be Great Britain’s grandest work.’150 He sounded Wakefieldian, wanting men of ‘small means’ (i.e. some wealth) to migrate, rather than labourers, advising that ‘gentlemen agriculturalists’ or ‘brokendown swells’ should not go to Vancouver Island it not being a place of refinement: ‘cats in gloves catch no mice. … The only class who might emigrate with early hopes of success are persons possessing some capital and who have been used to manual labour.’151 A few years later an anonymous writer in the Westminster Review suggested that western Canada was in such a state that ‘those destitute of indomitable energy and patience, especially if their exchequer be limited, are counselled to seek their fortune in an older and less exciting sphere’.152 The Wakefield theory was not entirely successful on Vancouver Island. Duncan Macdonald, who seemed to support Wakefield, did not favour the sale of land, but would rather it had been given to settlers who would then be taxed. That was a better way of raising revenue than land sales: ‘the practice of making the public lands … a source of revenue is unwise and impolitic … instead of attracting … it repels population from the country’.153 James Douglas, who dealt with the practice of colonisation, rather than its theory, also took issue with land sales. He reported in 1853 that colonists ‘complain of the price of land which they contend is sold at a price above its value and that every colonist is [i.e. should be] entitled to a free grant of land.’154 It is interesting to compare Douglas’s letters on the same subjects to the HBC and the Colonial Office, for sometimes

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they give different slants, but on this topic there was no difference. In the same month as the letter to the Duke of Newcastle cited above he wrote in a similar vein to Barclay after complaints against the HBC by settlers had appeared in Oregon newspapers: The effect of all their outcry is to induce Government to make free grants of land for settlers and they fancy that by getting rid of the HBC their darling object would be easily satisfied. That object elides a general feeling of sympathy on its behalf as every freeholder and every one desirous of settling on Vancouver’s Island at once sees the advantage of getting land free of cost instead of buying it at one pound sterling to the acre.155 In a letter to the Colonial Office the following year Douglas added: ‘I have not heard a complaint from any person in this colony except in regard to the sale price of the public land, which seems to be the only grievance affecting the colonists generally and that grievance I have no power to redress.’156 His predecessor, Richard Blanshard, attributed the limited number of settlers attracted to the high price of land, particularly it being ‘far higher than it is sold in the United States immediately adjoining.’157 Douglas tried to get the system changed; further, concerned that the HBC and PSAC would soon complete their building works, he stated: The perplexing question … [is then] what the labouring people in the Colony will find to do. They will then be destitute of employment and having no property or means of acquiring land on which to employ their labour and there being no foreign outlet for the expansion of general enterprise [because of American import duties] they will be unable to earn a livelihood and the probable consequence will be a general desire for emigration to the American settlements where grants of land are freely offered to all parties who become settlers or improvers of the soil.158 J.S. Helmcken concluded that: ‘The scheme of colonisation was a blunder, a theory, the sales of land were to pay for everything and the price was $5 per acre with the demand that every purchaser should send out a number of men to cultivate the purchase!’ Nearby, in the American territories one could get land for nothing: ‘the contrast was glaring and some of our people took advantage of it’.159 One case was that of John Tod, sometime council member, who did not purchase land on Vancouver Island on his retirement because of the cost, instead taking land on Point Roberts in the USA.160 Marx observed the American system with approval for ‘as the labourer can accumulate for himself – and this he can do so

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long as he remains possessor of his means of production – capitalist accumulation and the capitalistic mode of production are impossible. The class of wage-labourers … is wanting [absent]’.161 Thus, land being available only at the price of £1 ($5) per acre was a practical disincentive, despite theoretical social benefits. John Domer in an 1858 emigrants’ guide complained that the price of land charged by the HBC on Vancouver Island is ‘excessively exorbitant and has hitherto conduced to deter many emigrants from proceeding thither’.162 This was also the view of one who had so proceeded for Grant stated that ‘the high price of land, when equally good land can be got for one-fifth of the sum in Oregon, has prevented numbers of people from settling there, who were otherwise favourably inclined to do so.’163 Douglas reported in 1859 once again that there was ‘agitation’ about the high cost of land and that a petition: Signed by a large and respectable body of immigrants chiefly from the province of Upper Canada makes out a truly distressing case to the effect that in consequence of restrictions on their way hither and the obstacles encountered since their arrival in this country their funds are nearly exhausted and that their remaining means would soon be spent and themselves rendered incapable of settling unless they at once obtained leave to a title on the public lands. They themselves pray that no money should be required of them for twelve months and that the price of land should be 5s (11/4 dollars) per statute acre payable in four years.164 Five years earlier the surveyor, Joseph Pemberton, had been pressing the HBC to allow payments by stages: a quarter as down payment, another quarter when the land was marked out and the rest only when the official documentation had been received.165 Douglas did allow a delay in the payment of the first instalment and accepted just one shilling per acre at taking the land, another shilling after two months with the rest of the payments to be spread. He continued to press the Colonial Secretary on land pricing, supported by the Vancouver Island colonial legislature: I beg to call to your attention to the recommendation of the House of Assembly that greater encouragement should be given to migrants from the UK than is now possible under the existing law regulating the sale price of public lands in Vancouver’s Island in order to ensure the rapid settlement of the country with a British population, a suggestion which seems worthy of our most serious attention.166

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He forwarded another petition on land prices from the House of Assembly to the Duke of Newcastle later in 1859, ‘a matter of pivotal importance to this colony’, although he did add a rider that ‘an alternative source of funding would have to be secured’ for the colony to replace that lost from land sales.167 Douglas expressed Wakefieldian concern over free land encouraging speculation: ‘large tracts may be purchased, not with a view of improving the lands, but on speculation of a possible resale, when they have been rendered valuable by the labour of others in the same locality’,168 but pressed for land prices in areas of Vancouver Island which were not selling to be reduced to 4s 2d per acre, to prevent it remaining an ‘unproductive wilderness’.169 The price of land was reduced. A contemporary settler, Richard Mayne, stated that Governor Douglas made a proclamation on 19 February 1861 that land was to be sold for 4s 2d per acre to ‘promote the settlement of country land in the said colony’.170 British or alien residents who took an oath of allegiance to the crown could receive 150 acres (61 hectares) of crown land; married men 200 acres (81 hectares) with another 10 acres (6 hectares) per child (thus encouraging families, against one of Wakefield’s precepts, for he saw children as being unproductive). The land was to be laid out in rectangular blocks oriented to cardinal points and the price could be met in three instalments. To discourage speculation land could only be sold after two years assuming the full price had been paid and a certificate of improvement granted. After this, the emigrants’ guides featured the reduced price as an attractant,171 and a different sort of migrant was sought. A letter to The Times signed ‘Vancouver’ in late 1863 stated: Three distinct classes of emigrants have left the shores of England for these colonies [Vancouver Island and British Columbia]. First young gentlemen who tired of an office life in London or Liverpool and the too regular ride on the omnibus, have saved enough to pay their passage, thrown up their situations and emigrated; the second is the military element; and thirdly the mauvais sujets and unmanageable of society whose friends naturally forward them to these most inaccessible colonies. Nearly all may be said to have landed penniless. Of the first two classes mentioned, notwithstanding the disadvantage of previous habit, British pluck has in so many instances told that numbers have risen to independence or even to affluence, but with these the labour market is now overstocked. The third invariably return disappointed; and cover their retreat by the loudest lamentations; but these are not the classes likely to succeed out there. Let mechanics such as ships’ carpenters, brick-

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layers, smiths etc., farmers, ploughmen, labourers and honest women emigrate. The country will absorb any number of them.172 Richard Mackie, noting that the system was imposed by the government rather than the company, concluded that ‘the Wakefield model assumed the existence of sufficient amounts or arable land to form an agricultural economy. On Vancouver Island, however, such land was scarce and immigrants concentrated instead on the island’s varied natural resources’ and that ‘The Wakefield system failed in that it did little to encourage fresh immigration into the colony; to attract and maintain a sizeable labouring population in a colony adjacent to American territories offering high wages and liberal access to land.’173 The Wakefield system was never imposed upon the later settlement of British Columbia, its surveyor general, James Pemberton, the former Vancouver Island surveyor, in laying out agricultural land ‘abandoned Wakefieldian ideas’ and framed legislation in 1860 that allowed unsurveyed holdings of under 160 acres (65 hectares) to be taken provided that a fee of 10s was paid when proper survey was completed.174 ‘Parliament will watch with jealousy’: company land sales One of the major purchasers of land in Vancouver Island Colony was the Hudson’s Bay Company itself and its sister organisation, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. Such purchases would be made on the open market, with ninety percent of the price going into the colony’s trust fund to be used for colonial improvement. Barclay made this clear in a letter to Blanshard: Bailiffs and men having been sent out to commence the establishment of farms and cultivation under the supervision of Mr Douglas, the Governor and Committee [of the HBC] feel that they may to a moderate extent anticipate the funds which will thus come into their hands in trust for the Colonization and improvement of the Island. They have therefore determined to authorize Mr Douglas to make you advances to the extent of four thousand pounds as it may from time to time be required in erecting some of the buildings most urgently required. These buildings will have to be made under the direction of yourself as Governor and of your Council.175 Blanshard, confirmed that £4,000 would be spent on public buildings under his direction but claimed that they would be subject to sanction by the ‘Agent’ (Blanshard rarely used Douglas’s name). Further:

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Unless the Colony is intended to be merely an enlarged depot of the Hudson’s Bay Company which I do not conceive was the intention of Her Majesty’s Government in making the grant of the island, it will be a waste of public money to expend it in the way they indicate as the public buildings will then be surrounded by their reserves which they are neither prepared to use or sell.176 ‘Reserves’ referred to the fact that the company was deemed to be the possessor of much land around Fort Victoria, that had been occupied prior to the Oregon Treaty of 1846. Blanshard described this ‘vast district’ as 25 square miles (65 square kilometres) on the southeast corner of Vancouver Island commencing at Victoria Harbour and following Salt Water Inlet to near Knocken Hill and sent Earl Grey an illustrative sketch that seems not to have survived. He alleged that the HBC were ‘grasping at the whole price of the land by monopolizing this vast district, making it a free gift to themselves and then selling it for their own profit’. However, he did allow that the HBC lands were not superior to those elsewhere and that the HBC had sold some of this area as public land. Further, he believed the company proposed to retain 4,000 acres (1,618 hectares) in three farms, one at Victoria, the others north and east, with large numbers of cattle which would be ‘indispensable to the Company but of service to the Colony at large as it is from these farms that the settlers procure seed and cattle to stock their lands’. The farm near Victoria also served as a buffer against encroachment from the indigenous people.177 This fairly favourable depiction from a man antipathetic to the HBC did not protect the company from criticism,178 whilst later Blanshard complained at delays in getting land surveyed. Meanwhile, the HBC reserves were effectively preventing bona fide colonists from settling. Blanshard advised that a new town should be erected outside Victoria, away from ‘the vicinity of the Company’s posts’. When such a site was selected, the public buildings should be built there and adjacent agricultural land be ‘brought into the market fairly’.179 In 1852 when the HBC’s creature, James Douglas, had become governor, it was explained why the reserve existed: ‘On the founding of the post at Fort Victoria the usual custom was observed of marking out the site of the establishment and the extent of land required for tillage and a sufficient cattle.’180 In London at the same period, the HBC chair, Sir John Pelly, assured the Colonial Office that ‘The company consider they have a right to hold that land without paying for it, while for any additional quantity that may be required to be taken by the Fur Trade (which is merely the subordinate branch of the HBC) the same price will be paid as is paid by other purchasers of land.’181 In the meantime, the only real sale of land had been 100 acres (40 hectares) to Captain Grant at Sooke. Blan-

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shard reported on a potential English settler, Eliza Chancellor, seemingly the forerunner of others to whom ‘The Agent’, had offered to sell land from the company’s reserve, but Chancellor wanted land elsewhere, upon which so many difficulties were thrown in his way that he left in disgust. The only other person farming on his own account was ‘Mr Todd’ (sic, Tod), still a servant of the HBC, who had ‘ploughed a few acres’ near Fort Victoria. However, as Tod had not been able to get proper title from Douglas ‘he is becoming alarmed, has discontinued the house he was beginning to build and talks of leaving the colony’.182 The policies of the company paying for extra land, permitting other uses on its reserved holdings and making some land available for sale did not overcome the problem faced by settlers in that land close to the harbour and facilities of Fort Victoria was not normally available, as in the case of W.C. Grant detailed above. Occasionally, totals of sales and areas of land involved are mentioned, especially in the official reports of the HBC on their colonisation. By 27 April 1852, 1,478.5 acres (598 hectares) had been sold to eleven people and the HBC possessed 3,984 acres (1,612 hectares) in reserved land. Some of this land was being sold to retired company servants and applications from nineteen persons to take 2,355 acres (953 hectares) were in progress with the lands being surveyed. In addition, the PSAC cultivated four farms totalling about 2,500 acres (c. 1,000 hectares), which supplied food to Fort Victoria. These holdings would be sold to the farm managers at the usual rate of £1 per acre when a survey was completed. The HBC and PSC together had sent out 271 men, eighty women and eighty-four children between 1848 and 1852, although, as has been seen, many had subsequently deserted. As an inducement to stay, labourers who performed their contracts to satisfaction were entitled to a bonus of £25 to be paid in land at £1 per acre ‘so that it may be expected that many of them will become settlers’.183 Another source for information on land sales up to the end of 1853 is the article by W.C. Grant, although it is presented in a confusing manner. The HBC had 10,172 acres (4,116 hectares), the PSAC either 2,374 or 2,574 acres (961 or 1042 hectares), the number varies, and private holdings amounted to 7,261 acres (2,938 hectares). However, some private holdings must have been only in the application stage for Grant also said that 1,696 acres (686 hectares) were actually occupied by sixteen people and only 480-500 acres (194-202 ha) of the private land was in cultivation, his 30 acres (12 hectares) at Sooke, 10 acres (4 hectares) at Metchosin, with the rest being within the HBC reserve, presumably in possession of company servants. Grant described the crops grown, European style cereals and vegetables, root crops did well and he was struck by the quality of his ‘Swedish turnip’ crop from his own holding.184 Douglas confirmed that about 7,000 acres (2,833 hectares) of public lands had

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been registered for sale in 1853, which were being laid out in lots.185 Little of this land seems to have worked on, however, for the 1855 census identified 31 holdings totalling 1,418 acres (574 hectares) of improved land and 9,005.5 acres (3,644 hectares) unimproved. The farms had a combined worth of £56,530.186 Land sales information from 1855–56 was transmitted by Douglas to the HBC and a copy was printed in the parliamentary papers. In 1855 2,137 acres (865 hectares) were disposed of, but 837 acres (339 hectares) were reserved for roads or were deemed to be ‘unimprovable rock’ and did not attract a price, leaving precisely 1,299 acres, 3 roods and 26 perches (526 hectares) actually sold, bringing in up to the time of writing £512 17s 6d with £787 0s 10d still owing on the annual instalment plan.187 A much more detailed account of land sales appeared in the British Parliamentary Papers in 1858 from Joseph Pemberton listing the names of all purchasers, the land sold to them and the district in which it was situated. This data, tabled in the House of Commons in June 1858, must have been collected months earlier to account for the travel time from Vancouver Island, and presumably relates to 1857, prior to the 1858 gold rush. It shows a total of 120 lots, but many purchasers had taken more than one and just sixty-nine separate landowners are recorded (Appendix 4, Table 2.5). These include the HBC itself, which had acquired ten lots totalling 9,752 acres (3,946 hectares) and the six substantial holdings of the PSAC at 2,274 acres (920 hectares). It would seem that this data set records all land sales, including land sold on, thus Grant’s holding at Sooke is recorded, together the separate holdings of four members of the Muir family, also at Sooke where they had purchased Grant’s land as well as taking some more.188 Many landowners were HBC servants including most of the familiar names of the principal players in this story: Blenkinsop, Dallas, Finlayson, Helmcken, McNeill, Pemberton, Tolmie, Tod, and the biggest landowner, chief factor and councillor John Work with near 1,000 acres (404 hectares), even more that James Douglas’s own substantial holding of 777 acres (314 hectares). Sales to such employees were controversial in that they might reflect preferment to company people over settlers. The year this report emerged Douglas had been instructed by the colonial secretary thus: ‘you will pardon me if I enjoin on you, as imperative, the most diligent care that in the sales of land there should not be the slightest cause to impute a desire to show favour to the servants of the HBC. Parliament will watch with jealousy every proceeding connected with such sales.’ Douglas was to exercise ‘impartial probity’.189 The limited spread of European settlement, private or company, is highlighted by the fact that by 1858, 63 of the lots were in Victoria District, 26 at Esquimalt, 6 at Metchosin, 8 at Sooke, although 16 lots, some substan-

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tial, were further north in the Lake District with one at Nanaimo, which consisted of 6,190 acres (2,508 hectares) taken by the HBC for its coal mine and associated settlement. Unfortunately, according to the note appended to the table, Pemberton was unable to discover the amount of land actually under cultivation.190 The transformation wrought by the gold rush was apparent by October 1858 when Douglas wrote that from the start of 1858 … 1,142 lots had been purchased by 434 individuals. Many purchased a single lot but some in and around the expanding town of Victoria had taken more, for a town could not have been established had every individual purchaser been limited to the acquisition of one lot of 60 x 120 feet [18 x 36 metres], for so small a quantity of land would not have sufficed for many of the domestic and business purposes for which the purchases were made.191 Douglas also listed agricultural lands sold during this time (Appendix 4, Table 2.6). In his commentary on these statistics Douglas was keen to dispel any notions that Vancouver Island had become dominated by land speculators, arguing that with so much ‘waste land’ in the colony, a high speculative price could never have been maintained. It is interesting to note therefore, that, in his eyes, any land not under productive, i.e. European, use was ‘waste’. Anyway, he calculated the mean holding taken in 1858 was: 239 acres [97 hectares] or nearly, a very moderate quantity to each purchaser … After striving for many years without much success to attract a population to this colony, it struck me upon reflection that it would be absurd to place a check on emigration [i.e. emigration to Vancouver Island] by imposing various conditions on purchasers of land the very instant that people began to come into the country with thousands of square miles of uninhabited wilderness as good land as any in the District of Victoria.192 The rise in sales consequent upon the gold rush boom was seen in another letter of 11 December 1858 when Douglas stated with a fractional precision descending into perches – 160th of an acre – that 30,984127/160 acres (12,539 hectares) had been sold so far in 1858 compared to 6,303105/160 acres (2,551 hectares) in 1857.193 Infrastructure: ‘for the convenience of the inhabitants’ Vancouver Island Colony was to be self-sustaining. The British Government instructed Sir John Pelly in 1848 that ‘the whole of these charges

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[for colonisation] and every other expense connected with the occupation of the island is to be provided for by the Company according to the original understanding that no pecuniary demand of any kind was to be made upon Her Majesty’s government’.194 The company also had to provide for the accommodation of the colonial governor and other officials. Alexander Barclay, HBC secretary, confirmed this with Richard Blanshard: The Governor and Committee would recommend that a moderate sized but respectable house and premises should be erected as the official residence for yourself as Governor … Also that a moderate sized house should be erected for Mr Staines who at present will act as Chaplain and Schoolmaster. And a room or house capable of serving in a temporary way the purpose of a church on Sundays and of a schoolroom during the week … As a principle, a plan and estimate of all public buildings should first be submitted to the Governor and Committee for their consideration and sanction, but in the present case this may be dispensed with, provided the plan and estimates are approved of and sanctioned by Mr Douglas.195 ‘Our Island shall by God’s blessing be improved’: churches Barclay’s letter mentioned only a temporary provision for religious observances and this was over two years after the first chaplain, Reverend Robert Staines, had arrived. He had travelled aboard the company ship Columbia in March 1849 and performed divine service upon landing.196 In Blanshard’s 1849 instructions upon being appointed as governor, point 35 of the 41 listed mentioned that God was to be worshipped, churches to be maintained and more built ‘as Our Island shall by God’s blessing be improved [i.e. developed]’.197 Provision of churches did not happen at all promptly, Roderick Finlayson recalled that services had to be ‘held in the Mess Room of the Fort which was made to serve for almost every purpose. Here was also erected a sort of temporary pulpit and prayers held every Sunday.’198 Chief Factor Douglas was instructed in 1850 that the HBC must contribute some of the reserved land for institutions such as churches and schoolhouses, but that the company would not provide the structures: ‘the inhabitants, of course, must do the rest’.199 Douglas confirmed this with Staines but continued: I am however persuaded it is their wish and intention to cause a place of worship to be erected here whenever the present unhappy circumstances of the Colony, which render it impossible to procure mechanical labour except at enormous expense, will permit the attempt to be made with a reasonable prospect of success … By reference to the Prospectus for the Colonisation of Vancouver’s Is-

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land you will observe that the Company have set aside a portion of land equal to one eighth of the quantity sold, for the ministers of religion. I have no doubt that a site for a church and Burial Ground will be granted on due application for the same.200 In July 1853 Andrew Colvile was still advising Joseph Pemberton that a church should be built ‘when a population is collected’,201 although Pemberton had proposed building a church the previous December, suggesting it should seat 550.202 Permission was granted, but only for a smalller building, the instructions being that ‘public works suitable to present circumstances’ only should be erected.203 Pemberton had a design for a wooden church which could be erected for under £1,000, given that wood was on hand and virtually cost-free, but he was angling for a trip back to the UK and felt that he should come and oversee the construction of the ironwork necessary for this and other public buildings which were to be made up there.204 In October 1853 Douglas reported to the Duke of Newcastle that the building of a church at Victoria had at last commenced. The foundation for this Anglican structure had been laid in stone, and timber for the body of the church prepared, but Douglas had not been able to find any person to complete it, it would have to be built by degrees with hired labour. This included paying indigenous people for supplying shells and sand as revealed in the colony accounts in 1854.205 That year Douglas reported that he had been obliged to ‘call the attention of the HBC to the necessity of making effectual provision for the moral and religious instructions of the inhabitants of this colony’.206 Victoria District Church, later called Christ Church, finally opened in August 1856, being extended in both 1862 and 1865, in which year it became a cathedral before burning down four years later. The HBC accounts reveal that expenditure on the church to 1861 had reached £2,683 4s 1d, met from the Vancouver Island Trust account. By this time there was also a parsonage and schoolhouse at Namaimo, which had cost £575 to build in 1860.207 No more ‘roaming at large like so many savages’: the provision of schools The first minister, Robert Staines, was also the first teacher. James Douglas, then still in the Columbia territory, wrote to Roderick Finlayson at Fort Victoria in 1849 instructing him that Columbia had sailed from London on 8 September 1848 with Staines and his wife aboard as a school was about to be established: We propose … to found the school at Fort Victoria, and we beg you will well signify our intention to the Rev. Mr Staines and request him to remain with you until you receive further instructions.

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You will please to give him lodging in the establishment, allow them a servant and a separate table and make them in other respects as comfortable as possible. Staines’s salary was £100 p.a. as company chaplain and the ‘supporters of the school’ (i.e. parents) would pay him another £340 p.a. for the ‘services of himself and Mrs Staines as School master and School mistress’.208 Barclay’s reading was that Staines as a teacher ‘was engaged at the desire of the gentlemen in the country … and that he was not considered to be in the service of the Company in any other capacity than that of Chaplain at £100 p.a. and another £100 toward the support of the school.’209 The couple were to maintain themselves at their own charge and Finlayson was to ‘keep an account of there [sic] table. Regulation of their mess in their own hands’.210 At various dates between 1850 and 1852 Rev. and Mrs Staines taught between twenty-two and twenty-seven pupils, mostly the children of HBC officials, including John Work, William McNeill, James Yates and John Tod. James Douglas had three children there and was also guardian for two sets of orphaned children who went to the school.211 The HBC had settled with Douglas that children attending school should be boarded at the expense of the Fur Trade, ‘trusting to his representation that the expense could not be heavy.’ However, it came to £351 2s 1d for 1852 and HBC Governor and Committee in London wanted to know how many children were involved, presumably wishing to regulate the cost.212 By 1852, four years earlier than the building of the church, a boys’ school had been opened ‘chiefly at the expense of the HBC, for the instruction of the children of the lower classes’.213 This tied in with the priorities of Blanshard’s instructions, for much more prominent than the section on church building was that on schools: point 3 of the 41 on his list told him to enter upon ‘proper methods for erecting and maintaining schools in order to the training up of youth to reading and to a necessary knowledge of the principles of religion’.214 The Legislative Council minutes recorded in March 1853 that schools at Maple Point, near the PSAC settlement at Esquimalt, and another, probably a replacement, at Victoria were to be built, the latter costing £500 including the teacher’s house.215 Douglas confirmed in 1853 that ‘The appropriation of the sum of £500 made for the erection of a school house will be paid from the trust fund, the HBC having placed the sum of £2,000 at the disposal of the Governor and Council for colonial purposes.’216 The new school at Victoria opened in early October 1853 under Robert Barr, Staines having been replaced.217 The Victoria school had thirty-three pupils and was making satisfactory progress. Another school at the mining settlement of Nanaimo had been opened at the expense of the HBC.218 This was to the

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satisfaction of Douglas who wrote in uncharacteristically enthusiastic tones that: I sincerely wish their Honours could have the satisfaction of seeing twenty-five boys and girls who were before roaming at large like so many savages, marching satchel in hand and neatly dressed to school. Mr Bailey, the teacher, is attentive to his duty, and the miners are delighted with the idea of having the means of educating their children and will be more so when they are assured of the Company’s intention of sending out a Free Church Minister for Nanaimo, which I shall immediately communicate to them.219 The following year Douglas reported that Robert Barr’s salary of £60 had proved ‘insufficient for his support’ and he had had to be granted ‘relief’.220 The HBC told Douglas in 1854 that they had engaged a Mr Clarke who had trained at Battersea College in London as the schoolmaster for McKenzie’s farm at Maple Point.221 He was sent out on Princess Royal. At the 1855 census there were three schools, each with one teacher, all paid for by trust funds. That in Victoria had twenty-six pupils, Maple Point also twenty-six and Nanaimo twenty-nine.222 In December 1857 came a proclamation from Governor Douglas, stating that teachers of District Schools were ‘in addition to their annual salary and board, allowances from the Colonial Trust Fund, authorised to receive pupils in the manner following and to charge according to the scale of fees hereinafter set forth’. Children of colonists, residents of Vancouver Island and servants of the HBC were charged 18 guineas p.a. to be boarded or £1 as day pupils. Children of non-residents, not being servants of the company, were charged as the market could bear. The syllabus consisted of English, grammar, writing, geography, arithmetic and industrial training. If Latin or higher mathematics were to be taught, increased fees would be charged. Pupils had to pay for books and stationery.223 The colony, as it developed, had to make provision for other infrastructure. Vancouver Island Council in the mid-1850s was voting annually considerable sums for roads, bridges, a courthouse, the church and a hospital.224 Regarding roads, Douglas reported to the Colonial Office in 1853 that he had advertised for tenders to improve the roads leading to the various settlements around Victoria but no reasonable offers had been received. The costs were to be met from the trust fund.225 A committee had been established that year to consider building a road to Sooke,226 and two years later the council appointed commissioners to superintend the construction of a road on the east of Victoria ‘for the convenience of the inhabitants settled in that quarter’.227 In the later 1850s when the House of Assembly was in operation, it, too, debated

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about infrastructure. For example, ‘a Public Hospital … is greatly needed for the relief of the casual sick, applications for medical attendance being almost of daily occurrence at Government House by sick and destitute persons’.228 The hospital originated from ‘the benevolent exertions of the Chaplain to the HBC’.229 The House of Assembly also considered other matters, evidence of the growing maturity of the colony: a postal service, gas and water supplies and a proper jail, as, for example, in July 1858.230 Victoria: ‘a good site for a trading fort’ The development of Vancouver Island Colony was intimately bound to the development of its first European settlement and capital. The first report regarding what became Victoria by James Douglas in 1842 was noted above. In his autobiography, Roderick Finlayson described the building of the fort from 1843, using men as well as materials taken from posts abandoned by the HBC. Two company ships, Beaver and Cadboro were on station as guardships until the protective stockade might be finished. With a couple of years, Finlayson recalled, agriculture was expanded sufficiently to supply the Russian Fur Company operating in Alaska as land was cleared, dairies established and a granary built on the wharf.231 The HBC, even before Oregon Treaty of 1846 necessitated it, had begun to use Fort Victoria as an entrepôt given its relative ease of access, as noted in a despatch from Peter Skene Ogden and James Douglas to Sir George Simpson in 1846 when the ‘outfit’ (i.e. the annual supplies) for the HBC posts on northwest coast of America landed at Fort Victoria direct from England. Over the summer the returns and produce of: Forts Nisqually, Langley and other ports on the coast and from this river [Columbia] were transported thither and deposited for exportation, an exceedingly convenient arrangement which obviates the necessity of exposing so much valuable property to the Columbia bar. We are now enlarging the fort and getting two additional buildings erected of 100 x 40 feet [30.5 x 12.2 metres] to store the depot goods away and other improvements to facilitate the landing and discharging the vessels are also in progress.232 This suitability as an entrepôt did not necessarily extend to Victoria’s later role as a colonial capital. James Fitzgerald, anyway opposed to the HBC being granted Vancouver Island, wrote in 1848 that: Mr Douglas had … little idea … of ever founding a Colony on the island. He was sent on a particular duty, which he seems to have performed with activity and intelligence. His object was to find a good site for a trading fort with just sufficient good land in the im-

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mediate neighbourhood to afford supplies of food without much labour; and his attention was directed to a site, in respect of its advantages for a trading depot, and with no other object in view.233 There was general contemporary acknowledgement that Victoria was not the best location for a larger enterprise, because of the lack of a good source of water in the immediate vicinity and the difficulties of entering its harbour: Esquimalt would have been a better choice. Governor Blanshard recommended that the chief settlement be moved from Fort Victoria, partly to place the colonial focus outwith the company’s holdings.234 Joseph Pemberton, was asked his view on this, but dismissed Blanshard’s choice of site, east of Esquimalt, as coming from a limited knowledge of the area,235 whilst there was by then so much investment in Victoria that it was destined to become a town, even if another one was built.236 A few months later he reported that whilst Victoria had excellent possibilities for developing wharves and a well-protected harbour, it could accommodate only small ships, had a difficult entrance and there were the problems with fresh water supply. However, unless a decision about Esquimalt was taken promptly, by default Victoria would become the principal settlement: ‘already sixty-eight wooden houses in process of erection begin to make shew’.237 Andrew Colvile foresaw a second settlement being erected at Esquimalt and Pemberton was to scope possibilities for a slip suitable for repairing ships there, which, with the development of agricultural surpluses sufficient to supply vessels, might make Vancouver Island a competitor to the Sandwich Islands as a service base for shipping.238 Certainly, trade and service were regarded as having economic potential; Douglas explained to the Colonial Office in 1855 his policy ‘to facilitate the operation of trade’ by allowing the points of entry to Vancouver Island, namely Victoria, Esquimalt and Beaver Harbour (Fort Rupert) to operate as free ports. British vessels could trade freely around the island but foreign ships were ‘debarred from engaging in [this] coasting business’, except with a licence which would restrict them to places where there was a ‘resident population of British colonists’. Such ships could not trade with indigenous settlements, this being the sole prerogative of the HBC. Douglas was anyway concerned that there being no magistrates or other constituted authority within the indigenous settlements, foreigners’ trade would be outside the law,239 (only in 1858 did Douglas appoint three ‘Indian magistrates’).240 The town of Victoria outside the original stockade was laid out in 1852,241 but relatively little growth occurred for several years (Figure 2.5). In the mid-1850s Fort Victoria had been described by Alexander Rattray as ‘a paltry settlement with a scanty white population, and a harbour disturbed only by the canoe of the Indian, the occasional visit of some small

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and adventurous trading craft, and the annual arrival of the HBC storeship, with supplies, and for the homeward transport of furs’. Things changed and in 1858 Rattray noted that ‘Those who visited this island some years back would now have some difficulty in recognising its present capital, with its bustling streets, its busy harbour, and its ready and industrious population and thriving trade.242 Victoria resident Richard Mayne (from whose book Figure 2.6 comes) confirmed that: Merchants’ stores were rising in every direction. On the shore of the harbour wharves were being planted and … sailing ships laden with every description of articles which a migratory population could, and in many cases could not, want flowed into the harbour. Victoria appeared to have leapt at once from the site of a promising settlement onto a full-grown town. Its future had not, previous to this, looked by any means bright; and we had been in the habit of regarding the map of the town of Victoria, kept in the land-office as an amusing effort of the surveyor’s imagination. But now the promise seemed likely of fulfilment … Expectation was written in every face, which before had been placid, even stolid; for with occasional visits of Her Majesty’s ships of war, the great event of Victoria had been the advent of the Princess Royal once a year with the latest fashions of the Old World and fresh supplies, human and material, for the Honourable Company’s service.243 The cause of this transformation was the Fraser River gold rush (see Chapter 4) and presciently, Rattray feared that the prosperity he observed in 1858 was fragile as it ‘depends chiefly on the supply of the large but fluctuating mining population of the adjacent colony’.244 Meanwhile, the ‘large floating population’ that gold attracted, ‘chiefly from California and Oregon, gave an entirely new impetus to commerce. Merchants and traders followed the new community with capital and enterprise.’245 This ‘floating population’ was not the most genteel. A visiting naturalist, John Keast Lord, described his evening walk through Victoria the day he landed in 1858: The gold-fever was just beginning to rage fast and furiously, and all classes, from every country, were pouring in – a very torrent of gold hunters [which] includes a herd of parasites, that sap the gains of the honest digger; tempting him to gamble, drink poison (miscalled whisky), and purchase trashy trumpery … and thus fool away his wealth; ‘earned like a horse, squandered like an ass’ … The rattle of the dice-box, the droning invitations of the keepers of the monte-tables, discordant sounds of badly played instruments, angry

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Figure 2.5 Victoria, 1854

Figure 2.6 Victoria, 1858 words, oaths too terrible to name, roistering songs with noisy refrains, were all signs significant of the golden talisman that met me on every side, as I elbowed my way through the noisy throng.246 The situation was summed up by an anonymous correspondent to the Westminster Review: In the brief spell of four months [in 1858] 20,000 adventurers poured into the harbour. The easy-going, primitive settlers were

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overwhelmed by this invasion of foreigners … the rich came to speculate, and the poor in the hope of vaulting into sudden wealth. … The limited stock of provisions in Victoria was speedily exhausted. Twice the bakers ran short of bread. Innumerable tents covered the locality in and around the town as far as the eye could reach. The sound of the hammer and axe was heard everywhere. Shops, stores and ‘shanties’ to the number of 225 sprang up in six weeks. Investment in town allotments attained an extravagant pitch. The land office was besieged often before sunrise, by the multitude eager to buy building land and the demand so increased that sales had to be suspended in order to allow the Government surveyor time to measure off new divisions of land.247 Governor Douglas was praised in an editorial in The Times for being able to curb ‘with a strict and steady hand the six or seven thousand brigands who have suddenly descended upon Victoria’,248 and he downplayed any negative impacts upon the town. Perhaps for political reasons with the reversion of Vancouver Island from the company to the crown under discussion at that time, it would have been in the HBC’s interests to represent the new vigour of the colonial capital in positive terms. An example is this despatch to the Colonial Office in May 1858 about the miners passing through Victoria who: are represented as being with some exceptions the worst of the population of San Francisco, the very dregs in fact of society. Their conduct here would have led me to form a very different conclusion as our little town, though crowded to excess with the sudden influx of people and though there was a temporary scarcity of food and dearth of house accommodation, the police few in number and many temptations to excess in the way of drink, yet quiet and order prevailed and there was not a single person committed for rioting, drunkenness or other offences during their stay here. Rather merchants are rejoicing in the advent of wealth produced by the arrival of so large a body of people in the colony and are strongly in favour of making this port a shipping point between San Francisco and the gold mines.249 Douglas was a little more balanced in his reports to the HBC in London: ‘The spirit of speculation is alive in this Colony. Building lots and town property are selling at exorbitant prices and all sorts of improvements are spoken of as being in contemplation. The editor of a California daily paper lately made the amusing remark “that San Francisco has not begun to be what Victoria will become”.’ He thought this com-

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parison went too far, rather his capital ‘will improve as rapidly as Melbourne or California’, although he had concerns about inflation, for ‘rising prices need exorbitant rates of pay’ and expected even more trouble in keeping company servants and seamen in post.250 Matters peaked in July: ‘Steamers loaded with passengers are coming in daily and people are arriving from all parts of the world. We have received an increase of population to the extent of 10,000 able bodied men in the last four months. About 1,500 people arrived today. Imagine how busy we are.’251 Trade now allowed Victoria to fulfil its potential. In 1859 Douglas responded to a request from the Board of Trade for his views about Victoria being officially designated as a free port. He explained that it had always been maintained ‘on the footing of a Free Port in as much as no duties on imports or exports have been levied’, as they had not been on any other point of entry to Vancouver Island. ‘This was not fortuitous or the effect of accident but a part of the policy by which it was sought to encourage and foster trade and make Victoria an entrepôt for the coast of North West America.’252 This message was taken to the Vancouver Island Council in 1859 where it was explained that any shortfall in income resultant from the lack of customs duties would be more than compensated for by funds from direct taxes imposed on traders and professionals attracted to the island by better business prospects.253 Victoria was declared officially to be a free port on 25 January 1860,254 and that year it was reported that it had trade links with San Francisco, London, Honolulu, Callao and Hong Kong as well as more local links with Port Townsend and Portland.255 As Richard Mayne put it succinctly in 1862: ‘Very possibly, could the future have been foreseen, Victoria would not have been selected as the chief commercial port for Vancouver Island. But the selection has been made, the town is built or building, the commerce already attracted.’256 Indeed, Victoria was Vancouver Island’s success story for, also in 1862, Joseph Pemberton wrote gloomily about the territory he had been intimately involved in developing as a surveyor, landholder and politician, concluding that ‘the island is unimproved, progress being entirely limited to Victoria district and Victoria town and caused in the latter very exceptional cases, I believe, by its free port and the effect beneficial to it of the restrictive duties levied in American ports’.257

3 INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

‘Possessory rights’: indigenous peoples in the pre-contact period The chapter is not an ethnographic study of the indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island. Rather, it is an account taken from contemporary sources of what happened to these peoples when first a European trading post and then a company colony was established in their homeland, with later complicating factors of coal mining and gold rushes. In the text the author will use the term ‘indigenous people(s)’, but quotations, of course, have to retain original usages, even when the language would be offensive now. Where it is certain which First Nation is involved, the text uses the modern spelling of the names; the quotations use original spellings, which show much variety. Appendix 5 matches the old and modern names insofar as this has been possible to accomplish, for some nations have not survived into the present day. It was appreciated that the structure of the First Nations in Vancouver Island was complex: as early as 1845, two naval lieutenants made an extensive report that identified many different groups in the region.1 Four of them are most involved in the story here: the Songhees who inhabited the southeast where Victoria was built; the Quw’utsun’ and Snuneymuxw who lived around the central east coast where Nanaimo was to be and the Kwakwaka’wakw, who were around what became Fort Rupert in the northeast. The Haida, of what was for most of the period thought to be Queen Charlotte’s Island (the Queen Charlotte Islands, now usually called Haida Gwaii), also play a major part, if often subsumed within a more general grouping, the ‘Northern Indians’, whose annual movements south brought apprehension to the newcomers. Whilst this is not an ethnographic study, some background must be given, summarized from contemporary writers. Traditional lives were focused around fish. The 1857 parliamentary enquiry into the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) has a report of people catching herrings using

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nailed clubs,2 and taking halibut and ‘woolikan’3 (presumably oolichan or eulachan, indigenous terms for smelt). One report has them taking whales.4 The principal catch was salmon, the staple food which was dried for the winter. There was seasonal migration to exploit salmon, with bands having usually a main village and a summer village, with lodges made out of rough planks. Both settlements would be on or close to the coast, few lived in the interior. A wild plant, then called cu’mas or camass (quamash, Camassia esculenta), now used mainly as an ornamental species for its blue flowers, was exploited for its bulb, something like an onion, which could be roasted or boiled. It was collected and stored for winter in large pits. Berries were taken, potatoes grown and some hunting took place, but this was largely a fishing economy using dugout canoes. Richard Blanshard reported that these canoes, chiefly of pine ‘are very well constructed … some of them of a very large size’.5 Paul Kane, who worked as an artist amongst North American indigenous people, observed in 1847 that those on Vancouver Island subsisted almost entirely on wild vegetables and a range of fish – salmon, whale blubber, cod, sturgeon, clams, oysters, herrings, especially the roe – ‘which they obtain with so little trouble during all seasons of the year that they are probably the laziest race of people in the world’,6 this apparently negative remark being an observation about their satisficing behaviour. The indigenous peoples had a knowledge of herbal medicine, but other practices excited adverse comment, such as the flattening of infants’ heads. There were no codified laws, but a tradition of recompense for bloodshed or other wrong which constrained warfare to a certain extent: presents of blankets or other goods would be made to the victims and/or the chiefs, who had much influence over their people. One social control mechanism was the elaborate potlatch ceremony, where feasting took place and elaborate gifts were given in expectation of return. Far from being ‘savage’, a term scattered casually about contemporary records, the society and economy was well organised, as can be seen, for example, in the complex land holding systems which supported substantial populations sustainably in a resource-poor area down the generations. Georgiana Ball has written of the pre-contact system of land tenure across British Columbia, which survived into the fur trade era: Each of the ten Indian language groups divided into several bands or tribes who separately held a generally well-defined territory, the sovereignty of which was recognised by neighbouring tribes. Tribal territory in turn, divided into hunting territories and fishing sites, the possessory rights of which were held and strictly guarded by a clan, a smaller family group or even an individual. Usually these rights were handed down from one generation to another. This

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monopoly control provided the essential conditions upon which the efficient management of important resources could be implemented.7 Into this setting sailed James Cook and George Vancouver on voyages of discovery, followed a generation later by the most important European actor in our story, James Douglas, who was ‘not only a Creole, i.e. born in the West Indian Colonies, but a mulatto, i.e. partly coloured’ through his mother.8 Douglas’s wife, Amelia, was the daughter of a British HBC man and a Cree woman. ‘They told us to be off’: resistance to the ‘unrelaxing English grip’ James Edward Fitzgerald, when a young ‘idealistic colonist’ campaigned against Vancouver Island being granted to the HBC and hoped to organise a colony there himself. He wrote of the indigenous peoples of North America that ‘we conquered his land by that conquest which needs no battle – the civilised man over the savage – we hoisted a flag and called the land our own’.9 Much could read into this statement: the use of the male pronoun; the assumption that the indigenous people were ‘savage’; or, indeed, that colonialists were ‘civilised’. However, most Victorians genuinely believed that Europeans were bringing civilization to less-developed peoples who would benefit thereby. Sir John Pelly, the HBC chairman stated that ‘One of the main objects of the company is to civilise the native tribes by fixing settlers amongst them, who will find employment for them and show them the advantages to be gained from cultivating the soil.’10 In this chapter this contemporary attitude will be demonstrated often but cannot be challenged each time; let this paragraph stand duty for all such occasions. Undoubtedly many racists participated in the colonial endeavour to the shame of the colonial power and the sorrow of the colonised peoples. However, racism was not universal; would not one reading of Fitzgerald’s statement identify pity in the situation described? Fitzgerald himself worked for Maori rights in New Zealand and started a Maori newspaper,11 despite having made the ‘civilised’/‘savage’ distinction – he and the others were products of their time and upbringing. Fitzgerald’s words encapsulate the fact that colonisation, once Europeans had begun it, was basically unstoppable; the flags were indeed hoisted and lands deemed to be owned by people from the other side of the world. Unstoppable, maybe, but there was resistance. The indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island and the rest of what became Western Canada did not halt colonisation, but they may have slowed it, if not necessarily by purposeful action towards such an end. There were bitter conflicts south of Vancouver Island in American territory in the 1850s:

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the Puget Sound War as it has become known. After James Douglas’s retirement, when his successor as British Columbia (BC) governor, Frederick Seymour, and the Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for BC, Joseph Trutch, overturned some of his policies, there was trouble, too, in British Columbia. However, indigenous people did not rise up to oppose the colonists in the place and period covered by this book, to the credit of James Douglas, given his relatively enlightened policies – let the era in which he lived explain, if not excuse, the ‘relatively’. That matters were normally peaceful during Douglas’s governorship may also have been a product of the symbiosis between indigenous and migrant peoples. The British needed the First Nations for labour and for the production of goods: the HBC was, even in this island’s fairly unpromising environment, a fur-trading organisation, originally at least. The indigenous people traded for manufactured goods, including, of course, the famous HBC blankets and also gained employment, a matter of increasing importance as their traditional way of life was transformed in a postcolonial process. There were violent incidents, but mostly they were disputes over labour, land or resources or were individual criminal actions. On only a small number of occasions can one characterise events as actual, focused resistance to European penetration into this part of North America. One case can be found in the diary of Andrew Muir, a Scottish coalminer contracted to work at Fort Rupert, who arrived on Harpooner in 1849. Before landing there was a skirmish at Cape Flattery when the ship was surrounded by about forty canoes and arms were raised but then a breeze got up and Harpooner sailed away.12 Another comes from the voyage of Una to the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1851. This will be detailed below; for present purposes note that Una was carrying miners who the indigenous people forcibly resisted, ‘in fact they told us to be off’.13 It is unlikely that the miners from Una were told to ‘be off’ in precisely those words in any language. In fact, the actual words of indigenous people are rarely seen in the contemporary documentation and some researchers use oral historical traditions to try and overcome this lacuna as, for example, in the publication on the BC land question by the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs.14 However, there is one recorded contemporary conversation that highlights both the tragedy of colonisation to the indigenous people and the futility of any resistance. This comes from the rather sensitive writings of Gilbert Sproat, who settled at Alberni on the west coast of Vancouver Island with fifty men from two steamers in 1860. They anchored by an indigenous summer village when ‘the clattering of the cables of the ships was a noise hitherto unheard in that place and one that might well be remembered by the people, for their land really passed into the unrelaxing English grip as our anchors sank to the bottom’. He continued: ‘Sending for their chief in the morn-

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ing, I explained to him through an interpreter, that the tribe must move their encampment as I had bought all the district from the Queen of England’.15 Sproat paid the chief what he asked on condition that the whole village be removed. However, the chief did not keep to his bargain, indeed the local people, whom Sproat called the Ahts (presumably Huu-ay-aht), threatened to attack ‘but the dread of our cannon prevailed’.16 (David Rossiter regarded the importance of shows of force on Vancouver Island as key to the colonists being able to take possession of the land.)17 A few days later the chief, who had by then moved, told Sproat that: ‘They say more King-George men [i.e. British; Americans were ‘Boston men’] will soon be here, and will take our land, our firewood, our fishing grounds; that we shall be placed on a little spot, and shall have to do everything according to the fancies of the King-George men.’ ‘It is true that the King-George men are coming – they will soon be here; but your land will be bought at a fair price.’ ‘We do not wish to sell our land, or the water, let your friends stay in their own country.’ After further exchanges the chief concluded: ‘We do not want the white man. He steals what we have. We wish to live as we are.’18 The KingGeorge men came. ‘A fine race of men’ but … : views on indigenous people Captain James Cook made observations about the Nuu chah nulth in 1778:19 sketches were made and artefacts collected, some of which are on display in the British Museum. So much for the view of Walter Colquhoun Grant, Vancouver Island’s first independent settler, that the indigenous people displayed not ‘anything worthy the enquiry of an ethnologist’.20 Grant wrote privately that they were ‘as useless as they are harmless. All attempts to civilize or Christianize them have completely failed.’21 More public and, thus, more damaging was his address to the Royal Geographical Society in 1854. One description was of the 700 inhabitants of Barclay Sound, a ‘poor, miserable race [who] are very much divided both into tribes and small families. They are a harmless race and live altogether by fishing, having few bows and arrows among them and scarcely any muskets. Even the young men have a singularly old and worn appearance.’22 More generally he claimed that indigenous peoples, especially in the south of the island were ‘by no means courageous; their character may be described as cruel, bloodthirsty, treacherous and cowardly. They are ready to receive instruction, but are incapable of

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retaining any fixed idea. Religion they have none; they believe in no future state, neither had they … any idea of a Supreme being.’23 A few pages later came his description of the villages: No pigsty could present a more filthy aspect than that afforded by the exterior of an Indian village … a pile of cockle-shells, oystershells, fish bones, pieces of putrid meat, old mats, pieces of rag, and dirt and filth of every description, the accumulation of generations, is seen in the front of every village; half-starved curs cowardly and snappish prowl about, occasionally howling and the savage himself, notwithstanding his constant exposure to the weather is but a moving mass covered with vermin of every description.24 Grant must be seen as a racist, given his unpleasant generalities: ‘The union of the white man with the North American savage has seldom, if ever, been attended with good results; the offspring invariably possess all the faults of the savage, rendered only the more acute by the admixture of some slight additional intelligence from the white parent.’25 Such offspring, of whatever quality, were often the result of quasi-marital arrangements, when Europeans took indigenous partners, described presumably for the sake of delicacy in French as being à la fashion du Nord. One union was that of John Work, Vancouver Island councillor, whose Spokane, mixed blood, partner, Josette Legacé, he called his ‘little rib’.26 It is easy now to dismiss people like Grant: a case could be made that his words should not even be reproduced in this book. However, such views need to be exposed for they help to explain why, until the 1858 gold rush, it was difficult to attract migrants to Vancouver Island. Grant’s pigsty quotation was republished in John Domer’s emigrant’s guide,27 and further bad press, literally, came in The Times which wrote about bartering with indigenous people ‘who have no idea of our good faith, for they never let go of their goods until they have hold of yours’.28 William Keppel, in Fraser’s Magazine, went further, writing from considerable distance that the indigenous people ‘are without exception treacherous when they have anything to obtain by treachery; they lie by instinct; thieving is their natural propensity’.29 On the other hand some displayed a starry-eyed approach, such as naturalist John Keast Lord who bought an indigenous woman out of slavery at Fort Rupert for thirty blankets and two guns. Human life is beyond price, but it could be postulated that this woman was on the costly side and that Lord was duped. One reading would be that he had seen his expensive purchase as a potentially romantic act to be dismayed to discover he had bought ‘the ugliest old savage eyes ever beheld.’30 He took her back to her people in Nanaimo.

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Elsewhere balance can be seen, as in the report of Captain George Gordon, who took HM Steamer Cormorant to what was later the site of Fort Rupert in 1846 to load coal collected by local people. He recorded an early version of what became a typical European view: ‘the natives are a fine race of men, and appear industrious and friendly, but are much addicted to thieving’.31 As in parallel situations with other aboriginal peoples as in, say, Australia, here was an issue of the locals being deemed to be at fault for breaking property laws outwith their own traditions. James Douglas, perhaps inadvertently, made this clear regarding the taking of cattle loose in the woods in 1852 by ‘hungry Indians returning unsuccessful from the shore whose ideas are … somewhat indistinct as to the real value of domestic cattle [they] being considered in the same light as the deer of the forest, in which [the Indian] believes there is no exclusive property’.32 The HBC committee in London were aware of such matters, too, for Barclay instructed Douglas that ‘great allowance is … to be made for ignorant savages whose ideas of property are widely different from those of civilized men.’33 Another type of writer was the missionary. R.C.P. Baylee writing in 1854 was predictably dismissive of indigenous beliefs and ceremonies: ‘The “medicine man” who unites the character of juggler with that of quack, is one of the most important of the tribe; he is chosen annually with great ceremony and much howling.’34 He further observed that slaves were treated cruelly and other negatives were ‘idleness, deceit, theft, filth, polygamy and great improvidence, yet even in these respects they are superior to most other uncivilised nations.’35 The faint praise at the end of the quote was perhaps because, as Baylee noted, indigenous women exercised power within the family. Also, he was taken with the people of the Queen Charlotte Islands, bands who were generally feared by settlers, but he considered them, in what was meant to be a compliment, as the ‘Anglo-Saxons of this coast’.36 Another missionary in 1855 thought the people ‘brave and manly, skilful and ingenious’.37 Having acknowledged that to the contemporary reader the views of W.C. Grant were more prominent, here we should conclude instead with those of James Douglas, a man who spent not just his career amongst aboriginal peoples but also his life, his wife, as seen, being one of Grant’s despised ‘offsprings’. Douglas did adopt the contemporary habit of referring to indigenous people as ‘savages’ as references in this chapter will demonstrate, but, mediated through his responsibilities to family, company, crown and colony, he was basically sympathetic, consistently refusing to blame – or punish – a band for deeds committed by individuals, for example. He was able and willing, if in a patronising way, to see promise, if a promise to be realised, as always with Douglas, for the benefit of the company and colony. As he wrote to Earl Grey in 1851:

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I shall probably take the liberty of calling your Lordship’s attention thereafter to the best means of improving the condition of the aborigines of the island who are in many respects a highly interesting people, and, I conceive, worthy of attention. They will come, under proper management, [to be] of service to the colony and form a valuable auxiliary force in the event of war with any foreign power.38 And here is Douglas’s more nuanced version of Captain Gordon’s statement: ‘They are hospitable and exceedingly punctilious in their natural intercourse, grateful for acts of kindness … Though generally dishonest they are seldom known to violate a trust.’39 ‘Worsted in the bargain’: trading The HBC were present in what became Western Canada to trade with the indigenous people. This was always central to their activities in the field, the boardroom and in dealings with the crown. Thus Sir John Pelly reminded Earl Grey in 1846 that: ‘With regard to the question of trade, your Lordship is aware that the Company, by a grant from the Crown, dated May 13, 1838, have the exclusive right of trading with natives of the countries west of the Rocky Mountains for 21 years from that date.’40 With regard to Vancouver Island, Sir George Simpson, overseer of company operations in North America reported in 1844 on the prospects for its then new trading post, Fort Victoria: ‘The natives are not so numerous and formidable as we were led to believe, and seem peaceful and well-disposed, but as yet judging from the quantity of furs brought in, it does not appear they are very active, either as traders or hunters, or that their country is rich in that way.’41 However, Fort Victoria could also trade with people from outside the island. John McLoughlin told Roderick Finlayson at Fort Victoria in 1844 that: I am happy to hear that the Cape Flattery Indians are beginning to visit the Establishment with their furs … This will be of great advantage to the post and lead to an increase of returns as these Indians may be brought by good management to great many valuable furs. The same remark will apply to the other tribes inhabiting the Strait of de Fuca, who possess a valuable country which for many years past has not been closely hunted. By lending a few beaver traps to the most respected hunters bestowing small rewards on the industrious and urging upon all the advantages to be derived from hunting you will succeed in awaking among the natives a great[er] degree of energy and enterprise than they now evince.42

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That such awakening might be necessary is confirmed by an entry by Finlayson in the post journal: ‘Several Whetlances arrived in course of the day and brought nothing for trade but eight skins.’43 A couple of months later ‘three canoes of Cape Flattery Indians arrived and brought several sea otters which they will not dispose of at the price at present charged for the … blankets. They are therefore determined to bring their sea otters back. Some other small furs were traded from them.’44 They did bring back more otters a few months later; in August Finlayson bought two sea otters at seven blankets each although others were taken away, the Cape Flattery group still not being satisfied with the price.45 The local fur trade was affected by seasonal factors, less furs were brought in during the salmon season.46 There were other items to trade, however. Quw’utsun’ brought canoe loads of grass for the HBC cattle in 1845,47 and West Coast people traded oil from whales and dog fish. The oil was of excellent quality and the HBC sold it in on California. The company bought 1,000 gallons in 1854 and reported that greater quantities could be produced if indigenous people had access to better equipment.48 An anonymous midshipman wrote that as his ship first approached Vancouver Island local people paddled out to barter salmon.49 A witness to the parliamentary enquiry into the HBC confirmed that the company obtained ‘salt fish’ (salmon) from indigenous people to trade to the Sandwich Islands.50 Another item of trade was coal; collected surface coal was bartered at McNeil’s Harbour (later the Fort Rupert area), which gave rise to the start of the HBC coal industry, an economic mainstay of the company colony, if not from that location (see Chapter 5). Captain Gordon reported in 1846 that he purchased sixty-two tons in three days paying for each tub as it came up ‘by articles of trifling value which I procured … from the officer in charge at Fort Victoria. The whole of the expenses incurred, including a few presents necessarily made to the Chiefs will make the coals average not more than 4s per ton.’51 Indigenous people could also supplement food supplies. Douglas wrote to Finlayson in 1849 to encourage local bands to: extend their cultivation as widely as possible and to bring in everything in the ship [sic, ‘shape’] of fish or flesh which you will purchase from them and salt for winter use. If the Indians are disposed to be industrious they may furnish 4 or 5,000 bushels of potatoes next autumn with manifest advantage to themselves and to the Colony.52 A few weeks later the post’s journal recorded that indigenous people were, indeed, bringing in potatoes to trade, if at exorbitant prices.53

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There is contemporary evidence as to how trade was conducted, highlighting the shrewdness of the locals. The Times in 1848 noted that on Vancouver Island ‘great caution is rendered necessary in treating with them, or the white man will be worsted in the bargain in more ways than one’.54 The aptness of this warning can be seen in the journal of Richard Blanshard’s servant, Thomas Robinson, aboard HMS Driver in 1850. As the ship entered the Juan de Fuca Strait it was met by indigenous people, who had come out ostensibly to trade. Some hint of what must have been a frenetic scene is evident: ‘all were bargaining, giving a shirt for a bear skin.’ After they left ten fathoms of rope was found to be missing.55 Indigenous skill in trading might have been because of the contribution of the women. An old island hand wrote of ‘the squaws … having the most to say upon the matter, and being harder to persuade … The man never concludes a bargain without consulting her; and I have frequently seen her put a veto upon some commercial arrangement that I had imagined settled simply because she happened to be annoyed.’56 ‘A not undesirable population’: the utility of indigenous labour Indigenous people were of utility not just for what they could produce, but for what they could perform: their labour. This was both on an ad hoc basis and contractual. There was much demand for local labour when the HBC forts were being constructed, ironically to protect the company party from the people being used to build their fortifications. In 1845 Finlayson reported that he had employed a large number to carry wall pieces and saw logs, also to bring shingles from the saw mill at Esquimalt the three miles (4.8 kilometres) to Fort Victoria.57 Paul Kane observed in 1847 around Fort Victoria ten white men and forty locals engaged in building new stores and warehouses.58 In 1851, Douglas used indigenous people and company servants to cut a road from the Songhee village opposite Victoria to the mill road near the gorge at Esquimalt.59 Douglas also used locals to make roof shingles and laths that year.60 Indigenous people helped to build the stockade at Fort Rupert; in July 1849, between one and two hundred were already working there and more were arriving.61 That was the year of the California gold rush when many HBC men deserted. Finlayson reported that ‘we had to employ Indians as sailors to replace our seamen in the ships and labourers on land’.62 The following year Andrew Muir recorded that indigenous people were being used by the HBC at Fort Rupert to cut wood to export to San Francisco and that they were paid in tobacco sticks.63 However, the principal utility to the company of the peoples in the northeast was to collect coal. In 1846 when HM Steamer Cormorant visited to seek coal it was traded, as was seen above.64 By June 1850 when the HBC had established Fort Rupert, surface coal was worked by indigenous people in the sum-

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mer for the company; HM Steam Sloop Driver loaded 1,200 tons that month.65 It might be that by then coal was deemed to belong to the company and local activity had been transformed from trade to labour. Archibald Barclay advised Douglas that ‘too many Indians cannot be employed in this way. The Committee do not suppose that coal can be got much cheaper by the miners when they get their machinery up.’66 Barclay’s use of ‘employed’ might indicate that the payments – of tobacco – were, indeed, a return for labour. Certainly, there must have been some formal arrangement, for in 1850 four indigenous people at Fort Rupert communicated with Blanshard ‘saying that their contract with the HBC has expired and they are entitled to their passage back home’.67 In confirmation, the historian Richard Mackie has recognised that: ‘Company officials made the transition from fur trade to settlement in part by hiring their former trading partners as labourers in the new colony. Increasingly the colonial economy was grafted onto the native economy of the island.’68 Later when the HBC established a coal mine at Nanaimo, whilst British miners were used to bring up the coal, local people produced logs: eight logs each 15 feet (4.6 metres) long by 16 inches (0.4 metres) diameter earned them one HBC blanket. This was a much lower rate of pay, Douglas reported with evident satisfaction, than the work would have cost if carried out by hired labour.69 The indigenous people were also used for colonial purposes. Vancouver Island Colony accounts for 1853 have an entry for ‘a canoe and five Indians with despatches on order of Governor Blanshard in 1850’, the payment consisting of four blankets, blue baize cloth, tobacco, a shirt, comb and mirror worth a combined total of £1 17s 8d. Payments in cloth were recorded for canoe hire to transport officials, although usually payments were in tobacco. From the beginning of European penetration, indigenous labour was recognised as being worth managing. In 1845 Finlayson sent a man whose arm had been injured by an HBC servant, ‘a scamp by the name of Garipie’, to Dr William Tolmie at the post at Nisqually on Puget Sound. Tolmie was to return the injured man after treatment as ‘he is a very useful Indian’.70 Finlayson wrote to John McLoughlin later that year that ‘I am happy to say that we still continue on a friendly footing with the natives and that they exhibit a willingness to assist us in their labours.’71 Such assistance was always managed: thus Douglas did not regard indigenous labour as being suited for the work of the Boundary Commission in 1858 unless they were put under ‘proper supervision’.72 Two emigrant handbooks made similar points. John Domer said in 1858 ‘They are, in general, favourably disposed to the whites, and with proper superintendence are capable of being made very useful’;73 and A.J. Langley in 1861 that: ‘Indians can be employed at nominally low wages and with

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good management their services become valuable.’74 One of the few settlers to have left an account of farming on Vancouver Island was James Cooper in evidence before the 1857 parliamentary enquiry on the HBC. In this he details that he employed a great many indigenous people who were paid ‘principally in trade goods, such as blankets and baize’, rather than money as ‘they do not understand the value of money … [except for] a few knowing characters about the settlement’. Although they were not educated in European terms and had not had what would have been seen as the benefit of being exposed to Christianity, Cooper found that some of his labourers were ‘very intelligent’.75 Douglas had been advised of an additional benefit of using indigenous labour beyond the value of the tasks carried out: ‘the employment of the natives we should think would be the most likely mode of rendering them subservient to you’.76 After an affray between two groups of ‘Northern Indians’ in 1859, he was compelled to expel them. I deeply regret, however, that there is no means at my disposal of affording them employment in the colony, either in making roads or otherwise opening the country for settlement, as it is hardly creditable to the civilization of the 19th century that so essential an element of wealth as labour of the cheapest description should be in a manner banished from the colony … The employment of Indians … produces an immediate change in their general habits … sobriety and application; the improvement is striking … [This] confirms the influences of civilization and prepares the mind for the reception of Christian knowledge, while a capacity for labour so acquired places them above want.77 The following year Douglas concluded that: When not under the influence of intoxication they are … well conducted, make good servants and by them is executed a large proportion of the menial, agricultural and shipping labour of the colony. Besides their value as labourers they are of value commercially as consumers of food and clothes and could they be restrained from excess which I regret to add, notwithstanding the severe enactments enforced against vending of spirituous liquors, it has been found impossible to prevent, they would on the whole form a not undesirable population.78 Acquiring land: ‘The entire property of the White people for ever’ The flag had been raised; after 1843 Vancouver Island had British residents within the HBC, which itself had exclusive rights of trade with

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the indigenous people, but not title to land; ‘the land was theirs’ maintained the local groups. ‘Parlaying’ between the people in the trading post and those outside could lead to accommodation regarding company land occupation and there was a sufficient parcel of agricultural land available to the HBC for subsistence and a limited export trade. From the beginning the local First Nation, the Songhees, began to gather and they built houses for themselves near the fort even as it was being built.79 In 1844, Roderick Finlayson, the officer in charge, asked the Songhees to remove their dwellings to the other side of the harbour after a fire in the village had threatened the fort, ‘which at first they declined to do, saying the land was theirs, and after a great deal of angry parlaying on both sides it was agreed that if I allowed our men to assist them to remove they would go, to which I consented.’80 The new village was described in 1847 by Paul Kane, who had travelled widely in North America, and observed that the split cedar board lodges, each accommodating eight to ten families, were the largest he had ever seen.81 After 1849, given the terms of the grant from the government, the HBC’s attitude to land changed, as they were required to stimulate colonisation through settlement, which, without prior knowledge of gold rushes, would, seemingly, have to be largely agricultural in character. The company needed banks of land, especially that which had agricultural potential near Fort Victoria. Further, one income strand of the colony (and company) came through selling land on, at what was seen in Chapter 2 to be an expensive price. This was not Australia where the concept of terra nullius – land belonging to no-one – had applied. Here, the British Government recognised aboriginal land title and that they held the land, even if the indigenous people did not necessarily use it all productively, given their predominantly fish diet. Hence on Vancouver Island once the HBC trading post became a colonial capital, land needed for colonisation would have to be purchased. Purchase had another benefit. The British, both company people and any settlers that could be attracted, were likely to be in a considerable minority for the foreseeable future and taking land by anything other than agreement might inculcate dangerous resentments within the indigenous population. In 1849 the agents for the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, then still based on the Columbia River in Oregon Territory, advised Douglas on this point: ‘In regard to the savage state of the native tribes, we should hope that by kind treatment and by entering into agreement with the chiefs for occupation of all lands not actually required by them all hostile feeling on their part may be removed.’82 An example of the wisdom of this advice came from Fort Rupert in 1850 when the HBC faced local demands to stop working on the gardens outside the fort: ‘we should inclose no more of their land as we had not paid them for it and

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… it blocked up their road to the forest for wood.’83 The HBC bought this land at the price of a blanket and a shirt to each chief. Land was obtained, thus, by agreement and by purchase. Fourteen treaties were signed between the Hudson’s Bay Company and First Nations around the three company settlements of Fort Victoria from 1850– 52, Fort Rupert in 1851 and Colvile Town/Nanaimo in 1854. In 1859 and 1860 two other treaties were made at Barclay Sound and Alberni as the west coast of the island began to be settled after company control had been rescinded. Most of the treaty documents survive in the British Columbia Archives and as they were of the same form, with only specific details varying, one can be reproduced as a generic example below. Douglas was sent this ‘deed of conveyance’, modelled on that used by the New Zealand Company by Archibald Barclay in August 1850.84 The names of First Nations on the original documents do not always easily equate to modern versions but the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs has identified the 1850–54 treaties as affecting the Saanich, Songhees/Lekwungen, Sna-Naw-As, Scia’new, T’Souke, Malahat, Kwakwaka’wakw and Snuneymuxw peoples.85 The form of the treaties was this: Know all men, We the Chiefs and People of the ‘Keechamista’ Tribe who have signed our names and made our marks to this Deed on the twenty ninth day of April, one thousand eight hundred and fifty do surrender entirely and for ever to James Douglas, the Agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company on Vancouver’s Island, that is to say, for the Governor, Deputy Governor and Committee of the same the whole of the lands situate and lying between Esquimalt Harbour and Point Albert including the latter on the Strait of Juan de Fuca and extending backward from thence to the range of mountains on the Sanitch rim about ten miles distant. The Condition of our understanding the sale is this, that our Village sites and enclosed fields are to be kept for our own use, for the use of our children, and for those who may follow after us; and the land shall be properly surveyed hereafter; it is understood however that the land itself, with these small exceptions becomes the entire property of the White people for ever; it is also understood that we are at liberty to hunt over the unoccupied lands, and to carry on our fisheries as formerly. We have received as payment Twenty Seven pounds Ten Shillings sterling. In token whereof we have signed our names and made our marks at Fort Victoria 29 April 1850.86 Eleven names follow, each with a cross as a mark, duly witnessed by Roderick Finlayson and Joseph McKay for the company. The promise of

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a survey was fulfilled, Joseph Pemberton, the colonial surveyor, on his appointment in May 1851 was, indeed, to examine these lands.87 In the colonial accounts in 1853 appears a summary of the cost of land purchases to date, by which time nine different First Nations had been involved, usually being paid in blankets, with mention also of cloth, flints, powder, shot, shirts and tobacco as well as cash. The total price of the land purchased in cash equivalent came to £299 10s 2d.88 Arthur Morton noted that the Sooke (T’Souke) had received less as a smaller proportion of their land was deemed to be cultivable.89 Governor Blanshard reported to Earl Grey in early 1851 that the ‘agent of the HBC’, i.e. James Douglas – Blanshard rarely dignified him with a name – had shown him an account stating the HBC had expended to date $2,736 of which $2,130 was ‘for goods paid to Indians to extinguish their title to the land about Victoria and Soke harbours’.90 A number of issues arise from these treaties, the HBC could certainly be accused of just going through the motions ‘with regard to any right which they [indigenous people] may have supposed they possessed’.91 Certainly the prices were tiny, just as with the $7.2m price at which Russia sold Alaska to the US a few years later (although contemporary reaction to the Alaska deal was identified by its nickname of ‘Seward’s Folly.’) Even Walter Colquhoun Grant, no supporter of the indigenous people, wrote, if with some mathematical imprecision, that: The tribes were paid in blankets for their land; generally at the rate of a blanket to each head of a family; and two or three in addition to petty chiefs, according to their authority and importance. The quantities of blankets given to the various tribes were nearly as follows: To the Tsomass or Sougass 500, to the Sanetch 300, to the Tsclallum or Clellum and Soke Indians together about 150 – total 950. The value of the blanket may be about 5s in England, to which if we add 10 percent profit, we have a value of 10s, or two dollars and a half nearly as the price at which they were sold in the country in 1849–50 when the distribution was made: 1,000 blankets at this rate does not seem a large price to pay to the aborigines for some 200 square miles of land.92 The HBC was satisfied. Barclay wrote in 1852 to approve Douglas’s purchases from the Sanitch (Saanich) people, although he thought that perhaps the deal could have been done for less. The land was a ‘very valuable acquisition and procured at a very moderate cost … in such cases it is always best, even at some additional expense, to take away all pretext for further claim of compensation on the part of the natives’.93 Further, Grant, despite his declaration that the rate was not large, added ‘it was

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fully an equivalent for what the land was or ever would have been worth to them’.94 Meeting the costs of land purchase became more of an issue after the HBC had lost its control in 1859, the crown colony of Vancouver Island having ‘no revenue available or sufficient for such a purpose and, of course, the revenue of British Columbia cannot, while the two colonies are distinct, be applied to it’.95 A related issue is whether the ‘village sites and enclosed fields … kept for … [their] own use’ were sufficient for the indigenous peoples; also whether they would really get to keep this land. In 1844, as seen above, Finlayson persuaded the Songhees to move across Victoria harbour to an area which became known as the Indian or Songhees Reserve. Whilst in 1844 this district was safely away from the fort, when Victoria grew into a town with a fort at its centre the reserve became caught up in the larger urban district. On one occasion this proximity was very helpful when a fire in a fish-smoking house: which might have consumed the whole establishment … was put out by the prompt and active aid of the natives … as many as 500 Indians were engaged inside the fort at one time in extinguishing the fire, yet there was no attempt made at plunder and with the exception of a few loose articles of clothing which the men in the confusion of the hour had left exposed, no property whatever was abstracted.96 However, usually the reserve was regarded negatively and its proximity engendered social control issues, especially during visits by the ‘Northern Indians’, some of whom would camp there. Victoria mushroomed in 1858 as the Fraser River gold rush brought commercial opportunity and the reserve became not just a nuisance, but a nuisance occupying valuable harbourfront land. In 1859 the House of Assembly wrote to Douglas to enquire if the reserve might be removed.97 His response seemed firm. Whilst accepting that ‘the presence of Indians near the town is a public inconvenience’, he pointed out that when the settlement at Victoria was formed, certain reserves were made in favour of the indigenous people and these were demarcated as such in the surveys of the colony and were not available for other uses. The government ‘pledged that their occupation shall not be disturbed … [and] their violent removal would be neither just nor politic’.98 However, the potential value of the land was now such that attempts had been made by white residents to secure advantage by direct purchase from indigenous people. Douglas instructed the crown solicitor to insert a notice in the newspaper to the effect that ‘the land in question was the property of the crown, and for that reason the Indians themselves were incapable of conveying a legal title to the

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same and that any person holding such land would be summarily ejected’.99 The government could arrange development though and, despite his pledge that occupation would not be disturbed, Douglas proposed, if with the consent of the occupiers, to subdivide the reserve and let it out on leases to persons who would improve it by building. The cynicism of this policy might be mitigated by the fact that proceeds of these leases would be applied philanthropically to the benefit of the indigenous people, providing a schoolhouse and missionary teacher to ‘endeavour thus to raise them morally and socially to a higher position than they now occupy in the Colony’. Mitigated somewhat only, as the letter adds that Victoria would no longer ‘be retarded by [the] unprofitable occupation of one of its most valuable portions.’100 David Rossiter noted that ‘native peoples were left with small parcels of land around their village and resource procurement sites, enough, so authorities thought, that they would be able to sustain their lives as they had before the arrival of white settlers.’101 However, contemporary opinion seemed to think that this was unlikely, for Grant observed that the treaties left ‘the natives only a few yards of ground reserved around the sites of their villages.’102 More significantly, the colonial secretary, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in 1858 advised Douglas that: ‘it should be an invariable condition in all bargains or treaties with the natives for the cession of lands possessed by them that subsistence should be applied to them in some other shape’,103 an open admission that indigenous people would not be able to live on what land remained to them. The treaties indicate that they retained their village sites and enclosed fields and enjoyed fishing rights but hunting was only to be over ‘unoccupied lands’ and this and, presumably, the collection of wild vegetables would be severely affected when the lands were taken by settlers’ farms. This was realised by the indigenous people for in 1859 ‘much excitement’ prevailed among the Quw’utsun’ when their valley was surveyed by Joseph Pemberton. Douglas reported that: There is therefore now a general belief amongst the Cowitchans that their lands are to be immediately sold and occupied by white settlers, an impression which it is difficult to remove and gives rise to much contention among themselves about the disposal of their lands, one party being in favour of a surrender of their country for settlement while another party, comprising nearly all of the youngest men of the tribe strongly oppose that measure and wish to retain possession of the whole country in their own hands and I anticipate much trouble in the adjudication of the disputes before the land can be acquired for settlement.104

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It is telling that Douglas could write ingenuously that the impression that the lands were to be sold was ‘difficult to remove’, given that they were indeed being surveyed to be sold as the last phrase on the land being ‘acquired for settlement’ demonstrates. As for ‘trouble’ in this area, that was the voice of experience for one of the most difficult situations in the company colony period had arisen in this area in 1852 when a HBC shepherd was killed by two indigenous men and a expedition was mounted to punish the perpetrators (see below).105 From this section James Douglas appears to be somewhat hypocritical. However, it must be recalled that as colonial governor under the terms of the HBC grant, he had an obligation to stimulate settlement and it was necessary to secure land for this purpose. In mainland British Columbia, after Douglas’s retirement as governor, things got worse. Douglas had laid out substantial areas as indigenous reserves, but ‘the repressive Joseph Trutch’ as first chief commissioner of land and works and then lieutenant-governor of BC set out to reverse Douglas’s work. He succeeded, with a 92 percent reduction in the size of the reserves originally mapped out.106 ‘Our people are much afeared’ To the newcomers, with the exception of some miners, the presence of the indigenous people was a necessity, without them there would have been no fur trade and a smaller labour supply. Recall Douglas’s statement that they ‘executed a large proportion of the menial, agricultural and shipping labour of the colony’.107 However, whilst the indigenous people were indispensable, they were also a source of fear, we were ‘liable to get our throats cut at a moment’s notice’ reported a witness to the 1857 enquiry,108 and potential fear may have been one reason why the HBC struggled to attract settlement, at least before the gold rush. Roderick Finlayson recalled that ‘The Company were informed by the English government that they must protect themselves from the Indians, as the distance from the mother country was too great to afford troops or ships of war for such purpose.’109 Thus at Fort Victoria a stockade was erected with: ‘cedar pickets 18 feet [5.5 metres] high, round a space of 150 yards [137 metres] square, with houses and stores within, and two large block houses, bastions at two angles armed with nine pounder [four kilograms] cannonade, blunderbusses, cutlasses etc’.110 Such practical arrangements were allied to a policy of trying not to alarm the more numerous indigenous people. In 1849 Finlayson wrote that ‘Our people are much afeared to the attacks of the natives back at the mill and works [at Esquimalt] but … [it] behoves us to assume a calm but firm attitude’.111 An example of this came in the following year at Fort Rupert after axes had been stolen from the miners, the Muir family. The HBC threatened

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to burn down the lodges of the local people, which ended the situation and furs were offered as reparation for the thefts. The author of the post journal added bitterly: ‘This won’t do to be getting into rows each day for Mr Muir. We gained our point, however showed we are not afraid, yet did not get into a fight which is an Indian Trades policy.’112 The company in London put it that the ‘rule and practice of the service’ was to protect their people in the field through ‘temperate and prudent conduct’ towards the indigenous inhabitants.113 Even James Fitzgerald, an opponent of the HBC, felt that this to be ‘wise and generous’.114 An example of being ‘prudent’ might be seen during the Crimean War (see Chapter 7) when Vancouver Island Council realised the colonists by themselves could not protect the island against incursion from Russian America but it was dangerous ‘to arm and drill the natives, who might then become more formidable to the Colony than a foreign enemy’.115 This ‘temperate’ aspect of the policy offended Richard Blanshard during his unhappy period on Vancouver Island for he complained to the colonial secretary that the locals ‘are always treated with the greatest consideration, far greater than the white labourers … and in many instances [they] are allowed liberties and impunities in the HBC establishments that I regard as extremely unsafe’.116 His own policy was the iron fist and, as will be shown, he was criticised for ordering punitive raids after the Fort Rupert murders. Further, in response to a report from Grant of outrages at Sooke, Blanshard had begged Earl Grey for a garrison of regular troops, two companies, one to be based at Fort Rupert, the other in a cantonment at Esquimalt which could be more mobile and used to ‘overawe’ the natives.117 Grey’s tart response was that ‘I must distinctly inform you that it is not in the power of Her Majesty’s Government to maintain a detachment of regular troops to garrison the island.’118 Other means of control had to be adopted in face of people whom Blanshard felt to be ‘numerous, savage and treacherous’. One policy was to keep them free from ‘ardent spirits’, another sort of temperance. Blanshard was fair to the HBC in this regard, noting that the company did not supply liquor, rather the indigenous people obtained it from merchant vessels.119 The only bill passed during Blanshard’s governorship was the Act Regulating Importation of Spiritous Liquors.120 This was refreshed by the council in 1854 in response to ‘excesses committed by drunken Indians which could not otherwise be checked without endangering the peace of the colony’.121 When James Douglas succeeded Blanshard and the company gained more direct control, he was reminded of company policy: [In the] protection of settlers from the petty depredations of the Natives, much caution and forbearance is necessary in the employment of force and great allowance is in such cases to be made for

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ignorant savages whose ideas of property are widely different from those of civilized men. Individual retaliation should be carefully avoided and redress for injury demanded of the tribe to which the defenders may belong, any demand being supported by a show of force sufficient to command respect and to keep up the prestige of the Company’s powers.122 This HBC tradition of ‘temperate and prudent conduct’ can be identified in Douglas’s own despatches. Regarding the former, using a surprisingly modern concept, he wrote that the: Management of the natives is an object that must always have strong claims upon the attention of the government of this colony as no probable event can ever prove more disastrous to the settlements than collisions with them … By retaining their confidence and taking advantage of their mutual animosities we may therefore always manage to prevent extensive combinations of the tribes for the purpose of assailing the settlements.123 Prudence might be seen in that: Every means in the power of the government will … be exerted to keep the colonists together and prevent them from straggling into the Indian country and forming detached settlements, which from their weakness and isolation would be greatly exposed to Indian depredation and become a source of disquiet to the colony … [The indigenous peoples] fortunately do not all speak the same language and have their sectional interests and disputes which keep them divided in a manner hostile to each other, but notwithstanding these internal discords their friendship is valuable and their opposition would prove a formidable obstacle to the progress of an infant colony.124 After control of the island had passed from the HBC, more strident voices were heard. Duncan Macdonald said in a military setting in London in 1863 that Vancouver Island’s indigenous people remained ‘a source of constant terror’, being ‘truculent and treacherous … The opinion of well informed men is that they should be taught that they are the weaker party, and that coming into collision with red and blue coats is no trifling affair.’125 During the company period, such collisions were rare. At Fort Rupert in 1849, 400 indigenous people mustered in the fort ‘in consequence of a report having been spread … that we intended poisoning their quarters for stealing our tools. They seemed at first a little irritated

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but after a little came round again and left for their lodges quite reconciled.’126 Andrew Muir, one of the miners, wrote in characteristic style about how they had to be guarded whilst at work. One day after the watchman had run off with the arms and ammunition, they downed tools. How could we [be] thought to stand and work without them [the arms] [given] their [the indigenous people’s] annoyances by day and their thieving depredations by night we could not stant [sic, stand] that and men and people sees with their own eyes [indigenous people] go out and in five minutes return with two of their neighbours[’] heads in their hands it certainly teaches this lesson not to be trusted.127 Douglas, in more fluent English, reported on a situation around Nanaimo in 1854 when there had been skirmishes between different bands: Some lives were lost on both sides, but on the separation of the parties quiet was returned. Our position, in the midst of a host of well armed and excited savages, with a force numerically at one to twenty was alarming … The Colony has this year been overrun with savages of all nations, found between this and the 58th degree of north latitude. They have been attracted to this place by the prospect of profitable employment, and if there was a military force in the country to protect life and property, their presence would be desirable, but in our present neat handed condition we are better without them.128 At Fort Victoria, interactions at least with neighbouring indigenous people took on a different tone. As was seen above, the local First Nation, the Songhees, were resettled by Roderick Finlayson across the harbour from the fort in 1844. Richard Mayne, a writer of more experience there than many, said in 1862 that: The close contiguity of these Indians to Victoria is seriously inconvenient, and various plans for removing them to a distance have been discussed both in and out of the colonial legislature. In consequence of their intercourse with the whites – chiefly of course for evil – this tribe has become the most degraded in the whole island, having lost what few virtues the savage in his natural state possesses and contracted the worse vices of the settlers. It is scarcely possible to walk along the road by which their village lies without stumbling upon half a dozen or more lying dead drunk upon the

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ground … This village of Songhies presents one of the most squalid pictures of dirt and misery it is possible to conceive.129 The issue for the colonists, to take a word used above, was just ‘inconvenience’, for the Songhees were no longer feared. In 1846 Roderick Finlayson had used the phrase ‘our Indians’ to describe men unloading Cadboro;130 even earlier Finlayson had written of a cask broken by the clumsiness of ‘two of our islanders’, and the possessive seems more likely to relate to indigenous islanders than HBC servants.131 Walter Colquhoun Grant wrote that the indigenous peoples of the south ‘were accustomed to daily intercourse with the whites … [and] a single armed man may safely go alone among them’.132 Later, there was no doubt that acculturation had taken place. C.E. Barrett-Lennard, who visited Victoria in 1860 during his circumnavigation of Vancouver Island by yacht, wrote of indigenous people at Victoria who seemed to have learned to respect the authority of the white man and conform in their intercourse with him to many of the customs of civilization; we have occasionally seen them dressed like Englishmen. Those, however, who have only recently arrived, but who have made a little money by the sale of skins &c. are very fond of displaying themselves in public in all the gorgeous array of savage finery.133 Only in the early days of the trading post was an instruction given to ‘man the bastions’ against the Songhees.134 In short, it was not the ‘British Indians belonging to this settlement’135 as Douglas called them that caused fear in the capital. Northern Indians causing ‘a not unreasonable degree of alarm’ Fear in Victoria was caused by the ‘Northern Indians’, who came down every summer to trade, to seek work and, on occasion, to socialise. For example, in 1853 Douglas informed Captain Wallace Houston, of HMS Trincomalee that a large assemblage was expected at Victoria: for the purpose of attending a feast given by the Songhees chief Cheealshlae which will inevitably have the effect of alarming the white inhabitants and may prove dangerous to the peace of the settlement and Her Majesty’s Government having placed no other means of protection at my disposal, I am induced by an imperative sense of duty to request that the departure of HMS Trincomalee may be delayed for a few days.136

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After the event, presumably a potlatch, Douglas wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, justifying his delay of the departure of the naval vessel: The numbers present were estimated at 3,000 persons, and about 1,000 of these were able men, well-armed and equipped for war. Though I had no reason to suspect any evil designs upon the settlement, I put the settlers on their guard against a treacherous attack and sent an official note to Captain Houston … The meeting broke up yesterday and the Indians have since quietly dispersed.137 The following year Douglas banished the ‘Northern Indians’ from the settlements, but in 1855 their numbers were too great for his limited forces to accomplish this. Instead he spoke ‘to them seriously on the subject of their relations with the whites and their duties to the public’. Upon a pledge of good behaviour, he gave permission for them to seek employment with settlers and in the public works. No grave offences were committed and the visitors accepted the decisions of magistrates: ‘They begin, in fact, to have a clearer idea of the nature and utility of laws having for their object the punishment of crimes and the protection of life and property [and this] may be conceived as the first step in the progress of civilisation.’ However in his long report Douglas added that ‘the presence of so many armed barbarians in a weak and defenceless colony was a subject of great and increasing anxiety’ and he asked – in vain – for thirty regular troops to be garrisoned at the fort.138 In 1856 there was particular fear of the ‘Northern Indians’, given the Puget Sound War then raging close by. In March, Douglas reported that 300 had arrived at Victoria with others en route. As a result he had established with the assent of council a militia of thirty men and officers, despite the expense.139 Douglas then wrote to Isaac Stevens, the American Governor across the border, to say ‘that I have used every means in my power to prevent their annual visits to the white settlements, both British and American in this quarter, but the prospect of gain has proved as powerful an incentive as to make many of them disregard my instructions’. Thirty-eight canoes had arrived and others were expected, but Douglas did not think them hostile, as the men were accompanied by their families.140 There was only one incident, an internal dispute over gambling, which had occasioned a death and several severe injuries after which Douglas compelled the ‘Northern Indians’ to leave.141 The following month Douglas wrote that they had returned home ‘and the excitement among the colonists in respect of the danger of being attacked by those savages has subsided’. Later another party arrived, from the Haida nation. This was particularly worrying since two years earlier Douglas had had the son of the chief whipped for theft and there were

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rumours that the ‘chief had resolved to wipe out the disgrace of the whipping by making a hostile attack upon the settlement’. Douglas confronted him and received assurances that such was not the intention but: Unfortunately his son, the same youth who as beforesaid was whipped for misconduct was this day charged with committing a drunken assault on an unprotected woman and I have been under the necessity of punishing him by fine and imprisonment. This has caused great excitement among the savages … [and] it will be a great relief when they leave the Colony.142 Douglas compared the situation ‘to a smouldering volcano, which may at any moment burst into fatal activity’.143 The fears were such that at the opening of the Vancouver Island Assembly Douglas stated: Gentlemen, the Colony has been again visited this year by a large number of Northern Indians, and their presence has exited in our minds a not unreasonable degree of alarm. Through the blessing of God they have been kept from committing acts of open violence, and been quiet and orderly in their deportment, yet the presence of large bodies of armed savages, who have never felt the restraining influences of moral and religious training, and who are accustomed to follow the impulses of their own evil natures more than the dictates of reason or justice, gives rise to a feeling of insecurity, which just exist as long as the colony remains without military protection.144 In 1859 Douglas estimated 105 large canoes with about 1,500 persons, including women and children, had arrived. Such numbers far exceeded any demand for labour amongst the settlers and ‘consequently the great majority can find no employment and become nuisances from the mutual effects of idleness and poverty’.145 Given that he then did have a Royal Navy ship at his call Douglas had them expelled, with their canoes being escorted by HMS Tribune as far as Johnstone Straits ‘beyond a point where they would be likely to commit any outrages on white settlements and would at the same time give them sufficient protection against a tribe near to that locality whom they represent they are unable to pass at the present time unless protected’.146 The following summer Douglas stated that 2,000 ‘Northern Indians’ had congregated on the Songhees Reserve, becoming ‘a positive nuisance and a cause of alarm to the inhabitants of the colony. Passionately fond of ardent spirits they indulge … to excess whenever the means of intoxication are within their reach and on these occasions their quarters ex-

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hibit scenes of risk, disorder and outrage, disrespectful to a civilised and Christian country.’147 A visitor to Vancouver Island added ‘Becoming gradually bolder and more insolent, they at length brought matters to a climax by firing on the Rob Roy, a small trading schooner as she was leaving the Harbour of Victoria.’148 Douglas continued the story, but called the schooner by another name: The Hydahs … having turned out armed on the arrival of the police and made a show of resistance, I gave order that in addition the whole tribe should be disarmed … Those who had fired at the Royal Charley were publicly whipped in the presence of the whole tribe and afterwards conveyed to jail for a term of imprisonment with hard labour.149 Douglas then had an armed boat, provided by Rear Admiral Baynes from the naval base at Esquimalt, intercept all canoes and confiscate weapons. This should ‘impose on the minds of the Indians a respect for order and inspire them with confidence in the protection afforded by the Law, so that they will learn to turn to it alone for safety, and not to their own devices, while residing within the precincts of the colony’.150 In August Douglas wrote to the Colonial Secretary once more, to request permanent military assistance. He stated that, with a couple of exceptions, which must have been the firing on the schooner and the death of Captain John (see below), the Indians had ‘conducted themselves peaceably’, but there remained much apprehension amongst the inhabitants at ‘the close contiguity of a body of savages double them in number’. Douglas did not think they were there ‘to make war upon the white man, but to benefit by his presence by selling their furs and other commodities, but I cannot be blind to the fact that in an emergency we are nearly wholly unprotected and the most direful consequences might ensue were any sudden outburst to occur’. He added that the police force was small, largely special constables who rendered ‘cheerful assistance’, but would not be ‘of much avail against savages in case of an attack’. The navy at Esquimalt were too far off and could not sail into Victoria harbour, so he wanted Admiral Baynes to second a small body of marines to Victoria whilst the ‘Northern Indians’ were assembled and further to send a vessel ‘to visit at frequent intervals the different white settlements on this coast’.151 The Admiral was ‘disinclined’ to do what Douglas requested.152 Douglas had another strategy: to put the different communities into separate camps, require them to construct decent houses, make them pay something for the land occupied and impose a small tax for the support of ‘native officers’ who would work under the superintendence of the Chief of Police.153

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‘Kept in a proper state of subordination’: indigenous people and ‘Her Majesty’s authority’ ‘Our cattle shall no more be molested’: minor infractions The fears of the settlers may have been overblown, but there were some low level encounters and a few major incidents involving indigenous people. The company, then the colony, usually applied the law in minor cases without exciting further problems. That the law was sometimes brutal was a product of the age rather than of this particular place. In 1847 Roderick Finlayson: caught a Cape Flattery Indian breaking into the outer store … On his being carried into the fort for punishment some of his tribe, who were inside trading interfered, presented their arms at us and were on the point of firing when I called some of the Chiefs aside and represented the case to them and reproached them for countenancing a theft as being beneath the dignity of chiefs. I told them to walk outside or abide by the consequences which they did very reluctantly, the thief was then flogged having received eighteen lashes on the back and kept in prison until the evening.154 Often there was not even that level of protest. Douglas in 1853 reported that a local had been imprisoned for assaulting and wounding a white man with a reaping hook when they were working in the fields. The offender was punished according to the law ‘without exciting any ill-feeling in the minds of the natives at large who appear to approve and feel the justice of all the proceedings connected with these cases’.155 In this frontier environment, there was sometimes more excitement generated over crime concerning cattle. Finlayson reported that in 1844 some HBC oxen had been killed and he questioned the Songhees chief about this. The interview cannot have gone well for there was ‘a shower of bullets fired at the fort with a great noise and demonstration on the part of the crowd assembled, threatening death and devastation to all the whites. I had then to gather up our forces and man the bastions’. Finlayson sent out his interpreter to check the chief’s lodge was vacant and then fired grapeshot from one of the nine pounder cannonades at it. The Songhees were ‘much frightened, not knowing we had such destructive arms’ and the next day, following the local custom, the chief brought in furs to make reparation in full for the slaughtered cattle. He was told that ‘we came here to trade peaceably with them and did not want war unless we were forced to, so ended this disagreeable affair’.156 In 1845 Finlayson accepted three beaver skins and two land otters in return for the death of an animal the previous year. This was from the Quw’utsun’ who came south to Fort Victoria to trade and Finlayson took the furs ‘rather than

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that they should be further discouraged from visiting us and if their professions are to be relied on our cattle shall no more be molested.’157 Sometimes matters were more serious. In 1852 two Songhees had been accused of slaughtering cattle belonging to a settler. One man was apprehended without difficulty, but the other took refuge in the Songhee village on Victoria harbour. Douglas sent across a party to take him, but they were: surrounded by a tumultuous throng of armed men who set … [the constable] at defiance and were only restrained at the point of the bayonet from rushing in and disarming his party who were consequently compelled to retire in disorder without having executed the warrant and with the loss of two muskets and a boat which remained in the hands of the Indians.158 Douglas demanded the return of the muskets and boat but the Songhees just bargained for the release of the first culprit. Douglas was now in a difficult position, not wishing to ‘proceed to extremity with these Indians who have been uniformly friendly’ but unwilling also to have his, rather the Queen’s, authority challenged. He ordered the company ship, Beaver, to stand off the village with arms on display, causing: much excitement and alarm among the Indians. The women and children were flying in all directions while the men appeared to look unmoved upon the scene of danger but they had also time for reflection on the consequences of pushing the matter further and to my great relief sent a messenger to beg that proceedings might be stayed as they had resolved to end the dispute by restoring the boat and muskets which were immediately given up.159 The next day the chief made the usual offers of compensation for the cattle and ‘quiet was restored’.160 The threat of force was usually sufficient in these situations. Shipping: ‘not to be capriciously destroyed’ Moving up in scale, there were a number of more serious incidents involving shipping. Douglas reported in 1852 the story of the loss of the HBC ship Una in Neah Bay on Cape Flattery. Through the timely arrival of an American brig, Susan Sturgess, the crew of Una was rescued and part of her cargo saved, although there had been much loss of property through the ‘avidity’ of natives. A visit to the bay then took place by another HBC vessel, Cadboro, to require compensation for the company’s loss even though this incident had taken place in the USA.161 The chief, who had

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been absent when Una was plundered, demanded the restitution of stolen property from the perpetrators and then punished them with terrible severity: some were shot and another, accused of setting fire to Una, was buried alive. In his report, Douglas made it clear that such actions had not been demanded and were not approved by the British. Nonetheless, he could not conceal his satisfaction that the affair had been settled without hostility from Douglas’s government or the company. His conclusion was that ‘it has made a deep impression on the minds of the natives who were intently watching our proceedings’.162 The colonial secretary was careful to confirm that the dreadful punishments had not been sanctioned by ‘any British Officer’.163 In a letter to the American Indian Agent for Cape Flattery, Douglas said the indigenous people appeared: exceeding anxious to atone for the abuse committed and injury done to Her Majesty’s subjects. These barbarous acts, the result of their own uninfluenced deliberation, evince the sincerity of their repentance and we have in consequence renewed peaceful relations with the tribe … It will therefore not be necessary for the Government of the United States to take any further measures against them on account of the affair of the Una, which has been settled to our satisfaction.164 Douglas reported to the HBC in London that Cadboro had returned from Cape Flattery having recovered most of the stolen goods.165 The second shipping case also involved Susan Sturgess. This American brig, whilst seeking trade off the Queen Charlotte Islands in September 1852, had been taken by indigenous people, plundered and burnt with the crew held until ransomed by HBC officers. Douglas wondered how to respond. The brig’s master, Captain Rooney, and the owners had no right to British protection being ‘engaged in unlawful pursuits on a part of the British coast prohibited to foreign vessels’.166 Further, Rooney had been warned off the islands by HMS Thetis earlier and HBC officers had also cautioned him about the ‘bold and reckless character of the natives.’ Rooney had displayed a ‘lamentable want of judgement, [showing] total disregard of the precautions which prudence and common sense should have taught him were necessary’.167 On the other hand, the islands were British territory, if outside Douglas’s direct control (that he had actually just been appointed Lieutenant-Governor of ‘Queen Charlotte’s Island’,168 he could not have known at the time). If he did nothing, this would have ‘a very bad effect upon the natives of the coast generally and may embolden them to attempt other depredations … people should be called to a severe account and taught that the lives and property of white men are held at a high value and are not to be capriciously destroyed’.169

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It may be significant that Douglas made this statement to the HBC company secretary, implying that he was thinking of this matter in commercial rather than colonial terms. In the event, Douglas employed Captain Prevost and HMS Virago, to ‘induce these savages in future to refrain from acts of violence and to respect the laws of justice and humanity in all cases when British vessels or the vessels of other friendly nations are from stress of weather or other inevitable causes forced in a weak and defenceless state upon their shores’. In line with HBC policy, Prevost was to punish as far as possible only those who had been concerned directly with the seizure of the brig and take the chief aboard Virago until restitution of the captured property and reparation for losses was made. Chief Trader John Kennedy, having much experience of the Queen Charlotte Islands, was sent to advise.170 Finally, there was the loss of the British barque Lord Western, wrecked through ‘stress of weather’ on the west coast of Vancouver Island in 1853 whilst bound from Victoria to San Francisco. The owner of most of the cargo of timber and fish, Robert Swanston, asked Douglas to relieve the master, Captain Parker, and three of the mariners who were left near the wreck in a state of destitution amongst the indigenous people; the rest of the crew having reached Fort Victoria in the barque’s boats. Douglas had to comply for fear that the sailors would fall prey to ‘merciless savages’, and had chartered the HBC ship Otter to rescue the men. Swanston could give him no security for expenses incurred and Lord Western’s owner had been ruined by the loss, so Chief Factor Douglas appealed to the Colonial Office for payment of the expenses.171 The ‘poor unfortunate deserters’: the Fort Rupert murders Theft, assault, rustling and piracy did not bring forth any violence from the constituted authorities to indigenous people beyond judicial floggings. The ‘do not get into a fight’ Indian Trades policy held. Demonstrations of arms were made, but nobody was actually harmed; capital punishment for murder could be applied, but those who plundered Una were executed by their own people. It is significant that the most serious incident on Vancouver Island during the period under study that did include violence, took place under the brief governorship of Richard Blanshard who had a different attitude to indigenous people than experienced HBC officials. This was the series of events encapsulated under the name of the Fort Rupert murders. Fort Rupert was the HBC coalmining venture on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island set up from 1849 and abandoned when better prospects were discovered at Nanaimo, although a small trading post remained, largely to facilitate the export of roof shingles to the Sandwich Islands. John Helmcken, the HBC doctor at Fort Rupert who had been

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appointed magistrate by Richard Blanshard, wrote to the governor in July 1850 to report that three Europeans, perhaps deserting miners, had been killed by Newitty, a Kwakwaka’wakw band. He doubted the truth of this – ‘we hear false reports daily’ – but George Blenkinsop, senior HBC officer then at Fort Rupert, taking Jim, ‘the most intelligent Indian’, went to enquire.172 Helmcken himself requesitioned a canoe and chased after a ship, England, that had just left, because, in addition to absconding miners who might have been murdered, there were deserting seamen to be discovered. They, a later report said, ‘belonged to the Norman Morrison which ship they left at Victoria and went on board the England of Liverpool, Captain Brown. They arrived at Fort Rupert where intelligence arrived of their being on board England. Dr Helmcken, as Justice, went in board to take them out, but could not find them.’173 However, Helmcken did find the miners, in another canoe. They reported that they had been told by indigenous people that three white men had been discovered ashore by Newitty who attempted to get their clothes and then stabbed them and sunk the bodies, weighted down with stones. Helmcken now assumed correctly that the dead men were these three deserting sailors, two later named as Alfred Stanton and George Michael.174 On 13 July Helmcken received a more detailed but contradictory report from Charles Beardsmore, a junior officer at Fort Rupert. This was to the effect that Newitty men reported that they had seen three white men on an island and then saw strangers, indigenous people from another area, come up in a canoe. The Newitty hid and watched. The strangers approached the whites who threatened them, pitching a big stone into a canoe and smashing it. The strangers immediately fired and killed two men and chased the third. A shot was heard, but had not been fatal for the man was still moving when the strangers carried him into sight. Then he was stabbed, stripped and sunk, with stones at his feet. Another big canoe coming up, the strangers paddled off swiftly. The hidden Newitty afterwards went and stripped the other bodies and hid them. Beardsmore offered the Newitty blankets if they would show him where the bodies were but they refused and he had to go and look himself. He found two bodies, one hidden in a hollow stump, and covered them up. The bodies were later brought in, examined and buried. Blankets were offered as a reward for anybody bringing in the missing body.175 The veracity of Beardsmore’s testimony here has been questioned by historian W. Kaye Lamb: ‘Instead of telling him [Helmcken] that they [the murders] had been committed by the Newitty Indians, he concocted a complicated tale that implied that marauders from the north had been responsible. Why he did this is not clear; presumably he conceived that he was doing his chief and the company a service by befuddling the magistrate.’176 Another puzzling issue is the matter of blankets being of-

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fered as a reward, not just for a missing body, but, perhaps, for the capture of deserters. Given there were two separate parties deserting, it is not absolutely clear if this was for the miners or the sailors, but probably it was the former. Admiral Fairfax Moresby reported to the Admiralty that Andrew Muir, one of the deserting miners who reached California, told him that: ‘A reward was offered for their heads … Captain Brown of the England told Mr Blenkinsop who offered the reward it was a rash thing, my father [who had not absconded] heard him. My father heard Mr Blenkinsop offer the reward of some blankets for the whitemen’s heads “but the blacksmith was to be brought back alive”.’177 Muir wrote in his diary that Blenkinsop had offered ten blankets for each of their heads: was ever such barbarity heard off [sic], giving these bloodhounds ten blankets for one white man’s head these savages who care no more about taking of a man’s head than you should do of taking a meal of meat, surely these things will not pass without punishment … we were knocking about in our canoe when we heard from the Indians that there was three killed belonging to the ship. There is the effect of the blankets, I can say no more on the subject.178 The blankets issue is significant because if they were available as a reward for bringing in deserters – miners or sailors – this may have led indigenous people to kill any white men they encountered away from the fort and thus the HBC would be an accessory to crime. Governor Blanshard, who detested the company, took a further step and reported to Earl Gray that there had been suggestions that the ‘unfortunate men had been murdered by order of the Hudson’s Bay Company.’179 This despatch was seen by the HBC in London who were horrified that ‘officers of the Company [are] accused by the white inhabitants of having instigated … [the murders] by offers of reward for the deserters dead or alive’ and demanded details from Chief Factor Douglas.180 However, Charles Beardsmore might have cleared the matter up in a conversation with Admiral Moresby. If there was a formal reward offered, it was to apprehend murderers, not deserters: There was a reward of fifty blankets offered by Mr Blenkinsop in charge of the Fort [Rupert] for each of the murderers. No reward was offered for picking up the deserters. Such a thing as ‘I’d give you a hundred blankets to get them back’ might have been said. I might have said so myself to the Master at the Fort but not publicly.181

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In his autobiography written forty years later, Helmcken opined that any blanket reward was not significant, and even if it had been mentioned, it would not have been for bodies: Even if Blenkinsop had offered blankets for the arrest of the deserters, he would have done no more than followed the practice of the naval ships here … Men were of great importance at Fort Rupert at the time, for if more had deserted the place would have been without defenders against the three thousand Indians outside. As to Blenkinsop’s offering a reward for the deserters ‘dead or alive’ this bears the lie on the face of it. As a matter of fact the murder seems to have had no connection with Blenkinsop or the reward for deserters … as the Indians [who killed them] were foreign to Rupert altogether.182 Richard Blanshard, dissatisfied with his life as governor at Fort Victoria decided to take personal charge of matters at Fort Rupert.183 Lacking any military, he had to await the arrival of a naval vessel, in order that he could arrive with a ‘proper force’.184 In the meantime, he issued a formal proclamation in the Queen’s name, forbidding anybody to leave the fort for fear they would be cut off. People disobeying could be subjected to corporal punishment, an indication of his harshness. And whereas certain persons have lately been murdered by Indians near Fort Rupert, which murders I am immediately about to enquire into and punish, and the Indian tribes still continue in an excited and hostile state, and it is expedient that no opportunity should be afforded them of perpetrating such outrages as they have already committed, I do hereby order and declare: That no person or persons shall for the present leave Fort Rupert further than their daily avocations may require without a pass under the hand and seal of the resident magistrate which will only be granted in cases of urgent necessity. And that any such infraction of this last order shall be severely punished with fine, imprisonment or stripes.185 Douglas had long been concerned at what Blanshard might do at Fort Rupert fearing that if the governor delivered collective punishment rather than targeting guilty individuals, the company and settlers would suffer. There had been an exchange between the two earlier that summer when Douglas advised Blanshard not to leave Fort Victoria for fear of unrest there. Blanshard summarised the conversation thus: ‘you stated that you no longer dared speak to any of your own men, that you were in

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daily fear of seeing the establishment burnt down, and that my absence would render measures of self-defence necessary, which would probably end in bloodshed’.186 Douglas’s reply did not counter what Blanshard wrote.187 This seems such an unlikely characterisation of the ineffectual Blanshard and the stern and resolute Douglas that one might opine that Douglas was attempting a ruse to try and keep Blanshard away from Fort Rupert. If so it failed, for Blanshard went north anyway, appointing Douglas as magistrate to increase his authority. In a letter to George Blenkinsop marked ‘private’, an unusual occurrence which presumably denoted the delicacy of the company-crown issue, Douglas feared that Blanshard would: act with decision … therefore our position on Vancouver Island will be insufferable and the civil government worse than a dead letter … I do not know what will be done with the murderers of the poor unfortunate deserters. Mr Blanshard appears disposed to hold the Neweete tribe responsible for the deed, but that cause, as unpolitick as unjust, will lead to many evils and may involve us in a disastrous warfare with these savages … I have strongly recommended moderate measures to all and endeavour to demonstrate the justice and expediency of punishing the guilty alone and continuing friendly relations with other members of the tribe.188 Blanshard’s chance came when HMS Daedalus under Captain George Wellesley arrived at Fort Victoria on 22 September 1850 and was sent to Fort Rupert with Blanshard on board. Admiral Moresby wrote to the Admiralty in 1851 enclosing notes of a conversation he had had at Honolulu with Charles Beardsmore, who was a member of the Daedalus expedition. Beardsmore had thought the murderers might be secured if the British had seized as hostages Newitty who came on board to trade but Mr Ritchie [presumably of the HBC] was taken as a pilot of Daedalus. ’Twas his fault the murderers were not captured. The natives were coming off to the ship when he went on the forecastle and spoke to them in their own language and they immediately turned back and went away as fast as possible.189 Following this, the boats were sent in to the settlement, Beardsmore with them: ‘I had been sent to the Indian village to parley with them and I told them that if they did not give the murderers up I should be there again in twenty-four hours to take them. They thought I was joking.’190 There are varying reports of what happened next, but Admiral Moresby claimed that the Newitty at some stage fired on the boats of the Daedalus,

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wounding an officer and two crew.191 Blanshard reported that ‘though officers and men showed all possible skill and doubtless felt the greatest anxiety to punish the perpetrators, I regret to say it was fruitless, as the Indians decamped with the greater part of their property’. Blanshard then had the sailors burn down the lodges of the deserted village.192 This was just the collective punishment Douglas had feared but he expressed relief that the Newitty had not attempted to defend their position against ‘the badly conducted and unsupported Boat expedition [which] could not have carried it without a great deal of sacrifice of men’.193 The Colonial Office was displeased at the conduct of the Daedalus expedition, its advisability, even its morality, given that the seamen killed were deserters. Earl Grey wrote to Blanshard in a most direct manner: I by no means feel satisfied of the prudence of the step which you took in directing this expedition which appears to me to have failed in its main object. And at all events it is necessary that I should state for your guidance on future occasions that Her Majesty’s Government cannot undertake to protect or attempt to punish injuries committed upon British subjects who voluntarily expose themselves to the violence or treachery of the native tribes at a distance from the settlements. I have no reason to suppose from the accounts which have reached me, both from yourself and from other quarters that the settlements themselves are in actual danger.194 Neither contemporaries nor historians have been kind to Blanshard over this incident. Beardsmore noted that the indigenous people looked at the deserters in the light of slaves running away from their masters in which case anyone might catch or even kill them: ‘a slave among the Indians, his life is not worth a snap of the finger’.195 Historian Robin Fisher, aware of this attitude to slavery that could explain why the deserters had been killed, thought that Blanshard, ‘in contrast to the fur traders … [lacking] the ability and probably the inclination, to delve into the subtleties of Indian motivation’,196 had seen them simply as murderers. W. Kaye Lamb thought Blanshard was ‘seeking to put into force the white man’s law in what still remained a red man’s country’,197 a punitive law, which ignored the Indian concept of reparations and payment of damages. Matters were to be better arranged the following season. In June 1851 Moresby visited Esquimalt, ‘to be satisfied that means have been adapted, and satisfactory results obtained for bringing to justice the murderers of the British seamen’.198 In the event HMS Daphne was employed in a

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second expedition. Douglas forewarned Blenkinsop, again urging that only the guilty be punished: HMS Daphnae [sic] proceeds to Fort Rupert to punish the Neweete Indians for the murder committed last summer by some individuals of that tribe unless they surrender the criminals to Her Majesty’s Officers to be dealt with according to law. Governor Blanshard will, I believe accompany the Daphnae to Fort Rupert and probably remain with you some weeks; I beg that every civility and attention in your power may be extended to the governor and the officers of Her Majesty’s ship. I sincerely wish the Neweete Indians may be induced to give up the criminals who it is understood are only three in number as it will save the effusion of blood on both sides. Exert all your influence to accomplish that desirable object.199 Blanshard’s report to Earl Grey on the subsequent expedition mentioned that, before fleeing, the Newitty returned fire on the boats causing injuries to two sailors when a party from Daphne landed, Blanshard perhaps conveniently, describing these as minor injuries only. The indigenous people were not pursued owing to the nature of the ground; instead the sailors again burnt canoes and houses.200 Douglas took up the story, reporting that George Blenkinsop delivered a message offering peace to the band at large on condition of the delivery of the three Indians concerned with the murder, a strategy redolent of the HBC and different to that pursued by Blanshard the previous year. These terms were accepted but ‘the murderers themselves got wind of the situation and fled’.201 They were, however chased into the woods and put to death by their own people after making a desperate resistance in which one of the assailants was severely wounded. The mangled remains of the criminals were taken to Fort Rupert and after being identified by the Kwakwaka’wakw chief were interred near the fort and Douglas concluded with satisfaction that ‘the war with that nation may be now considered as nearly at an end’.202 The following year Douglas confirmed that the men ‘concerned in the murder had been executed by their own countrymen and that we had in consequence renewed peaceful relations’. The actions in the second expedition from Daphne had had ‘a most salutary effect’.203 ‘The painful necessity of assuming an hostile attitude’: apprehending the killers of Peter Brown At the next serious incident old HBC hand James Douglas was in charge. In May 1852 he informed the captain of HMS Thetis of the ‘foul and wanton murder’ of an HBC shepherd, Peter Brown, on the morning of 5 March. Two Quw’utsun’ had appeared at his house in a friendly fashion,

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so much so that Brown’s workmate, James Skea, left him with the visitors and went out to the sheep. Skea returned at midday to find ‘to his great horror and surprise the lifeless remains of his fellow shepherd, who had been murdered in his absence extended on the ground a few yards from the house’. Brown, his corpse still warm, was dead from gunshot wounds to the chest. Guns and four blankets were missing from the house and the murderers had left behind a looking glass and several pipes. Skea must have recognised the men, one of whom, it seems, was well known and Douglas looked forward to their early apprehension, a measure ‘absolutely necessary for the prevention of alarm’. He thought the murderers were not acting ‘with the knowledge or in association with any other members of the tribe, who have on all occasions evinced the most friendly disposition towards the whites.’ Thus, ‘we have therefore and for reasons of public justice and policy’ decided not to punish the tribe but to ask the chiefs to surrender the men. Punishing the tribe could make them ‘unite in a league against the whites’. If the men were not surrendered Douglas said he would be ‘under the painful necessity of sending a force to seize upon the murderers.’ In such a case he would requisition marines from HMS Thetis.204 Douglas wrote to Sir John Pakington in November 1852 about Brown’s murder. He could find no mitigating circumstances, it had been just a ‘wanton outrage’ to kill this inoffensive young man, the only son of a respectable widow in Orkney. The perpetrators had fled to Nanaimo with the intention of taking refuge amongst their friends. Douglas had sent messengers to the Quw’utsun’ chiefs; one came back with them and this chief expressed regret. His people were not disposed to quarrel with the whites, only one group might try and protect the murderers, the rest were disposed to side with their chief. This, Douglas felt, was satisfactory. He was expecting the arrival of the HBC vessel at Fort Victoria and would then send a sufficient force to apprehend the assassins,205 for as he explained later ‘to undertake an expedition of so much importance in open boats … will neither represent the dignity of the government nor afford shelter or protection to the men and might probably end in disaster and defeat’.206 Three weeks later Douglas had planned the operation as revealed in another letter to Captain Kuper. He confirmed that most local people wanted to surrender the murderers but were ‘violently opposed by a numerous party of their relatives and personal friends, and I am convinced the surrender will never take place unless they are intimidated by the presence of an overwhelming force. I have therefore decided on fitting out an expedition for the Cowegan Country.’ He had decided to use the HBC ship Beaver and the brigantine Recovery. He needed 250 men and could supply fifty himself, but looked to Captain Kuper for the officers and the balance from HMS Thetis.207 That Kuper’s acquiescence

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was less than willing might be judged from his subsequent demand to Douglas for the return of Arthur Samsun, the officer from Thetis in command of the expedition. This demand was refused, as it ‘would prove injurious to the public service’.208 On 24 December Douglas reported that he was going within days into Quw’utsun’ territory ‘to demand the surrender of the murderer of Brown … I shall do everything in my power to avoid a war with the Cowitchen tribe but for the peace of the settlement it is necessary that the murderers should be immediately brought to punishment.’209 The following week he reported that he had met with the chiefs ‘to impress upon their minds that the terror of the law would be let loose on the perpetrators of the murder only and on no other member of the tribe except such as should be found resisting the Queen’s authority’.210 The expedition was again delayed by bad weather but finally aboard Beaver and Recovery a smaller force than that originally planned, 130 seamen and marines under Lieutenant Samsun, accompanied by seven ‘half whites’ raised in the colony, their sergeant and an interpreter left Fort Victoria on 4 January 1853. The colony accounts later recorded the items supplied to the militia: guns, powder horns, shirts, belts, trousers, capots (hats) hose (stockings) shoes and tobacco.211 The party anchored off Cowegan, where one of the two alleged murderers was known to be, on 6 January and sent messengers to the several bands to meet with Douglas to settle the matter ‘giving them distinctly to understand that I should be under the painful necessity of assuming an hostile attitude and marching against them with the force under my command should they decline my invitation’. The indigenous people agreed to meet and the colonial forces disembarked. Douglas seemed to relish the spectacle: last of all two canoes crowded with the friends and relatives of the murderer [arrived], hideously painted and evidently prepared to defend the wretched man, who was himself among their number, to the last extremity. On landing they made a furious rush towards the spot where I stood, a little in advance of the force and their deportment was altogether so hostile that the marines were with difficulty constrained by their officers from opening a fire upon them. When the first excitement was abated the fellow, fully armed, was brought into my presence. I managed after a great deal of trouble in taking him quietly into custody and sent him a close prisoner on board the steam vessel. His capture having removed all cause of dispute, I assembled the Indians and spoke to them long and seriously about the subject of their relations with the Colony and the rules which must govern their conduct in future. They expressed utmost regret on the death of Brown and a sincere desire to be at

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peace in the Colony, a feeling which was strengthened by the imposing force before them. They left in the course of the afternoon in the best possible temper and the forces were immediately after embarked, having fortunately concluded the day’s work without firing a shot in anger.212 Douglas lauded Lieutenant Samsun for keeping the troops under control and not letting them open fire. The force went on to Nanaimo, where the second alleged murderer had taken refuge, arriving on 9 January. Here the man was regarded as the ‘hero of the tribe’ and matters promised to be more difficult. The Snuneymuxw chiefs were persuaded to deliver him up, but on the day appointed failed to do so, offering instead: to ransom his life by making a payment of fur. In consequence of that breach of faith, his father and another influential Indian were taken into custody in hopes if inducing them by that means to yield … my earnest wish being, if possible, to gain our point without bloodshed and without assailing the tribe at large. After two days of most anxious suspense it was again settled that the father should be given up if he [the nameless suspect] was brought within half a mile of the anchorage.213 The murderer fled into the woods. Douglas felt that he now had to become more assertive: ‘it was then impossible to temporise longer without loss of character. Negotiation had been tried in vain and I therefore decided on adopting more active measures and with that view ordered an immediate advance towards the Nanaimo river where their villages are situated.’214 They took the first village without firing a shot and spent the night there. The boats came up before morning and they proceeded to a second village, which was deserted. The murderer’s father was chief of this village, where all the people’s winter food was stored. Douglas wrote with satisfaction that ‘they were now completely in our power’ and indigenous people found in the area were rounded up to be told that ‘they should be treated as enemies and their villages destroyed if they continued longer to protect the murderer’. At this threat, Douglas was informed that the wanted man was in the woods by the coast about three miles (4.8 kilometres) distant so he sent the pinnace with sixteen seamen and nine ‘half whites’ to capture him. ‘After a long chase in the woods in which the half whites took the principal part, the wretched man was captured and taken on board the steam vessel.’215 The troops were withdrawn without molesting or doing any damage to other indigenous people or their property.

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The two felons are now in custody they were brought to trial and found guilty of wilful murder by a jury composed of the officers present. They were sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead and the execution took place in the presence of the whole Nanaimo tribe, the scene appearing to make a deep impression in their minds and will, I trust, have the effect of restraining them from the commission of crime. I am happy to report that I found the Cowegan and Nanaimo tribes more amenable to reason than was supposed.216 The colonial accounts record that the executioner’s fee was £6 17s 6d, and later give his identity as M. Rowland, probably Mattias Rowland, a Victoria publican.217 Douglas concluded significantly that the result ‘was obtained as much by the influence of the HBC as by the effects of intimidation’ and repeated his evident satisfaction that all had been accomplished without bloodshed,218 his policy later to be described as ‘selective rather than indiscriminate punishment’.219 Unlike his predecessor, Douglas received a favourable response from the colonial secretary about his conduct and that of the men in this affair. ‘All was highly creditable’, he confirmed in his reply.220 Another murder took place in 1856, that of a non-British European called Peter Cornelius, who was living among the indigenous peoples of the west coast. There was an accusation that the chief was involved and this man was put to death by the neighbouring tribe.221 The records show two other executions of indigenous men: one took place on the morning of 25 August 1860 when the ‘extreme penalty of the Law’ was imposed upon a ‘Northern Indian’ outside the jail at Victoria who had been found guilty at the assizes for the murder of a man called Brown. Maybe this related to the murder of Peter Brown.222 ‘For the security of all’: the execution of Fathlasut The final case was the murder of Thomas Williams. James Douglas wrote on 22 August 1856 that this British settler of the Cowegan country was brought to Fort Victoria that morning having been shot through the arm and chest by Fathlasut, a Samuna from Upper Cowegan. Williams was a squatter, a man who had not purchased his land and had no right to occupy it. Douglas always tried to discourage squatting, ‘yet it is essential for the security of all that these persons should be protected.’ He was to demand the surrender of Fathlasut from his chiefs, failing which he would send in a force to apprehend him, for which purpose Douglas was to apply to Admiral Bruce. Finally, as always, he assured the Colonial Office that he would do all in his power to ‘avoid collisions with the Indians’.223

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Douglas’s application to Bruce, perhaps purposely, did not mention that Williams was a squatter, and he appealed to the navy’s mission to support British civil power: ‘I am therefore under the necessity of making a requisition upon you for a force sufficient to answer the ends of justice, and teach these savages to respect the lives and property of Her Majesty’s subjects.’224 Douglas reported that he had had ‘much trouble’ in getting the natives to deliver the accused. Most of the 1,400 Quw’utsun’ warriors were at Fraser’s River on the mainland, leaving about 400 in the valley and a feeble attempt had been made by the accused man’s family to rescue the prisoner. The colonial force of eighteen members of a militia, the Victoria Voltageurs, under L. McDonald of the HBC and 400 seamen and marines under Commander Matthew Connolly (who was to be recommended for promotion) took temporary possession of three Quw’utsun’ villages to ensure that Fathlasut was surrendered. Douglas, his staff and the Voltageurs had been in the lead in the push through the bush, seamen and marines in behind to guard against surprise, such tactics picked up from the Puget Sound War in Oregon Territory. Fathlasut was tried under English law ‘before a special court convened on the spot and found guilty of wounding with intent to murder.’ He was sentenced to be hanged and was executed immediately near the spot where the assault had been committed ‘in the presence of the tribe upon whose minds the solemnity of the procedure and the execution of the criminal were calculated to make a deep impression’. Douglas reported with satisfaction that there had been no casualties on either side, a grim note adding ‘the criminal excepted’, and no property was damaged. The British forces remained for two days afterwards to re-establish friendly relations with the people.225 James Cooper who had been on the island at the time mentioned to the 1857 Select Committee that it was significant that a ‘proper force’ had been available and that there had not been further trouble because the indigenous people ‘probably believed that it was all right; they believed that it was correct that the man should die.’226 Douglas wrote that ‘The zeal evinced by every officer present as well as the courage, discipline and orderly conduct of the men won my warmest admiration.’227 The colonial secretary approved the action in the ‘peculiar and aggregated circumstances of the case … but I would remind you that the extreme measure of sending in an armed force against the Indian tribes must be resorted to with great caution and only in a case which urgently demands the adoption of such a course’.228 This advice, written from the security of a Whitehall desk by a man who, presumably, would never have met an aboriginal North American, and which was in any case akin to the established HBC policy by which Douglas had conducted his career, seems to have irked Douglas. He replied in detail on

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the reasons why he, the experienced hand, had deemed it necessary to employ an armed force. I trust I may be permitted to make a few explanatory observations in reference to the remarks in your despatch on the subject of the expedition to Cowegan … The measure of sending an armed force against the Cowitchan Indians was only resorted to on the failure of all other means of bringing the criminal to justice and indicating the authority of the law. I may add without fear of contradiction that never was a special example more urgently demanded for the maintenance of our prestige with the Indian tribes than on that occasion. Elated with the recent success of the Oregon tribes over the United States troops the natives of this colony were also becoming insolent and restive.229 Douglas obviously felt that he had to show to his colonial master that the man who shot Williams must not be allowed to escape with impunity: He in fact told his friends that he had nothing to fear from the enmity of the whites as they would not venture to attack a powerful tribe occupying a country strong in natural defences and so distant from the coast … Our demands for the surrender of the criminal were answered by a rush to arms and a tumultuous assemblage of the tribe in warlike array. From thence arose the necessity of applying an armed force to support the Requisition of the Law and the danger to be guarded against in our efforts to apprehend the criminal was a collision with the whole tribe.’ Douglas added that these were the principles that had worked with the murderers of Peter Brown, ‘terrors of the Law … let loose on the guilty only and not on the tribe at large provided they took no part in resisting the Queen’s authority nor in protecting the criminal from justice’. He contrasted his success, with himself in the vanguard, with disastrous expeditions that had recently occurred in Africa and New Zealand as well as the ineffectual operations of Richard Banshard. I may further assure the government that I was not influenced by the love of a military display in assuming the great responsibility involved in directing the Cowegan expedition but only by a profound sense of public duty and a conviction founded on experience that it is only by resorting to prompt and decisive measures of punishment in all cases of aggression that life and

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property can be protected and the native tribes of this colony kept in a proper state of subordination.230 This important despatch identifies the nuanced HBC and, thus, Vancouver Island Colony policy of Chief Factor and Governor Douglas towards the indigenous people on whom all at this time depended. Blanshard had just the iron fist; Douglas wrote dismissively of his ‘fruitless expedition’, whilst he, himself, sought to accommodate the indigenous people when this could be done, even if this attracted criticism. One critic was a settler and council member, James Cooper, who in evidence to the 1857 parliamentary enquiry stated, not fully accurately, that ‘when an Indian commits any depredation he is bribed; there is no authority, no force to punish him; and therefore rather than he should show a disposition to be angry, he will perhaps get two or three blankets given to him to make friends with them again’. This policy, Cooper averred, may have answered HBC purposes well enough in most places ‘but not among a settlement of British subjects’.231 However, Douglas was prepared, if necessary, to remove the velvet glove from his own iron fist and use military threats if, as Cooper went on to note, he had British military personnel at his disposal, hence Douglas’s extreme reaction against Colonial Secretary Labouchere’s caution in this regard. The indigenous people could live without molestation, but only if they followed the strictures of James Douglas, and remained, as the quotation above noted ‘in a proper state of subordination’. ‘They are protected in their rights’: the law and indigenous victims It is clear that indigenous people who offended against the British on Vancouver Island had to be subject to the law, at least partly to assure their subordination and bolster the confidence of the British settlers. How did the law apply in situations where indigenous people were victims of crime committed by colonists? It is clear that there was some protection against the incomers under the law of those incomers. In the trading post era Roderick Finlayson expelled the HBC employee, Garipie, in irons to Fort Vancouver because of his outrageous behaviour towards an indigenous youth engaged to drive the oxen whilst the HBC man held the plough. Garipie had maimed another indigenous employee the previous year as was seen above. Finlayson wrote: Garipie as was usually the case with him when having anything to do with Indians quarrelled with his ox driver, struck him with his fist, kicked him severely, and abused him in such a barbarous manner that I had to go to the poor defenceless lad’s assistance and reprimand Garipie for his brutality, when to my surprise I received

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my share of his gigantic blows which he dealt so unmercifully that I had to defend myself as best I could under the circumstances.232 Another HBC ploughman then present did not come to Finlayson’s aid and the indigenous boys there took their chance to run away. Garipie was taken to the fort where, before visiting naval officers as witnesses, he received forty-two lashes before being expelled. The whipping was ‘moderately administered being given more with a view of showing an example to the others than severely injuring him’.233 Thus, indigenous people in HBC work could receive protection from senior officers’ fists as well as protection through the law, although it is not clear if Garipie was flogged for abusing the youth or fighting his master, perhaps both. In the company colony period such protection was applied with greater formality under a colonial legal system. James Douglas, when a new governor in 1851, acknowledged that the indigenous people had to be confident they could turn to the law in cases of dispute, which would benefit also the wider colony by promoting peace: ‘they are protected in their rights and we endeavour by every possible means to conciliate their good will as it is a matter of great importance to acquire their confidence and to lead them to appeal for redress in all cases of wrongs to the laws of the land, instead of having recourse to lawless retaliation’.234 Following the murder of an indigenous man called Jake in Victoria in 1857, allegedly by Richard Jones, a white labourer of Constance Cove Farm, Douglas issued a proclamation offering £50 ($240) reward for information. Anybody harbouring Jones would be an accessory after the fact and prosecuted. Another proclamation with the USA, on the same day, pointed out that Jones could be extradited.235 However, there was controversy over the acceptability of indigenous people’s testimony against the British. In 1851 there had been a complaint by Tenatman, a T’Souke chief, against Thomas Hall, a worker at Esquimalt Farm in his local area who had ‘forcibly dispossessed’ the plaintiff of a valuable double-barrelled fowling piece by swapping it for an inferior gun and eight dollars. However, the plaintiff had no evidence, except the testimony of one of his countrymen ‘who not being a Christian could not be duly sworn’.236 Even if Douglas admitted the evidence, there was still no proof of force, Hall claiming the exchange was by mutual consent, although Tenatman now clearly wanted his better gun back. The case was decided necessarily in the favour of the defendant, but Douglas prevailed upon Hall as a matter of justice to give the plaintiff his gun back, a plea reinforced by a note to his employer, the farm manager.237 That Tenatman received justice only through the coerced goodwill of the person who had opposed him in court was clearly not satisfactory and Douglas was moved to write to his colonial masters:

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The question arising out of that simple case on which I would require your Lordship’s instructions is this: How far the testimony of Indians is to be admitted as evidence in the Law Courts of this colony … in the case of disputes between the white man and Indian. I do not see how we can with justice reject the only species of testimony the latter may have to offer.238 Douglas was advised by the colonial secretary that: My belief is that it is to the general advantage of Justice that all such evidence should be received, leaving it to the tribunals how much value it may really possess. I do not think a distinction between cases in which colonists are concerned and those in which natives only are concerned on principle advisable. Indian testimony may not infrequently be the only means of ascertaining the truth if circumstances should ever bring the two races into nearer relations than exist at present.239 Further, Sir John Pakington thought that there was nothing in English law against this: ‘the evidence of all persons is permissible in our courts if they have any mode of solemnly declaring the truth which is self binding among themselves.’240 The establishment of such principles did not mean that ‘English law’ was universally applied in Vancouver Island Colony in cases where indigenous peoples were wronged, for there were also aboriginal traditions to be considered. In 1849 when an indigenous boy had been killed by an HBC employee his parents were just given ten blankets as recompense.241 Eight years later an indigenous man was accidentally shot by four men and boys from HMS Satellite. At the time Douglas wrote he was still alive, but if he died there would be an inquest. Meanwhile, Douglas stated, his friends were seeking monetary compensation ‘in accordance with their rude customs’ and Douglas thought ‘on public grounds … to entertain their proposals’ and was considering what compensation might be appropriate.242 Historian Robin Fisher, whilst acknowledging Douglas’s sympathy to indigenous people, noted ‘by using an Indian method to settle the dispute Douglas also revealed that the two races did not stand equal before the law … when an Indian wounded a European the statute book declared it to be an offence punishable by death’.243 An additional issue was the small scale of the young colony in its island situation. Gilbert Sproat, who settled Alberni on the west coast, told of an American employee who caught indigenous people stealing potatoes and to scare them off peppered them with dried peas fired from a shotgun. To his amazement one man died, a pea getting lodged in his

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lung. Under colonial law an inquest jury had to be sworn, but Sproat, a straightforward, honest chronicler, admitted that getting an impartial jury was difficult as everybody in the district was in his employment. This proved to be the case for the jury, determined to protect their workmate, first ruled that the man shot in the lungs with peas had died by being mauled by a dog. When Sproat rejected this as stupid, the jury reconvened and ruled the man had fallen off a cliff. Sproat dismissed the jury and arrested the American who had fired the peas on his own responsibility, but he escaped. Rather than being appalled at this demonstration of the ineffectual and biased nature of the colonial law now being imposed upon them, the local indigenous people were, apparently, not concerned as the dead man was not of their tribe and they could use his death, punished or not, to their advantage as it showed that they, themselves, were not thieves.244 Putting ‘a stop to such bold proceedings’: dealing with indigenous ‘domestic broils’ The company colony imposed the full rigour of the law up to and including military campaigns against indigenous people who had transgressed the rules imposed upon them by committing crimes against the colonists. Laws were also in place and put into practice to some extent to protect indigenous people from crimes conducted against their persons by the colonists. A third class of disputes were those within the indigenous community, or, given the complexity of First Nations in this region, better to add also between the different indigenous communities. There is limited evidence of the HBC becoming involved in the trading post period. In the two reported cases the HBC seemed to have other motives, even if the phrase ‘British justice’ was used. The first came in 1845 when Finlayson reported that a large trading party from Bellingham Bay had been robbed by Songhees. He chose to interfere ‘to protect friendly Indians coming to trade with us’, his reason seeming to be predicated upon commercial not moral considerations. The robbers were persuaded to return the property and the Bellingham Bay people were escorted home: ‘Thus wild savages were taught to respect British justice.’245 The following year two parties from different First Nations arrived at Fort Victoria. One put a bale of furs in the fort for safekeeping and fear of being raided by the others. Even so there was a fight over ‘some old quarrel’ and some musket balls fell amongst HBC people, so Finlayson ‘had to interfere and put a stop to such bold proceedings’.246 In the company colony there was caution expressed by all involved about interfering in such disputes. Douglas, wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, in 1853 that:

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In reference to the management of the native Indians I must remark to your Grace that there is a subject connected with this which has caused me no small degree of anxiety. This is the settlement of their domestic feuds, for like all barbarous nations they … destroy each other whenever any cause of difference exists and such pretexts are seldom wanting. This is a state of things inconsistent with their present position as inhabitants of a British Colony but heretofore I have not attempted to interfere except in the character of arbitrator … I have therefore made it a rule to confine our interference in their affairs to a species of authoritative advice which has great weight and has produced a good effect in allaying their mutual dislike, so much so that with the exception of an unfortunate native who was lately murdered by his own countrymen, no other criminal activity has been committed among the natives within the precincts of the settlements for the last twelve months and I made them understand that such acts if committed within the limits of the settlements in the future be considered in the light of capital offences and tried according to the Laws of England.247 It is clear that Douglas, always practical, had had to temper what he wished he could do against what he could accomplish. Whilst he could act as an arbitrator, he would, perhaps could, only actually prosecute the law if the intra-indigenous disputes happened to occur in the vicinity of the settlements. He went on to talk of the settlements having to be regarded as ‘sacred ground’ by the indigenous people.248 Newcastle’s response was equally realistic and also supportive: ‘The interference of the local government in the exercise of these people must be cautiously exercised. It would clearly be most unwise and impolitic to involve ourselves in their domestic feuds of which as you justly observe it is impossible for us to understand the real merits.’249 Douglas was more open with the company in London regarding this matter, for only to them did he divulge that there was actually a benefit to the ‘whites’, and thus the HBC, if he left ‘domestic broils’ unchecked. He told Barclay in 1853 that the native population of the west coast: are at present in a very unsettled state amongst themselves in consequence of an atrocious massacre committed by the Neweetes and others who have almost cut off to a man the whole of the Naskeemo tribe. Their demeanour towards the whites is, however, quiet and friendly and I do not consider it prudent to interfere with their ‘domestic broils’, otherwise than as mediator, as they tend to our security, and serve as a safety valve for the escape of their vindictive passions.250

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On occasion intervention was necessary as in August 1856 when Douglas reported that people from the Queen Charlotte Islands, presumably Haida, whilst returning home from Victoria attacked and troyed a Quw’utsun’ village, slaughtering the inhabitants, except for some women and children whom they took with them, presumably as slaves. Other Quw’utsun’ then threatened to attack any ‘Northern Indians’ they could find but ‘were restrained by their respect for Her Majesty’s Government and for fear of giving us offence’. Douglas was afraid they would attack within the settlements, his ‘sacred ground’, where other ‘Northern Indians’ had assembled for protection. These people were afraid to leave because their route home also lay through Quw’utsun’ country. Douglas was also fearful, for if they all went together ‘in all probability from a feeling of their own strength [they would] become dangerous and commit numberless depredations on the less powerful native tribes of Vancouver’s Island’. So he came up with a plan ‘which without displeasing the Cowegans was conceived by the Northern Indians as a mark of peculiar favour.’ This was to send the latter, about 300 strong, with fifteen large canoes, under the escort of the HBC steamer, Otter, about 150 miles (241 kilometres) north, well beyond Quw’utsun’ territory.251 The following year there were more feuds, including attacks on ‘Northern Indians’ employed by white settlers in various locations. Three were wounded and two killed. Further, the small village of a local band was destroyed and all killed. Douglas would have resorted to force to punish the perpetrators but with only two constables had not the power to act, but through the ‘moral influence of government’ was able to restore calm to the settlements, repeating to the people his mantra that they constituted ‘sacred ground’.252 In 1858 Douglas had devised a policy of enlisting indigenous help in controlling their disputes by appointing ‘three Indian magistrates who are to bring forward when required any man of their several tribes who may be charged with offences against the Laws of the country, an arrangement which will prevent much evil but without the necessity of unceasing vigilance on the part of Government’.253 However, this policy was not put into place straight away and in 1859 1,500 ‘Northern Indians’, including many from the Queen Charlotte Islands arrived and a serious affray occurred between the Haida and a group from near Fort Simpson at their encampment north of Victoria. These tribes in their own country are often at war with each other and keep the peace whilst here only from respect to our Laws. At the season in question their internal animosity was stimulated by a quarrel between two of their most powerful chiefs. Both parties

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flew to arms and assailed each other with the ferocity of tigers and in a few minutes eight or ten of the combatants were killed or wounded. The further destruction of life was prevented by the timely arrival of Mr Commissioner Pemberton with the Victoria police who succeeded in putting an end to the affray and dispersing the excited crowd of combatants.254 Two options now seemed open to Douglas: to disarm them or expel them. The first was impractical, so they were removed.255 The next year Douglas reported that double the number of ‘Northern Indians’ had visited, 3,000 of whom camped on the Songhees reserve. He reminded the Colonial Secretary that the First Nations had mutual contempt for each other held in check only by the law, but: occasionally, in moments of excitement, these restraints are forgotten. Within the last month two startling crimes have been committed, one by a Hydah [Haida] chief named Captain John who treacherously shot the chief of the Songase [Songhees] tribe as he was returning from a festive meeting to which he had been invited by the former, and a principal Quaknoth [Kwakwaka’wakw] Chief was slain by some people of the Songase tribe. In consequence of these acts I determined on removing from the confined encampment they have hitherto occupied the several tribes living there and who from want of space were unavoidably brought into contact with each other to another spot where each tribe is to be assigned a distinct and separate dwelling place.256 Before moving them, Douglas had a conference with the various chiefs ‘reproving them for the enormity of their conduct’ and reminding them not to seek redress ‘according to their own barbarous customs’ but to ‘submit implicitly to the rules that I proposed to establish for their government’ or be expelled. They submitted. Meanwhile, the Songhees entered a formal complaint against Captain John for the murder of their chief and John and his brother were arrested but: While being searched preparatory to their being locked up they suddenly drew their knives and furiously assaulted the officers in charge of them who after receiving several severe wounds were compelled in order to save their own lives to shoot the prisoners dead on the spot, a fate which their manifest crimes had long merited, though I sincerely regret the manner in which it happened.257

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Using the last incident as evidence, it must be acknowledged that the Songhees, inhabitants of British territory, were indeed entitled to and were given the protection of the law in circumstances where their assailants were also from a First Nation. However, there were practical difficulties throughout the period in expressing this protection uniformly and it is clear that keeping the peace inside the British settlements was regarded the most important task for the colonial government. ‘A rancorous hatred of American domination’: the Puget Sound War and Vancouver Island That an international border had been imposed across this region of the Pacific coast of North America in 1846 in some ways did not affect the indigenous peoples. They continued to move around the area, crossing the border if necessary as with groups from Cape Flattery and Bellingham Bay coming to Fort Victoria to trade whilst ‘Northern Indians’ would come south, to settlements in the USA as well as Vancouver Island. There was a distinction, however, in that following the Oregon Treaty, a large area which had been governed de facto by the HBC in a manner which accommodated the indigenous people with little violence, was divided and different governance systems imposed. North of the border, in Vancouver Island, the peace was kept and with some success, given that there was never an uprising during the company period. By contrast, there was a belief amongst the British that Americans took an altogether different and harsher approach to indigenous peoples. Richard Blanshard, at the parliamentary enquiry in 1857 answered questions on the matter: ‘In fact, though it may seem to be an inhuman statement to make, the sooner they get rid of the Indians the better?’ ‘I believe it is what the United States people call improving them.’ ‘Improving them off the face of the land?’ ‘Exactly so.’258 In this part of the USA there was serious conflict: the Puget Sound War also the Yakima War, between indigenous people and the American settlers and government in the mid-1850s. This is not the place to retell the story of that war,259 except for its impact on Vancouver Island. During the conflict Douglas’s letters to the Colonial Office are frequently concerned with the war, much of it occurring in an area he would have known when it was occupied a decade earlier by the HBC. He compared the situation there with that in the territory under his control. Thus, in November 1855 he wrote to about the ‘pleasing fact that peace and

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quietness reign’ in the colony and ‘these blessings we have been taught to appreciate by the deplorable state of American Oregon which is now involved in a disastrous war with the native tribes of that country … animated by a rancorous hatred of American domination’. He wrote of the ‘skill and courage’ of the indigenous warriors, before going on to express his ‘dismay’ at their actions in forcing the American settlers to abandon their fields and flee for protection to the coast. Many deaths had occurred and much property was destroyed. This war found Douglas torn. He always had sympathy for indigenous people: thus his readiness to see positive attributes in the conduct of their forces. He was also a loyal company man who had spent his career in the region and was distraught that the ‘Indians of Oregon’ had been so mismanaged by the Americans after ‘fifty years of commercial intercourse with the establishments of the HBC’ had ‘softened and improved’ their character. However, as colonial governor he hoped that the indigenous people would ‘receive a timely check or the evil spirit may spread among the aboriginal population of the British territory’.260 This helps to explain his decision to interfere out of his area of control, just as he did with the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Fraser River gold rush. Douglas’s faith was another factor. When asked for help, in a ‘deep feeling of sympathy for a Christian people’ he sent firearms and ammunition. Douglas also knew of a belief amongst Americans that the HBC were in league with their opponents and so his aiding the Americans would dispose of this false rumour.261 Douglas sent the HBC ship Otter with ammunition to Major James Tilton, the officer commanding Washington Territory, the only practical help the colony could offer, although he gave freely of his advice, especially that Tilton should try to engage the indigenous people on the plains rather than their ‘fastnesses’.262 Within a few months Governor Isaac Stevens requested further assistance and to Douglas’s obvious chagrin, the HBC refused to help. The colonial government had little money of its own and so Douglas used his own funds, initially $3,465, later rising to $7,000, to purchase and transport ammunition. That Douglas, who, throughout his adult life, was concerned about his personal finances would advance so much demonstrates how important this situation was to him. Initially he wanted the British Government to assume the advance.263 This must have been rejected, for he then looked to the British to use their influence to ensure that he would be repaid by the Americans ‘seeing that it was owing to my official position as the representative of Her Majesty in this colony that I was required to succour a Christian people in their peculiarly distressed circumstances’.264 Douglas complained at non-payment again in May 1858,265 and it was several years before he got his money back. John B. Floyd, the American Secretary of War, finally wrote to President

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Buchanan in 1859 stating that in 1856 available supplies near the scene of hostilities in Puget’s Sound were nearly exhausted and Douglas was appealed to by Governor Stevens not to leave the Americans ‘at the mercy of hostile bands of savages then leagued together for their destruction’. Floyd made clear that this was not a debt arising from ordinary purchases but was a loan.266 One continuing problem for Vancouver Island was the involvement of ‘Northern Indians’ in the war across the border. In 1856 Douglas sent ‘Victoria Indians’ with an HBC man to San Juan Island to expel some ‘Northern Indians’ who had looted the deserted American settlement there. Two ‘Northern Indians’ were captured and brought to Vancouver Island for trial.267 The next month Douglas expressed fears that the Americans might try to compel him to keep ‘Northern Indians’ out of Oregon Territory or, perhaps, face the prospect of a US invasion into British North America.268 Other American concerns were about Vancouver Island being used as a refuge for escaped indigenous prisoners and deserters.269 On the other hand, Douglas was advised from the Colonial Office of ‘the belief … current amongst them [the ‘Northern Indians’] at present that the King George man [British] and the Boston citizens [USA] are allies and that the ultimate destruction of the redskins is their object.’270 So Vancouver Island, with its small and often unprotected population was under suspicion and threat from two fronts. Douglas tried to keep both parties on his side, but it is clear that ultimately his sympathies lay with his fellow Christians south of the border. Captain McDougal of the US ship John Hancock, had expelled ‘Northern Indians’, but it seems one had been killed and his fellows were agitated by what they considered to have been an unprovoked attack. Douglas calmed those he came across, recommending them to leave the punishment of the offender to the authorities, but meanwhile informed McDougal that precautions should be taken ‘to guard against treacherous attacks upon your settlements which they may secretly meditate, notwithstanding their professions to the contrary’.271 In April 1857 he wrote to the captain of US steamer Massachusetts about concerns that a large party of ‘Northern Indians’ were massing on or around Vancouver’s Island and that they threatened the USA. Douglas thought these reports ‘unfounded, no large body of Indians have arrived from the Northern Coast this year apart from one party from Fort Simpson who came this morning’, and he did not think them hostile.272 He sent a similar message to the Colonial Office adding ‘yet [they] being the creatures of impulse, no sort of confidence can be bestowed in them’.273 The following month sixty large, well-manned canoes had arrived, and Douglas told Stevens ‘there is nothing in their conduct or general deportment which leads to the conclusion that they entertain hostile designs against the US settle-

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ments. Should they hereafter evince a mischievous disposition, I shall feel it a duty to communicate with you on the subject’.274 That month he used Otter to disperse a gathering of ‘Northern Indians’ at Sooke, advising Europeans there ‘to assume on all occasions a bold countenance with Indian visitors in order to impress their minds with a feeling of respect for the power and resources of Government’.275 In the event, whilst the ‘Northern Indians’ ‘committed outrages each on the other yet in the midst of their own feuds and dissent they have uniformly respected the persons and property of the white settlers’.276 Continued vigilance remained necessary; in 1858 Douglas reported to London on the defeat of Colonel Edward Jenner Steptoe’s detachment of US troops in Oregon Territory by foes who, as the New York Times put it in racy style, ‘have never yet been whipped by the whites’.277 This victory had greatly increased the ‘audacity of the savages and the difficulty of managing them. It will require, I fear, the nicest tact to avoid a disastrous Indian War’.278 The war did not spread to Vancouver Island. Gold: from ‘a regular scramble’ to ‘a sanguinary war’ Things changed in what became western Canada through the discovery of gold. The pressures this brought to Vancouver Island were part of the reason why the HBC lost its control of the colony, whilst the opportunities gold brought to the mainland ensured the development of British Columbia. With regard to the indigenous people, gold brought many into much greater contact with migrants as areas once left to them or impacted only by HBC trading posts became subject at least to temporary migration from miners whose activities were incompatible with the traditional uses of the land. There was some resistance from indigenous people. An early taste of what was to come to the mainland with the Thompson and Fraser Rivers and later Cariboo gold rushes came from the Queen Charlotte Islands, where there was a short lived flurry of interest in gold extraction in the early 1850s (see Chapter 4). The HBC ship Una with a party of men commanded by William McNeill sailed to what was then known as Queen Charlotte’s Island in late 1851. Upon approaching, about thirty canoes came up without threat, the indigenous people being initially pleased to see the strangers. The party was allowed to land and set to work but the indigenous people started stealing tools. There was also competition over the gold itself: ‘they said it was not good that we should take all the gold away, if we did so, that they would not have anything to trade with other vessels should any arrive’. McNeill reported that after the miners set off an explosion, the locals would dash out from concealed places to try and take the gold: ‘a regular scramble between them and our men would take place, they would take our men by the legs and hold them away from the gold, some

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blows were struck on these occasions’. When their opponents drew knives, the miners refused to work. Then came the instruction to ‘be off’ mentioned above. McNeill’s party were ‘not strong enough to work and fight also’, so they withdrew.279 Two significant points emerge: firstly, that indigenous people did not wish to share resources and, secondly, that they were prepared to use force to protect them. A few months later an American ship Exact arrived at Fort Victoria, reporting further hostility at the islands: The natives mustered in force and would not allow them to work the gold which they were afraid to attempt through forcible means as there were only thirty-two persons altogether on board. They have therefore returned empty handed and much dispirited. The master proposed returning to the Island in company with the Recovery [an HBC vessel], but in consequence of political controversy I declined his offer, though in other respects an additional force would have been acceptable and a guarantee of success.280 James Douglas was made lieutenant-governor of the Queen Charlotte Islands in September 1852, in order for there to be a mechanism by which matters there could be more effectively regulated, but the gold fever died away, perhaps the plundering of Susan Sturgess off the Queen Charlotte Islands, also in September, was a disincentive to prospectors. Much more significant gold discoveries were made on the mainland a few years later. The practical difficulties of turning these reserves into exploitable resources were great. The location was remote and mountainous and was difficult to access; the region had few facilities; and, not least, the indigenous peoples displayed hostility, based on two reasonable premises as explained by Douglas in July 1857 in the exploratory phase of the gold rush: The Native tribes … have … expressed a determination to oppose all attempts at working gold on any of the streams flowing into Thompson’s River both from a desire to monopolise the precious metal for their own benefit and from a well-founded impression that the shoals of salmon which annually around those rivers furnish the principal food of the inhabitants will be driven off and prevented from making their annual migration from the sea.281 In that despatch Douglas recommended that a government ‘officer invested with the requisite authority should without delay be appointed’ to control matters in the area, for resistance could lead to hostilities. Later that year Douglas was concerned that ‘difficulties between the natives

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and whites will be of frequent occurrence and unless measures of prevention are taken the country will soon become the scene of lawless misrule’.282 Douglas with Colonial Office backing attempted to establish a policy to keep the indigenous people quiescent by guaranteeing their rights. He had already ‘taken measures as far as possible to prevent collision between these tribes and the whites and imposing upon the miners the great fact that the law will protect the Indian equally with the white man and regard him in all respects as a fellow subject’.283 One might make a case that ‘equally’ and ‘fellow subject’ were selected for the audience to whom Douglas was writing and which of his hats he was wearing – it was Governor Douglas writing to the Colonial Secretary. Later, Chief Factor Douglas wrote to William Smith at the HBC headquarters at a different address in London. Whilst there was still acknowledgement that indigenous people had rights and keeping the peace was laudable, there was a commercial imperative, regarding both the need to exploit the gold and, particularly, to protect the HBC’s rights of exclusive trade with indigenous people west of the Rocky Mountains. It would ‘be dangerous and unnatural to identify ourselves with the natives in any contest with white men, at the same time the Company’s rights of trade are to be protected, and white men cannot carry on any trade, within the limits prescribed by the Company’s Trading Licence without a manifest violating of the Law of the Land.’ His policy, thus, had two objects: that ‘the Indians must be restrained from evil, and the white man from illicit trading’.284 He reported to Smith that as head of the HBC in the region he had sent instructions to Chief Trader McLean at the company post on Thompson’s River reminding him of the HBC’s exclusive rights of trade as well as of the requirement to try and keep all parties calm, with acknowledgement that McLean’s physical powers were limited: No other persons can lawfully carry on trade or erect trading establishments within the British Territory and you may warn them off on any attempt being made to do so; but I would strongly advise you to avoid collisions which may end in serious difficulty and bloodshed. I am aware of the feeling of the Indian population in respect to the Americans but I think they will find it impossible to carry out their determination of preventing whites from working in their diggings. Leave them entirely to their own impulses and be careful not to encourage them to resist the influx of gold diggers, or we may become embroiled in serious difficulties, in short inculcate upon the Indians the duty of being kind to all white men. Your words will at least have a restraining effect if they cannot altogether prevent evil, at the same time I would take care to

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inform any white strangers coming into the country that the Indians are dangerous and not to be trusted.285 However, within a few months the indigenous people were even obstructing HBC employees in their quest for gold. They would wait until the men had uncovered the ‘auriferous stratum’ and then hustle them away and take the gold themselves. ‘Such conduct was unwarrantable and exceedingly trying to the temper of spirited men, but the savages were far too numerous for resistance, and they had to submit.’ Douglas then noted that at all times the natives had ‘scrupulously respected the persons and property of their white visitors at the same time as they have expressed a determination to reserve the gold for their own benefit’.286 Matters worsened when those extracting the gold were not experienced HBC hands, but, as quickly became the case in 1858, migrants drawn in their thousands up from the USA and other places (see Chapter 4). Douglas expressed his fears in a letter requisitioning an officer and ten marines from HMS Calypso to accompany him on a visit to Fraser River: ‘A sanguinary war of races, the inevitable consequence of a prolonged state of misrule, may plunge the Government into the most serious difficulties unless steps be immediately taken to avert the evil.’287 Douglas was prescient, for in 1864, the year he retired as Governor of British Columbia, the later Cariboo gold rush was, indeed, associated with the sanguinary Chilcotin War. Three Tsilhqot’in men, twelve road workers and six settlers died and eight Tsilhqot’in chiefs were tried for murder, six being executed.288 The ‘demoralising effect’: colonial impacts on indigenous people ‘He invariably disappears as the civilized man comes on’ This chapter concludes with an overall assessment of the impact of the company colony on the indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island. Finlayson came up with a strangely precise total of their population in 1845: 11,463,289 whilst Blanshard, after discussions with more experienced people, thought that numbers were falling.290 In 1856 James Douglas’s census produced a figure of 25,873.291 This is unlikely to represent an actual better-than-doubling of population since earlier estimates; more likely is that it was a more accurate count of an island that had been widely explored in the intervening years. Later estimates suggest that the indigenous population was dropping with totals as low as 15,000 by 1862.292 Contemporary views were that this was inevitable, as exemplified by this exchange with Blanshard at the 1857 parliamentary enquiry: ‘You are not aware that he [the indigene] invariably disappears as the civilized man comes on?’

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‘I cannot say from my own knowledge, but I believe this is a well known fact, and it would be the case in Vancouver’s Island.’ ‘Then if [further] colonisation were to take place in Vancouver’s Island we should hear little more of the Indian?’ ‘Very little more.’293 A number of causes were advanced, chief amongst which was introduced disease. An anonymous missionary wrote in 1863 that 5,000 had died from smallpox in the previous year, it being assumed by the indigenous people that this had been introduced by colonists from San Francisco.294 Other diseases mentioned in contemporary references were syphilis and influenza. James Fitzgerald, campaigning in 1848 against the HBC being granted Vancouver Island, wrote: Civilization has been to him [the indigene] not the sun that warms but the lightning that scorches; under its influence instead of growing and advancing in the scale of humanity, the North American Indian seems to have shrivelled still further into the very decrepitude of barbarism. He is losing the ancient traditions of his race, a fatal symptom of expiring vitality; he has lost his native spirit of independence … he is melting tribe by tribe from the face of the earth … or is hanging in hopeless dependence on the white strangers who have crushed him – who have taken from him all that was his, and given him nothing that was theirs.295 Fitzgerald was writing in anticipation, with an axe to grind and without personal knowledge. Better we should turn to the writings of Gilbert Sproat, who in 1866 wrote an account based on first-hand observations of indigenous people around Alberni: At first no particular effect was observable; the natives seemed if anything to have benefited by the change in their circumstances. They worked occasionally as labourers, and bought new blankets with their wages; and many of the Indians supplied themselves with the white men’s cast-off clothes, which they took a pride in wearing. Having at the same time acquired a taste for flour, rice, potatoes and other articles of food that were sold to them at low prices, the natives spent the first winter after the arrival of the colonists more comfortably than usual. It was only after a considerable time that symptoms of a change amongst the Indians living nearest to the white settlement could be noticed … his mind was confused, and his faculties surprised and stunned by the sight of machinery, steam vessels and the active labour of civilised man; he

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distrusted himself, his old habits and traditions and shrank away despondent and discouraged … he soon began to disregard his old pursuits and tribal practices and ceremonies … It seems savages must disappear. Are they, in thus shrinking away, obeying a natural and general law by which the purposes of the Almighty are being carried out in their removal?296 Sproat knew that in his area the problems were neither from disease nor alcohol abuse as he had kept that away. Assigning aboriginal decline to a divine planning process is an explanation unlikely to find favour today, but the change to a western diet might. Further, Sproat’s depiction of what might be recognised as anomie, the diminution of personal norms, almost thirty years before Durkheim put forward the concept may have some explanatory power.297 In his later book, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, Sproat also noted that there was little intermarriage between the English migrants and the local people to sustain numbers, for the English did not marry even the ‘finer native races’, nor even the French in Canada ‘whose women are most attractive’. Again he predicted the ‘inevitable extinction’ of the indigenous peoples even without disease, alcohol or ill-usage and despite better living conditions than before.298 And often there was alcohol, despite the efforts of the HBC to keep its supply under control. It was reported regarding Fort Victoria in 1845 that: ‘The total abolition of the sale of intoxicating liquors has done much good of [sic] the whole community, white population as well as Indians,’299 but a few years later the colony had to try to regain this position. In the preamble to Richard Blanshard’s Act Regulating Importation of Spirituous Liquors, it was admitted that ‘the free and unrestricted traffic in spirituous liquors has caused and does still cause a great damage and inconvenience to the inhabitants of Her Majesty’s Colony of Vancouver’s Island, by debauching and corrupting the population, both native and Immigrant’.300 James Douglas in 1853 was perhaps a little smug about the ‘wise and humane regulations of the HBC [through which] the natives of Vancouver’s Island have not acquired a taste for ardent spirits, a vice from which they are fortunately free, otherwise they would be much more difficult to control’,301 for in the early days of the colony virtually the only source of government income was through licensing spirit shops in Victoria and, inevitably, supplies must have reached indigenous people, whilst there was also illicit trade from ships – ‘unscrupulous traffickers, who manage to evade the law’.302 By 1860 Captain Barrett-Lennard observed much difficulty with alcohol abuse and, like Sproat, also changes in diet known now to be injurious to health:

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Many imported articles of food in use among the colonists are rapidly being adopted by them [the indigenous peoples] such as flour, biscuits, rice, sugar, and molasses, the latter being a special favourite. Spirits of the vilest description are supplied them by the whiskey sellers, a proscribed class, as a very severe penalty justly attaches to selling of any kind of ardent spirits, the very bane and curse of his race, to an Indian.303 The Reverend J.J. Halcombe did not mince his words: ‘Into this vortex of vice and dissipation – for such it [Victoria] was – the Indians, both from the coast and the interior of British Columbia were continually drawn, only to return to their homes tainted with evil, the most degrading and destructive, and possessed with a raving for ardent spirits.’304 The anonymous missionary whose estimate of the ravages of smallpox was noted above, actually opined that rum smugglers were a greater plague to the Indians than smallpox and that ‘a red man will be a rarity in the next generation’.305 ‘A deep and dark record of commission’: missionaries and other contacts Missionaries were amongst the agents of change on the indigenous people, although establishing Christianity was not easy. In 1848 Finlayson reported that: ‘The Rev. Mon. [sic] Urquhart is still here and appears to be rather unsuccessful in making the Songhees attend his lectures. They appear to be impressed with the idea that he brought sickness among them, the influenza, with which some have died, having unfortunately broke out amongst them on his arrival.’306 In 1850 a Roman Catholic bishop wrote to the Colonial Office seeking support to bring out clergymen to work amongst the indigenous people on the island, only to be told to take his request to the HBC.307 The company on the island was not always supportive; Douglas in 1852 wrote to a Roman Catholic missionary, Reverend Langfield, regarding a report that Quw’utsun’ Indians under his ministry had made depredations on his property and Douglas was sending up men in a canoe to make enquiries. Notwithstanding the result: I have to request in the strongest manner the desire of this government that you immediately withdraw altogether from the Cowegan Country and return to this place as I am informed that the Indians have on several occasions previous to the present reported outrage, treated you with contempt and exhibited a dislike to your person and office which proves in the clearest manner that they are not prepared to benefit from your teaching, and that your further stay

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in their country will be the predation of consequences dangerous to the peace of this colony.308 The Colonial Office approved of this action as Douglas noted the following year and missionary stations outside the settlements were to be discouraged. However, in the same letter Douglas noted the arrival of Modeste Demers, the Roman Catholic bishop of Vancouver Island, who was hopeful of setting up a mission. Demers had little success amongst the indigenous people, even those near Victoria and his team was working more with French Canadians, to Douglas’s approval as this encouraged sobriety.309 However, by the mid-1860s the Catholic church under Demers was running residential schools for indigenous girls at St Anne’s Mission on Vancouver Island and for boys at Victoria as well as educating children in the field.310 Grant’s 1854 lecture had a story of a French missionary, Père Lamfrett, whose pictures and songs held the attention of the Songhees at Fort Victoria only until the fishing season started. Lamfrett then went to the Cowitchen area, where his success lasted only as long as he had blankets or fish hooks to give out and when the fishing season started there he had only a few old women left in his flock. Subsequently, the local people, finding that Lamfrett ‘received no fresh supplies of goods to distribute among them, sent to the neighbouring Chief Factor of the HBC, to beg that he might be removed or otherwise they would kill him’.311 Douglas was astonished at Lamfrett’s mission ‘without a singe white assistant and without any pecuniary means to defray the cost of an establishment as he trusted entirely to his Indian converts for support, a plan which could hardly be expected to succeed with ignorant savages’, and, indeed Lamfrett had to be rescued.312 The Westminster Review summed up the situation in 1866: Catholics and protestants are engaged in missionary labours among them, and not without some favourable result upon their morals. But so absolute is the physical, social and moral degradation of the Indian that after very many years of strict religious training he is readily tempted to conform to the vices of the pioneer whites; and thus the hard and self-denying toil of the missionary is soon neutralised.313 This might suggest that the missionary impact on the indigenous people and their traditions was insignificant, but there was potentially more influence upon some of the younger generation. In a precursor to the discredited residential school system that heaped such obloquy on Canada in the twentieth century when aboriginal children were removed from their parents, R.C.P. Baylee, writing for the Colonial Church Chronicle

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looked to educate indigenous children, ‘keeping them there separate from their parents and friends. To this separation I feel confident these latter would consent when the object in view was explained to them, and when influenced by the further inducement of a few trifling presents.’314 Christianity was one element in an officially sanctioned programme of change for the indigenous people to whom bringing Western civilization and religion was genuinely, if arrogantly and patronisingly, seen to be of benefit. Thus, in 1858 the colonial secretary advised Douglas that he was assured of government support regarding indigenous people’s ‘intercourse with the whites, and, whenever such a work may be contemplated, their civilisation’.315 That this ‘civilization’ meant an end to the indigenous way of life can be seen by the fact that by 1859 Vancouver Island Council was contemplating their settlement in permanent villages. Douglas had made anticipatory reserves in various districts incorporating the cultivated fields and existing village sites. The people could be housed on part of the reserves and the rest of land leased, with proceeds applied to spiritual and temporal ‘elevation’, such as building churches and schools. The council made smug contrasts with the USA where ‘immense expense had been incurred to very little purpose in settling the Indians, [in California] the Indians are diminishing and becoming more hostile and demoralised’.316 However, there was contemporary acknowledgement, even by missionaries, that European contact in Vancouver Island had been deleterious to indigenous people. C.G. Nicolay in the Colonial Church Chronicle, which one might have expected to have adopted a less critical stance, wrote in 1855 that: ‘I venture to think that there is a deep and dark record of commission written down against us, and this will appear plainly on a contrast between the condition of the natives when first discovered by Europeans and their condition since they have been brought into immediate connection with them.’317 He stated that the people in the south of Vancouver Island were only more docile than those to the north because they had become slaves of the Europeans. The Colonial Office admitted in 1859 that: ‘Proofs are unhappily still too frequent of the neglect which Indians experience when the White man obtains possession of their country and their claims to consideration are forgotten at the moment when the hand of the protector should be extended to help them.’318 Another commentator concluded that ‘in a few years the great and powerful warlike … tribes will be numbered among the things that were’.319 Despite such contemporary guilt, the HBC under James Douglas, the not-quite ‘white man’ most responsible for dealing with the indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island and its surrounds in this period, received favourable reviews, even if their motivation was questioned: thus an 1858 editorial in The Times stated that:

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The peculiar character of the Hudson’s Bay Company has, for a curious reason produced a beneficial effect on its policy towards the indigenous tribes. Other conquerors of foreign superiors have as in New Zealand or the remainder of North America, constantly pressed the natives out of their old possessions as the land was gradually required for the uses of civilization; but a Fur Company, under the influence of an opposite interest protected natives for the same reason which induced it to preserve foxes and martens and otters. The hunters were as necessary as the game and the company found its advantage in maintaining them in the undisturbed possession of their solitudes.320 After the company period, matters worsened for indigenous people, even before the notorious Joseph Trutch gained power. In 1865 Douglas’s successor, Arthur Kennedy concluded: ‘the condition of the Indian population is very lamentable: drunkenness and prostitution being the prevailing and prominent characteristics’.321

4 THE ECONOMY OF VANCOUVER ISLAND COLONY

‘One of the first colonies and best settlements of England’ The colonial government of Vancouver Island had to have an income to meet its expenses and provide necessary infrastructure, whilst the company performing government functions had to make a profit. Money for these purposes had to be raised locally; Vancouver Island Colony had to be self-supporting; the only assistance to be expected from the mother country was protection against foreign aggression. Sir John Pelly, chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), instructed James Douglas when he assumed the governorship in 1851 that to provide for colonial expenses, ninety percent of monies raised by the sale of lands, royalties from mining of coal and other minerals and sales of timber cut from public lands would be held by the HBC ‘in trust for public purposes such as surveying, erecting churches, schools, houses of the Governor, Clergymen, and schoolmasters, or other public buildings, and making public roads etc.’. The trust fund could not be used to pay the salaries of government officials or in repairs of buildings and roads; all such expenditure, which ‘ought to be arranged on the most economical scale’,1 would have to be met at least initially from duties paid for licences to retail spirits. These licences were, thus, expensive at £120 each per annum. The 1857 Select Committee having discovered this from James Cooper asked several supplementary questions with growing incredulity, discovering in sequence that £120 was for only one licence; that the licence came without a house; without land and that trade in spirits could not be made with the indigenous population.2 The other ten percent of colonial income went to the HBC as profit and the company also made money from commercial operations, which although not restricted to that activity were known collectively as the ‘fur trade’. The HBC originally went into Vancouver Island in connection with the company’s staple trade in what became western Canada

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although ‘very few furs are caught upon Vancouver’s Island.’3 Rather, its significance was Fort Victoria’s utility as a ‘depôt for the posts in the interior’.4 This position was strengthened when the company abandoned its holdings in what became Washington. Furs traded through Fort Victoria were badger, bear (black, brown and grizzly), beaver, fox (blue, red, cross and silver), lynx, marten, mink, muskrat, otter (land and sea), panther, seal (hair and fur), racoon, wolf and wolverine. In addition, there was a hide trade involving deer, sheep and cattle, and ox horns were a related product.5 Over time, especially after 1858, when the Fraser River gold rush began and the HBC lost control of Vancouver Island, fur trading activities became less important and the ‘settlement frontier was born’.6 David Rossiter noted: ‘the trading regimes that structured landuse relationships between the Hudson’s Bay Company and Native peoples on Vancouver Island and the mainland began to diminish in importance. The balance of territorial control began to shift in favour of white settler society.’7 However, the HBC remained in operation and by the 1860s the fur trade once more began to dominate company affairs. Entries in the inward correspondence letterbook contain telegrams and cables on the price of beaver pelts and musings as to whether mink would remain fashionable.8 The ‘fort is capable of cultivating to a large extent’: agriculture The fur trade and other economic sectors had to be supported by agriculture, whilst after 1849, the opening up of the colony for agricultural settlement would become a significant aspect of the HBC’s strategy to encourage immigration and fulfil the terms of its grant. In the six years of settlement before this, non-indigenous agriculture was principally for the subsistence of the company party. In January 1845 Roderick Finlayson wrote that he had 25 acres (10 hectares) planted, axe men were making stores for grain and the smith was making ploughs and harrows.9 By June, the area under production had risen to 100 acres (40.5 hectares), 40 percent of which was under wheat.10 The Fort Victoria post journal often mentioned agricultural work; in summer 1846 came mention of planting potatoes, turnips, and wheat, taking in new land and later cutting hay, reaping, binding grain and carting oats.11 By 1848 a report mentioned that there were 300 acres (121 hectares) under tillage, eighty cows and numerous other cattle and ‘all was well and particularly economically managed’ under a ‘civil but hard Scot named Finlaison [sic] who has about thirty people of all descriptions under him.’12 The next year one of the Fort Rupert miners, Andrew Muir, on his arrival at Fort Victoria reported on agriculture and its potential:

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Fort is capable of cultivating to a large extent, a good space of it being cleared and here the Company have two dairies with upwards of 150 milch cows and an abundance of wild ones. They also grow wheat, corn, potatoes and other vegetables; the only thing wanted at this place is moisture in the summer season for want of which the crops are greatly burnt up by a long drought.13 The following year agriculture was expected to contribute to company income. Douglas was instructed that the Fur Trade Reserve (the area around Fort Victoria) should be producing enough food for the company with a surplus for sale. Former servants of the HBC were to be allowed to take plots to produce food,14 extending a long-established company policy to this new setting.15 The fur traders in Russian America formed a market; Vancouver Island’s miners, too, exerted a demand for fresh food. Two years later, Sir George Simpson suggested that the HBC should not be engaged directly in farming given that the Puget Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC), an offshoot of the HBC, was also in this business: ‘It would be better that the attention of the [HBC] should be confined to its more legitimate pursuits, trusting to the Puget Sound Agricultural Company for supplies of agricultural produce, by which arrangement the two concerns may be actually beneficial to each other and any clashing of interests avoided.’16 Maybe this advice was predicated on the knowledge that the HBC employees at Fort Victoria were not skilled as agriculturalists. Walter Colquhoun Grant, who farmed at Sooke, was particularly scathing: At Victoria they have got abt. 150 acres [61 hectares] under cultivation and have a stock of about 1,000 cattle and 2,000 sheep. They are however miserable farmers, they ruin the land by paying no attention to the succession of crops, and never applying manure, and they ruin their stock by paying no attention to breeding and allowing the majority to run wild in the woods.17 In the event the HBC’s operation of agriculture through the PSAC proved to be less than satisfactory (see Chapter 6). Further, in 1864 Governor Kennedy described the agricultural resources of Vancouver Island Colony as being ‘almost wholly undeveloped … sufficient … for ten times the present population’.18 Looking back from the 1890s, John Helmcken, who had been brought to the island as a doctor forty years earlier, wrote that the early farms were run ‘on a fearful expense, indeed clearing land is an expensive job … How many thousands of pounds were expended in this way I forget … Until now the Colony has never supported itself with ordinary necessaries.’19 ‘Ordinary’ was an apposite word for the 1855

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census records indicate that production at Vancouver Island simply reproduced familiar products from the British Isles. There were horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry, whilst the principal crops were wheat, oats and vegetables.20 ‘Nothing but the trees’: the timber trade The island was forested in many places and one product that became important was the manufacture of shingles – oblong wooden tiles used for buildings, especially on roofs – and a trade with the Sandwich Islands developed from both Fort Victoria and Fort Rupert. As will be detailed below, Fort Rupert was established as a mining establishment but after this failed, the local HBC trader, George Blenkinsop, turned his attention to other enterprises, employing the indigenous people to make shingles, whilst on his own account Blenkinsop became involved in the export of ice from Alaska and also squared timber from Vancouver Island.21 The exploitation of mature, first cut, timber became another significant trade. Wooden piles, used, for example, in mines to support roofs were one product. Another was masts and spars for ships. This did not prove an easy industry to establish. In 1851 Douglas was instructed from the HBC in London that whilst he could get men to cut spars for the company’s ships, he was not to outfit vessels to send spars to England.22 The following year Douglas wrote to the Colonial Office about William Brotchie, a former HBC ship’s captain, who had been engaged in preparing spars for about two years as a private venture but had not found a buyer and Douglas pleaded that he be given a government contract.23 Brotchie was allowed to ship spars from Fort Rupert aboard Norman Morrison, in 1852. They sold at the West India Docks in August 1852 with the best prices paid for the largest spars.24 After this, the HBC secretary, Archibald Barclay, commissioned a report on the potential for the Vancouver Island spar trade. This found the trade not yet properly developed: the spars sent to London compared poorly against those from the USA, Canada and Riga (Latvia), being selected with insufficient care and not properly cleared of sap. Vancouver Island spars were ‘nothing but the trees and only partially stripped of bark.’ There was no chance of finding a market for small spars, given cheaper competition from Norway and Sweden, however ‘for the encouragement of the settlement in the hands of your honourable company it [the spar trade] could be fairly tried … we see no reason to suppose that the nature of the wood and its growth is any bar to further experiments’.25 In 1853 Brotchie was appointed agent to a Liverpool timber merchant, a Mr Worthington, who invested £2,000 with a similar sum raised in Vancouver Island. Spars were collected and there were suggestions that the vessel used to carry them to England could bring a return cargo of migrants and Worthing-

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ton was advised to place advertisements for migrants in the Liverpool papers.26 However, Brotchie found that the ‘freights were too high to do anything in the “out and home” way’, no voyage to England took place and he had to seek to offload the spars in San Francisco on a cost recovery basis or they would have just warped and rotted on the shore in Vancouver Island.27 One of the potential investors in this aborted venture was Joseph Pemberton, who had asked HBC approval for his engagement in this private trade, he being a company servant.28 The answer came back that ‘I do not think that you or any other person in the Coy’s service should engage in trade as it would necessarily interfere with the duties you have engaged to perform for the Coy.’29 Pemberton rather plaintively responded that he had thought the idea ‘would please you’, especially given the return ‘cargo’ of emigrants, but ‘I shall of course discontinue my slight connection with Capt B if you desire it.’30 John Muir, one of the Fort Rupert miners (see below), went on to take part in the spar trade from Sooke. He supplied spars to San Francisco and Chile and some rivalry developed between him and Brotchie. During the Crimean War it seemed likely that the Royal Navy would become regular customers, but no contracts were signed and upon the outbreak of peace the navy turned back to its regular suppliers in the Baltic. Brotchie left the spar trade, going on to supply ice to San Francisco and he also became harbour master at Victoria. Barry Gough has written that the Royal Navy’s purchases of spars never amounted to more than a casual trade. The island was too distant from its markets and the HBC did not fully embrace the possibilities of the trade, never facilitating transport of the product.31 Indeed, Douglas reported that the council had imposed a duty on timber cut from public lands in 1854, restricting also the right to take timber to British residents. He saw these regulations as preventing waste and benefiting colonists rather than letting the resource be exploited by outsiders, but any restrictions affected development.32 The timber industry only became important on Vancouver Island after the company period. Its potential led to much of the development of the west coast from the 1860s, as discussed in David Rossiter’s article, which traces the evolution of the timber industry from the early stream-powered sawmill near Fort Victoria. By 1853 there was a larger one at Albert Head and that year the Muirs built theirs at Sooke, although, like the others, this was mainly local in scale, despite occasional export of spars. Only in the 1860s under William Banfield and Gilbert Sproat at Alberni, were industrial scale operations instigated. James Douglas had granted their company the right to select up to 15,000 acres (6,070 hectares) for the venture ‘in that part of the colony … at a fixed price not to exceed £1 per acre’.33 Rossiter thinks this was at the urging of Captain Edward Stamp, characterised as the driving force behind the enterprise, as Douglas reported to

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the House of Assembly.34 A fee of £400 had been negotiated for the rights to land, but it was never clear as to quite which area this related, the region not having been properly surveyed. The whole issue was complicated by a question as to whether Douglas was entitled to grant acreage at this period, as this was when the transfer from the company colony to the crown was taking place. There were constant disputes over land claims, not solved by a survey finally taking place in 1862. In 1865 the sawmill company agreed that their £400 granted them ownership of the settled area: the mill, the village site and two farms, and that same year it became clear that, again, the Vancouver Island authorities would allow the cutting of timber from crown land only for a royalty payment. This duty meant that the company could no longer continue taking trees from land that it had laid claim to, but never paid for and the business closed. Industrial-scale timber activity later returned to the area in the 1880s. Edward Stamp went on to develop a timber business on mainland British Columbia.35 ‘The natural resources … remain undeveloped’ Timber’s position in Vancouver Island’s economic situation was illustrated for 1853 when statistics collected by Grant revealed imports of $64,600 against exports of $71,900 (Appendix 4, Table 4.1).36 The exports comprised timber and wood products, also coal (see below), fish of various species, oil, cranberries and potatoes. It was thought that colliers might be able to produce salt from seawater,37 whilst experiments were performed with distilling salt from salt springs.38 The oil was produced from whales and ‘dog fish’ by the indigenous people of the west coast and had a reputation for being of excellent quality, ‘considering the imperfect means they possess’ for operating the trade.39 The HBC tried to prohibit foreigners from fishing within three miles (4.8 kilometres) of the coast as that was the area reserved for sole use of the company,40 whilst evidence was taken at the 1857 government enquiry into the HBC that many thousands of barrels of salt salmon were sent each year to the Sandwich Islands.41 Other products at least considered for the island were hemp, soap and ice, although it was not ‘to be expected that the development of Vancouver Island as a manufacturing colony … [would] be either easily or early accomplished’.42 In the build up to the grant of the island to the HBC there had been correspondence with the Colonial Office about the chances of establishing a whaling station there.43 Another possibility was that of Victoria becoming an entrepôt for Pacific trade. In 1856 it was stated that the: island bids fair to be a possession of great importance from its climate, which is described as exceedingly healthy and suitable for

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the cultivation of grain; and still more from its position with respect to the trade of the Pacific and because it possesses extensive fields of coal which will be of the greatest profit and advantage for the carrying on of steamer communication in the Pacific.44 Other contemporaries also mentioned the strategic location of Vancouver Island, including Charles Fitzwilliam in the enquiry on the HBC in 1857: ‘it is the most valuable possession in the Pacific. If you take the map of the Pacific you will see that the only safe harbours … exist in Vancouver’s Island with the exception perhaps of Acapulco and San Francisco.’45 However attractive the site, one significant problem constraining the island’s economic development was its situation: Deprived by its remote position from commercial intercourse with the mother country or any other British possession and cut off from the advantages of foreign trade by the heavy import duties levied on all the productions of this colony in the neighbouring ports of the United Sates, the inhabitants of Vancouver’s Island are really placed in the worst conceivable position as regards their general prosperity and it is very evident that the natural resources of the colony must in such circumstances remain undeveloped and the country continue an uninhabited waste.46 Another general issue was the island’s exclusion from the reciprocity agreements between British possessions in North America and the United States that restricted duty payable on goods traded between the two. The British crown, having secured a process for settlement of Vancouver Island by controversially granting it to the HBC, were keen that no more favours should be seen to be done for its commercial rulers. One of the few independent settlers, James Cooper, stated in evidence to the 1857 enquiry that: The greatest drawback is being omitted in the Canadian Reciprocity Treaty; therefore we are cut out, we have no market for our exports; it would have been a great boon to the colony had we been admitted at the same time Canada was admitted … we should then be on the same terms as a State of the United States.47 Indeed the ‘abrupt termination’ of the reciprocity treaty negotiations was a matter of bitter regret to the Vancouver Island Council in July 1857.48 A modern historian has written that ‘Douglas found it possible to harmonise the interests of the colony with those of the Hudson’s Bay Company, not as a fur trade company, but as a resource development

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company and as a colonial proprietor.’49 Not all would have agreed that the colonial interests were secured, for contemporaries found the dominance and control of the HBC to be a drawback to the private sector. For example, Jules David, president of the Victoria Chamber of Commerce, wrote that: ‘prior to the year 1858 the British possessions in the North Pacific attracted but slight attention; the trading posts and forts of the HBC, and a few farming establishments on Vancouver Island under their control being the only inducements for commerce, which therefore remained entirely in the hands of the company’.50 Another wrote in 1858 that the change of government system meant: ‘brighter days … in store for Vancouver’s Island for next year it will be under the direct government of the crown’, the author then proceeding to puff the potential of the timber reserves, the harbour and agriculture, concluding ‘there is every advantage in the island of Vancouver to make it one of the first colonies and best settlements of England’.51 Presumably this anonymous author was Edward Ellice MP for this same phrase had been used in Ellice’s evidence to the 1857 enquiry.52 However, the most significant product in the company period did not feature on the list: this was coal. ‘One vast coalfield’? ‘Insufficient equipment and primitive living conditions’: Fort Rupert Even before the HBC took the grant of Vancouver Island in 1849 it was thought that coal production would become significant. James Fitzgerald accused the company of having prior knowledge of the potential for coal production and concealing this from the government until late in the negotiations.53 This would seem not to be the case. As early as 1845 a naval report had mentioned that the HBC had secured specimens of coal from the island, even though they were not of good quality, it was thought because they were surface deposits.54 In September 1846 HM Steam Sloop Cormorant had purchased coal from the indigenous people at McNeill’s Harbour in northeast Vancouver Island,55 and the same month Peter Ogden and James Douglas wrote to the captain of HMS Fisgard stating that whilst ‘we have not ascertained to what depth the surface bed [of coal] extends … a large quantity of coals may at any time be got there by employing the Indians who are numerous and active to dig and transport them to the ship’.56 Further, there had been communication within the Admiralty about the HBC bringing mines into operation in February 1847.57 Thus, when in January 1848 The Times carried a report headlined ‘The discovery of coal at Vancouver’s Island’, referring to specimens brought to Portsmouth by Cormorant and retelling the story of how the HBC had become aware of the local people’s knowledge of the surface deposits, it was retelling old news.58 Perhaps it is not coincidental that same month Fitzgerald himself wrote to the Colonial Office ‘about form-

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ing a company to work the coal and establish a colony in Vancouver’s Island.’ He was informed that no proposal for working coal had been received from the HBC; nonetheless shortly afterwards he claimed that the charter to the company made over ‘valuable coal mines’.59 The Morning Chronicle even described coal as a ‘ready-made export trade’.60 This was in spite of the fact that on Vancouver Island at that time there were only surface workings operated by indigenous people. The Times was somewhat more realistic, for on the same day it editorialised that: ‘Vancouver’s Island is beyond the Antipodes, that it is more distant even than New Zealand, that if it has coal, there is no demand for it, and that if it has harbours, there is no trade for them.’61 Further to counter Fitzgerald’s claim, in the negotiations about the grant, Pelly had been informed that ‘the value of coal at Vancouver’s Island will necessarily form a material consideration’.62 Pelly’s response had been to assure the government that ‘the Company expect no pecuniary advantage from colonising the territory’,63 but a royalty of ten percent on minerals was offered to the HBC ‘as affording a fair remuneration to the Company for their capital invested in this undertaking, and for the risk with which it will be attended.’64 The first HBC coalmining venture on Vancouver Island was that at Fort Rupert on the northeast coast. A map of Vancouver Island published in 1843 marked just ‘lodes of copper ore’ for the Fort Rupert region, coal seams being recorded only for the Nanaimo area,65 where a successful mine was created after Fort Rupert’s failure. However, in 1846 indigenous people had supplied coal to the navy from the northeast coast, and John Arrowsmith’s map of 1849 confidently proclaimed ‘COAL’ in upper case letters at McNeill’s Harbour.66 The significance of this enthusiastic labelling was noted by the President of the Royal Geographical Society that year who, in a prediction that turned out to be monumentally overstated, stressed ‘the importance of this discovery of good coal in the vicinity of a district which will undoubtedly attract for many years to come the surplus population of all the American states and perhaps of Europe also’.67 The HBC established a post at Beaver Harbour in this region on 1 May 1849 to exploit the coal. In company style a post journal commences on that day (although only the first volume to April 1850 has survived). The first entry details how the party of thirty-three men searched for a suitable site for a settlement, noting that ‘we commence tomorrow in earnest clearing a place for the fort with rather a motley set [of men] for such an undertaking’.68 By 13 May the party were considering the coal grounds and soon the company began trading with the indigenous people for the surface coal they collected, the first load being taken aboard the company brig Mary Dare on 30 June.69

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‘Gross negligence and bad usage’: the Muirs Professional miners in the form of the Muir family from Lanarkshire in Scotland were hired to work the coal for three years in November 1848. John Muir was ‘oversman’, in charge of his three sons, Andrew, Robert and Archibald, two other Muirs as well as John McGregor and John Smith. Andrew Muir kept a diary, which forms a valuable source, particularly as it gives a voice to the labouring classes, usually mute in the documentation of the Vancouver Island story. They travelled on Harpooner from 29 November 1848, arriving at Fort Victoria on 1 June 1849. On 27 August they left on the Mary Dare for the ‘tedious’ voyage to the northeast coast. The Muirs, seemingly, were unaware that no actual mine existed at Fort Rupert. Andrew Muir’s diary expresses resentment at this; they had been contracted to mine coal, not to seek it and then establish a new pit. Further, Archibald Barclay wrote to Douglas in June 1850 about a letter he had received from the miners that must have been penned months earlier, complaining that they had ‘not found things at the mine as they were represented to them when they were engaged in the Company’s service’.70 Another problem, highlighted in Belshaw’s study of miners on Vancouver Island, was that the Muirs had contracted to be paid partly on a piece-rate basis. This system failed to provide sufficient reward, given no remunerative seams were ever discovered.71 The resentment of the miners against the company was fully reciprocated. HBC post journals are normally a straightforward account of daily activities, with editorial comment being rare. However, as early as October 1849, bitter comments intrude into that at Fort Rupert. One day the miners set off for work at 07.20 but were back at the fort at 09.00 because ‘it rained too hard and wet the men’s backs … Our [the HBC’s] poor men work out of doors morning till night, rain or no rain.’ The same day the miners demanded better protection against the local people, but their complaints were rejected and the miners characterised for being shiftless and lazy: ‘not one day have they worked more than eight hours and on average not more than about five hours … it is plainly to be seen that they have determined to do as little as possible.’ The entry detailed disputes over food supplies and criticised John Muir’s lack of control over his men.72 Later entries detail disputes over accommodation and about the miners’ own heavy consumption of coal. Thin seams of coal from 2 to 18 inches (5–46 centimetres) in depth were already being worked by the indigenous people by their digging out small quantities with their axes, an activity of ‘very great labour’.73 The Muirs began to dig themselves at a site north of the fort, opening a pit on 29 October 1849,74 although it became waterlogged a few days later.75 Governor Blanshard, soon after his arrival at the island, made his way to Fort Rupert aboard Driver, a steamship which bought the 1,200 tons of

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coal stored on the beach that Captain McNeill had acquired for the HBC from the indigenous people the previous year.76 Blanshard observed that the party of ‘Scotch’ miners had not been able to discover coals in any quantity and reports of seams of 3 feet (0.9 metres) in depth of excellent quality were false. Further, ‘the miners are unprovided with proper implements, discontented with their employers, and can scarcely be induced to work’ but ‘should they persevere there is no doubt that the supply of coal may eventually be obtained, which will greatly increase the value of this colony’.77 Driver’s captain reported on a conversation with John Muir in which he also stated the reports of the quality of the surface coal had been exaggerated, but he had hopes of finding more and better coal once a forty horsepower engine he had ordered arrived.78 All hopes proved futile. On 16 April work on the mine stopped as the watchman responsible for security ran off with the arms and ammunition. The Muirs, thus unprotected from the indigenous people, some of whom were resentful at this new competition for limited resources, withdrew into the fort. Here they were set to work on other tasks, such as sinking wells and building a stone chimney (Figure 4.1). This is the only extant structure from the HBC’s original Fort Rupert, a site now inhabited largely by indigenous peoples south of the modern town of Port Hardy. Labouring was not to the liking of the Muirs, especially having to toil on a drain with a ‘smell hardly fit for a pig to go in’.79 The company’s record of events differed somewhat. The post journal stated that the fear of the indigenous people and the miners’ lack of protection was simply a ruse, it being ‘downright falsehood’ to say that the Indians had been a hindrance to their work: ‘the fact is … they have not concealed from us of late that they are and have been tired sometime past of sinking the shaft’. The entry also stated that the miners were willing to be put to work elsewhere.80 Certainly they constructed the chimney, but then refused to work on the drain.81 George Blenkinsop, HBC leader at Fort Rupert at this period in the absence of the more experienced William McNeill, said they had broken their contract. The miners then agreed to work on the drain, but Andrew Muir took time off, claiming to be sick. Let him explain, in his own ungrammatical way, what then happened: Blenkinsop came and charged me with neglect of duty and a penalty of £50, which I said was false I was at my duty he said we were not doing half work but sitting idle I said I was doing as well as I was able and that I was never acquainted with such work as taking out roots he also charged me with these words that I was a rebellious person and kept men of [sic] their duty which I put down as defamation of character and have witnesses to prove that he said

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Figure 4.1 The Hudson’s Bay Company chimney at Fort Rupert so, so that when we could not please with our work we stop for the present until matters are settled.82 The post journal states that the amount of work done on the drain was what one man could have accomplished in six hours, rather than being sufficient for two men in ten ‘I asked Mr Muir if it was the custom in Scotland when two men were working together for one of them to

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remain idle and look on whilst the other worked’. The writer expressed concern that the miners’ conduct and refusal to obey orders might amount to rebellion. He was worried that this could encourage further mutiny in the company servants, whilst divisions amongst the Europeans might be exploited by the indigenous peoples. The two men, Andrew Muir and John McGregor, were threatened with irons and told to stay away from the other workers.83 So, they went off hunting with the local people, and no more work was done. On 2 May two HBC vessels arrived with Blenkinsop’s superior, upon which Muir recorded: Captain McNeill commenced like a madman swearing and threatening and ordered us to our work. We said not till we were fairly tried by English laws for what was charged against us. We were ordered to be put in irons and fed on bread and water during the time they were putting the irons on McGregor and I were treated in the most shocking manner possible called everything we could be called and threatened to be shot like dogs and dared not open our mouth so we remained silent.84 John Muir confirmed his son’s account: ‘Captain McNeil … in the most abusive manner possible to describe threatened [them] to be shot like dogs and [they] were thrust into the bastion with irons on their hands night and day, two days and two nights and fed on bread and water.’85 The two miners were kept at the bastion for six days, but conditions gradually improved insofar as they were allowed to have the irons removed at night and could sleep in the same place to be warmer. They met with their fellow miners who implored them to go back to work until the company steamer should return from Victoria when they would be tried, but the two refused and were returned to gaol if now without irons and with proper food. They were later set free but still refused to work and got into further trouble with Blenkinsop regarding illicit trading with the indigenous people. The company steamship, Beaver, returned on 27 June with Dr John Helmcken, newly appointed as magistrate by Blanshard,86 who had been instructed to enquire into the Muirs’ complaints, particularly the imprisonment without trial, which appeared to be a ‘harsh step’.87 Blenkinsop was told that the governor regretted he had had to ‘resort to severe measures … and still more so that the peace and security of the establishment should require such application’ and that Dr Helmcken would act as a ‘check on all disorders for the future’.88 The miners laid their case before Helmcken, ‘but he told us he could do nothing in it’.89 In his report to Blanshard, in which he seemed rather out of his depth, Helmcken said that said he had deferred the case.90 Helmcken had trained as a doctor

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not a lawyer and it seemed clear he did not find his posting as JP to Fort Rupert to be congenial, the only other educated men there being the chief trader and his clerk, a group not even sufficient to play a round of whist.91 Three of the miners, including Andrew Muir, soon absconded ‘with our canoe … determined to make for some Christian place since we could get neither rights nor privileges here’.92 Charles Beardsmore, an HBC official at Fort Rupert, displayed some sympathy for the miners and other company servants: ‘The men on entering for the Hudson’s Bay Company were all deceived, very much deceived. No man in his right senses would come from England to suffer what these men have got to suffer. ’Twas worse than transportation. There are no places to receive them, not the slightest accommodation, no places at all’. He concluded generally that ‘Colonization will not do under the HBC’.93 The absconding miners became bit players in the story of the Fort Rupert murders, their flight at first being confused with the desertion of the three sailors who were killed (Chapter 3). Andrew Muir was later to return to Vancouver Island, first to property at Sooke with his father, then to the seemingly unlikely position as sheriff of Victoria where he died at thirty-one from alcoholism.94 Not all the miners absconded, the HBC Record Society suggested that fear of being massacred if they left the safety of the stockade kept them there.95 John Muir was one and in a letter to Barclay concluded that Vancouver Island ‘is good enough on itself and abounds with minerals and will yet be something’ but he expected Fort Rupert to fail and ‘all through gross negligence and bad usage’.96 The HBC board was only able to react to these events months after they had happened and in October 1850 advised Douglas that they anxiously awaited his report about Fort Rupert and that ‘If these unfortunate differences have not been adjusted when you receive this letter, you are requested to take immediate steps for settling them … if Mr Blenkinsop has abused his authority in the manner stated by Mr Muir, you will supersede him in his appointment’. The commercial imperative was then seen again, for the instructions went on: ‘And you will please to give directions to the officer in charge at Fort Rupert for the time being that every possible assistance is to be given to the miners in order to enable them to get at a seam of workable coal.’97 To the Colonial Office, Sir John Pelly kept up a braver face: ‘Everything has been done that could be done. Experienced miners have been sent out and are now employed in the operations necessary for reaching a suitable seam of coal … and by the latest accounts they were sanguine as to the results of their labours.’98 In November, the HBC reached the conclusion that ‘Muir’s men have behaved ill in refusing to work and we are inclined to suspect from what you say of the difficulty

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you had in getting them to leave Fort Victoria for the mine last year that they had a eye for California before leaving England.’ The company also criticised Blenkinsop, whose explanation had not been as ‘satisfactory as the committee could wish’. The remaining miners were to be kept at work at Fort Rupert, for exploiting even a thin seam would be better than them being kept ‘idle on high wages’.99 Meanwhile, at least the locals were collecting coal during the summers, although Archibald Barclay noted that this should always be inspected and non-combustible material removed and not paid for and Grant wrote in 1851 that they had ‘already extracted nearly all that cd. be procured in this way’.100 Between the commencement of the grant and 27 April 1852, 1,315 tons were ‘sold and exported’ by the HBC. Royalties at 2s 6d per ton totalled £164 7s 6d of which the HBC took its ten percent of £16 8s 9d, the balance going to the colony’s trust fund.101 Purchasers of coal had to come and collect it, although it was sometimes carried to Oregon or the Sandwich Islands in a vessel going for a return cargo.102 ‘I sincerely hope Gilmour has discovered a workable seam’ In December 1850 another gang of miners, led by Boyd Gilmour (sometimes Gilmore) was engaged and, having been selected ‘with great care’, it was hoped they ‘will conduct themselves in a more upright and satisfactory manner than those who have deserted’.103 However, the new men made familiar complaints. They claimed to have been cheated out of provisions on the voyage out: ‘whether the fault was with the Ship Pekin or the HBC I know not, only we know that it happened that we had to suffer by it’. Compensation for short rations was eventually paid.104 Like the Muirs, Gilmour’s gang had been assured that ‘the coal would be found before we got out, but I find we are only to commence to find the coal’.105 The cost of their labour was very high, but so was the price of coal,106 presumably explaining why Douglas was advised that no place on Vancouver Island with indications of coal should be left unexamined.107 Further, ‘the state of affairs at Fort Rupert presents a far from pleasant aspect, and the shameful and mutinous conduct of the miners will, I fear, cause a considerable delay in the successful issue of the mining operation and cause much loss’. Learning from the mistakes of Blenkinsop and McNeill, the HBC instructed Douglas that ‘you should impress upon the gentleman in charge of Fort Rupert the necessity of a conciliatory manner towards these people and no pains should be spared in rendering them as comfortable in respect to their lodgings and rations as the circumstances of the country will admit’.108 This advice was redundant, for in May Douglas had already reminded Blenkinsop to be ‘temperate’ in his dealing with his men, especially the miners.109 Further, whilst large scale agriculture seemed not to be possible at Fort Rupert, some cattle were to

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be kept there so the miners might get occasionally have fresh beef, in addition to any meat supplies that might be obtained from hunting or from trade with the indigenous people.110 Labour relations were now better, but the operation was fruitless. The gang were in want of a blacksmith, theirs having deserted during the journey, and, without his skills, they could not get tools repaired and were reduced to ‘keeping things moving’ until another could be found. Not that things could be said to be ‘moving’, for Gilmour wrote that ‘I must candidly state that every report that I have seen or heard regarding the coal in this part of the island is wide of the truth, however I will do my best for coal’.111 Partly to ensure the men remained fully occupied they were to instructed extend the cultivated area, whilst Douglas was to station sufficient men at Fort Rupert to protect them against the indigenous peoples.112 In August 1851 control of the mine was removed from the HBC fur trade in favour of Vancouver Island Colony,113 but this seems to have made no material difference. In March 1852 the shaft established by the Muirs had been further tested to 20 fathoms (25.8 metres), but was abandoned as no coal was discovered. The new gang then tried at another spot and bored 183 feet 5 inches (55.9 metres) also without success: ‘a somewhat discouraging circumstance’.114 Grant reported that Gilmour tried another seven bores and pits but as the thickest seam of coal discovered was only 6 inches (15.2 centimetres) no mine was ever opened.115 In June 1852 Douglas sent word to Fort Rupert that: coal is now in great want … I sincerely hope Gilmour has discovered a workable seam … let no exertion be spared in forwarding the boring operations. Mining should be the main, the exclusive, object at present at Fort Rupert … spare no expense or trouble in the search for coal, it is now the grand object and if found will be the making of all concerned.116 The following year Douglas was instructed by Barclay that the ‘Unfavourable reports from the miners are disheartening … [in that] indications of coal appear less promising as the bore proceeds’ but exploration was to continue and more boring rods were to be sent from England.117 Shortly afterwards mining at Fort Rupert was abandoned and Gilmour and his gang were sent south to the new mine at Nanaimo. Grant reported that ‘there are now no miners at Fort Rupert, and the establishment consists of twenty officers and men. As the Indian trade there is unimportant, and as it was principally fixed on with a view to the coal, it is probable that ere long it will be abandoned.’118 Blanshard’s summary was that ‘the accounts which had been sent to England of these coal mines were so very much exaggerated that they soon gave over working

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them’.119 Douglas was trying to sell the remaining stock of coal from Fort Rupert at San Francisco in June 1853:120 it remained unsold in April 1854.121 With mining ended, Fort Rupert returned once more to the HBC fur trade’s operations although Sir George Simpson noted that furs were so limited in quantity ‘that unless the post can be maintained on a very moderate footing or that some other branch of business can be there carried on, we doubt it will answer our purpose to keep it up’. Spars were considered, but trade had not been profitable and to establish it properly would require extra shipping at considerable outlay. In sum, ‘if Fort Rupert cannot be made to cover its expenses and yield a reasonable profit, it will be abandoned’.122 However, in April the following year it was thought that the ‘fur trade, in conjunction with the manufacture of shingles may more than cover all necessary expenses. The experience of one or two seasons will decide that question and enable us to remove all the valuable property and a part at least of the buildings should it then be found desirous to abandon the post.’123 It was another generation until that happened. Although the furs collected there, mainly lynx, rabbit, marten and racoon were worth £5,405 for a direct outlay of £660 4s in 1859, Fort Rupert was one of the company’s least profitable stations.124 Rather it was the manufacture of wooden roof shingles for export to the Sandwich Islands125 that enabled it to survive as a company post until 1883 when the HBC did finally withdraw, selling out to a former company man who had worked there.126 The stockades, which were renewed in 1858,127 are long gone but, as seen above, Andrew Muir’s chimney can still be found. ‘As if for the purpose of inviting human enterprise’: coal at Nanaimo James Douglas led an exploratory expedition to the east cast of Vancouver Island in 1852. Local people pointed out three beds of coal outcropping in different parts of Nanaimo Bay: One of the beds measured 573/4 inches [147 centimetres] in depth of clean coal and it was impossible to repress a feeling of exultation in beholding so huge a mass of mineral wealth so singularly brought to light by the hand of nature as if for the purpose of inviting human enterprise … the discovery can hardly fail to be of signal advantage to the colony.128 Other seams were not so thick but Douglas thought that Vancouver Island ‘is one vast coalfield’ and the progress of the colony will thus ‘be rapid and prosperous, notwithstanding the many adverse circumstances which have hitherto retarded the development of its resources’.129 Joseph

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Pemberton, the surveyor, had been to Nanaimo and agreed prospects were good: ‘I confess I feel great confidence as to the ultimate success of the coal discovery at Nanaimo, the traffic it will bring to the island etc. That it will turn out a profitable investment for capital I have no doubt.’130 The miners from Fort Rupert were sent south to Nanaimo and the HBC ordered its clerk, Joseph McKay, ‘formally [to] take possession of the Coal Beds lately discovered there for and on behalf of the Hudson’s Bay Company’.131 Grant ascribed to McKay, rather than Douglas the ‘discovery’ of coal, although ‘the Indians of the neighbourhood’ had directed the company man there.132 However, as noted above, the presence of coal in this area had been noted on maps as early as 1843. Presumably in light of the labour relations troubles at Fort Rupert, Pemberton advised the HBC ‘to rent these mines out at a heavy royalty’, rather than mining directly but, alternatively, thought a subsidiary company might be established.133 This last proposal was adopted, the HBC ‘made a large purchase of land and commenced an extensive coal work’,134 held separately from the fur trade. James Douglas was made manager – Roderick Finlayson later wondered how he sustained so many jobs.135 One of Douglas’s first actions was to instruct McKay to forbid any persons to work the coal either directly themselves or indirectly through employing indigenous people ‘except under the authority of a licence from the HBC’. Where such permission was granted royalties of 2s 6d per ton were payable. The significance of the company interests in the exploitation of Vancouver Island Colony’s resources can be seen in that these instructions to McKay were recorded in the colony letterbook rather than amongst company correspondence.136 A few months later Douglas was pleased to report to the Colonial Office that ‘the researches since made by the miners of the HBC have confirmed the opinion then formed of the vast mineral wealth of that district of Vancouver Island.’ The miners had found a useful seam at 48 feet (14.6 metres) down leading to ‘a feeling of satisfaction in the colony as every inhabitant naturally takes a lively interest in the success of an undertaking on which the prosperity of the Island and in a great measure their own private interests so much depend’.137 Douglas also reported to the HBC, receiving acknowledgement of this ‘gratifying news’ from Barclay, who also approved of the arrangements to relocate Gilmour and the other miners to this new venture.138 Sir George Simpson expressed himself more tartly: ‘I trust that the many disappointments and heavy outlay heretofore incurred in opening up the coal trade may now be rewarded by an abundant return from the newly discovered mines.’139 In October 1852, 130 tons of Nanaimo coal were sent to California for sale as there proved to be no immediate demand for it closer at hand and advantage to be gained from thus letting it be known that there was

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coal available at Vancouver Island.140 John Muir, who was also involved in this second and more successful mining operation, thought that the coalfield would employ thirty to forty families.141 However, his family’s traditional bickering with the HBC continued, a ‘source of constant annoyance [which] also seriously retards the work’ and his contract was not renewed.142 Meanwhile, the indigenous people were now ‘indefatigable in their researches for coal’ and had found a seam over 6 feet (1.8 metres) in depth. They worked with a ‘surprising’ degree of industry and disposed of coal to the agents of the HBC for clothing and other articles of European manufacture.143 In May 1853 Douglas wrote that ‘the progress made in opening the coal works at Nanaimo has been rapid and satisfactory’ and he described with evident pleasure the extent of the seams and their thickness, the principal one being between 6 and 7 feet (1.8–2.1 metres). The mine had then reached about 60 feet (18 metres) deep and he considered that there was an opportunity for about one hundred miners to be employed. Several shiploads of coal had already been sold at San Francisco and he was confident enough of supply to have ‘prevailed upon’ the HBC to offer coal for HM Steam Sloop Virago for a reduced price of 30s per ton, equivalent to that charged on the coast of Chile; alternatively for only 25s per ton, Virago could go and collect the remaining stocks of coal from Fort Rupert. This was the birth of a ‘noble trade’ he predicted, although there was some concern expressed that Americans had found coal nearby at Bellingham Bay.144 A few months later Douglas noted that the ten miners then at Namaimo were to be joined by a ‘large body of colliers from North Britain’ engaged by the HBC. These men could look forward to an income of 10–12s per day and a free house, whilst helping Nanaimo to become the ‘centre of a flourishing trade which will greatly contribute to the increase of wealth of the population’.145 These colliers must have been those on the ill-fated voyage of Colinda, when the miners, like almost all other passengers, deserted in Chile when the ship made an unscheduled stop following a mutiny (see Chapter 2). In 1855 the HBC sent twenty-three miners with their families, a total of about one hundred persons, ‘the largest accession of white inhabitants the Colony has received’.146 By the end of 1853, although still needing more miners the HBC had at Nanaimo ‘a flourishing little settlement, with about 125 inhabitants, of whom 37 are working men, the remainder women and children; there are about 24 children at a school presided over by Mr Baillie’.147 There were twenty-four houses with more being built by the HBC in a settlement sometimes called Colvile Town after Sir John Pelly’s successor, Andrew Colvile. Food supplies, especially deer, came mainly from the indigenous people. That autumn when the future of the mines was seen in meeting

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demand from San Francisco, Nanaimo was producing about twenty tons of coal a day and steam engines were being introduced to ease operations.148 Douglas reported that the steam pumps were working well by November, although the following month repairs were required.149 Grant opined that ‘it will be the Hudson Bay Company’s own fault if they do not make a very profitable speculation of their possessions there’.150 Nanaimo served as a market for potatoes and vegetables from farms at Victoria and residents of the island and people from elsewhere were seeking to purchase lots there. Douglas enquired of the HBC in London what should be done about such enquiries, for to accede to demands for private purchase would change the character of the venture, which illustrates the tensions between company and colony. Douglas, at heart an HBC man, wrote: I should much prefer leaving the place as it is … in the Company’s hands, but that course would be opposed to the legitimate progress of the Colony and give rise to a great deal of public clamour against the Company which would be desirable to avoid. There would moreover be an advantage in allowing the miners and other servants to purchase building lots and the possession of property would attract them to the spot and be a great inducement to remain in the country … In the event of sales being made all minerals and the company’s right to undermine the ground should be reserved.151 Further conflict of interests then arose in that Douglas, always concerned about his private finances, admitted that he was looking to invest himself – ‘my little savings’ – in the Nanaimo mines. There was some rather uncharacteristic special pleading, for perhaps the Governor and Committee ‘may think that I have some claim to consideration and may find the advantage hereafter of having a resident proprietor to manage the business’.152 Three months later he enquired again about a personal investment, wanting to assume ‘half the risks’,153 but the mine remained in company hands. In 1854 Boyd Gilmour was searching for fresh coal seams and seeking to open a new mine, but was not successful and in July he was replaced, being ‘clearly deficient in some of the essential qualities of a pushing energetic manager’ and, as Douglas added acidly, he had never discovered a single seam of coal.154 Later, Douglas described him as ‘indolent and deficient in energy and knows just enough of Physical Geography to confuse himself and every one about him. He is entirely a man of theory, but never takes the trouble to verify his theories by actual observations.’155 Pemberton lumped Gilmour and Muir as ‘the stamp of

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men to work coal under directions but not to find it, nor to keep matters from getting into mechanical confusion’.156 By contrast, the new manager, George Robinson, was praised for his energy and attention and under his direction, new seams were sought and by the end of 1854 one was found, if by chance, on Newcastle Island to which a recalcitrant miner had been expelled. In late 1854 the Nanaimo operations employed sixty-six people, forty-one miners, surface workers including those making pit props, an interpreter (for the indigenous people) and a schoolmaster, whilst a Wesleyan minister was to be engaged.157 Output was thirty tons a day, by which time the miners were being paid 4s 6d per ton for coal which the HBC sold on for 30s per ton.158 Perhaps no wonder that there were then strikes, associated also with the competing opportunities of employment at the Bellingham Bay mine, which had a ‘magnificent’ seam of 16 feet (4.9 metres).159 Experienced miners were much needed there as Pemberton described the original workforce as comprising ‘seven very backwards Americans’ and several ‘drunk Indians’.160 Most of the Nanaimo miners were from Staffordshire in the English Midlands and they proved to be no more tractable than the Scottish Muirs and there were disputes throughout this period; the miners making ‘the most of Bellingham Bay, holding that retreat before our eyes as a scarecrow on all occasions of difficulty … we therefore never urge them too far and treat them with all proper kindness and liberality’.161 There were desertions to Bellingham Bay, although six of eight returned, to Douglas’s satisfaction, the old Vancouver Island hand recalling that ‘recruits always give trouble at first until they are put into good housing and brought under the influence of proper discipline’.162 In fact, by July he recorded that they were ‘reconciled’ and had asked if there were places for their friends from home.163 Douglas’s smugness was misplaced, for by October 1855 there had been more ‘troublesome contests with the Staffordshire miners, who notwithstanding the kindness lavished upon them, were becoming more and more restive and unbearable’. Particularly bad were the six returned deserters who were prone to seeding their output with coal dust and slate, a tempting ruse as miners were paid at personal piecework rates.164 They later deserted a second time to Bellingham Bay, although three Bellingham Bay miners came the other way.165 Better were some Scottish miners, one of whom, Robert Dunsmuir of the Gilmour party, as a reward for not joining in the 1855 strike was given permission to operate his own seam.166 By 1856 Douglas reported that trade was poor, stocks too high and prices would have to be reduced. Key to this problem was the mine at Bellingham Bay, American captains preferring to buy coal from their countrymen, whilst San Francisco was being supplied with coal from England.167 In April 1857 the HBC was seeking contracts with the vessels

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about to survey the boundary between the Vancouver Island and the USA as well as naval vessels at a reduced price, but demand generally was so weak that Douglas ordered a halt to further exploration.168 By June there were 8,000 tons stored at the pithead and Douglas was offering coal at 14s per ton at San Francisco, about half the price it had once fetched. When Douglas was asked by the House of Assembly about royalties from Nanaimo for 1856, he reported that none had accrued as the previous year had seen no sales, with ‘large stocks accumulating at the mines for which there is no demand’.169 Matters seemed to improve subsequently, when English contracts to San Francisco expired and the Bellingham Bay mine closed.170 The mines at Nanaimo expanded to three pits and more reliable Cornish miners were brought in. Potential supply still exceeded demand, Douglas thought output could easily reach 50,000 tons p.a. if only he could sell that much.171 The 1858 gold fever then led miners to desert and some of their replacements were ‘not the best of characters’,172 but demand for coal was strong, given the increase in business and population in the area and the mines had to take whoever they could although ‘Indian labour can hardly be got now.’ Further problems were that the steam engines of 1853 were deteriorating, whilst the perennial issue of poor management had resurfaced. The Muirs and Boyd Gilmour had brought problems to the HBC; now George Robinson, whilst ‘intelligent and obliging … has managed to render himself almost universally obnoxious to the miners’ and was going home.173 The HBC never having had much success as a mine owner, sold its monopoly holdings in Nanaimo to the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company in 1862. Belshaw used the words ‘Spartan’ and ‘primitive’ to describe Nanaimo at its sale, but noted that the new owners saw possibilities especially in supplying the navy and under its new owners the venture was successful.174 Robert Dunsmuir, who had once worked at Fort Rupert, became a supervisor and then a mine owner on his own account having discovered the island’s richest seams. He ended up living in a castle, with a positive reputation as a pioneer industrialist but was also decried as ‘British Columbia’s chief symbol of unbridled capitalism, and a ruthless exploiter of men and material’.175 A ‘rich harvest of trade … to the advantage of the Colony’: the impact of gold mining There were accusations by one ‘J.C.’ in a letter to The Times in May 1858 that the HBC had known of the existence of gold on the mainland for the previous twenty years, ‘it having been originally discovered by the natives who were ignorant of its value; but the policy of the Company in keeping such matters quiet is by this time pretty generally known.’176 This

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accusation seems to fly in the face of the evidence, for throughout the company period there was much discussion about gold finds, as such would be of economic benefit to the struggling colony. Thus, James Douglas uncharacteristically let his emotions emerge in August 1850 when reporting the ‘glorious discovery’ of gold on Queen Charlotte Island.177 However, matters proceeded slowly; the HBC expedition on Una was driven off in 1851 by the indigenous people (Chapter 3) and only in July 1852 could Douglas report that Chief Trader John Kennedy on Recovery had been to the island(s). Gold had been seen, but it was ‘not of sufficient quantities to repay the expense of working’.178 Eight of his party deserted to American ships which had also been seeking in vain for gold and, far from the excitement of 1850, Douglas’s gloomy conclusion was that ‘I regret to say that the expedition has not been productive of any immediate advantage to the company.’179 One problem for the metropolitan government was that the Queen Charlotte Islands had no organised colonial government and there were fears that this might encourage unwelcome American interest in their potential. This administrative lacunae had to be filled. As always, James Douglas was the man on the spot. On 29 April 1852 Queen Victoria signed a declaration that ‘We have deemed it necessary to establish a colony in our Island of Queen Charlotte’ and Douglas was to ‘take the said island into … [his] care and charge and carefully and diligently to discharge the duty of Lieutenant Governor thereof, by doing and performing all and all manner of things thereunto belonging’,180 rather shorter and less detailed instructions than his commission for Vancouver Island. Meanwhile, the company was still trying to profit from the gold. In October 1852 Sir George Simpson was seeking to have a geologist sent out from England to determine whether the seams were ‘worthy of attention as a branch of business to be carried on systematically’,181 although by December Simpson expected that the company would give up.182 Chief Factor Douglas determined that it would be ‘worthwhile to risk the expense of a trading post in order to ascertain the capabilities of the island and to retain it in possession’, but it was ‘out of my power to secure men for so unpopular a service’: every disposable man had been sent to the more certain economic opportunities provided by the Nanaimo mines.183 Wearing another hat, Lieutenant-Governor Douglas agreed to carry out the instructions of the British government with regard to forming regulations to adopt when granting licences for gold mining,184 and he issued a proclamation in April 1853 setting out a procedure under which interested parties could obtain a licence for 10s per month to seek for gold.185 However, the limited extent of the gold deposits and the antipathy of the local people towards prospectors meant that interest in the area soon died away.

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The story of the Queen Charlotte Islands gold fever demonstrates that both the HBC and the British Government were prepared to employ the company and colonial leader James Douglas, for economic and/or political gain, as would be seen again in 1858 with the larger gold rush on the mainland. Again Douglas intervened, insisting that licences were obtained by miners before digging and that ships entering the Fraser River had to call at Victoria first to be processed by customs. One commentary has it that ‘Douglas was not even Governor. But he acted as such’,186 although it must be stated that he had official backing for his actions, the Colonial Secretary having ruled on 16 July 1858 that whilst ‘in strict law your commission extends to Vancouver’s Island only … you are authorised under the necessity of the case to take such measures not inconsistent with the general rights of British subjects and others within Her Majesty’s dominions as that necessity may justify’. By contrast, Douglas was warned not to try to extend the rights of the company he served beyond its existing limits. These, he was reminded, were limited to ‘exclusive trade with the Indians and [it] possess[es] no other right or privilege whatsoever.’187 The following month Douglas was informed that he would be appointed governor of British Columbia, too, and although the necessary documents were not yet prepared, in the meantime he was to act as if he already were governor.188 The openness of the correspondence also suggests that the accusations that the HBC concealed matters such as gold finds had little substance. Indeed, it was over two years earlier, in April 1856, that Douglas had written that: I hasten to communicate for the information of HM Govt a discovery of much importance made known to me by Mr Angus McDonald, clerk in charge of Fort Colvile one of the Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts on the Upper Columbia River. That gentleman reports in a letter dated on the 1st March last that gold had been found in considerable quantities within the British Territory on the Upper Columbia and that he is moreover of the opinion that valuable deposits of gold will be found in many other parts of that country.189 Later Douglas advised the colonial secretary that he had good news of further finds on the Fraser River and searches were being made for gold elsewhere, including on Vancouver Island,190 and ‘I entertain sanguine hopes that future researches will develop stores of wealth perhaps equal to the gold fields of California.’191 Douglas himself took a tour of the diggings at Fraser River in early June 1858 and based on interviews with experienced miners amongst the 190 whites and 380 indigenous people then involved, reported again on the good prospects on both Fraser and

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Thompson Rivers, the former being ‘richer than any three rivers in California.’ Indeed, the region ‘is one continuous bed of gold of incalculable value and extent.’192 His recommendation was that in the face of extensive immigration to the area, land should be surveyed and opened up for sale at the usual £1 per acre, with customs duties and mining licences being other sources of revenue. He had no doubt that the company would be unable to protect its monopoly, its exclusive rights of trade with the indigenous people. In a despatch to the HBC board in London he advised: ‘better surrender with a good grace a right which is no longer tenable for a full and sufficient compensation to be paid annually out of the revenues of the country’.193 He made the same point in his letter to the colonial secretary, though, of course, leaving aside the issue of inevitability. Rather the HBC would nobly volunteer to ‘relinquish their exclusive rights of trade’ in return for compensation.194 Chapter 2 detailed the changes brought to Victoria by the gold rush as Vancouver Island’s population and economy were transformed. After the Fraser River gold fever died away, one of its legacies was the greatly expanded merchant class in Victoria as well as its widened role and experience as a Pacific port. This became a resource. As early as 1852 Mary Shadd, in campaigning to find a place to which people could flee to escape slavery in the USA, had predicted that Vancouver Island would become ‘the first island in importance on the globe’ because of its potential for trade and ‘the people there settled of whatever complexion will be the merchant princes of the world’.195 A decade later Alexander Rattray also considered that Vancouver Island ‘will unquestionably become a great commercial colony, unrivalled in the Pacific.’196 The story of Victoria as a free port, which helped in this regard was told in Chapter 2. This status must have helped Victoria when a second gold rush led to another, shorter, boom. Discoveries on the mainland, in the Cariboo region, north of the earlier diggings had ‘restored the situation in the colony just when the early tide of gold, and consequently of miners, was receding. The news of the fabulous wealth being gathered brought a fresh rush … mainly through Victoria.’197 Indeed: Many men are making 100 dollars a day and not a few have picked up 100 ounces in the same space of time. Numbers who left Victoria penniless are now worth from $1,000 to $10,000, the result of one summer’s labour. Those who have not luck enough to get good claims of their own obtained plenty of employment at from $10 to $20 per day. Want is unknown, provisions are plentiful, and hardships are among the things of the past. According to all accounts the gold must have been taken out by spadefuls.198

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This second bout of gold fever did not last, in Cariboo the gold deposits were deep and proved expensive to extract and, thus, were not ‘poor man’s diggings.’ There were reports of migrants returning home ‘fallen victims of misplaced confidence’, of people hungry and women ‘obliged to adopt the most degrading of lives’ as a result.199 Whilst ‘Victoria continued to do the principal business of these mines … the population to feed was comparatively small and Victoria suffered’.200 John Helmcken, by then speaker of the House of Assembly, spoke of ‘overtrading’ to the Cariboo gold fields,201 a condition related to an over-optimistic reading of the potential business from miners when supplies ‘grossly exceeded’ demand with a consequent slump in the market.202 Statistics exist for the trade of Vancouver Island at this period (Appendix 4, Table 4.2), showing how difficult matters had become, for even adding the value of gold produced in British Columbia traded through Victoria to the exports, Vancouver Island Colony’s balance of trade was in deficit. Further, the public accounts, which between 1859 and 1863, whilst fluctuating, had seen an overall positive balance of receipts over expenditure, had fallen into deficit. The slump was one reason why Vancouver Island Colony lost its separate political status (see Chapter 7). The exploitation of gold in mainland areas brought mixed fortunes. Politically, the difficulties of coping with the initial boom became one factor in the ending of the HBC grant of Vancouver Island, whilst the subsequent slump was a factor in the uniting of the crown colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. That Victoria eventually became the capital of the united provinces (see Chapter 7) helps to explain its development into the pleasant city it has since become. Economically, gold transformed the situation on Vancouver Island as was explained in 1866 by an anonymous contributor to the Westminster Review: The white inhabitants, a few hundred in number, were chiefly employed by the Company in fur-trapping, or stationed at the Indian trading posts. For a dozen years extensive and valuable coal beds in the island had been worked by the Company; vast forests of timber had been discovered; some of the baser metals were known to exist; and in addition to these elements of wealth, the capacious harbours of Victoria and Esquimault in the south of the island, foreshadowed a bright commercial future for the colony. But for the discovery of gold, however, Vancouver Island might have ‘dragged its slow length along’ at an imperceptible rate for many years.203

5 COMPANY, CROWN AND GOVERNORS

The ‘certain ruin’ of Richard Blanshard Richard Blanshard was a thirty-two year old Cambridge-educated barrister when appointed to be governor of Vancouver Island in 1849 (Figure 5.1). He had not practised law, but had gained experience of the world, travelling in the West Indies and serving during the Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848–49 in India. He seems to have been recommended for the governorship by a relative who was a friend of Sir John Pelly.1 Certainly his appointment was fairly sudden; Sir John Pelly had wanted the Vancouver Island Colony to be in the hands of James Douglas if ‘merely as a temporary expedient until the colony can afford to pay a governor unconnected with the Hudson’s Bay Company’,2 and Earl Grey had acquiesced.3 However, a few months later the Colonial Office was preparing a formal commission for Richard Blanshard. The National Archives in London holds a draft from January 1849 together with a report from lawyers confirming all was correct and an order in council from Queen Victoria giving her approval.4 The commission itself, signed by the Queen and appended with the Great Seal, is dated 16 July 1849.5 A flavour of the formality of the whole process may be tasted in the covering letter from the colonial secretary: I have the honour to transmit herewith a Commission under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, appointing you to be Governor and Commander in Chief in and over the Island of Vancouver and its Dependencies, together with Instructions under the Royal Sign Manual and Signet for your guidance in the Administration of the Government thereof. I also transmit Letters Patent under the Seal of the High Court of Admiralty appointing you to be Vice Admiral of that Island and its dependencies.6

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Figure 5.1 Governor Richard Blanshard ‘Engaged with Mr Blanshard to go to Vancouver’s Island’ Blanshard’s journey from England to take up his new post in this most distant colony was a difficult one, the rigours of which had serious impacts on his abilities to carry out his responsibilities. Details survive in the form of a journal kept by Blanshard’s manservant, Thomas Robinson, from which Figure 5.2 has been drawn. Robinson had already seen much of the world and his account starts with descriptions of Mauritius, Ile de Bourbon (Réunion), St Helena and Ascension Island from when he

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Figure 5.2 Richard Blanshard’s journey to Vancouver Island, 1849–50 he had been a seaman in the mid-1840s. He returned to a landsman’s life and was working in a warehouse in his native Liverpool when on 11 October 1849 he ‘engaged with Mr Blanshard to go to Vancouver’s Island’.7 Blanshard had been instructed to cross the Atlantic to Panama, traverse the isthmus to the Pacific coast and take a navy ship north to Vancouver Island,8 a route chosen to enable Blanshard to inspect the path future settlers to the colony might take as well as being, in prospect, quicker than sailing round Cape Horn.9 The Atlantic leg was on Medway, which left Southampton on 16 October with 120 passengers, many of them French. The voyage was pleasant, Robinson writing of beautiful nights and sailors dancing. After calling at Madeira, the passengers put on a play, Blanshard taking the part of Sir Anthony in Sheridan’s The Rivals. This was perhaps a foretaste of what was to come for, like Sir Anthony, it might be said of Blanshard that ‘the least demur puts me in a frenzy directly’.10 There were stops at some West Indian islands before Medway berthed at Chagres on 22 November. There followed the most difficult part of the journey for

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‘traveling over the Isthmus of Panama is very tiresome’.11 Most of the trip was by open canoe along the Chagres River, when the passengers spent four nights ‘huddled together’ on the floor, troubled by lice, dogs, fleas, and probably of most significance, mosquitoes, before they took to ponies for the last stage into Panama town arriving on 27 November. A month later they were still there and Blanshard wrote to Earl Grey enquiring about his onward connection.12 In fact, Blanshard, with Robinson in tow, had then to make his way south to Peru to find a navy ship going to Vancouver Island. They left Panama on 28 December travelling via Guayaquil to Callao from where they had an excursion to Lima, which impressed Robinson, before returning to Callao where they finally took berths on HM Steam Ship Driver on 17 January, arriving at Fort Victoria on 9 March, 155 days after leaving England. A meeting with James Douglas took place aboard and then on 12 March 1850 His Excellency Governor Richard Blanshard made his formal entrance to the settlement to a seventeen gun salute from Driver answered by shore batteries.13 Blanshard read his commission to the assembled populace. In his own report to Earl Grey, Blanshard made a simple two-line statement to this effect, without elaboration.14 More informative is the record of HBC hand, Roderick Finlayson: ‘The inmates of the fort were assembled in our old mess room to hear the proclamation read as well as the governor’s commission. The employees of the company were then the only settlers … we gave three British cheers and then dispersed.’15 The anonymous Fort Victoria post journal, presumably compiled by Finlayson, noted the arrival of Blanshard aboard Driver on 9 March and on 12 March stated laconically, ‘All the British residents who were at hand were assembled here and heard the Governor’s Commission read. People employed as usual. See Labour Book.’16 ‘Indulging his hostility’: Governor Blanshard and the Hudson’s Bay Company The HBC, which had recommended Blanshard to be governor,17 had thought this placed him under obligation to them, for the company secretary asked to hear from Blanshard ‘from time to time on all that may occur, and on all subjects that may concern the advancement of the colony’.18 This was not the case; some years after his governorship had ended Blanshard was interviewed by the parliamentary enquiry into the HBC and asked ‘In what relation did you conceive yourself to stand to the Hudson’s Bay Company?’ Back came one of his shorter answers: ‘In none whatever’.19 Rather Blanshard was the crown’s man, armed with a commission which instructed ‘the inhabitants of our said island and its dependencies to be obedient, aiding and assisting you, the said Richard Blanshard in the execution of this our commission.’20 Instead of his reporting to the HBC, the crown used Blanshard to check up on the

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company. For example, after the Fort Rupert murders (Chapter 3), Admiral Moresby requested that Blanshard would ‘favour me with an account of the means the HBC possess for securing the personal safety of their servants, and the extent of their coercion over the native tribes, who have thus given a fearful example of their sanguinary treacherous disposition’.21 Further, Blanshard, on occasion, enquired into company business, as when he asked George Blenkinsop about coal taken and ships supplied at Fort Rupert,22 despite the company on the island having been told through Chief Factor James Douglas that Blanshard’s role was ‘confined to the administration of civil government of the colony and to military affairs’.23 Douglas on being told of Blanshard’s appointment had been instructed to provide a house for him, if, in an example of the HBC’s economy regarding its colonial role, ‘a very temporary one … until funds arise from the sale of land and other property’.24 Despite this, Charles Johnson, captain of Driver, recorded that Douglas ‘expressed himself taken by surprise at the Governor’s arrival’,25 and nothing had been prepared, there being a labour shortage because of desertions for the gold diggings in California. It is telling that in the sentence following Blanshard’s statement to Grey that he had read his commission he commenced his complaints against the HBC: ‘No lodging being ready for me I have been compelled to remain on board the Driver during her stay in the Colony.’26 According to Johnson this was not true, for Douglas had offered Blanshard accommodation in his own house and it was Blanshard’s choice to remain on board. On 17 March, less than a week after he had arrived in his colony’s capital, Blanshard left on Driver to the HBC post at Nisqually in Oregon Territory and from there went up to Fort Rupert. He returned on 6 June 1850 when, given that Driver was leaving for South America, he did at last consent to take a room in Douglas’s house.27 It seems clear that Blanshard did not get along with his housemate. Less than three weeks later Blanshard penned a formal letter of complaint to Douglas over the withdrawal of labourers who had been working on building his own ‘cottage’: I request that you, as representative of the HBC in this colony will inform me whether it is the intention of that company to supply proper labour to complete the work at my cottage, which I was informed by the directors I should find ready on my arrival or whether I am no longer to rely on their doing so.28 Ten days later another letter complained that only one man was working on the cottage and Douglas was ‘at liberty to withdraw him also, as the labour of a single man is a mere mockery … proof of this inability or un-

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willingness of the HBC to furnish me with lodging’.29 In a written reply to the man who shared his house, penned the same day, Douglas reiterated that I beg to assure you that there is no unwillingness on the part of the Hudson’s Bay Company to provide you with lodgings though our inability to do so with the promptitude you expect is but too apparent, as well the cause, the complete misorganisation of the working classes in every country on this coast from California to New Archangel.30 The next month Douglas apologised for the late arrival of materials for the cottage but with the reassurance that ‘every possible exertion will be made to complete your residence.’31 Douglas later reported that Blanshard’s house cost $1,548.55 in labour and material but that Blanshard planned an addition to cost several hundred dollars more, for which he was later reimbursed.32 The house was on HBC land and Douglas proposed that rather than charge the colony for the cost of erection, the HBC should recoup the money by means of an annual rental payment of ten percent of the building cost. This was not permitted, rather Douglas was instructed that the fur trade should retain this original building and erect another for the governor on a different site.33 In January 1851, the HBC wrote to Blanshard about the second property, when it was made clear that any ambition for grandeur on his part was not to be fulfilled. Although the building would be of stone rather than wood, this was a precaution against fire not an expression of status. Further, whilst the building would be ‘respectable’, its size could only be ‘moderate’, appropriate to a standard ‘calculated for the commencement of the Colony, rather than for what you may anticipate it may come to in time, as the funds that can be relied upon are limited and small at present’. Then, reinforcing the company position with regard to another dispute, that over Blanshard’s allocation of land, it was made clear that the house was not to be Blanshard’s personal property but the ‘official residence for yourself as Governor.’ If all this were not enough to affront Blanshard’s dignity, whilst ‘as a principle, a plan and estimate of all public buildings should first be submitted to the Governor and Committee [of the HBC] for their consideration and sanction’, this was not necessary here ‘provided the plan and estimates are approved of and sanctioned by Mr Douglas’.34 Perhaps realisation of the offence this would cause led the company to instruct Douglas to establish ‘a friendly communication with Governor Blanshard … with a view of placing your official intercourse on a better footing’, a policy supported by Earl Grey.35 In April 1851 Blanshard noted that the HBC had reserved £4,000

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for the erection of public buildings and again these were to be sanctioned by ‘the Agent’. Such buildings, he advised, should not be erected in or near Fort Victoria as that would put them within the HBC holdings, rather, in a particularly unrealistic recommendation, he suggested a new town be built at a distance from the company post.36 Another dispute was over the legal system. Blanshard’s commission gave him the power to appoint law officers and the first was the HBC doctor, John Helmcken, who was appointed as magistrate in June 1850,37 before his arrival at Fort Rupert (see Chapter 4). There were few educated men on Vancouver Island in 1850 (women could not then be law officers so the male term is appropriate) and none with legal training (other than Blanshard himself) so this choice was logical enough. However, ‘as there are no independent settlers, all cases that can occur requiring magisterial interference are disputes between the representatives of the HBC and their servants. To appoint the former magistrates would make them judges in their own cause, and to arm them with additional power, which few of them would exert discreetly’, although Blanshard felt that Helmcken, being a surgeon, was likely to be freer from HBC ‘influence’. Further, being recently arrived, Helmcken was ‘a stranger to the petty brawls that have occurred, and the ill-feelings they have occasioned between the HBC and their servants’.38 On the back of the original copy of this despatch held in the National Archives, ‘A B[lackwood]’ wrote ‘I suppose there is no alternative except the appointment of this gentleman to the magistracy if the office is truly necessary, but the objection of appointing the servants of the HBC holds good.’39 Indeed, within two months of his appointment Helmcken had resigned: ‘as without proper support the office merely exposes him to contempt and insult; and he further states that being in the employment of HBC he cannot conscientiously decide the cases which occur, which are almost invariably between the Company and their servants’. Blanshard went on to editorialise to Earl Grey: ‘This is the very objection I stated to your Lordship against employing persons connected with the Company in any capacity in the Colony.’40 He later reported that ‘the Chief Factor’ – Douglas is not named – had forced Helmcken to give him copies of all his official correspondence as magistrate. This ‘has quite confirmed me in my opinion of the impropriety of making appointments among the company servants’.41 Helmcken went on to marry Cecelia Douglas, the daughter of ‘the Chief Factor.’ Blanshard’s second appointment as magistrate was James Douglas himself, before the governor went once more to Fort Rupert in 1851. Blanshard expressed the same fear of the conflict of interest: ‘I do trust that in thus appointing you judge of your own cause there will be no abuse of authority.’42 He had detected abuse before, in 1850 when there

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was a fight between HBC officer, Joseph McKay, and a Canadian worker, whose name is not recorded, unlike his disposition, which was ‘surly.’ Douglas had intervened and had both caned the worker and also put him in prison for a day. The man appealed over Douglas’s head to the governor who took his side, ruling that he ought not to have been punished twice for the one offence.43 Blanshard later claimed that he had spent much of his time in office dealing with petty squabbles between the HBC officers and men.44 Such seemingly minor matters helped stoke Blanshard’s resentment of the dominating presence of the Douglas and HBC upon the colony. He exaggerated this somewhat to Earl Grey in June 1850 when he stated that HBC servants formed ‘the entire population’ of the colony,45 and later that Vancouver Island was ‘merely an enlarged depot of the HBC which I do not conceive was the intention of Her Majesty’s Government in making the grant of the island’.46 In sum, ‘The whole tendency of the system pursued by the HBC … [was] to exclude free settlers, and reserve the island, either as an enlarged post of their own or a desert’,47 the presence of several thousand indigenous people living in such a desert being disregarded, as they had been in Blanshard’s 1850 letter. So overwhelming did Blanshard’s antagonism become that a Colonial Office official wrote on the back of one of his despatches that ‘I cannot help remarking on the inconvenience of Lieut. Blanshard’s habit of indulging his hostility to the company.’48 Indeed, Blanshard fell in with a set of people including Reverend Staines and Dr Beacon ‘who shared with him the mutual grumbles’ about the HBC (see Chapter 6).49 Beacon is mentioned little in the archives except in Helmcken’s memoirs where it is stated that he had been sent to the HBC property on the Columbia River and: I suppose Mr Douglas preferred Beacon’s absence. He was a radical, a grumbler, had become attached to Governor Blanshard and shared with him the mutual grumbles about the HBC. These people thought a colony could be formed in a day … [They could] only think of the civilised life they had left … they did not adapt themselves to a rough and ready country, if they had they might have been more comfortable and happy. They wanted a great deal more than could be supplied from the limited resources at disposal, they wanted the luxuries and supplies of a civilised country.50 Another point, made somewhat archly by the representative of the few well-educated pioneers of early Vancouver Island, was ‘besides no one even then would tolerate the air of superiority they chose on all occasions to put on’. Helmcken felt that Governor Blanshard himself ‘originated a good deal of this grumbling’,51 and concluded that the people on the

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island ‘could not serve two masters, Blanshard and the HBC in the shape of Mr Douglas – in fact this divided authority led to “parties” and was the cause of much bad feeling and trouble’, adding that Blanshard had ‘soon found that although [he was] governor, Mr Douglas had all the power and all the men’.52 ‘Disgusted with the state of affairs’: Governor Blanshard resigns Finlayson stated bluntly in his memoirs that: ‘Governor Blanshard … finding but few people to govern except the Company’s people, who looked more to the Company’s officers with whom they had to deal than the governor, the latter got disgusted with the state of affairs and left for England.’53 Blanshard himself advanced other reasons for his resignation, which was submitted on 18 November 1850, just over eight months after he stepped ashore. A principal reason was his health, for ‘since my arrival here I have suffered so severely from continual attack of ague and subsequent relapses that I am now enfeebled to a degree which renders me incapable of the slightest exertion’.54 Judging from the symptoms described it would seem likely that he had contracted malaria, probably from being bitten by mosquitoes during his four-day canoe trip along the Chagres River.55 Blanshard could not enclose a medical opinion on his condition as the HBC doctor, presumably Beacon, was in Oregon Territory, but other testament confirmed Blanshard’s enfeebled state, including a letter from Douglas that same month which described his faintness and liver pain.56 Dr Helmcken later confirmed that the governor’s problems were the result of ‘his own health’, rather than ‘the condition of things’.57 Further, Thomas Blanshard, Richard’s father, sought medical opinion on his son’s condition in London by showing letters received from him to eminent doctors, whose reports were taken to the Colonial Office as the elder Blanshard campaigned for Richard to be allowed home. One doctor stated that his ‘immediate removal’ was essential;58 another that Blanshard seemed to have the most serious form of intermittent fever, with internal congestion, frequent faintings and breathlessness after slight exertion. This doctor, too, had ‘no hesitation’ in stating that his removal was ‘indispensably necessary’.59 Another issue was finance. Governors of small island colonies such as the Turks and Caicos Islands and Prince Edward Island received £800 and £1,500 respectively per annum in the 1850s, whilst governors of larger territories were paid much more: £7,000 in New South Wales. For Vancouver Island Colony in the lists in which these figures appear, there is no sum stated, just a note that the salary was a matter for the HBC.60 Blanshard’s successor as governor, James Douglas, was paid, initially receiving £300 p.a. from the company,61 although he stated that this was insufficient to meet the extra expenses he met by virtue of holding the

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office.62 By contrast, as Earl Grey explained, Blanshard had ‘entered into an agreement to undertake the office without salary’, only when an assembly was called and a local revenue raised could a salary be paid.63 As Blanshard did not set up an assembly, only forming a council the day before he left, he was never paid. Nor did he even receive expenses. He had been advanced £175 for his outward journey, but this must have cost closer to £300.64 Even then, the Treasury and the Colonial Office corresponded coldly about the subsidised leg, that from Callao to Fort Victoria.65 Then the Admiralty charged Blanshard £47 15s for being entertained at the table of Captain Wellesley in HMS Daedalus from 30 September to 9 October 1850 when sailing from Fort Victoria to Fort Rupert to seek the Fort Rupert murderers.66 Blanshard, with surely some justification, responded spiritedly, if with some exaggeration, maintaining that the settlement at Fort Rupert itself had been in danger and that his journey was necessary to prevent a massacre.67 Thus, he would not accept the account as a personal liability and, noting that there were ‘no funds at my disposal as governor’ sent the account back to be forwarded to the directors of the HBC.68 This was duly done by the Admiralty in December.69 Secretary Barclay, in his turn, refused it and forwarded it to Vancouver Island with a note that the colony ‘may consider £47 15s a large sum for the entertainment of one person [original emphasis] for 9 or 10 days’, and enquired if these charges were to an established scale and, if so, could they see a copy.70 A copy was duly supplied and the rates were, indeed, correct.71 Financial matters were made worse since the only place Blanshard could obtain food and other supplies was at the company store and, not being in HBC employ, he was charged the higher, stranger’s, rates. He had to pay 300 percent on the cost price of HBC goods delivered to Fort Victoria, whilst officers of the HBC paid a premium of only 33 percent.72 As the time of Blanshard’s service coincided with the gold fever in California, demand on the western seaboard of North America was great and this was reflected in high prices for goods. It may be enquired why Blanshard had agreed to take on this post without salary or expenses. The reason was that he had been ‘promised 1,000 acres [405 hectares], of land when … [he] went out’, having a verbal agreement to this effect with Sir John Pelly.73 If any such promise had been made to Blanshard it was false or ‘evaded’, to use the term from an anonymous 1858 book.74 Alternatively, perhaps Blanshard had just misunderstood, for there was to be 1,000 acres reserved for the governor, ‘This grant is not made to him as an individual but in his public capacity and will always belong to the Governor for the time being.’75 The anonymous author of 1858 had Blanshard ‘fairly harassed and starved … out of office’;76 Blanshard himself put matters more circumspectly in a letter to Earl Grey on 18 November 1850: ‘heavy expenses have been thrown

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on me by the HBC contrary to my expectation, for my passage out and during my residence here.’ His situation had become ‘straightened’, he wished to resign and pleaded to be given passage on a naval vessel to Panama, rather than have to face the greater expenses of the long voyage round Cape Horn or the long journey overland from San Francisco.77 Later that same day Blanshard restated that ‘my private fortune is utterly insufficient for the mere cost of living here, so high have prices been run by the HBC’ and noted again his health problems, his ‘ague’.78 There were further pleas to Earl Grey later: ‘I find it impossible to remain here much longer on account of increasing weakness’, was one in February 1851.79 Blanshard’s resignation was accepted on 3 April. Grey’s tone was formal, indeed cold, he was ‘pleased to accept’ the resignation and had passed on the request for a navy passage to Panama. There was no expression of thanks to the governor for carrying out his unremunerated office,80 which Blanshard later estimated had cost him personally £1,100 per year.81 Blanshard recommended that the government ‘appoint some person as my successor whose larger fortune may enable him to defray charges which involve me in certain ruin’.82 Blanshard acknowledged Grey’s acceptance of his resignation on 11 August,83 and Thomas Robinson reported that month that he was ‘breaking up the establishment and selling off’, adding that he, himself, hoped to return to Vancouver Island.84 In fact Blanshard tried to get land for him but failed.85 His master did not wish to return and Richard Blanshard finally left Vancouver Island and his offices of governor, commander-in-chief and vice-admiral, grand but empty titles which had meant so little, on 1 September 1851, nine and a half months after he had first requested to depart. Blanshard was charged £300 for his passage home, the first leg of which was, as requested, on a naval ship, HMS Daphne, to Panama.86 His experiences on the Chagres River remained unhappy and he lost most of his luggage in it, including his copies of his official papers.87 Blanshard had a formal interview with Earl Grey soon after his return to England, as reported in the Court Circular in The Times,88 and later, as an ‘embittered soul’,89 he gave evidence to the 1857 parliamentary enquiry into the company’s affairs, in which he stated that he had ‘hoped that my services might be considered by Her Majesty’s Government afterwards’.90 They were not and, unsurprisingly, Richard Blanshard never took up another colonial position, his experience in Vancouver Island having been ‘all so different from what he had expected’.91 He married soon after his return and spent his life on family estates in the south of England, dying in London at the age of 77 in 1894.

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‘I shall address you soon on Colonial affairs’: Chief Factor Douglas as governor ‘I think it right to offer you privately my advice’: the HBC consolidates power There seemed to be general agreement between all parties that another governor ‘would not take the office on the same terms that Mr Blanshard did’,92 and so the crown turned to the company for the new governor, Herman Merrivale from the Colonial Office writing to Pelly saying that ‘it becomes necessary that a successor to Mr Blanshard should be appointed and I am to enquire whether the HBC have any gentlemen to recommend for the situation.’93 Sir John Pelly, who did ‘not think that Governor Blanshard acted as he ought to have done’,94 reverted to his original choice of James Douglas to be this gentleman (Figure 5.3). In the letter of 15 April 1851 in which Douglas was first informed that he would be the company’s nominee, he would have gone on to read that ‘since writing so far it is understood that Lord Grey will appoint you Governor on receiving an official recommendation from the Governor and Committee which has been sent to his Lordship. You may therefore expect to receive the appointment accordingly in due course.’95 This happened the following month.96 There seemed to be no need to enquire whether Douglas was prepared to take up the post. On 30 August 1851, the day before Blanshard left, a council was appointed on Vancouver Island. James Cooper and John Tod were made councillors, their positions confirmed by an order in council the following March,97 and James Douglas was appointed senior member to ‘fill the place’ of the governor.98 Blanshard was instructed that ‘By this means Mr Douglas will be in a capacity to open any letters that may come addressed to you or the officer administering the government, until his commission, which it requires some time to make out, shall arrive.’99 In the National Archives in England there exists a draft of Douglas’s commission, which is nothing more than a copy of that of Blanshard, with the names altered in longhand. There are marginal notes, between Earl Grey and his officials noting that the HBC had protested about having to pay for Blanshard’s commission to be drafted, would likely protest again about having to do the same for Douglas, and so the re-use of Blanshard’s commission would save money.100 On 31 October 1851, the day following receipt of his commissions, which were dated 19 May, James Douglas acknowledged his appointments as ‘Governor and Commander in Chief in and over the island of Vancouver and its dependencies’, also, via the Admiralty, his appointment as vice-admiral. He assured Earl Grey that ‘Royal instructions will be faithfully executed … to the honour and advantage of the crown as well as the interests of HM subjects in this colony’. 101 Chief Factor Douglas also received letters

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Figure 5.3 Governor James Douglas

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from the Hudson’s Bay Company about his new responsibility. Sir John Pelly confirmed that ‘in your position of Governor you are responsible to the Crown alone through the Colonial Office and the HBC have no control over you’, but tellingly added that ‘I think it right to offer you privately my advice and opinion of what ought to be your course of conduct.’ To be fair, most of the rest of this long letter was concerned with matters of good governance, about forming a council, making laws, appointing a judge and so on but company interests did intrude, especially regarding finance. The colonial trust fund could not be used to pay the salaries of officials and the HBC looked for taxes to be raised to pay for these in due course, but, presumably given that Douglas, unlike Blanshard, was the company’s creature, they agreed to meet his salary, together with that of his clerk, the clergyman and schoolmaster; noting these ‘would be the only expenses to be provided for at present’.102 As mentioned above Douglas’s initial salary of £300 was below the norm for a colonial governor, although he would also have an income as Chief Factor. There was a realisation that the company’s business had to be separate from that of the colony; Barclay twice told Douglas this during the early months of his governorship.103 However, the HBC continued to advise Douglas openly on matters outside the economic sphere of company activity: ‘I shall address you soon on Colonial affairs’ wrote the company secretary to Her Majesty’s governor and commander-in-chief.104 The HBC, though benefiting from Douglas being governor, was nonetheless conscious that his colonial duties distracted him from fur trade affairs. When Douglas was further appointed to be lieutenant-governor of Queen Charlotte Island, it was accepted that the appointment was necessary, but the HBC hoped ‘that the duties which this office will entail upon you will not add much to the weight of those you have hitherto performed nor interfere materially with the business of the Fur Trade’.105 Douglas’s reply surely conveyed a hint of weariness: ‘I will discharge the duties of my office to the best of my ability.’106 The day before he wrote that letter in 1852 Douglas had sent another message to Barclay, this one marked ‘private’. He confirmed his promise of ‘faithful discharge’ of the duties of his new post but in this confidential correspondence added his concerns over the workload from his growing portfolio of offices and his competence relating to some areas of responsibility. He particularly felt ‘at a loss’ over procedures, especially in the legal sphere, regarding Queen Charlotte’s Island. Douglas had had no legal training and was already looking to the appointment of an attorney general for Vancouver Island, which would ‘leave me more time for the extensive business correspondence I have to maintain and for the proper duties of the executive department, which I now get through only by dint of unreasonable toil

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and application’.107 He later expressed these concerns officially in a despatch to the Colonial Office, writing of the: duties of another office involving an amount of labour and responsibility while I have no assistance whatsoever in the administration of public affairs while any function of Government, whether Military, Judicial, Executive or Clerical must be performed by me alone, a range of duties too extensive and dissimilar in their nature for my unaided strength to attend to with satisfaction to myself or advantage to the public.108 He made a similar complaint years later when he was ‘in great perplexity for want of efficient help, having neither the assistance of a Colonial Secretary, Treasurer or Accountant … [and] it would require a full set of efficient officers to perform the duties that now devolve upon me alone’.109 Things were made more difficult if the unusual circumstances of the company colony threw up matters of confusion. One minor issue was whether despatches and official forms should be sent to the island by company ships or naval vessels.110 Then, when a hospital for the use of the navy had been erected at Esquimalt, Douglas enquired of the Colonial Office ‘to direct whether that outlay is to be defrayed out of the Imperial Treasury or from Colonial funds and if the latter that the wishes of HM Government to that effect may be communicated to the Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’.111 A major issue was the defence of Vancouver Island. Douglas was constantly concerned as to how it was to be managed and how its costs were to be met as when his council employed company assets to protect the colony as with the use of the HBC steamer Otter from 1854 as a guardship during the Crimean War (see Chapter 7). On occasion Douglas exceeded his powers as colonial governor. Following the loss of the brig William he, as vice admiral, held an enquiry into the deaths of persons at sea. For this he was praised by Sir George Grey at the Colonial Office, but for him to have gone on to organise a vice admiralty court, Douglas was firmly instructed, was inappropriate as the Admiralty would have had to approve of it and the lack of any professional lawyers on Vancouver Island would have made this unlikely. Douglas was to try crimes committed at sea in the colony’s ordinary courts, as if the offences had been committed onshore, the lack professional lawyers apparently not being a concern in these circumstances.112 The Colonial Office seemingly felt the need to restrain Douglas’s power, especially when in 1856 he was reminded of the need to appoint an assembly (see Chapter 6). This may have been to reduce perceptions

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about conflicts of interest. In the biography of Douglas’s fellow council member, John Tod, it is stated that when Douglas was appointed governor few believed that he ‘would be any more than an agent for his employer’,113 and this perception had been drawn to the attention of the Colonial Office in 1855 by John Powell Mills, master of Colinda (see Chapter 2): I have recently arrived from Victoria Vancouver’s Island at which place I have been most maliciously and cruelly persecuted by the authorities there – the Honourable HBC – who at the same time are the Representatives of the British Government. Mr James Douglas is Governor, Chief Factor of HBC and was also my agent. I assure you, Honourable Sir, this colony is far worse than a foreign port for any British subjects to reside in or go to, to trade, on account of the most despotic, arbitrary power these gentlemen are invested with – for proof of these assertions, Honourable Sir, you may get every individual’s statement residing there.114 The relationships between Douglas and the assembly that was subsequently elected were difficult, the governor being reluctant to see his authority challenged (see Chapter 6). ‘Mr Douglas is too full of his appointment’: two governorships Company-crown relations entered a new phase when it was made clear that the HBC grant over Vancouver Island was not to be renewed after 1859 following the recommendation of the parliamentary enquiry of 1857.115 The HBC immediately tried to rein in expenditure. The company secretary instructed Douglas in November 1857 that he was to ‘use all due discretion in the public expenditure’; only disbursement ‘actually necessary for the maintenance of the Government’ was to be permitted, unless money was raised locally by imposing new dues or taxes.116 Instead, in the summer of 1859, Douglas applied to the HBC for advances on the account of the colonial government. Douglas’s successor as HBC representative was Alexander Grant Dallas, his son-in-law. Another son-in-law was Dr John Helmcken, Speaker of the House of Assembly and also Chief Trader for the HBC; Chief Justice David Cameron was Douglas’s brother-in-law. These men formed the ‘family-company compact’,117 derided by Amor de Cosmos, the ‘stormy petrel of British Columbia politics’ according to his commemorative plaque in Victoria. Later the Registrar General of British Columbia married Agnes, third daughter of Douglas, who was by then governor of that colony.118 Douglas and Dallas argued on occasion, most notably on the question of lands claimed by both company and colony, but Dallas initially helped out over colonial finance, his father-in-law

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‘being without means to carry on his government … To extricate him from his difficulties I advanced a further $2,000 on condition that … he would treat it as a loan’. Dallas complained that ‘Mr Douglas claimed as a right what I was willing to concede only as a favour’ but then accepted that even favours were anyway to cease: ‘I take note that I am to make no further advances to the Colonial Government from the funds of the HBC under any pretence whatsoever.’119 The company declared that its policy was not to go beyond the terms of the original grant and their responsibility for Vancouver Island’s governance had ceased on 30 May 1859.120 Douglas noted with some bitterness the ‘satisfaction’ of the Duke of Newcastle at this decision,121 and he continued to enquire as to how colonial expenses such as the salaries of colonial officials, including himself as governor, were to be met.122 The government’s position was that: ‘they have no wish whatsoever to see any provision made beyond what the very limited means of the community will allow for civil government of the island … Vancouver Island like other British Communities, however small, must expect no assistance from without towards those ordinary and regular expenses of her government.’123 If that was not clear enough, the next despatch contained the phrase ‘it is absolutely necessary that the island should provide for its own civil expenditure.’124 Douglas had been told to pay expenses from resources under the control of the legislature, including sale of crown lands, reported an official to the colonial secretary sometime later.125 A particular controversy arose over the erection of public buildings. In 1858 Douglas had been reminded by the HBC to: ‘curtail the expenditure on account of the company by all the means in your power, and avoid entering upon any new undertaking, such as public buildings, roads, bridges etc.’.126 Douglas, perhaps beginning to become distanced from the HBC as his future career lay elsewhere, did not heed this instruction. Victoria houses today the grandiose British Columbia parliament building, a neo-baroque stone edifice from 1898. This replaced on the same site wooden government buildings known as the ‘Birdcages’ from both their shape and the fact that they were notoriously draughty, and it was these buildings that caused the controversy. To Douglas they were ‘required for the public offices of the colony’ given that the existing building used for government purposes was extremely small and incommodious and since the great increase of business in consequence of the causes which led to the establishment of the colony of BC and the rapid increase of the population of Vancouver’s Island it has been found absolutely impossible to carry on the public business in that building with the degree of method and regularity which is so essential to public interests and

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which is so necessary for avoiding delay in the transaction of public matters.127 There was a need to relocate also the offices for other public business, which ‘had hitherto been transacted within the stockade of the Hudson’s Bay Company’. Douglas thought that selling off the government building’s plot in the middle of town would release sufficient funds to erect the new buildings, although he admitted there was a problem over the colonial government’s title to the land on which the old offices stood. Nonetheless, he declared that he had made arrangements with the HBC for a sum of £6,500 to be transferred. The new buildings were erected in what is now the heart of Victoria but was then ‘sufficiently near to the town while removed from its noise and confusion’. Douglas thought that the total cost would not far exceed the £6,500 and that any extra expense could be met from the sale of town lots.128 The Duke of Newcastle sent Douglas a coruscating criticism of his actions: ‘I am at a loss to understand the ground of the proceedings. Both you and the agent of the HBC must have been fully aware that the licence of the Company was due to expire.’ Negotiations had been taking place between the government and the HBC about settlement of the accounts, ‘You cannot therefore have expected that when incurring this expense on the very eve of the termination of the licence that any portion of the expense would be ultimately defrayed by Her Majesty’s Government … I must direct you to cease at once all further expenditure on these buildings.’129 Enclosed was a copy of a letter to the HBC confirming that ‘after the actual expiration of the Company’s licence or in immediate prospect of its expiration’, the government would not meet any costs.130 Henry Berens for the company, shamelessly but successfully just blamed Douglas, distancing him as colonial governor from the HBC itself. Your Grace must be aware that the Officers conducting the monetary and commercial affairs of the HBC in the Colony can only look to the Governor representing the government as the party to determine what disbursements are required for the wants of the government, and if the Governor decreed it necessary that certain buildings should be erected for government purposes, it would not be the business of the officers of the Company to express any judgement … This Company have no means of knowing what passes between the Governor and the Colonial Office. They can only assume he acts under instructions from the Home Government.131

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For his part, Douglas assured the Duke of Newcastle that there would be no call upon the British Government to meet the cost of the new buildings, (although in the event the colonial accounts record expenditure of £9247 19s 2d by January 1861, far in excess of the £6,500 previously mentioned).132 He did admit that he had not obtained the ‘sanction’ of the House of Assembly for this plan and that there were opponents of it there: ‘it was questioned … as is every government measure for means best known to themselves’.133 Further, Douglas pointed out the HBC had granted Governor Blanshard £400 for the erection of buildings and that the land they were on was held by him and his council as trustees for the colony and this was the land sold in order for Douglas to erect the ‘Birdcages’,134 although it was also claimed by the HBC.135 Faced with such resistance from both company and governor, despite the fierceness of his letter in July 1859, the Duke of Newcastle withdrew his objection, accepting that the cost of these building should be borne by the British Government ‘as coming within the head of expenditure incurred by the HBC during their tenure on the island’.136 As for the HBC, they agreed that the land should be released for colonial government purposes although they felt it was actually in company ownership as fur-trade land. Nevertheless ‘in order not to cast a slur upon the proceedings of the governor’, the project should go ahead.137 The ‘Birdcages’ were built. Douglas’s growing distance from the HBC increased with his appointment as governor of British Columbia: his ‘complete loyalty to the Company … no longer bound him’.138 Douglas added British Columbia to his role as governor of Vancouver Island Colony, but it was made clear to him by the Colonial Office where his focus should be, for while ‘the soil of … [Vancouver Island] is as yet held under the expiring licence of the Hudson’s Bay Company … it is British Columbia which now demands and indeed may almost absorb the immediate cares of its governor’.139 Crown and company competition for Douglas’s ‘cares’ can be made out from a letter now, sadly, faded and largely illegible, from Thomas Fraser at HBC House to Alexander Dallas: ‘I can quite understand that Mr Douglas is too full of his appointment with Governorship of the new colony to pay much attention to the demands [?] of our trade.’140 Further, as another letter of the same date makes clear, Douglas ‘would be called upon to relinquish all association with the HBC’.141 In what was a busy day for Fraser he also wrote to Douglas informing him that the HBC had recommended him to be Governor of British Columbia on account of his ‘distinguished abilities’, ‘great experience and knowledge of the country’ and that this recommendation had been accepted. The company, thus, still played a significant role in the affairs of this region even though their official position had disappeared. The letter concluded, properly, with acknowledgement of Douglas’s service to the

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HBC on Vancouver Island and the areas adjacent, expressing ‘in the name of the Governor and Committee as well as my own the deep regret we feel at the prospect of losing the services of an officer who has been so long and so intimately connected with the affairs of the company and who has always administered them to our entire satisfaction’.142 Douglas replied that he regretted having to abandon his company role: ‘the possession of the office [Governor of British Columbia] is accompanied by conditions which I dislike and will involve my separation from the business which has formed the object of my past life’.143 Correspondents to the HBC locally had to be advised that Douglas was no longer in charge of fur trade affairs ‘owing to his numerous government duties’.144 James Douglas was appointed as Companion of the Order of the Bath in recognition of his work on Vancouver Island – ‘how grateful I am for your kind notice of my public service’145 – and he accepted the position as Governor of British Columbia in a ceremony at Fort Langley on 19 November 1858, if with echoes of the lack of enthusiasm he had once shown about being made lieutenant governor of the Queen Charlotte Islands, for ruling British Colombia was ‘a post of great difficulty and responsibility which I have neither sought nor coveted’.146 And it was typical of Douglas’s growing concern about both finance and status that he hoped that the ‘salary from HM Govt will be adequate to my support in a manner worthy of the position’. He reminded the Colonial Office of the high cost of food, clothing, servants’ wages, labour, ‘in short every necessity of life’.147 Upon his appointment to British Columbia in addition to Vancouver Island, four Chief Factors of the HBC, including relatives and long-time colleagues, wrote to Douglas stating that ‘through the instrumentality of the Company’s officers and resources’, of which ‘Your Excellency formed the head’, the ‘foundation of a great colony has been laid. Though the connection be now severed, we need hardly add that our best services and influence shall always be at Your Excellency’s disposal in the prosecution of the arduous labour now before you.’148 In practice, the HBC moved swiftly on and Douglas became a potential impediment to company interests. This may be seen in 1863 when the British Government was looking for development of the naval base at Esquimalt with better access from Victoria. The HBC wanted land needed for the purpose to come from the holdings of the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company, which would increase its value, whilst income from the sale ‘will go towards cancelling the debt to the HBC’. It was hoped that Mr Douglas would make ‘no difficulty’.149 Douglas held his dual governorships for six years during which time he engendered opposition in both colonies, which was not to the liking of the Duke of Newcastle, the colonial secretary, who was seeking actively to promote their unity. In a memorandum sent to his officials in

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1863, Newcastle stated that Douglas ‘is to be relieved of both governments. I made this as little unpleasant to him as I could and told him that when I wrote to him officially I would take care to prevent his enemies having a triumph over him’.150 Arthur Kennedy was commissioned ‘in room of Mr Douglas’ as governor of Vancouver Island Colony on 11 December 1863, as a pro forma held in Colonial Office files confirms.151 He was an Irishman from County Down, who had been a soldier before joining the colonial service, where he had been governor of both Sierra Leone and Western Australia. Kennedy spent much of his tenure of Vancouver Island in conflict with the assembly. When Vancouver Island was united to British Columbia, Frederick Seymour, governor of British Columbia since 11 January 1864,152 took on the united colony from 22 October 1866.153 Seymour was also an Irishman and had been in the colonial service since 1842, serving in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), Antigua, Nevis, and British Honduras before being appointed to British Columbia after Douglas’s retirement.154 Kennedy, though doubtless disappointed at being superseded, was knighted and resumed an otherwise successful colonial career becoming governor of Hong Kong and Queensland.155 ‘The Crown, the Colony and the Company’ Upon Douglas’s retirement he was made Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, becoming Sir James Douglas. His entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography praises the sense of responsibility which accompanied him in his journey from company man to colonial governor: ‘During his long service in the fur trade Douglas had never taken a furlough nor been absent one day from duty. As colonial governor, he had dedicated himself to responsibility and toil. His manner was singular and pompous but he could never consent “to represent Her Majesty in a shabby way”.’156 Douglas, ‘Old Square Toes’,157 inspired respect, even where there was disagreement on policy. Joseph Pemberton wrote that ‘although I may differ from him on some question touching land and labour … personally nothing but the best feelings exist’.158 Roderick Finlayson, who had built Fort Victoria with Douglas in 1843, stated that ‘Mr Douglas … was cool and determined – painstaking, methodical; would never be hurried … He considered over matters well and would carry out his determination with resolution and vigour. He … was a disciplinarian – strict and would allow no-one to impose on him. He also possessed force of character and would not be disobeyed.’159 Douglas himself thought that being governor of Vancouver Island was ‘responsible and disagreeable’,160 but ‘I have done my duty faithfully both as respects the Crown, the Colony and the Company.’161

6 THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY GOVERNANCE OF VANCOUVER ISLAND

‘True and absolute lords and proprietors’ In the original grant of Vancouver Island to the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) drafted in 1848 the HBC was made ‘true and absolute lords and proprietors’ of Vancouver Island, ‘saving always the faith, allegiance and sovereign dominion due to us [the crown], our heirs and successors’. There was no specified requirement as to the establishment of a government or legal system, other than a statement that the company ‘should defray the entire expense of any civil and military establishments which may be required for the protection and government of such settlement or settlements’.1 The following year the Administration of Justice (Vancouver’s Island) Bill, introduced by Earl Grey, stated that when a local legislature was established in Vancouver Island it would be lawful it to ‘make provision for the administration of justice’ as a printed marginal note had it, summarising much legalese in the body of the text.2 In the meantime, Earl Grey instructed Governor Blanshard ‘to make such provisions as you may consider most advisable both for the apprehension of offenders and the trial of prisoners and the conduct of civil cases subject, however, to the powers which the legislature of the island will hitherto be able to exercise in altering such provisions’.3 Despite him having had legal training, unlike his successor as governor or, indeed, the colony’s first chief justice, the barrister Richard Blanshard made only one actual law, an act regulating the importation of spirits in 1850 (see Chapter 3).4 The government system to be established was set out in Blanshard’s commission, repeated word for word in that of Douglas. The commissions were of great length, but their requirements may be summarised in one phrase: ‘reasonable laws and Statute as shall hereafter be made and agreed upon by you with the advice and consent of the Council and Assembly’. Thus, there was to be a local bicameral legislature, although its decisions could be rendered ‘utterly void and of none effect’ if judged

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to be repugnant to the established law of the United Kingdom. Council members, appointed by the governor, ‘shall hold their places in the said Council at our pleasure’, ‘our’ meaning the crown’s. The assembly, which was to be called by the council, would be elected, with the franchise limited to freeholders possessing twenty or more acres (eight hectares) of freehold land but the ‘said Council shall have full power and authority to make and enact all such Laws and Ordinances as may from time to time be required for the peace, order and good Government of the said Colony’, so there was no practical necessity for a lower chamber. The governor was to have a ‘negative voice’ in the making or passing of laws; anything of which he did not approve could be halted.5 ‘Said Council shall have full power and authority’ Richard Blanshard did not establish an assembly and did not wish to appoint a council, composed, as would have been inevitable, ‘entirely of the officers of the HBC’.6 Earl Grey accepted this as a temporary situation, urging that ‘no unnecessary delay should take place in constructing your council and establishing the prescribed institutions for the Government of the Colony’.7 However, only the day before he left office did a council, which Blanshard had ‘constructed’ just three days earlier, actually meet, when it was necessary to assure succession.8 James Douglas had to be on the council, but it is noteworthy that as well as a loyal HBC man, John Tod, Blanshard was able to appoint a member antagonistic to the HBC in James Cooper. Cooper, an Englishman, had worked for the HBC, as a ship’s mate, then master, from 1844 to 1849 when he gained experience of the region to which he returned as an independent settler. He took land at Metchosin in 1851 and soon became involved with a group critical of Douglas and the HBC. He left Vancouver Island in 1856, later returning to become harbour master when he stood for the assembly. He disappeared from the island in 1876 and no details about the rest of his life are known.9 Tod was a Scot who had worked for the HBC since 1811, becoming a chief trader by 1834. He moved to Fort Victoria in 1849, where he took a farm before retiring in 1852 having been on furlough for the previous two years. He was never promoted to chief factor, partly through having fallen out of favour with Sir George Simpson, who found him vulgar, and Tod’s biographer has characterised him as being a ‘rebel in the ranks’. Tod served on council until 1858,10 and afterwards remained in Victoria where he died in 1882. Douglas appointed Roderick Finlayson to council in 1852, before its second meeting, as a replacement for himself.11 Finlayson was a Scot who had worked for the HBC since 1837 and had, with Douglas, established Fort Victoria in 1843, being in charge of the trading post from 1844 until Douglas returned to the island in 1849. He first purchased land for him-

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self in 1851 by which time he had been promoted to chief trader. He became chief factor in 1859 when Douglas had to resign from the HBC upon his appointment to the dual governorship. Finlayson was a council member from 1852–63 and later, in 1878, six years after his retirement, became mayor of Victoria. He died in Victoria in 1892, almost fifty years after helping to build the original fort.12 John Work was appointed in April 1853 as a fourth member of council, ostensibly to make it easier to reach a quorum of three, perhaps also because as a loyal HBC man he would help to outweigh the rebellious Cooper.13 An Irishman who had been employed by the company since 1814, Work became a chief factor, also Vancouver Island’s largest landholder. He supported Douglas and the company loyally until his death at his estate in 1861. In 1853 Douglas wrote of his councillors that ‘I believe them to be loyal subjects and honest men and they are moreover the largest freeholders in the colony and should therefore … be disposed to promote its interest, which is so clearly identified with their own’.14 That they were company men, or at least had been, was not mentioned; perhaps it was just understood as Douglas was writing to the HBC secretary in response to criticisms of the council in American newspapers. The composition changed in 1858 with two more appointments: Donald Fraser, who wrote for The Times, and promoted emigration to Vancouver Island; and Alfred John Langley, who was a businessman who had migrated to Victoria during the gold boom of that year and wrote a book on the colony.15 David Cameron, a Scot who ran a sugar estate in Demerara before moving to Vancouver Island to manage the coalmine at Nanaimo and was subsequently made the chief justice, was appointed to council in 1859.16 In 1862 the council was divided into executive and legislative branches, both with the same membership, but the latter was to deal solely with law, the former with other business.17 ‘Removing all doubts as to the validity of our local enactments’: establishing an assembly Establishing an assembly was more complex than the HBC governor nominating colleagues to serve on council for ‘there existed no organised demand for representative government … the Home Government nevertheless insisting upon the creation of an elective Assembly.’18 The HBC knew an assembly was supposed to be elected, but the governor in their employ, James Douglas, faced the same problem as the more independent Richard Blanshard: the lack of suitable people to serve or even to be electors, given the twenty acres (eight hectares) freehold threshold for the franchise. In 1852 Douglas reported to the Colonial Office that it was not expedient to call an assembly until ‘there be a sufficient number of persons of education and intelligence in the colony to form the mem-

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bers’; in the meantime he would continue to rule with the advice of his council, informed by the laws of England.19 The company might also have been comfortable with a situation where there was no meaningful public participation in the governance of their colony. The Colonial Office, distrustful of the power exercised by or through the agent of a commercial company despite their being those ‘true and absolute lords’, simply insisted that an assembly be established. That this was deemed to be a noteworthy issue might be signified by the correspondence on this matter, over ninetten folio pages, being issued as a parliamentary paper in 1857.20 The first entry is a despatch from Henry Labouchere to Douglas pointing out that Blanshard had been ordered to establish an assembly and that whilst there was a clause in the governors’ commissions empowering them to make laws ‘with the advice of his council only[,] perhaps this was introduced with the view of creating a legislature to meet the immediate wants of the community before Assemblies could be summoned’. That Douglas had hitherto governed with just a council was ‘a fair understanding’ of his authority, but it was now doubted by colonial lawyers ‘whether the Crown can legally convey authority to make laws in a settlement founded by Englishmen even for a temporary and special purpose, to any legislature not elected wholly, or in part, by the settlers themselves’. The clause in the governors’ commissions about the council alone being able to make laws was ‘unwarranted and invalid’ and Douglas was to call an assembly ‘at once’, fixing its size and constituency boundaries as he saw fit. It was made clear that an assembly, once called, might ‘surrender its power into the hands of a single chamber’ as in some small West Indian islands, but this did not occur and Vancouver Island Colony maintained its bicameral legislature until union with British Columbia. Labouchere realised that forming an assembly was a task ‘of some difficulty as well as responsibility’, especially given the lack of assistance available to the governor and the ‘peculiarities’ of his position but he ended his long despatch appealing to Douglas’s ‘public spirit’.21 Douglas replied in a more emotional tone than he usually adopted, a measure, perhaps, of his unhappiness at this unwelcome development: ‘It is, I confess, not without a feeling of dismay that I contemplate the nature and amount of labour and responsibility which will be imposed upon me in the process of carrying out the instructions.’ He approached the task ‘with diffidence’, pointing out his lack of legal or administrative support and his ‘very slender knowledge of legislation’. Douglas looked forward to the government’s ‘kindly-promised assistance and support’.22 Confidence in that assistance was misplaced, if the phrase had ever had a meaning that went beyond a formal politeness: Douglas’s first appeal for a ruling regarding the assembly was met by Labouchere stating that ‘it is

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probable that that difficulty will have been resolved before the receipt of this despatch’; hopefully so, for it contained no advice whatsoever.23 Having received his instructions Douglas was basically left on his own; Labouchere stating that ‘I am satisfied from your language that you are fully prepared to encounter that responsibility and to take the necessary steps.’24 Ever the experienced administrator, Douglas began to consider his way forward. He declared himself ‘utterly averse to universal suffrage’, his decades of service in the hierarchical HBC presumably colouring his opinion, but was concerned that the landholding threshold for the franchise might be too restrictive. He sought permission to extend voting rights to ‘all persons holding a fixed property stake’ be that housing or land, for this group would have the motivation to seek to improve the ‘moral and material condition of the colony’.25 However, after consulting council, Douglas decided to stick with the original qualification,26 a decision ratified by Labouchere, who pointed out that once elected, an assembly could decide upon a different threshold.27 Five days after first mentioning to council the demand for an assembly Douglas reported on its structure: four electoral districts returning seven members, who would have to meet a qualification of possessing freehold estate worth at least £300. He expected the assembly to convene within a month.28 With so few qualified to become representatives he feared ‘our early attempts at legislation will make a sorry figure’, although having an assembly, he assured Labouchere, ‘will have the effect you contemplate, of removing all doubts as to the validity of our local enactments’.29 Douglas issued proclamations announcing the election and detailing the constituencies in July 1856.30 One rural district, Esquimalt and Metchosin, was to return two members; the others, Sooke and the mining settlement of Nanaimo, one member each. Victoria had three members. The rural districts had so few electors that the representatives were ‘mere nominations’, but there was a lively contest over the seats for Victoria with five candidates standing.31 The new assemblymen contained familiar names such as Joseph Pemberton and Dr John Helmcken, the latter being elected speaker, so connections with the HBC were strong. There were others with less affection for the company. One was John Muir, the patriarch of the family of Scottish miners who had been mistreated at Fort Rupert and who was now running a logging business at Sooke, which district he represented. Another potential rebel was Edward Edwards Langford, bailiff of one of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC) farms, who took one of the Victoria seats. Governor James Douglas formally opened the General Assembly of Vancouver Island Colony on 12 August 1856 with the members of the Legislative Council also being present, claiming pompously but, surely, inaccurately, that this was ‘the first instance of representative institutions

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being granted in the infancy of a British colony’ (Bermuda’s assembly first met in 1620, eight years after its organised settlement). Another ‘remarkable’, and more accurate, claim was that ‘Self-supporting and defraying all the expenses of its own government … [Vancouver Island] presents a striking contrast to every other colony in the British Empire, and like the native pines of its storm-beaten promontories, it has acquired a slow, but hardy growth.’ The prose became even more purple: ‘So unbounded is the reliance which I place in the enterprise and intelligence possessed by the people of this colony, and in the advantages of their geographical position that with equal rights and a fair field, I think they may enter into successful competition with the people of any other country.’ The ‘fair field’ allusion was to the need for a reciprocity treaty with the United States, which did not come to pass. Then with ‘the interests and well-being of thousands yet unborn’ who would revere or condemn their acts ‘according as they are found to influence for good or for evil the events of the future’, the chief justice administered the oath of allegiance to the new members (Figure 6.1).32 Despite such ringing exhortations, there was an immediate controversy over the new assembly and a challenge to Douglas’s authority in that one member raised a question of the validity of the process whilst two others were challenged regarding their qualifications to have stood for election.33 Edward Langford was dismissed as the speaker determined he did not meet the property threshold. He was replaced by an HBC man, Joseph McKay, who was returned without opposition. The embittered Langford went on to become a considerable opponent of Douglas and the HBC (see below). The relationship between the assembly and council proved difficult to formalise. Several years after the assembly’s establishment, the council issued a ruling that the different houses were co-ordinate branches of a legislature instituted for the welfare and good government of the colony and such being the case the Council conceives it has as good a right to amend any proposed law that may be sent from the Assembly to the Council as the Assembly has the right to amend any proposed law which may be sent from the Council to the Assembly.34 The intermittently poor relations between the assembly and the company-dominated executive will be discussed below. ‘I have employed Mr Cameron almost incessantly’: the Supreme Court of Civil Justice Organised government needed a legal system beyond the governors acting as judges. Blanshard was a barrister but Douglas had no legal train-

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Figure 6.1 Members of the Vancouver Island Assembly, 1856 ing and law books had to be sent to help his legal deliberations; he acknowledged a consignment as late as May 1854, although by that time a judge had been appointed.35 Earlier, in March 1853 to help reduce his legal workload, Douglas appointed district magistrates, including all four PSAC bailiffs: Edward Langford, Donald McAuley, Kenneth McKenzie and Thomas Skinner, also James Cooper’s estate manager, Thomas Blinkhorn.36 Seven months later, David Cameron, the HBC manager at the Nanaimo mine was also appointed.37 Douglas was disappointed at the magistrates’ performance even given their inexperience and lack of legal training but as he explained later during his long dispute with Edward Langford, there had been no choice of candidates.38 In September 1853 it was found that improper records had been kept in one case and the council decided to limit the magistrates’ jurisdiction to cases dealing with issues of less than £100.39 A professional, salaried, judge was needed it was decided at the next council meeting,40 and in December the council passed an act to establish a Supreme Court of Civil Justice with jurisdiction over the whole colony, for all cases where the amount in dispute exceeded not £100 but £50. The judge’s salary of £100 would, it was proposed, be paid from the fees charged for spirit licences.41 David Cameron, despite having no legal training and having been magistrate for

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only three months, was proclaimed Chief Justice of the Vancouver Island Supreme Court on 7 January 1854,42 and Douglas informed the Duke of Newcastle about the appointment.43 Cameron had been a draper in Perth, Scotland before migrating to become a sugar estate manager in Demerara, then to Vancouver Island as manager to the Nanaimo coalmines, for which he received an annual salary of £150.44 He was married to James Douglas’s sister, Cecilia, which, added to his lack of legal qualifications, made his appointment controversial. Several of the magistrates, including Blinkhorn, Langford and Skinner, also James Cooper and the Reverend Robert Staines petitioned unsuccessfully against Cameron’s selection,45 but he was approved by the crown in April 1856,46 the same month that Douglas received from Henry Labouchere a detailed despatch on the conduct and practice of court procedures;47 Douglas proclaimed Cameron’s appointment in May 1857.48 Establishing a legal system, even with a dedicated judge to assist, took Douglas’s attention away from commercial affairs, one of the tensions of the company colony, as Douglas confirmed to the HBC the following year: I have employed Mr Cameron almost incessantly in organising and bringing into working train the Law Courts of the Colony. That labour has been enormous and not unsuccessfully executed as Her Majesty’s Government have approved and sanctioned with a very few alterations the Rules and Practice for the Supreme and Inferior Courts of Civil Justice of Vancouver’s Island as drawn up by Mr Cameron … The Law Courts above all other departments of the fur business have paramount claims on my attention and have taken much time to arrange … but the worst is over.49 Perhaps as a consequence, later that year a legally qualified judge from England, Matthew Baillie Begbie, who had been justice in British Columbia, had his practice extended to Vancouver Island.50 Begbie was recalled by Finlayson as a man ‘who dealt justice with a stern and vigorous hand. He was a terror to evil-doers, especially in the gold excitements of ’58 and after years.’51 There was also a dispute over how Cameron would be paid, despite the council agreeing to use spirit licence fees. The colony accounts show that Cameron received £150 in June 1855,52 and there were other payments of similar size or less, and it seems that Douglas had subsequently applied to the Colonial Office to meet Cameron’s salary as a public official, but without clearing this with the HBC to which Henry Labouchere had simply passed on the application for funding.53 This saw Douglas having to explain to John Shepherd, the HBC governor, that ‘I certainly never had the slightest intention of overlooking the Governor

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and Committee’s right to be consulted on all questions involving Colonial expenditure.’ His view was that the salary of the Chief Justice ‘would be provided out of the public treasury and that the Company would not be charged for that expense’. He assured Shepherd that Cameron still kept the coalmine’s accounts and in an uncharacteristically expansive passage stated that whilst the expenses of the Supreme Court would be met by fees, the judge should have a salary giving ‘the advantage of having the fountain of justice running pure and the judges placed above suspicion of venality.’ He suggested a ‘moderate sum’ of £400 per annum.54 The company did pay, but only £100 p.a. This was until 1860 after which Cameron’s salary was no longer a matter for the company whose control had ended and it rose to £800, met from income from sales of land.55 It might be thought that the establishment of governance structures, particularly the representative democracy of the lower house would be a sign of growing maturity for Vancouver Island and bring satisfaction to the settlers as would the establishment of a legal system with professional judges. However, in the company colony, the development of such institutions just promulgated protests against the company by those who saw its power being extended. In the case of the assembly the protestors included some of its members; Governor Douglas’s antipathy towards setting up the lower house was to seem like foresight. ‘The Governor and Committee are quite prepared to meet any charge’: resistance on Vancouver Island ‘Warm discussions’ in the House of Assembly From 12 August 1856, the people of Vancouver Island (excluding the indigenous inhabitants) had an official voice as the House of Assembly opened. Its mission set out by Governor Douglas was to aid the executive from the representatives’ ‘local experience and knowledge of the wishes of the people and the wants of the country’.56 Such ‘wants’ did not always coincide with those of the company and rather than aiding the executive, the assembly challenged it; demanding that Douglas throw light upon the political position of the colony and detail funds and income from land sales. Douglas had to explain why the HBC kept ten percent of proceeds from land sales and timber and mineral royalties.57 The assembly had alternative views as to what should happen to income from spirit licences, opposing the governor’s decision that it should be handed to the HBC to be placed in the trust fund.58 There were demands for better postal services and infrastructural improvements. All these came in the first four months of the assembly’s existence to the end of 1856, despite six of its sixteen meetings being adjourned.59 The following year brought demands for voting reform to ensure better representation

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from the towns and for the ‘entire revenue … to be placed under the control of the Legislature’. At this same meeting came an ingenuous but potentially troublesome enquiry as to ‘what sums have been expended in England by the honble [honourable] HBC and for what purposes?’60 With changes to voting regulations allowing more townspeople to vote, there was ‘a warm discussion relating to privilege’ over whether council members could themselves vote.61 Answers to questions put to the governor regarding courts, coal royalties, Chief Justice Cameron and the desire for a reciprocity treaty were read at a meeting in June; at the next meeting it was openly discussed whether the HBC should have to surrender their private interest in Nanaimo coal.62 In August a complaint about beer licences was made; many meetings in the autumn had no business, but in December there was a discussion about the education system.63 In short, the Vancouver Island Assembly chafed under company domination, despite most of its members being company men. This did not mean that all company men had changed their spots. In 1858 there was a disagreement within the assembly between James Yates, a publican and landowner, and the colonial surveyor, Joseph Pemberton. Yates gave notice that he intended to ask Pemberton by what right he was employed in surveying ‘private property’ of the HBC and PSAC and whether the two companies reimbursed the colony for his time. At the subsequent meeting Pemberton observed that he was not bound to answer, ‘He was not under the jurisdiction of the house. The house did not vote his salary – in fact he was engaged to the Hudson’s Bay Company and to them alone he was answerable.’ Yates considered the reply an ‘insult to the House’, but the matter was dropped.64 The House of Assembly originally met in HBC property, but perhaps it was symbolic of the growing distance between the company and this body which had been imposed upon their colony’s governance that in 1859, Douglas informed the assembly that the HBC was no longer prepared to facilitate them and he had made arrangements to transfer the Assembly to the court room attached to the new police station. The police had been instructed to ‘prepare for your reception without delay, in a manner befitting the dignity of your Honourable House’.65 This move might be identified as being part of the withdrawal of the HBC from government as the revocation of the charter drew nearer. Indeed, the day following this news, James Yates, one of the malcontents associated with Councillor James Cooper, demanded that Douglas advise the British government to send commissioners to the island to make ‘a thorough investigation into the affairs of this colony before releasing the HBC from their responsible government’.66 Douglas acquiesced, perhaps with reluctance.67 The assembly was keen to see the back of the HBC and

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Douglas answered a question in May 1860 on ‘whether the Home Government has assumed its proprietorship of this island and cancelled the HBC’s grant in this Colony’. His response was that preliminary steps had been taken.68 It might have been expected that relations would improve once the HBC charter had been revoked unless antagonism between a governor and a colonial assembly was inevitable. One example will suffice to suggest the latter is the case. In 1866 the assembly described the governance situation in Vancouver Island as comprising ‘two incompatible and hostile forces’. On the one hand was the assembly, the ‘representative power’; on the other was the governor and council, viewed by the assembly as the ‘despotic power’ and ‘the one to yield must not be the repressentative power’. Governor Arthur Kennedy of Vancouver Island, by then a crown colony, was ‘acting in a hostile manner to the best interests of the country’.69 Kennedy’s comments to the Colonial Office denied the assembly’s claim that he had ‘supreme control’, if rather wishing that were the case, whilst he, in his turn, charged the large majority of assemblymen with ‘unfitness and incapacity’.70 ‘Singularly deficient in judgement’: Edward Langford Resistance came also from other quarters, some of it associated with individuals or groups of people, at other times stimulated by events. One person who was a constant thorn in the flesh of the HBC and James Douglas was Edward Edwards Langford. He was a former army officer and farmer from Sussex in the south of England, who had taken up a position as bailiff on one of the PSAC farms. Perhaps he had heard of Vancouver Island through being a ‘distant connection’ of Richard Blanshard. Blanshard certainly knew of Langford’s case, detailing the terms of his contract to the 1857 enquiry, although he had thought that Langford was coming to work for the HBC rather than the PSAC.71 Langford emigrated on Tory, arriving at Fort Victoria in May 1851 when he took over the first of the four PSAC farms. According to Blanshard’s evidence, Langford had cause for disappointment, for on the property prepared for him were just two one-room log huts, one for his family, the other for his labourers. Upon arrival, Langford’s wife was close to giving birth and Blanshard accommodated her until the delivery, ‘being sorry to see any English lady reduced to such a state of inconvenience’.72 Whilst Langford was energetic, he was also profligate, erecting a fine house and living well beyond his means, building up a considerable debt to the HBC. As early as July 1853, Andrew Colvile wrote from the HBC in London to say that he was ‘very much disappointed with Mr Langford’.73 He was given notice in 1855 and became antipathetic to Douglas and the HBC, signing the petition against the appointment of David Cameron as

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chief justice, for example. Douglas later described Langford as ‘singularly deficient in judgement, temper, and discretion’.74 Langford was the member disqualified from sitting in the House of Assembly in 1856, as he had not property sufficient to meet the £300 valuation threshold. The vote to expel him was 3:3, with the speaker, John Helmcken, perhaps significantly the HBC doctor, using the casting vote to remove him. There were even outright allegations of unfair practices: James Cooper in evidence to the 1857 parliamentary enquiry stated that ‘There is a gentleman out there of the name of Langford, who has been a bailiff under the Puget Sound Company for some five or six years, and they wish very much to get rid of him’.75 Langford offered himself for election again in 1859 but withdrew after a pamphlet parodying his election address had been circulated. He sued for libel over this and had his day in court but later declared the proceedings to be ‘improper, illegal and vexatious’ and was found to be in contempt of court when he refused to answer a question from Chief Justice Cameron, which was ‘irrelevant’, ‘inquisitorial and harsh’. Langford was fined ten shillings and, seemingly worse, was ‘locked up with felons, Indians and maniacs.’76 Langford continued to pursue those he thought responsible for the election parody until both friends and enemies contributed to his passage money to remove him from Vancouver Island.77 In England Langford continued to complain about the HBC, now to the British government, stating that he had been unfairly stopped from purchasing land, the parcels he wanted having been reserved for the PSAC. This land would have become valuable during the 1858 gold fever: ‘I was anxious in a legitimate manner to realize something after a long residence in Vancouver Island barren as to any pecuniary benefit. I could … have re-sold the land at five times the original cost.’78 Langford’s protests dragged on for years, Douglas was forced to rehearse the case again in 1860,79 and not until 1863 was Langford finally informed that the British government was not disposed to take up his case.80 Douglas, seemingly irritated beyond measure by Langford’s long campaign, wrote to the Duke of Newcastle wishing that he were in England so that he might pursue Langford ‘for such a malignant libel on my professional character’.81 ‘Too much uppishness’: Reverend Robert Staines Robert John Staines was a teacher from Northamptonshire in England who was educated at Cambridge University. He worked in Ireland from where his employer brought him to the notice of the HBC, then seeking a dual appointment of teacher and clergyman for its Pacific district. Staines was hastily ordained in 1848 in order to qualify. His wife, Mary, was also a teacher and both were appointed, not originally for Vancouver Island but for Fort Vancouver the company settlement in what is now

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Washington. However, whilst they were sailing there in 1849, the HBC decided to transfer their regional headquarters to Fort Victoria and that became the Staines’s destination. Their vessel, the HBC barque, Columbia, was skippered by none other than James Cooper, who was to become Staines’s co-conspirator on the island. Reverend and Mrs Staines were rather too grand for their new environment. Dr Helmcken recalled that when he arrived at Fort Victoria in 1849 he had been taken round the settlement by Roderick Finlayson and remarked upon the puddles only to be told that ‘when the Revd Mr Staines came a few months ago it was much worse and when Mrs Staines landed we put down what we could for her to walk on. She wanted to know where the streets were’;82 ‘too much uppishness’ was one summary.83 ‘A man full of frill’ was another characterisation, this from Finlayson who told the story of Staines’s visit to the Sandwich Islands en route to Vancouver Island. Staines waited upon the king, dressed soberly in clerical garb; his servant, though, was resplendent in livery. The king assumed the man in the colourful costume to be the more important and rushed past Staines to greet the servant – Reverend Staines ‘was awfully disquieted’.84 The Staineses were disappointed to find that nothing had been prepared for their arrival. Nonetheless, they organised schooling whilst Staines held services in the hall of the fort each Sunday. He also took on an agricultural holding, but was reluctant to pay for it ‘under various pretexts’ wrote Douglas, disapprovingly.85 Staines’s relationship with Douglas became strained, another cause being over a court case involving accusations that he had stolen pigs; in his evidence to the 1857 parliamentary enquiry James Cooper has Staines being ‘persecuted’ by Chief Justice Cameron over these pigs with the implication that this was in revenge for Staines having hitherto been ‘obnoxious to the authorities’.86 A third cause was a complicated dispute over a couple wishing to marry, even though the woman might already have had a husband. Staines had published the banns to be criticised by Douglas for having done so.87 Staines joined other malcontents such as James Cooper, Edward Langford and Thomas Blinkhorn and was amongst those who petitioned against the appointment of James Douglas as governor. Finlayson characterised Staines as the chief agitator saying the others followed him in complaining that the governor ‘could not do justice to the colony being at the head of a commercial house. The governor could not please both parties.’88 Staines was also thought to be the anonymous author of commentaries critical of the HBC in American newspapers. Staines had, wrote Douglas, a ‘disagreeable manner and unyielding temper’,89 which perhaps explains why his career as a teacher began to flounder, which, as his salary was paid by the parents’ fees, was a consid-

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erable problem. The boys under his charge made but little progress, although the girls taught by Mary Staines did well: ‘she kept the pupils in order, took them out, saw they were properly and correctly dressed’.90 By May 1853 several parents had refused to pay the fees and the £340 needed to support the school each year was not forthcoming. Douglas recommended to the HBC that Staines be given notice,91 but the following day had to transmit demands by Staines that the company guarantee his salary.92 In reply, Barclay regretted the school was declining ‘through the inefficiency and unpopularity of Mr Staines’, but ‘it is for the supporters of it to apply such remedy as may appear to them to be proper’.93 There was a dispute also over £100 annual gratuities guaranteed by Douglas to Staines, which were a mistake and needed to be ‘written back’, Douglas was told, Barclay adding ‘it is not necessary that he should be made acquainted with it’.94 Staines sent letters of complaint to Douglas, but these were returned by the governor’s secretary, with the cold message that ‘the Governor of Vancouver’s Island … does not deign to reply to such communications.’ Matters relating to the HBC rather ‘should be addressed to Mr John Work Esq., who will give them due and proper attention’.95 Writing later in 1854 Douglas concluded that the grievances from the group including Cooper, Staines and Langford were ‘less real than imaginary [for] … the frugal and industrious are rapidly improving their condition in life; there are no taxes, no public burdens, the laws are justly administered, the means of education are extending, intemperance is on the decrease, and crimes almost unknown’.96 Staines was dismissed as teacher by the HBC in 1854, although allowed to continue as chaplain. Instead, without the company’s leave, he fled towards England, his fare raised by public subscription, in order to present another petition, this one to the Queen, critical of the appointment of David Cameron as chief justice. However, his ship, Duchess of San Lorenzo, was lost in the Juan de Fuca Strait shortly after setting sail and Staines and all others on board perished. Mary Staines, who had not accompanied her husband on the fatal voyage, later returned home.97 In a statement written presumably before knowledge had been received of Staines’s drowning, the HBC company secretary declared that ‘the Governor and Committee are quite prepared to meet any charge brought by him or others against the Company in respect of their management of Vancouver’s Island.’ The company could dismiss Staines as a maverick – ‘as a schoolmaster, clergyman [and] citizen Mr Staines’ conduct [is] unsatisfactory’ – but the letter expressed also a hint of concern that officers of the HBC might join in his complaints.98 Sir George Simpson, whilst expressing token regret that this ‘unfortunate man’ had perished, nonetheless thought that ‘the desertion of the Rev R.J. Staines

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… I have no doubt will be generally considered a very satisfactory mode of getting rid of that troublesome person’.99 James Cooper objects ‘to being subject to the Hudson’s Bay Company’ James Cooper, the council member, had 300 acres (121 hectares) at Metchosin, which was managed by Thomas Blinkhorn, ‘by far the most energetic settler on the island’.100 Cooper himself concentrated on trading with San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands using a forty-five ton iron schooner, Alice, which he had brought out, disassembled, aboard Tory in 1851. He also took land at Esquimalt and had a share in a tavern in Victoria. Cooper traded lumber mainly, according to a witness to the 1857 parliamentary enquiry,101 also potatoes and cranberries, but as the cranberries were purchased from indigenous people on the Fraser River, this contravened the HBC monopoly on such trade and James Douglas, then just the company representative, protested. This dispute pushed Cooper into Richard Blanshard’s camp of people antagonistic to the HBC, which may explain why Cooper was appointed by Blanshard as a councillor just before the governor left. As noted, Cooper signed the petition against Douglas assuming the governorship. In the second meeting of the council in April 1852, the first under Douglas, there were disputes between the two men. Cooper was overruled by Douglas when he tried to nominate Edward Langford as his substitute whilst he was away from the island, Douglas ruling that appointments were personal. There was a further dispute between them over whether the cost of the surveyor should be borne by the company or the colony.102 Another issue Cooper had was with the HBC over the charge for his passage out on Tory. The company secretary wished ‘every indulgence’ to be shown to Cooper regarding this charge, adding, however, that this ‘had to be consistent with the ultimate security of the debt’.103 Relationships worsened when Douglas forbade members of the council to sell spirits, thus adversely affecting Cooper financially as a tavern owner, as well as the matter being couched in intemperate language, the minute noting that holding a liquor licence was ‘derogatory to the character of a member of council’.104 Cooper took this personally and wrote the colonial secretary. Claiming to be unconnected with the HBC, his previous career as a ship’s captain for the company being disregarded, Cooper said he was just a general dealer who sold spirits in units of above two gallons (nine litres) only, which made him a wholesaler not a retail dealer and should have prevented him having to purchase a spirit licence.105 The following year Douglas reported that he wished to create a revenue from divesting the publicans of ‘a part of their ill-gotten wealth for the benefit of the colony’, going on to observe that this ‘measure was fiercely resisted by the whole body of publicans aided by Mr James Cooper, a member of the

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council and unfortunately for his own credit and the public good, proprietor of one of the licensed houses’.106 In his letter, Cooper had made the claim that he was subject to ‘a premeditated scheme to obtain my withdrawal from council as the vacancy could [then] be filled with individuals more congenial to the wishes of the HBC’. The colonial secretary forwarded that letter to Douglas with a warning that he had taken note of its contents even though it had not been sent through official channels, such channels, unfairly in the circumstances, being through the governor.107 In 1853 Douglas had his secretary, Richard Golledge, write to Cooper to reprimand him formally for not attending council meetings and John Work was appointed to council officially in order for it to be more often quorate, but it might be observed that Work was a loyal HBC man. Cooper was expressly forbidden to cite the lack of a road for the eight mile (thirteen kilometre) journey between Metchosin and Fort Victoria as an excuse for non-attendance.108 This highlighted another resentment Cooper had in not being able to get a road out to his property. There was also bitterness about Douglas re-assigning two men, Bazil Batimean and Charbono, who had been under contract to cut and square lumber for Cooper, to join Douglas’s exploration of the east coast of the island. Cooper noted that his action ‘possibly may be legal, but is not either just or generous’.109 Cooper became active in organised resistance, for example there was a public meeting in the schoolroom in May 1853, ‘to consider the best means of promoting the interests of the colony’. Ironically, he had had to ask Douglas’s permission to use the room.110 Joining with others including Staines and Langford, Cooper protested against the appointment of Douglas’s brother-in-law as chief justice and also against the HBC’s control of Vancouver Island generally. Cooper left Vancouver Island in 1856 and returned to his native Bilston in the English Midlands and gave evidence antipathetic to the HBC in the 1857 parliamentary enquiry, his principal point being that settlers on Vancouver Island ‘objected to being subject to the Hudson’s Bay Company’.111 Cooper returned to Vancouver Island in 1858 as harbour master at Esquimalt, and he resumed his battles with Douglas, becoming a member of council again in 1860. Cooper has been described as ‘the first political agitator in British Columbia’.112 ‘Every one here with the exception of the clique appears happy’ Langford, Staines and Cooper were only the most prominent protestors against the HBC and its rule over Vancouver Island. Thus, the petition to Richard Blanshard protesting against the appointment of James Douglas as governor was signed by fifteen people claiming to represent the ‘whole body of independent settlers’. Many signatories had reasons to be anti-

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pathetic to the HBC. Six were Muirs, the Scottish mining family from Fort Rupert, who by now had settled at Sooke; another two were of the Muir party, including John McGregor who had been imprisoned with Andrew Muir at Fort Rupert. Another from Sooke was Thomas Monroe who had leased Grant’s land. The other signatories were James Yates, a landowner; William McDonald, carpenter; James Sangster, settler; Staines; Cooper and Blinkhorn. Yates was also a publican, a member of a small group who paid for many colonial expenses through the £120 annual fees they paid licences to sell spirits,113 which might have had a bearing on his attitude. The petition expressed ‘unfeigned surprise and deep concern’ that Vancouver Island’s ‘government has been committed to a chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’, which ‘being, as it is, a great trading body, must necessarily have interests clashing with those of independent colonists’. Issues highlighted were those of a political nature, as well as the judicial concern of cases inevitably being between upper and lower servants of the same company. Further, the petitioners begged ‘to express in the most emphatic and plainest manner, our assurance that impartial decisions cannot be expected from a governor, who is not only a member of the Company, sharing its profits … but is also charged as their chief agent with the sole representation of their trading interests in this island and adjacent coasts’.114 Some contemporaries and later historians such as Arthur Morton assumed the well-written petition actually to be the work of Richard Blanshard himself.115 Another case of disputed authorship related to an Oregon newspaper article, which had made a series of complaints against the HBC signed by ‘the settlers of Vancouver’s Island’. Douglas reported to Barclay in July 1853 that it was ‘supposed to be [by] Captain Cooper or some member of a little clique consisting of that person, the Rev Mr Staines, Yates a ship’s carpenter [that Yates held land and had a business is not mentioned] and Muir, a collier and publican who do anything in their power to slander the HBC and to produce impressions unfavourable to their character and government’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the HBC in London asked about the complaints. There were four: the price of land was too high; the colony’s population size was not increasing as quickly as they expected; public works were not being created as rapidly as they wished and finally, they wanted to see the grant to the HBC revoked and the island made a crown colony. There were other minor issues such as the scarcity of fresh food and business problems. The most serious issue was the HBC’s ownership, which the writers felt stopped the free issue of land, ‘their darling object’. Douglas assured Barclay that: the complaints emanate entirely from themselves … Every one here with the exception of the clique appears happy and contented.

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… It is absurd for people who are receiving benefits in every shape from the Hudson’s Bay Company to talk of oppressive sway. There is no part of the British Dominions where the civil rights of the subjects are better secured or more freely enjoyed than by the people of Vancouver’s Island and there can be no complaint on the score of public burdens as no taxes of any kind are levied and goods from every part of the world are imported free of duty … [Further,] the laws have been fairly and justly administered to the best of my ability.116 Some people from outside the island such as San Francisco merchant Robert Swanston and London barrister Thomas Bannister became involved in these protests, although in the case of Swanston, maybe the involvement was motivated by the antipathy between himself and Douglas dating back to an incident and court case involving the loss of a trading vessel in 1853 (see Chapter 3). Douglas complained to the Duke of Newcastle about Swanston’s ‘extraordinary conduct’ when he had been held in contempt of court,117 and Staines, despite being chaplain of the HBC, ‘openly took part with Mr Swanston and appeared to act as his legal advisor’.118 Swanston enquired of Bannister in late 1855 whether the Colonial Office were paying heed to the petitions from Vancouver Island, accusing the HBC of adopting ‘crushing measures’ against efforts to ‘open the eyes of the Home Government to what is going on here’.119 In another letter he claimed ‘The residents as a last effort to save the colony have begged of me to apply in the strongest terms to you to exert what influence you can bring to bear in their favour.’ Swanston enclosed material he had sent to the Colonial Office and Queen Victoria the previous year with accusations that the HBC displayed ‘apathy and indifference’ to the colonists who were ‘disheartened’ as a result. He knew of six families who wanted to leave and predicted a ‘general exodus’. An added problem was that the fact that Douglas had been supplying arms to the Americans in the Puget Sound War had become known to the indigenous people on Vancouver Island, fostering a belief that that ‘the King George Men [British] and the Bostons [Americans] are allies and the ultimate destruction of the redskin is their object. The whites on Vancouver’s Island are placed in a very difficult position that requires an abler man at the head of affairs than Mr Douglas.’120 James Cooper led a group of settlers who also made this point to Bannister, complaining that they were ‘entirely helpless’ and at the mercy of the ‘Indian tribes’. Could Bannister help to ‘advance the interest of this portion of the British Empire’?121

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‘Frightful excitement and alarm’: the appointment of David Cameron Douglas’s assurance of contentment amongst the mass of residents was shaken after he made David Cameron chief justice. Ninety people petitioned Douglas against the appointment of his brother-in-law to this office in February 1854 on the grounds that judges should be ‘men of the highest repute for honour, honesty and impartiality’; should have ‘through a lifetime of unwearied and arduous application have proved their ability in the honourable profession of the law’. Yet David Cameron had lived on the island for only a few months and as a magistrate he ‘has most signally failed in impressing us with a sense of his integrity and uprightness’. The petitioners thought Cameron to be ‘rash and indecorous in his language’ and ‘totally void of the little practical knowledge necessary to conduct business of a Magisterial Court’, yet he had now been promoted. They begged Douglas ‘to alter your decision and thus allay the frightful excitement and alarm’ occasioned by Cameron’s appointment. They requested a qualified judge be sent from England.122 Douglas corresponded with the Colonial Office about the petition saying he was unsure of how to respond as the grievances, he claimed, lacked detail. He accepted there were perceived problems about Cameron being an employee of the HBC, but so were the magistrates company servants, being PSAC bailiffs, and such was ‘an unavoidable evil as there are no qualified persons in the colony’.123 Douglas was backed by all council members (except Cooper) who, together with ten others ‘representing nearly all the colonial proprietors’ had sent a counter-petition to Douglas demanding that the petition against Cameron be set at nought: ‘if the unreasonable clamour of a few individuals who have little or no vested interest in the island were found effectual to rescind important enactments framed expressly to protect property we feel that law and order would be in jeopardy’. Anyway, Cameron was ‘the fittest man here of those not already professionally occupied to preside in such a court.’124 Many of Cooper’s group sent another petition to the Queen with Reverend Staines, but he having drowned on the journey, they forwarded a second copy. Metaphorically ‘approaching the footstool of your throne’ they begged the Queen’s permission to express concerns about ‘grievances inflicted by the local government’ of Vancouver Island, demanding in place of the governor’s brother-in-law as judge, a man ‘of adequate integrity, ability, learning and experience in whom we can impose our entire confidence’.125 In the original covering letter to the Duke of Newcastle, which was also re-sent, issues were raised about Cameron’s ‘improperly close family connection to the governor’, his lack of experience of Vancouver Island, the inappropriate nature of his former employment at Demerara in a ‘slave colony’ and, echoing the earlier complaints of Blanshard, the impropriety of somebody being both an emp-

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loyee of the HBC and the judge. If there were to be a dispute at Nanaimo ‘it might not improbably fall to Mr Cameron’s lot as a judge … to adjudicate upon cases in which he was a principal party’.126 Despite such pleas, Henry Labouchere informed Douglas the following month that David Cameron had been confirmed officially as Chief Justice.127 Later an official from Downing Street wrote to Swanston to assure him that the Colonial Office had not overlooked the representations against Cameron, but a report from Douglas about him was found to be satisfactory and ‘in the absence of any more eligible person’, Labouchere had recommended to Queen Victoria that Cameron be confirmed.128 The campaign against Cameron continued for years, even after he was no longer the sole judge on the island. In evidence to the 1857 parliamentary enquiry, James Cooper claimed that settlers were ‘unanimous in their opinion, they have no confidence in the courts of justice; our supreme judge has not been educated to the bar; I believe all the knowledge that he gains is from books; for instance, before he can decide upon a case, he has to refer to his book even in the most common case’.129 In addition, Cooper expounded upon the conflict of interest theme in Cameron’s appointment: ‘it so happens that the gentleman holding that appointment [as judge] is the brother-in-law of the Governor (who is also a paid servant), and paid by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and therefore many cases that come under his notice must of course clash with the interests of individuals’.130 During Edward Langford’s long dispute with the HBC, which saw him correspond with the Duke of Newcastle as late as 1862, he produced evidence collected, presumably with considerable effort, from both Demerara and Perth to show that Cameron had been in financial difficulties before he went to Vancouver Island.131 His case was that ‘Mr Cameron is a man of obscure origin with no legal education whatsoever and a very imperfect general one; he was an uncertified bankrupt in Scotland and … an insolvent debtor in Demerara’, his appointment ‘rendering the proceedings in the law courts in the Colony a theme of scorn and derision’.132 Cameron was required to respond and admitted that he had indeed got into debt in Perth through being too liberal in extending credit, and again in Demerara when the labour supply ‘became fickle and unsteady’ upon the emancipation of slaves. He moved to Vancouver Island because of his wife’s health. There was no mention in this response of his wife being the sister of James Douglas. As part of the Langford case, Douglas was obliged to justify once more his appointment of Cameron, nine years after the event. He wrote that he did not know Cameron had failed in business, confirming that he had come north to seek a more temperate climate for the sake of his wife. Again, the relationship between this woman and Douglas was not mentioned. Otherwise, Douglas’s refrain was the familiar tale of the small island hav-

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ing a limited pool of talent from amongst whom Cameron was ‘undoubtedly the most fitting person I could obtain’ to become chief justice. He was a man of business, had had a liberal education and whilst Douglas could claim for him only ‘some legal knowledge … what was equal to all, [he was] possessed of more than an ordinary amount of discretion and common sense’. He ascribed Langford’s antipathy to jealousy, given that he had been senior magistrate at the time of Cameron’s appointment.133 The confines of the island are highlighted well in the Cameron case, even more than in the other protests. The scale of island society was such that there really was no person with legal training residing there. Further, the inherent inconsistencies of the company colony can also be seen. A petition to the governor, who was a company man, complaining that another company man, who was also his brother-in-law, had been chosen as judge led to an enquiry by the crown of the governor about his brother-in-law and the governor responding positively, the petition was dismissed. ‘Idle rumours and suspicions that we wished to monopolise all the land’: the Puget Sound Agricultural Company Another cause of complaint was the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. Originally formed by the HBC to exploit agricultural lands on the Columbia River and Puget Sound itself when the company had holdings in that area; when the HBC had to retrench to Vancouver Island, the PSAC came too, although some plans had been made for them as early as 1849.134 In April 1852 James Douglas, who had management of the company as part of his wide portfolio of responsibilities, reported that the PSAC had commenced operations on Vancouver Island with a large agricultural establishment at Esquimalt and a smaller one nearer Victoria.135 A few months later, Andrew Colvile from the HBC in London instructed Joseph Pemberton, the surveyor, that the PSAC was to be restricted to the four farms already occupied or planned, with Edward Langford, Duncan McAuley, Kenneth McKenzie and Thomas Skinner as bailiffs and in a later report this can be seen to be the position, although their holdings were set out in five units, McKenzie managing two of them (Appendix 4, Table 6.1). Colvile wished to restrict the growth of the PSAC as this would ‘put an end to all these idle rumours and suspicions that we wished to monopolise all the land’.136 Colvile’s use of ‘we’ was significant for many connected with the island regarded the HBC and the PSAC as the same organisation. Governor Blanshard, for example, thought the PSAC ‘had no real existence’;137 ‘I never could discover any difference between them’ he told the 1857 parliamentary enquiry, adding in response to a later question that ‘men even came out saying they were HBC servants and it appeared that their agreements had been entered

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into with the Puget Sound Company’. One he mentioned specifically in this regard was his relation, the bailiff, Edward Langford.138 Blanshard had been told by Earl Grey in 1851 that the companies were separate, but countered by observing that James Douglas of the HBC was in charge of the other company and that PSAC employees could buy at HBC rates in the company store,139 obviously a sore point given his own experience in these premises (see Chapter 5). In sum, ‘the evidence appears to prove that a select few of the HBC formed the Puget Sound Company’.140 One consequence was that the PSAC had access to land which, as with the HBC reserve itself, was not then available for independent settlers. Thus, Douglas had to confirm that land being issued to James Cooper in 1852 did not infringe the PSAC reserve.141 Another issue was the efficiency of the PSAC. The four bailiffs were not all effective agriculturalists, the problem of finding suitable employees prepared to move to wild and remote Vancouver Island applied to this sector as to others: ‘I am very much disappointed with Mr Langford and Mr Skinner who do not seem adapted for a new country or for establishing farms in the wilderness’ wrote Colvile. Skinner had complained bitterly that ‘nothing was done for his accommodation, and that means of cultivating the farm were not supplied to him and we fear he is not more adapted to succeed in a new country than Mr Langford proved to be’. Douglas was instructed by Colvile to make Skinner and Langford ‘strictly and honestly’ perform their duties under threat of dismissal. This fate was already being considered for Langford who had brought little land into cultivation, had lost hundreds of sheep and paid scant attention to his men or the business.142 There was at one time a plan to erect a town on PSAC land and Pemberton reported that he had been instructed by Douglas to lay out a site and appoint Langford as the agent. Pemberton advised against the scheme and it did not come to pass,143 even though Andrew Colvile was in favour although he would not have employed Langford, whom he thought to be unsuitable.144 Colvile held out more hope for Kenneth McKenzie, who operated his farm with ‘energy’.145 For example, in 1853 there were complaints about the cattle management system, which basically involved hunting the feral beasts with rifles fired from horseback. This was not efficient, as many cattle were not killed immediately but wandered off to die in the woods, their meat wasted. A more ‘cultivated and compact system was required’ and McKenzie, the best bailiff – ‘a few more such men would make the Puget Sound Company as profitable a concern as could be wished’ – was to be consulted.146 Indeed, later that year Pemberton advised that ‘the most intelligent’ of the managers, clearly McKenzie, should run the whole PSAC operation as a co-ordinated unit.147 This had the added benefit of relieving Douglas of one of his burdens: ‘from the multiplicity of your

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duties we cannot expect that much of your time or attention should be devoted to the affairs of the PSAC’. Douglas was to receive £400 for his four-year’s service when replaced by McKenzie as agent for the company. McKenzie would supervise the other three farms as well as run his own.148 Sadly, as a later historian reported, ‘Mr McKenzie, as general supervisor, muddled his accounts so that all the company knew that it was grossly involved in debt.’149 Finlayson noted that the PSAC did not flourish as most of the labourers sent out to work the land ‘left for California gold diggings. Bailiffs had been sent with them to take charge of the farms … but not all adapted to a new country … the end was a collapse; there were no profits’.150 On the positive side, the PSAC did produce some livestock and crops to help meet the needs of the local population, as well as those of the British navy and Russian customers to the north but with regard to colonisation, the presence of this company was a barrier. The position of the PSAC as a dominant landholder and agricultural producer was seen to stifle opportunities for independent settlement whilst the company’s close links with the HBC stimulated unease on Vancouver Island and, as this chapter has demonstrated, the presence of the HBC itself in its dominating position on Vancouver Island was the cause of more than unease, it bringing forward resistance.

7 VANCOUVER ISLAND, WESTERN CANADA AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD

Foreign relations were always a difficult matter for those responsible for Vancouver Island Colony. The Hudson’s Bay Company had a charter to run the island, but foreign relations remained a reserved power for the British Government. This was especially the case with regard to warfare, as was made clear in the instructions issued to Governor Blanshard who, despite being commander-in-chief and vice admiral, was ‘not under … any power or authority hereby given to you [to] commence or declare war without our knowledge and particular commands therein first obtained from us under our sign manual and signet, or by order in our Privy Council’.1 Declaring such reserved powers was one thing; putting them into operation from London, thousands of kilometres and months distant was quite another. Another issue was the British Government’s consistent disinclination to spend money on Vancouver Island, which included a reluctance to pay to defend it, whilst the power on the spot, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), usually lacked the personnel and matériel to become involved in military activity. Douglas was conscious of this weakness against potential aggression and pleaded often with the Admiralty and the Colonial Office for warships to be sent to or, better, stationed, at Vancouver Island. When there was a navy ship at the island to support him, Douglas could even become belligerent. As early as 1849, before the declaration of the colony, Chief Factor Douglas thanked Admiral Sir Phipp Hornsby for the protection afforded to the HBC and their British subjects against lawless Americans.2 In its colonial era, Vancouver Island faced mightier foes and might well have entered into a state of war with both its foreign neighbours, the USA to the south and Russian America to the north.

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‘The colony can do little if left to its own resources’: Vancouver Island and the Crimean War Isolated Vancouver Island was close to the action in the Crimean War. This 1853–56 conflict – Russia versus Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire – as its name suggests largely focused on the Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula now in Ukraine. However, the war spread into other theatres and there was action also in Turkey, the White Sea, the Baltic and the Pacific. This last theatre saw naval engagements between Russia and the allied nations of Britain and France, including the siege of Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula, where there was an allied landing in 1854. There were also landings on Sakhalin and in the Kuril Islands. It seemed as if Britain might take action against Alaska, which was then, and until its sale to the USA in 1867, Russian America.3 The nearest organised British territory to Russian America was Vancouver Island, and there had long been trade between the two places,4 Blanshard reported that wheat was sent there for example,5 and there were formal contacts between Governor James Douglas and Governor Nickolay Rosenberg in New Archangel.6 However, there had also been conflicts in the region; a £20,000 loss by the HBC occasioned by the aggression of Russian authorities at Sitkine in 1834 being one cause of contention.7 During the Crimean War this proximity became dangerous, with the potential for Vancouver Island to become entangled in a geopolitical conflict of a scale far beyond its ability to handle. That nothing actually happened is known only through the privilege of hindsight, at the time James Douglas had to consider how best to defend his colony. In May 1854 he protested to the Duke of Newcastle that Vancouver Island was defenceless, but that he was considering raising an ‘irregular force of whites and Indians’, for whom barracks would be erected. Expressing a belligerence he was to show again during the rather more local Pig War (see below), he then had the temerity to advise Newcastle to mount a pre-emptive strike against the Russians by taking all their North American settlements. He declared that these were designed to be defended only against ‘savages and could not be maintained against a regular force of 500 men’.8 Douglas was reined in. His council concluded that given the small scale of the island they ‘could collectively offer no effectual resistance against a powerful enemy’ whilst ‘it was considered dangerous to arm and drill the natives, who might then become more formidable to the colony than a foreign enemy’. The indigenous people were a known and actual threat as opposed to the unknowable threat from the Russians. Council did not approve the militia plan.9 Payments to a Vancouver Island militia do appear in the colony accounts from 1854,10 but this was a body of Europeans used in actions against the indigenous people (Chapter 3) not a multi-ethnic force used to oppose

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foreign powers. Against the Russian threat the best that could be done was to charter the HBC ship, Otter, armed and manned with a force of thirty hands and officers to watch over the safety of the colony’s settlements until the British were able to make better arrangements. Otter could not have beaten off the Russian navy, but offered some protection against ‘predatory vessels acting under the authority of letters of marque’.11 The colonial secretary, by then Sir George Grey, answered Douglas’s May despatch and, like the Vancouver Island Council, thought that establishing an irregular force was a bad plan. As to leaving the defence of Vancouver Island against Russia to the distant, in every sense, British government, his rather sanguine – and economical – view was that Vancouver Island should just receive occasional naval visits as ‘there is nothing in present circumstances of the war with Russia to forbid the hope and expectation that [this] will not suffice for the protection of the island’.12 Further, Grey did not think there was sufficient danger from foreign enemies or privateers to warrant the expense of chartering Otter. Anyway, that decision had been taken without permission and the charges were disallowed.13 Douglas, affronted, responded that he was now placed in ‘a position of particular difficulty … [without] discretionary power to protect settlements in cases of great public danger.’ Otter had been chartered for only twenty days at a cost of £400; he had always been frugal with public expenditure and had been faced with ‘great public excitement’ and he had hoped that the government would ‘in due course provide for the payment of the expenditure in question’.14 In the end the government did pay.15 In February 1855 Douglas complained once more about the lack of protection. There had been a brief call from the fleet returning from action against Russian positions in summer 1854, otherwise ‘this island has not been visited by Her Majesty’s ships since the declaration of war against the Emperor of All the Russias’. That the colony or its shipping had not been molested Douglas ascribed to the hand of providence and he had had particular concern about the HBC fur trade ship which, however, had got away successfully from the island with furs worth up to £80,000 the previous month. Douglas added people had made ‘repeated appeals’ to him for protection, leaving him in a ‘painful position’, with responsibility to protect them, yet ‘without means of any kind’ to enable him to do so. He pleaded for a naval vessel to be sent. Rather, in 1855, an agreement was negotiated by the Admiralty that secured ‘neutrality … so far as regards the possession and ships of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Russian American Company.’ Douglas seemed grateful at this, a matter of ‘a nature very important to the material interests of the inhabitants of this colony and which will moreover have the effect of allaying

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their fears and imposing confidence in the wisdom and foresight of the measures adopted by HM Govt for the protection of this colony.’ Such confidence did not last, for the next year, following a petition from the inhabitants of the island, another colonial secretary, Henry Labouchere, finally claimed credit for ‘foreseeing the importance of protecting the settlement from attack’ and ordered the Admiralty to send to Vancouver Island HMS President, an elderly fifty-eight gun frigate which had been launched in 1829.16 This decision, Douglas reported back, had ‘given utmost satisfaction to the inhabitants of this colony’.17 The ending of the Crimean War eased tensions between Vancouver Island and Russian America, but the American special agent to the British colonies in 1859 remarked that Esquimalt was being fortified, perhaps against the Russians,18 and expenditure for military cantonments there was duly recorded in the 1860 colonial accounts.19 Also in 1859 there was a dispute as to whether five Aleutian Islanders were being held at Victoria against their will as the Russians claimed or were staying there voluntarily, which was Douglas’s position.20 However, by the late 1850s, James Douglas had become more concerned with his southern neighbour, the United States. ‘Manifold cases of international relationship and feeling’: Vancouver Island and the USA Vancouver Island was granted to the HBC largely to ensure that it did not fall into the hands of Americans and the interaction between the colony and USA, a few kilometres off its coast, remained fraught throughout the HBC period. Tensions were caused by the presence of Americans on British territory, either Vancouver Island itself or New Caledonia/British Columbia, especially in the period between the discovery of gold and the organisation of the colony there. There was also a major territorial dispute over ownership of the San Juan Islands (see Figure 2.1). However, on occasion, what must be considered to be a racial solidarity was evidenced as the political and, perhaps, psychological distances between the British and the Americans were lessened by a shared fear of their Other, the indigenous people. Chapter 3 saw Douglas supplying ammunition to the Americans and then loaning his own money to succour Isaac Stevens, the governor of Washington Territory, during the Puget Sound War. He also acted as an experienced source of counsel, advising Stevens to ensure negotiations with the indigenous people took place outside his settlements and that he should demand the immediate surrender of parties who had attacked Americans.21 This did not mean that the Vancouver Island authorities were in alliance with the Americans against the indigenous peoples; Douglas supported the Americans often in his private capacity. At the official level, each incident was dealt with

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according to due process of the law. For example, in 1857 Douglas refused an extradition request relating to American army deserters who had fled to Vancouver Island on the grounds that they had not committed any crimes for which extradition could be granted.22 The ‘functionary’ versus the ‘agent of a friendly power’: British, Americans and the Fraser River Many Americans were attracted to the goldfields of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers in New Caledonia. This was a problem given the limited British physical presence in that territory, which was unorganised politically until 2 August 1858 when the colony of British Columbia was declared with James Douglas as its governor. Even before this, it was seen in Chapter 4 how Douglas, from what was the then only established British polity in the region, Vancouver Island Colony, took it upon himself to administer the exploitation of gold along the Fraser River. He was supported in such actions by the British Government. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton advised Douglas of the ‘pressing necessity’ for public order to be imposed on the Fraser River and approved Douglas’s assertion of the dominion of the crown over the region, without disallowing foreigners, specifically Americans, from entering so long as this dominion was recognised. A warning was given: ‘I need hardly impress upon you the importance of caution and delicacy in dealing with those manifold cases of international relationship and feeling which are certain to arise.’23 For the American part, President James Buchanan sent a special agent, John Nugent, to the area to report. Nugent was to remind his fellowcitizens of their requirement to respect the law, but was also to obtain from that ‘functionary’, the governor of Vancouver Island, ‘abrogation of the rigorous system of extractions’. These, such as the fees for licences to seek gold, were causing American miners ‘much exasperation’, especially as it was suggested that Douglas was imposing charges ‘as factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and not as governor of Vancouver Island’.24 Douglas reported in advance of Nugent’s arrival to Lord Napier, British ambassador in Washington, that the visit could be useful if the immigrants were to be advised to conform to British laws, but he was suspicious as Nugent was the editor of the San Francisco Herald, presumably thinking that Nugent was seeking to find sensation. However, he agreed to treat Nugent with courtesy as ‘the agent of a friendly power’.25 Indeed, Nugent reported that Douglas had adopted a ‘friendly disposition’, but would not relax the charges and had ‘remarked that there was nothing to prevent Americans going elsewhere if they were dissatisfied with their treatment’. Relations between the governor and the agent then broke down completely as Nugent objected to receiving letters signed by Douglas’s secretary rather than the governor, although this was not an

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unusual practice and the letters were perfectly polite.26 Nugent reported some cases of alleged ill-treatment of Americans and advised that a consul be appointed for Victoria to help US citizens.27 He placed a piece in the Victoria Gazette advising Americans ‘to comply with local regulations’, even though ‘it would scarcely be expected that a well-regulated government could at once be built up out of the chaotic elements suddenly thrown together in such confusion’. His tone became patronising and racist, for this ‘confusion’ might be pardoned on the part of an executive ‘hitherto dealing for the most part with savages and possibly unprepared … for the more refined exigencies imposed by governmental regulations with a white population.’ Nugent was even ruder about Douglas’s subordinates ‘who by reason of their long isolation from civilized society and their habitual intercourse with Indians had unlearned most of the finer traits of humanity and were scarcely accountable for a grossness of conduct that had become to them a second nature’.28 In his turn, Douglas was contemptuous, reporting to Napier that Nugent was ‘disqualified by disposition and temper for the position he holds’.29 The mutual dislike of Douglas and Nugent might be dismissed as unimportant; of more moment was Nugent’s geopolitical commentary to his president that whilst the British territories had little value, they could certainly be taken by the Americans whenever they wished to exert themselves to do so, whilst the ‘ultimate accession to the American possessions on the Pacific coast’ of these British territories was assumed. Special Agent Nugent had a rather more proximate than ultimate ambition for American ‘accession’ of the San Juan Islands (see below).30 It would seem that British mistrust of American intentions in the Northern Pacific was well-founded. ‘The middle of the said channel’: the San Juan Islands dispute The boundary between British North America and the United States to the east of the Rocky Mountains had been fixed in 1818 along the 49°N parallel. In 1846 the Oregon Treaty established the border west of the mountains, continuing it along the same line of latitude, dipping below only to cede the whole of Vancouver Island to Britain. The first article of the treaty stated: The line of boundary between the territories of the United States and those of her Britannic Majesty shall be continued westward along the said forty-ninth parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fuca’s Straits, to the Pacific Ocean: Provided, however, That the navigation of the whole of the said channel and straits,

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south of the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, remain free and open to both parties.31 All would seem clear except that there was no agreement as to which channel was meant in 1846 for, given that the area is studded with islands, more than one possibility exists. The British claimed that the channel referred to must have been the easternmost, the Vancouver or Rosario Channel (Strait) as that was the usual sea lane taken at that time; by contrast the Americans claimed that as the treaty was ceding only Vancouver Island to the British, the westernmost channel, the Canal de Haro (or Arro) must be the boundary. The San Juan Islands: San Juan itself, Orcas, Lopez and a number of smaller islands (Figure 2.2) lie between these channels and, thus, their sovereignty was contested. This dispute brought the countries close to conflict. In 1853 Douglas informed the Duke of Newcastle that some Americans had ‘set up a claim’ to the islands on the Canal de Arro on behalf of the USA and ‘it was [his] intention to assert’ British sovereignty. However, no reply had been received from London after his despatch, he assumed because of the problems of Colinda (Chapter 2), thus, Douglas had been required to act without advice. He had defeated every attempt of American squatters to occupy the islands and they remained a de facto dependency of Vancouver Island, unoccupied by any ‘whites’ except those at an HBC fishing station on San Juan Island. He pointed out the value of these islands given their ‘inlets abound with salmon and other fish which form a productive export and inexhaustible source of wealth. Having arable land, too, the islands ‘form an appendage of incalculable importance to this colony’.32 Douglas later reported that had informed people squatting on Lopez Island that they were committing trespass on British territory, and were liable to lose their labour and improvements. Then, ‘artfully changing their tactics, the leader of the party declared that he was a British subject and intended to settle and purchase land in the colony’. Upon this declaration, a formal licence permitting the cutting of timber on Lopez Island was issued, requiring duty to be paid to the government of Vancouver Island on the usual basis. British sovereignty thus asserted, Douglas reported somewhat smugly that the whole party soon afterwards abandoned the island.33 As a defensive measure against further encroachments ‘by our unscrupulous neighbours’, Douglas decided to establish a British settlement on San Juan Island and he received permission from the HBC Governor and Committee to use company staff in this venture. Charles Griffin, an HBC servant, was entrusted with the management of this settlement from November 1853. Douglas, in contrast to the usual policy of only selling land in Vancouver Island Colony, with agreement from the HBC in Lon-

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don offered free land on San Juan Island: 500 acres (202 hectares) would be made available without charge to any British subjects who would take the land and improve it (i.e. turn it into productive farmland). This policy had failed, there had been no takers, but the HBC’s own settlement under Griffin, Belle Vue sheep farm, was ‘in a most flourishing state’ with 2,300 head, much land under cultivation and roads running the length of the island. Emphasising that this was an HBC enterprise, not private, Douglas noted that the company had placed a plaque claiming the islands in 1845 and their fishing station had been operating since 1850.34 Douglas had also written to the Duke of Newcastle in February 1854 at great length to reinforce the case for British sovereignty of the islands. It fact, he feared that the duke might find his analysis ‘over minute’. Douglas had obviously read the Oregon Treaty carefully and now added that the Rosario Channel was the only one that ran southerly as mentioned, whilst the Canal de Arro could hardly be considered a passage at all, impeded as it was by numerous islands. In fact, Douglas claimed that at the date of the treaty these islands ‘were supposed [i.e. thought] to form part of Vancouver’s Island’, the Canal de Arro was undiscovered and thus the treaty could only refer to the passage to the east; his argument was ‘conclusive’. The ‘executive authorities’ on the American side of the border had not by any overt act contested the British position, although the Oregon Assembly had made a claim and the collector of customs of Washington Territory (which was constructed from part of Oregon Territory in 1853) had been threatening to tax British property holders on the islands as a consequence. To counter this, Douglas, lacking military forces, had strengthened the British civil authority by appointing Charles Griffin to be magistrate of the archipelago in 1854, with specific instructions that should ‘the collector of customs appear there for any unlawful purpose he will be treated precisely as a common offender’.35 Griffin was reminded that the islands were British and his duty as magistrate was to protect the property of all British subjects,36 but he later had to be told that nothing could be done against Americans until the law had been broken, even though an American tax collector was present.37 Meanwhile, Douglas arranged for Vancouver Island’s collector of taxes, Robert Sangster, to visit San Juan Island aboard Otter, to remind those there, including the American official, that this was British territory. The American, a man called Ebay, withdrew but left a Mr Weber on San Juan Island as ‘inspector’ for the United States.38 In January 1855 Douglas reported on a series of events that had taken place. First a detachment of US troops from Puget Sound with Acting Governor Charles Mason landed on San Juan with a ‘large train of lawless followers’, who strongly urged Mason to take possession, but he did

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not do so. Shortly afterwards the US revenue cutter Jefferson Davis visited and the commander waited upon Douglas to inform him that he had been instructed to enforce the US Government’s laws; that he had, reluctantly, to fulfil his orders and Douglas was warned not to have any British ships at the islands. Thirdly a sheriff of a neighbouring American county three times visited San Juan Island to try and impose taxes on British residents but was resisted each time. Douglas stated that ‘we still remain masters of the field’, but was realistic enough to attribute ‘our success … in some respect to their fear of the Northern Indians, who have become the terror of the American settlements’. The governor hoped that incursions were at an end, for he remained conscious of the comparative weakness of the British military position given the presence across the border of a large contingent of federal troops and the British could not even stop American squatters entering the islands.39 A few months later came the return of the sheriff, Ellis ‘Yankee’ Barnes of Whatcom County.40 Barnes led an armed party onto San Juan Island and demanded of Charles Griffin $80 in taxes. Griffin refused, claimed that Barnes then menaced him and stole thirty-four sheep including valuable breeding rams, and left for the American shore before help could be mustered. Douglas, informed presumably by a canoe paddling over to Victoria, had indeed sent men to help, but Barnes had already left and ‘unfortunately’ the British did not pursue. Douglas now despaired of his ‘hopes of remaining in quiet possession’, given that the ‘mob of Washington Territory’ had committed this outrage and regretted that this situation came at such a difficult time for the colony ‘at the present juncture of affairs in Europe’, namely the Crimean War. Douglas appealed once more to Admiral Bruce for protection.41 He also wrote sternly to Governor Isaac Stevens of Washington Territory, the man he had supported only a few months earlier, demanding that Barnes be apprehended or, if he was acting under orders, then Stevens should make restitution, for ‘the Island of San Juan has been under the possession of British subjects for many years and is with the other islands of the Archipelago de Arro declared to be within the jurisdiction of this colony’.42 In reply Stevens maintained ‘a guarded reserve’ as to whether Sheriff Barnes had had federal backing, but Douglas gained the impresssion that ‘the American party on San Juan were certainly not discouraged by the Federal authorities’, who seemed unwilling to displease ‘the mob’.43 Douglas’s conflicted relationship with Stevens surfaced once more when Douglas advised him that he was unable to protect American citizens on the San Juan Islands or elsewhere but he would warn the Washington governor if he thought that ‘Northern Indians’ came to ‘evince a mischievous disposition’ against US settlements.44 His contrasting hard line with the USA over the San Juan Islands had been rein-

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forced by the Colonial Office when Grey specifically instructed Douglas to treat the islands as British possessions.45 Douglas sought help in this endeavour from Rear Admiral Henry Bruce, commander-in-chief of the British Pacific fleet. Retelling the story of Barnes’s incursion, Douglas warned Bruce that ‘the territory of Her Majesty will be subject to continual violations and there will be security neither for life nor property’. In case such an appeal to patriotic duty might not be a sufficient inducement, Douglas added that he could supply provisions, he would be willing to provide a building to serve as a naval hospital and that his colony had coal.46 Admiral Bruce did arrange a naval visit, for which he was thanked, although it seems that the building that was, indeed, provided for a naval hospital cost £1,000 and Douglas was concerned as to how the cost would be met. He certainly required the navy to take charge of the building and meet its running expenses.47 Meanwhile, he advised Bruce that he could supply spars in addition to food and water, but asked the navy keep to keep an eye on the west coast where he feared Americans were engaged in illicit trade in arms and spirits to the indigenous people. It seems Governor Douglas had to engage in practices little better than bribery in order to secure the military protection that a British territory might have expected as a right, even though it was ‘the intention of Her Majesty’s Government to make this a self-supporting colony’.48 In 1857 British and American boundary commissioners, in the region to mark out on the ground the line of 49°N, were appointed to fix the boundary between Vancouver Island and the USA to clear up the San Juan Islands sovereignty issue.49 However, the following year, Douglas wrote that the boundary question remained undecided, the British and American positions unaltered.50 Once more he had to make the case for British sovereignty of the San Juan Islands to a colonial secretary, this time Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, just as he had in 1853 to the Duke of Newcastle. Douglas referred to his earlier despatch and reiterated his opinion that the Rosario Channel was the boundary: the islands ‘belonged to the Queen’.51 As might be expected the contrary view came from the American agent, John Nugent, who advised President Buchanan in 1859 that as the deviation from 49°N as the border between British North America and the United States in the west of the continent was only to cede the south of Vancouver Island because of the town established there, therefore the sea boundary should take the channel closest to that island, which would place the San Juan Islands in American possession. He also made a practical case for seeking the islands as they had good land, decent harbours, timber, fresh water and access to fishing grounds.52

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The Times featured the dispute in September 1859,53 for by that time the islands had become newsworthy. In July that year a detachment of sixty-four US troops under Captain George Pickett landed on San Juan Island (Pickett was later to become famous for Pickett’s Charge, a futile Confederate assault during the Battle of Gettysburg). The official line from General William Harney, commander of the US forces in Washington Territory,54 who wrote to Douglas without mention of sovereignty, was that the invasion had been to protect US citizens – settlers to the Americans, squatters to the British – against ‘insults and indignities’ from the authorities on Vancouver Island. Specifically, protest was engendered after a pig belonging to the HBC had been shot by an American, Lyman Cutlar, who had found it rooting in his garden, after which Douglas had threatened to evict all Americans as trespassers, thus the name sometimes used for this dispute, the Pig War.55 Douglas stated that he had been visited by Harney in Victoria a little while earlier when no such complaints had been raised.56 The American response to threats of eviction was that they did not recognise the British claim and that their occupation was to be permanent. Douglas had the luxury of naval vessels on hand at that time. He sent in HMS Tribune under Captain Geoffrey Hornby with the Vancouver Island attorney general, George Hunter Carey, on board to support the San Juan Island authorities, whilst ensuring no ‘illegality in the proceedings’ as all measures against the invading force had to be ‘carried out by the ordinary exercise of civil power’. Douglas, thus, was careful not just to rely on what might be a temporary military advantage, for that could not be sustained against his more powerful adversary; he had to have the force of the law behind him. Immediate ‘bold and decided’ military measures under this rule of law would best deter any further plans for incursion and in practical terms it was better to deal promptly with Pickett’s initial force rather than allow time for reinforcements. Douglas’s plans were thwarted by Carey reporting that the occupying force was larger than had been thought initially. The British could not expel them without ‘a strong possibility of resistance’ and Tribune would require reinforcement to mount a counter-invasion. Douglas was ready to send a second ship, but was persuaded by naval officers that ‘milder measures should be first tried.’ The naval officers would do as ordered by the governor, but ‘entered their protest against any forcible demonstration.’ Defeated, Douglas just instructed the navy to prevent any further landing and to ensure that fortifications were not built. Meanwhile, HMS Plumper was sent to British Columbia to collect some supernumerary marines to boost British forces and Captain James Prevost of the Boundary Commission was instructed to use his influence with his American counterparts to persuade Harney ‘to refrain

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taking a course which was likely to promote collision’ and damage the ‘harmonious relations’ existing between the USA and Great Britain.57 What amounted to a council of war was held in Victoria on 1 August between officials of both Vancouver Island and BC and the naval officers. Those present concluded that Pickett’s occupation of San Juan must have been under federal instructions as the action was too extensive, given its use of naval vessels, to be put down to General Harney acting alone. The meeting concluded that ‘today’ – thus before any reinforcements – the British could ‘sweep out the US troops and citizens’. However, it was not expected that this could be done without bloodshed, which would escalate the situation and could engage US federal forces, against which Vancouver Island and BC would be defenceless. It might also foment rebellion amongst Americans living in the two colonies; even a wider war with the United Sates might be engendered. Whilst ‘Your Excellency [i.e. Douglas] could for the moment amply vindicate Her Majesty’s sovereignty’, that is invade, he might not be able to maintain that sovereignty for more than a short time. ‘Under the circumstances [it would be] more prudent to abstain from anything that can excite a collision at present.’ Matters should be left to the home government.58 Thus, the military option (backed by law) favoured by Douglas was abandoned; instead ‘the withdrawal of the British subjects from the island of San Juan under protest against the act of hostility which has rendered such a step necessary’ was considered. This climb down, Douglas stressed, was not predicated from lack of courage amongst the military who would not ‘hesitate for one moment in hazarding life and property in their country’s defence’. Rather, perhaps minimising the practical points raised against his demands for precipitate action, Douglas claimed that the problem was that ‘they do not know San Juan is their country’. The governor acknowledged the navy’s position, with the politician’s expression of profound respect, nevertheless: ‘I still believe vigorous measures on our part would soon dispose of the question in our favour.’ He concluded that he had not had time to ‘weigh the measures’ recommended by the council of war or decide whether they could be carried out ‘without a complete sacrifice of British interests’.59 A week later Douglas had had leisure for ‘mature reflection’ and ‘with every deference’ to the council of war concluded that he would not ‘abandon the island to such an occupation’ and determined to land British troops there under Captain Hornby of HMS Tribune, so that, at least, both sides would be in occupation of the disputed territory. However, and in another example of his weakness: ‘I regret to say that Captn Hornby did not deem it advisable to carry out these instructions.’ Douglas now feared that the occupiers would increase in confidence as delay in taking action ‘deprives it of most of its force’. HMS Ganges under

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Admiral R. Lambert Baynes had by now arrived at Vancouver Island to increase the naval presence to five ships, so there was certainly the firepower to act, but to Douglas’s ill-concealed dismay not the will amongst the navy to do so.60 Later that month Douglas confessed that his views differed ‘essentially’ from those of Baynes. The governor wanted to invade – ‘a bold and resolute stand … [which] would have nipped their pretensions in the bud, increased the influence and added to the dignity of this government’ – the admiral did not for fear of bloodshed over such a petty issue. Meanwhile, General Harney was approaching the matter ‘in a spirit of levity’.61 Governor (and Commander-in-Chief) James Douglas, a man renowned for his pomposity, was affronted and was no doubt pleased to be able to submit a petition from the ‘most influential and respectable inhabitants of Vancouver Island’ protesting about the American incursion in a loyal and patriotic fashion.62 The Americans did reinforce, to become 400 strong, with artillery pieces, and were erecting a barracks, but the arrival of the supernumerary party from BC increased the British forces and presumably the stakes.63 Douglas reasoned that the American civilians on San Juan were only squatters, who would remove themselves if the American troops could be expelled but by September they were dug-in on the very hill Douglas had intended should be held by British forces. Harney told Douglas that no withdrawal could take place without the views of the US president being known.64 In the event, American sovereignty just increased: by October US revenue collectors were working on the islands and vessels were being required to clear customs at Port Townsend in Washington Territory. This further outraged Douglas and he once more urged action of the Duke of Newcastle: ‘Our forbearance has been great and Your Grace may rest assured that if it be possible we shall patiently and quietly await the action which may be instituted by HM Govt.’65 Meanwhile The Times, obviously unaware of the true situation, praised Douglas’s political approach, ‘his great prudence and judgement’, editorialising that ‘it would be hard indeed if children of the same stock … should find much difficulty in adjusting a petty boundary question on the coast of the Pacific.’66 In November yet another long despatch from a man who was not at all prudent regarding these barely inhabited islands was sent to a colonial secretary responsible for somewhat more significant British possessions, as Douglas once again pressed the Duke of Newcastle to permit joint British and American occupation, if this time as a civil venture with reduced troop numbers. The Americans objected, stating, once more, that their citizens needed protection against the indigenous people, although Douglas felt this could be secured by occasional naval visits and, if that policy would not suffice, the disputed territory should be depopulated until its sovereignty had been decided.67 In short, Douglas seemed ready to try anything that ended the

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situation where just Americans occupied the islands. The Duke of Newcastle ruled that a civil magistrate should remain on San Juan, that this person should do nothing to provoke the Americans and, presumably aware of Douglas’s bellicosity, expressly forbade him to land troops unless British lives or property were at risk. Meanwhile, most American troops had been withdrawn, leaving a company of fifty under Captain Lewis Cass Hunt, although there was also an American civil magistrate and customs officer. Douglas, not to be quieted, once more demanded British troops be stationed on the island as a concession that allowed an armed party of Americans to remain in sole occupation would have ‘the worst possible moral effect throughout the country’ and ‘the island would inevitably slip from our grasp’ as ‘ignorant’ American squatters, inevitably would arrive and occupy the best land, ‘the effect of which may be fatal to British rights’. He concluded with a diatribe against what might be characterised, to borrow a phrase from the next century, as appeasement: Under all the circumstances of the occupation of San Juan, confident that the offensive movement was that of an individual [Harney] and not of a government I must confess I had some doubt in my own mind as to whether the passive and non-resistant policy we had followed would be altogether acceptable to HM Govt considering the large and magnificent force we fortunately had at our disposal and that if any collision had unhappily occurred it would not have resulted from any aggressive deed on out part but simply from the responsibility forced upon us in defence of a national honour and integrity.68 Persistence seemed to pay off, for in January 1860 Douglas was finally authorised to land troops on San Juan, although he waited until he learnt the American response to negotiations initiated by Lord John Russell, the foreign secretary.69 It seems clear that this venture was not without disagreement amongst the British principals for Admiral Baynes required that he be given a copy of Douglas’s orders from the duke, as he was receiving somewhat contrary instructions from the foreign secretary.70 In the event, Captain Prevost was sent to reconnoitre and offered six sites for a British post. Baynes and Douglas settled on one of them, rejecting the offer of advice from Colonel Richard Moody, the engineer officer in BC, for fear that this would give the impression that there was a military objective.71 The Americans on the island claimed not to know that joint occupation had been agreed, but Douglas, once the troops were in place, advised that joint occupation should continue until ‘the entire removal’ of both powers could be arranged.72 In preparation for the winter the

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British were later equipped with wooden barracks, the £1,000 cost of which Douglas rather hesitantly claimed from the colonial secretary, assuring him that the ‘most rigid economy’ had been enforced.73 Even so, the Duke of Newcastle insisted on further details before payment was authorised.74 Early the following year civil administration was removed from San Juan as ‘sovereignty of the island was admitted on both sides to be in suspense’.75 Various solutions were offered. For example, The Times, to ‘terminate a protracted dispute by sensible compromise’, proposed that a channel within the archipelago be adopted as the boundary which would place San Juan Island itself on the British side and secure Canal de Haro for undisputed British use.76 However, neither party would shift and the islands remained under joint military occupation for twelve years until the dispute was offered up to the international arbitration of Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany in 1871. He appointed a three-man commission, which met in Switzerland for a year and, through the emperor, recommended in favour of the American position, that the Canal de Haro be the boundary. In 1872 when the boundary was ratified, the British troops withdrew. The San Juan Islands became part of Washington Territory and subsequently entered into statehood in 1889.77 ‘A temporary condition of imperial policy’: ‘foreign relations’ in western Canada A third ‘foreign relations’ situation for Vancouver Island Colony was with British Columbia. Vancouver Island is now part of that Canadian province but from 1858 to 1866, BC was a separate British colony and thus ‘foreign’ to Vancouver Island. In fact, given that despite various alarms Vancouver Island never did come to blows with either Russia or the United States, its relations with its sister colony and their outcomes affected the island colony more than any other foreign affairs matter. What became British Columbia was an unorganised British territory west of the Rockies known as New Caledonia. The Hudson’s Bay Company had held exclusive trading rights with the indigenous peoples there since 1838, the fur trade having begun in the region in the early nineteenth century. The company maintained a handful of trading posts that housed a few dozen Europeans. Matters changed from 1858 when the gold deposits discovered a little earlier began to be exploited. Thousands of miners were attracted as was detailed in Chapter 4 and there was an urgent need for this influx to be regulated and the industry and the society to which it gave rise to be controlled by the British. Asserting ‘the rights of the crown’ At first the task of controlling the mainland mining districts was taken up by James Douglas. Operating outside his jurisdiction as governor of Van-

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couver Island, Douglas did have legitimate interest in New Caledonia through being in charge of HBC operations throughout the region, although the company trading monopoly did not extend to immigrant gold prospectors. Douglas took a number of journeys to the mainland including to Fraser River in early June 1858, there ‘to assert the rights of the crown to enforce the revenue laws of the Empire and to protect the rights of the HBC.’78 He then proclaimed that all boats entering the Fraser River must first secure a licence from the authorities at Victoria and this was announced in The Times.79 As was discussed in Chapter 4, Douglas was enthusiastic about the economic potential of the exploitation of gold, either directly from licences and taxes or, regarding Vancouver Island, indirectly from profits made from supplying and servicing miners. However, this might be at a cost to the peace and security of the region from the immigration of the miners, most of whom were from outside the British realm with no tradition of, perhaps no expectation of, submitting to British rule. In May 1858 Admiral Lambert Baynes received a request for help as these foreigners are crowding into the British Possessions with reckless precipitation and I have pointed out the danger in forcible terms of permitting the country to be occupied by a foreign population whose sympathies are decidedly anti-British and who will never cordially submit to British rule or possess the loyal feelings of British subjects … To prevent the entrance of these people into British territory is perhaps altogether impossible with any force that could be collected within a reasonable time, but what may be easily accomplished is to maintain the authority of the Government to preserve the peace, to punish offences, and to enforce obedience to the Laws until Her Majesty’s Government are in a position to take more decided steps for administering the government of the country.80 Douglas was temporarily seconded HMS Satellite, Captain James Prevost, from the British Boundary Commission, which vessel accompanied Douglas on a trip to the Fraser River to observe the situation with the hope that ‘an imposing display of force … will have a powerful moral effect and prevent much future evil’.81 A few days later, writing from on board Otter, Douglas demanded of Prevost a well-ordered military force to support British authority and the customs officer he was to appoint ‘as the British Frontier is now violated by American vessels in the most open manner’. This was ‘in the Queen’s name’ and was an order; Douglas reserved his more beseeching tone for Admirals.82 Prevost complied and Douglas thanked him the following month when it was agreed that HMS

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Satellite would enter the Fraser and its launch go to Fort Langley to support the customs officers. Douglas added a cautionary note about sailors deserting, unable to resist ‘the exciting and wonderful tales which are everywhere heard’; as a counter-inducement he offered to pay the men an extra dollar a day for ‘assisting in the discharge of the duties devolving upon the revenue service’.83 That seemed insufficient and Douglas shortly afterwards agreed to double the men’s pay, an arrangement that lasted until early November.84 These matters were subject to the attention of the Vancouver Island Assembly, which in June called a conference with Douglas rather than giving him the trouble of having to report in writing and pronounced itself satisfied with the governor’s actions. One point that might be noted is that Douglas declared that he had been ‘actuated by motives in the first place to do every justice to the HBC and, secondly, to promote by every means the welfare and prosperity of the Colony’. One wonders if the order – company first; colony second – was indicative of Douglas’s priorities.85 Douglas required the aid of Satellite one further time on 9 July, his revenue officer claiming that vessels were ascending the river without licences,86 but shortly thereafter Satellite had to withdraw to fulfil its primary function of assisting the boundary commission.87 Douglas had to requisition the HBC ship Recovery instead and asked Prevost for sailors to serve aboard to protect the revenue officers. Prevost complied and was formally thanked by Douglas and later the Admiralty for doing so.88 Douglas also brought Prevost’s ‘cordial’ assistance to the attention of the colonial secretary, Lord Stanley, maybe a good thing for Prevost’s later career, given that Lord Stanley, as the Earl of Derby, would become Prime Minister three times.89 Prevost, who had married Admiral Fairfax Moresby’s daughter, became an admiral himself. In August another naval vessel, HMS Calypso, was required to supply an officer and ten marines to accompany Douglas whilst he investigated an ‘alarming collision’ between white miners and indigenous people on the Fraser.90 Douglas also requested ten men from troops attached to the Boundary Commission,91 and then asked that HMS Calypso be permanently stationed at Vancouver Island as the forces under his command were ‘manifestly insufficient for the support of the civil authority and the protection of British interests’.92 ‘Weak moments’ and ‘evil hours’: the creation of British Columbia A letter from Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton informed James Douglas on 31 July 1858 that an act to establish ‘a regular government’ of the territory west of the Rocky Mountains, to be called British Columbia, was prepared, and it came into being on 2 August. The new colony was to be self-supporting with representative institutions. A party of Royal Engin-

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eers would survey the country, organise settlement sites and choose one for the seat of government. The despatch enquired of Douglas how best to keep order amongst Americans in BC and the most effective way to ensure the ‘natives’ should have alternative subsistence in return for the ‘cession’ of their lands, whilst ‘the best means of diffusing the blessings of the Christian religion and of civilization’ amongst them needed to be established.93 A fortnight later, Douglas was told he would be governor and, in the meantime, he was to act as if he already were. Vancouver Island itself was not to be part of the new colony given it was still under the HBC, but the British Government was ready to receive, once the HBC grant had expired, a joint address from the island’s assembly and council ‘praying for the incorporation of that island with British Columbia’.94 A second letter of the same date admitted that ‘minute directions conveyed from this distance and founded upon an imperfect knowledge are very liable to error and misunderstanding’, but nonetheless gave Douglas a series of instructions for the administration of the new colony that tended towards the minute. Some lessons had been learned from the company colony on Vancouver Island in that a professsional, presumably legally-trained, judge was to be sent to BC, as was a collector of customs, and their salaries and that of Douglas as governor would be met by the British government ‘from obvious motives of policy’. Regarding the company, the HBC could expect ‘no regulations giving [it] the slightest preference’, not even in the fur trade. Indeed, the despatch went into considerable length about the present limits and future reductions of the HBC’s powers: They have had no right to exclude strangers. They have had no rights of Government or of occupation of the soil. They have had no right to prevent or interfere with any kind of trading except with Indians alone. To claim or exercise any further right is, on their part, a mere usurpation, although I doubt not, often both practised and submitted to in ignorance. But to render all misconceptions impossible, Her Majesty’s Government have determined on revoking the Company’s Licence (which would of itself have expired in next May) as regards British Columbia, being fully authorised to do so by the terms of the Licence itself, whenever a new Colony is constituted.95 Douglas was assured that the British Government would utilise his experience in dealing with the indigenous peoples and that he could rely upon government support for policies devised ‘for the protection of the natives, regulation of their intercourse with the whites, and whenever such a work may be contemplated, their civilisation’. He was to make

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recommendations regarding the ‘wants and means of the Colony in this sudden rise of social institutions in a country hitherto so wild’ and also report on harbours and coal deposits. During the winter of 1858–59 it was assumed that he would have leisure to ‘consider the permanent prospects of the colony and the best mode of administering its affairs’. Vancouver Island, still ‘held under the expiring licence of the HBC’ remained his responsibility, but it was ‘British Columbia which now demands and indeed may almost absorb the immediate cares of its governor.’96 Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s decision to make BC and Vancouver Island separate colonies, if under one governor, did not meet universal acclaim. The San Francisco Bulletin said it must have been taken ‘in an evil hour’ and criticised the creation of ‘two official organizations and two capitals where one would have been sufficient.’ The ‘evil’ had been ‘partially remedied by making Sir James Douglas, an able Hudson’s Bay factor, Her Majesty’s representative for both colonies.’ However, at the end of 1863, ‘in a weak moment’ the colonies were separated further by Douglas being replaced by two governors and ‘from that day the colonies have declined rapidly’, under such a ‘cumbersome’ government system.97 The system was also expensive to operate given the tiny scale and limited income of the two colonies. Uniting them would seem to be a solution, but once the separate colonies had been created, they identified their own requirements for development, based upon distinct economies, which had led to different fiscal policies being adopted. Further, union would mean loss of employment and status amongst the ruling elites, so it was not an easy thing to bring about. ‘I believe it would be almost as hopeless to amalgamate the two as it would be to rejoin the Confederation to the Federal States’: uniting Vancouver Island and British Columbia Following a general election in 1859, a Conservative, Sir Edward BulwerLytton, was replaced as colonial secretary by a Liberal, the Duke of Newcastle. Newcastle had been colonial secretary for eighteen months from late 1852 and, upon his return to the post, he brought some stability, serving for almost five years, the longest incumbency since the third Earl Grey’s near six years ended in 1852, following which nine men had held the position in seven years. The Colonial Office archives record internal discussions under Newcastle about the governance of the two North American Pacific colonies. The duke circulated four senior officials with a long memo in March 1863. The headline question was whether the present system of both colonies sharing one governor should continue. That was only ‘half union’ and Newcastle’s ambition was a full legislative union, but ‘unluckily the jealousies – I might almost say hatreds – between the two have become so great and such opposition

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of interests has been allowed to grow up that I believe it would be almost as hopeless to amalgamate the two as it would be to rejoin the Confederation to the Federal States [a reference to the ongoing American Civil War]’. Thus, he expected that there would have to be two governors, despite the costs of duplication. He pondered whether future union might be eased if one governor was made senior, with the other being a Lieutenant-Governor, although which colony might be downgraded was not stated. One decision that had been made and was not for discussion was that James Douglas was to be relieved of both governorships.98 The officials’ responses accepted the need for two governors and of equal rank. Mostly the replies considered the size of councils and how best to meet their costs, with the expectation that land sales would be the mechanism, at least in Vancouver Island. Arthur Blackwood was particularly keen to end the ‘improvidence and jobbery’, which he saw as too frequently occurring in colonial legislatures.99 Newcastle himself wrote in June 1863 that given a union between Vancouver Island and BC: ‘economy and efficiency would be promoted … political capacity … developed … the strength of the colonies … consolidated and generally … their well-being … greatly advanced’. However, he declared himself aware that the prevailing feeling was against union and he accepted that the colonies must continue under separate governments. It had become necessary to make new arrangements for BC. The bicameral model of Vancouver Island could not be applied as the fixed population was too small, so a single council would have to be organised, with three equal groups: office bearers, magistrates and ‘persons recognised by the residents of the colony as representing their feelings and interests’.100 An Order in Council was issued to this effect, revoking the arrangements sponsored by Bulwer-Lytton in 1858.101 Even the Duke of Newcastle’s long period in office was not sufficient for him to see union, partly because of the problem of withdrawing institutions from Vancouver Island, but mainly due to the ‘prevalent feeling on the spot’, particularly a bitter dispute between the colonies over import duties.102 Later Roderick Finlayson was to remark that the separate laws and tariffs in the two colonies had come close to ruining both because of the enormous expenses involved.103 People in Vancouver Island Colony were generally in favour of union. One commentator, Alexander Rattray, wrote that union would reduce the expense of having to maintain two staffs, whilst the economies of the two colonies were complementary: ‘We are strongly in favour of a union under one government, one talented, energetic head, of these two colonies, evidently intended by their mutual and relative position by the nature of their resources and eminent yet distinct capabilities for such a union’.104 Jules David, president of the Victoria Chamber of Commerce, wrote in March

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1865 to Newcastle’s successor, Edward Cardwell: ‘That an equitable union of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia at an early date as possible is essential to the maintenance of imperial and local interest in the British possessions of the North Pacific.’ That ‘imperial’ interests preceded ‘local’ might perhaps be ascribed to a clever attempt to get what the Chamber of Commerce wanted – the ‘local’ – by attaching this to wider and, to the Colonial Office, more significant ‘imperial’ requirements. The resolution went on to state that ‘from the first’, since the 1858 gold rush, the interests of the island and mainland were identical and their separation ‘was a temporary condition of imperial policy arising out of the grant of the island to the company’.105 This seemed not to be universally known even to principal players by this time for Governor Frederick Seymour of British Columbia declared himself to be ‘in ignorance of the motives which induced Her Majesty’s Government to make two colonies of the British possessions to the westward of the Rocky Mountains’.106 David explained the history to the Colonial Office: under the ‘judicious rule of Sir James Douglas, then joint governor of both, the progress of the colonies was co-incident and their division merely nominal’. However, the instigation in late 1863 and early 1864 of separate governors with distinct establishments had altered the situation and now ‘threatens seriously to impede the mutually beneficial relations hitherto existing between them’. As it was, squabbling between the two governments and colonies and the small scale of their populations was resulting in ‘access of strength to our American neighbour at the expense of British influence’.107 There was a majority in the Vancouver Island Assembly in favour of the union. In January 1865 after ‘a warm debate’ the proponents of union, led by Amor de Cosmos, won the vote 8:4. However, there were allegations that this did not represent the public view and de Cosmos and an opponent of union both resigned to force by-elections to test public opinion. Both contests were won handsomely by pro-union candidates and the House of Assembly voted once more for ‘unconditional union’. This was reported by Arthur Kennedy to Cardwell to whom Kennedy left ‘decisions about conditions and details, even to the form of government’.108 The assembly’s resolution in favour of union spoke of it being the means ‘best adapted to prevent permanent causes of depression as well as to stimulate trade, foster industry, develop our resources, augment our population and ensure our permanent prosperity’.109 Later that year, Kennedy forwarded a petition from local merchants in favour of retaining Victoria as a free port, under a union,110 and later another resolution of the assembly demanded immediate union.111 Further, the assembly communicated directly to the Colonial Office by means of that new technology, the telegraph, when the speaker, John Helmcken, told

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Cardwell that the two colonies were too small (in population terms) to afford separate governments and that ‘nothing short of immediate union … can stay the rapid decline of both countries and restore the confidence of the public’; ‘injury’ was being caused to both colonies through the ‘uncertainty and suspense on the question of union.’112 Similar sentiments were expressed in a resolution sent to the governor, duly forwarded to Cardwell.113 Kennedy himself was in favour of union, for ‘the two colonies are not only intimately connected with each other, but to a very great extent [are] mutually dependent’.114 Earlier he had told Cardwell that ‘A year’s experience and close observation in this Colony have led me to adopt a very decided opinion of the expediency – I might almost say necessity (for to that I think it must come) – of uniting British Columbia and Vancouver Island under one Governor, one Legislature and equal laws.’ He dismissed Douglas’s policy of fostering separate legislatures whilst ‘the difficulty of one Governor administering two neighbouring Governments, conducted upon different and antagonistic commercial principles as they exist at present, seems to me insuperable’. He feared that having a free port (Victoria) next to a polity where import duties were levied (BC) would simply encourage smuggling, as already happened between Vancouver Island and the USA.115 In this regard Kennedy had the backing of the local residents. A petition signed by 321 people at Victoria had earlier been sent to the BC governor Frederick Seymour regarding legislation passed at the colony’s legislature in New Westminster imposing customs duties on goods brought into BC: ‘inopportune’, ‘unwise’, ‘impolitic’ and ‘inequitable’ were some of the adjectives listed.116 Later, the Vancouver Island Assembly felt this legislation to be ‘partial’, ‘unjust’ and ‘oppressive’ in its impact upon Victoria as it hindered Vancouver Island’s trade with its neighbour.117 Although Kennedy and a majority in the assembly wanted union, on other matters they were at loggerheads, the governor considering the system of governance on Vancouver Island with its two chambers to be ‘unworkable’, stating that the assembly was ‘irresponsible’ and important matters such as land speculation were not being dealt with and no taxation revenue was being derived from the indigenous people. However, Kennedy dutifully enclosed yet another memorial from the assembly pressing for union and under a governor ‘not interested in the continuation of the old ways’.118 Other resolutions in similar vein were forwarded, although in the end Kennedy refused to comment upon them, just noting wearily on 31 August 1866 that the union must be facilitated and that Vancouver Island ‘will submit to any constitution which her majesty might be pleased to grant’.119 Edward Cardwell received different advice from Kennedy’s counterpart, Frederick Seymour, in British Columbia. Writing from his nascent

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capital of New Westminster, Seymour expressed antipathy towards Vancouver Island, objecting to an attitude that saw the mainland regarded ‘as the dependency of an outlying island’.120 He castigated Douglas for having drawn a full salary from BC whilst continuing to reside in Victoria. He enclosed an article from the North Pacific Times stating ‘what has built up Victoria but the mines of British Columbia?’121 A few days later he summed up the BC situation thus: ‘feeling is strongly opposed to the proposed connexion. Indeed, I cannot see how it could in any way benefit British Columbia; and it is impossible to avoid perceiving how under the former Government this colony was unduly depressed to raise Victoria to artificial prosperity.’122 He had told Cardwell before, in a letter written from Paris without access to his papers, that whilst there was no desire in British Columbia for union and a resentment that ‘everything was done to foster Victoria’, if union were to come about the new legislature should be dominated by BC representatives and the capital should be at New Westminster. This lengthy Paris missive runs to eight printed folio pages containing detailed proposals for the political and legal systems of a united colony.123 Seymour’s despatch was considerably longer than the British Columbia Act, 1866, which finally united the two colonies under the name of British Columbia. The writ of the previous mainland colony of that name was deemed to ‘extend to and over Vancouver Island’, with the Legislative Council of BC to be increased from 15 to 23 members. The laws of the former colonies were to remain in force, except that the customs duties of BC were to extend to Vancouver Island.124 The British Columbia Act was printed on 11 June and ‘On 19 November [1866] at noon I proclaimed the Imperial Act 29 and 30 Victoria Chapter 67 simultaneously in Victoria and New Westminster and thus effected the union of the colonies’, wrote Frederick Seymour who stepped up from being governor of the mainland colony to become governor of the united colony. He added that ‘there was no enthusiasm or excitement shown in either town’.125 The decision to unite the two colonies was surprising to some, particularly in America where it was felt that their trade might be affected by the customs changes. Thus the San Francisco Bulletin, on 20 August 1866 had an article entitled ‘The Colony of Vancouver Island to be abolished’, a decision that would sweep away the constitution, the free port and everything that attracted capital and intelligence to that out of the way island and to give the people over, bound hand and foot, to the domination of the Governor of BC … Victoria, one of the best built and pleasantest little cities on the Pacific coast is no longer to be the

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metropolis; that honour is to be conferred on New Westminster, a rough and unreclaimed site for a town – rather than an existing city – a place labouring under all the disadvantages of being beyond the line fixed by the Admiralty survey as the safe limit of navigation for sea-going ships.126 With the union, what had been seen as cumbersome, duplicated government systems could be ‘rightsized’ to use the modern management term. The principle casualty was Vancouver Island’s governor, Arthur Kennedy, who was not chosen as governor of the united colony, presumably because his period in office for Vancouver Island had been ‘by no means free from difficulty’; ‘I regret much the unfavourable effect which this measure will have upon your interests’ wrote the Earl of Carnavon, the latest colonial secretary.127 In acknowledgement Kennedy was obliged to confirm that he would support Seymour and, perhaps poignantly, stated that he would leave for England when requested to do so by the new governor.128 Another casualty was Arthur Watson, treasurer of Vancouver Island, who was informed that his office was about to be abolished and that Seymour was to ‘consider the names of gentlemen whom I may consider best fitted to fill the several public offices’.129 In the event the treasurer of British Columbia was to be W.A.G. Young, former colonial secretary of Vancouver Island and Watson was offered only the temporary post of sub-treasurer to keep him in funds in case a permanent post arose.130 This not proving to be the case, Watson was offered six months leave of absence on full pay with a free passage for himself and his family back to England.131 Regarding the new united Legislative Council, four men from Vancouver Island were deputed: the speaker, Dr John Helmcken although ‘a somewhat vehement politician and disposed to consider principally the interests of Victoria’, Joseph Pemberton, formerly surveyor general – so two old HBC hands remained – also Amor de Cosmos and, from Nanaimo, Joseph Southgate.132 The first session was held at New Westminster on 21 January 1867 and Seymour wrote that ‘considering the state of antagonism which has so long existed between the two sections of the present colony, I may say the work of the session is progressing satisfactorily’.133 ‘Either town would suit me equally’: Frederick Seymour and the choice of the capital Frederick Seymour visited Victoria on 7 November 1866 to be received ‘with great coldness but no disrespect by a large concourse of people’ and he was presented with addresses marking his accession to governorship of the united colonies.134 This coldness might seem strange given that Vancouver Island had pressed for the union Seymour embodied, but his baggage as having been the champion of the independent BC when he

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was regarded as having acted against the interests of Victoria counted against him on the island. Seymour had to work to overcome this prejudice but reported proudly in January 1867 that upon his return to Victoria he had held three balls and ‘I do not believe that a single person invited declined to come for political reasons.’135 In contrast with his original treatment in Victoria, at New Westminster Seymour had been received with ‘a most loyal and gratifying reception’.136 Both former separate colonies pressed for the capital of British Columbia to be situated on their territory.137 New Westminster, on the Fraser River had acted as the capital of British Columbia from 1859.138 The settlement, originally to be called Queensborough, was renamed New Westminster in July of that year as Queen Victoria wished.139 Pemberton’s memoirs detail the complex investigations that had taken place before New Westminster’s site was chosen. Other settlements were proposed under Douglas and one at Fort Langley was started, with Pemberton appointed as surveyor.140 However, Captain Richard Moody of the Royal Engineers, chief commissioner of lands and works, decided upon a different site. Moody was an experienced man, not just as an engineer and soldier; he had even been a colonial governor who had laid out a new colonial capital. This was when he was lieutenant-governor of the Falkland Islands and in the 1840s had moved the colonial capital and only town from the restricted site of Port Louis to a new settlement he planned and laid out at Stanley, named after Lord Stanley, Colonial Secretary from 1841–45 and again in 1858. Stanley, which retains Moody’s original grid plan, has become a pleasant if still tiny capital ‘city’, but at the time Moody was criticised, one settler accusing him of having chosen a miserable bog hole for the site of Stanley.141 Moody also failed to impress contemporaries with his second colonial capital, for Finlayson was puzzled at the choice for New Westminster, troubled as it was by swamps, marshes and heavy timber, with choruses from ‘acres’ of frogs ruining the spring whilst summer was the season for ‘the stings of myriads of mosquitoes’. The site was certainly impregnable – there were fears of American incursions – ‘but unfortunately this quality renders it inaccessible to the merchantmen of the Pacific, and to the trade of Puget Sound’. Better, Finlayson thought, to have chosen a place that had commercial advantages and then ‘call upon science to fortify it’.142 The development of New Westminster on any site at all puzzled Frederick Seymour, who became governor of British Columbia only after it had been built, and wondered why it had been decided ‘to lay out the plan of a city of vast dimensions … and to sell the lots on the faith that on them would stand the future capital of British Columbia’.143 Seymour went on to make allegations that anyway New Westminster was doomed from the start by the decisions of James Douglas when BC governor whose resi-

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dence in Victoria with his officials and their associated expenditure meant that the younger settlement was set upon ‘a retrograde course early in its history’. Indeed, when Seymour arrived at New Westminster to assume the governorship his capital was a ‘melancholy … picture of disappointed hopes’, with houses untenanted, the best hotel to let, in short it was ‘to use a miners’ expression, “played out”’. One problem was that New Westminster was not the sole port of origin for BC and thus trade up the Fraser was normally serviced by Victoria with its more convenient location and New Westminster merchants did not profit. Seymour wondered if the trade monopoly of Victoria might make the ‘larger colony’ languish and ‘deprive Victoria of its commerce by simply relapsing into wilderness’.144 The Victoria Chamber of Commerce was robust in its response and accused Seymour of wanting to divert trade from Victoria to his own city and ‘descending to vituperation’ against theirs.145 The president of the Municipal Council of New Westminster sent a memorial to Edward Cardwell in April 1866 before the British Columbia Act was published regretting that ‘Her Majesty’s Government has decided upon uniting the Colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island contrary to the well-understood wishes of the people of the former colony.’ However, if the government was to persist in this policy, the capital of the united colony must be at New Westminster. Investments had been made by parties assuming it would continue as a colonial capital and rejecting New Westminster would distress this group and other residents, stoking resentment against Victoria and Vancouver Island. Further, union ‘being forced upon British Columbia’, people there had a right for some ‘consideration’ from the government; also due regard should be paid to the fact that BC was larger. The memorial ended with a demand that a single fiscal system be established across the united colony and, of course, it should be that of a uniform customs tariff, with Victoria losing its free port status. Although the memorial was ‘respectfully submitted’, its tone tending towards hectoring.146 Vancouver Island played the cleverer game. Rather than making an immediate demand in favour of Victoria, the assembly passed a resolution transmitted to London by Kennedy, couched in properly respectful terms, asking that the Colonial Office ‘should postpone the fixing of the permanent seat of government until the wishes of the people of the two colonies be ascertained’, wishes that they would have been secure were to be in their favour.147 The following year Seymour made an address on the choice of capital to the Legislative Council of British Columbia, after receiving petitions favouring Victoria. He regretted that there had ever been two separate colonies with ‘rival towns’, he would have preferred always that one town had been pre-eminent be it Victoria, a settlement at Esquimalt or New Westminster. Under Douglas’s joint governorship affairs in BC were

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directed from Victoria causing dissatisfaction, which helped to bring about a greater separation of the colonies when different governors were appointed. With union it was the intention of the government that New Westminster should be the capital, although Seymour believed Victoria would retain its commercial supremacy. The matter should not be prejudiced by the fact that a large outlay had recently been made in public buildings at Victoria, nor that Vancouver Island had wanted union, whilst BC had ‘stood aloof’. The united colony had already suffered from political agitation and to set the ‘present question at rest’ Seymour recommended that he and his successors ‘be commanded to reside permanently in the present capital of the colony’, namely New Westminster.148 This address was enclosed in a letter to the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, the colonial secretary, in July, in which Seymour asserted that he had been unwilling to be swayed by ‘meetings held in the Victoria Theatre’ from which, presumably, had originated the petitions laid before him. However, now, in contrast to his address, Seymour considered that, provided justice could be done to people who had purchased land at New Westminster, Victoria might be the capital. This choice was based largely on financial considerations: it was ‘older and more developed’, already had a Government House and it ‘would be well to concentrate our waning resources upon the spot where the greatest outlay has been made’, although he also muddied the waters by adding that ‘either town would suit me equally’.149 The colonial secretary had demanded a decision on the location of the capital in August 1867,150 presumably before Seymour’s despatch of July had been received and he wrote again in October to say that he found Seymour’s July report unconvincing, stating that he had been expecting ‘a definite recommendation’. The duke, to be helpful, and dropping large hints, added that he did not think that in making New Westminster the capital originally there had ever been a pledge that the site of the capital ‘shall never be moved’ and, with an even greater lack of subtlety, concluded that ‘although I do not prescribe to you the choice of one or the other capital, you will be at liberty, in case you should decide in favour of Victoria, to quote the authority of the Home Government in support of that course’.151 In response to the August despatch, Seymour, as was his wont, wrote at some length, stating that New Westminster had been proclaimed the capital of BC and that ‘Vancouver Island prayed and agitated for admission on any terms into an union with the mainland colony. Hence it would seem but natural that New Westminster should be the capital of the united Colony.’ However, ‘Victoria has the largest population, the richest shopkeepers, the largest Church endowment, the greatest trade, and is singularly favoured by the headquarters of the Pacific squadron being placed in the neighbouring harbour of Esquimalt.

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It is also unquestionably the most convenient place for communicating, if desirable, with the United States authorities at San Francisco or Alaska’ (freshly purchased by the USA from Russia). Victoria also had Government House, built in the latter days of the HBC rule (see Chapter 5). Seymour did not use the term ‘birdcages’ about this building, but wrote at length of the structure’s exposure to cold breezes and the lack of paper on the walls to cover the settlement cracks. New Westminster was ‘less troubled’ politically than the ‘feverish’ Victoria, being smaller and more remote from commerce, including the HBC, which remained an important player commercially, if no longer politically. On a personal note Seymour liked the New Westminster ‘cottage’ from which he wrote, which, though a modest English house, was nicely furnished in a lovely situation. He also thought the fact that New Westminster was not the commercial hub should not stand against it for ‘Ottawa had not the trade of Quebec or Montreal, Fredericton that of St John’s’.152 Such an idea of promoting two complementary urban centres would not have found favour with some such as Pemberton who asserted that ‘it needs no prophet to say that British interests require one capital on the Pacific, so eligibly situated that it shall be capable of entering into friendly competition with San Francisco in commerce and comfort’.153 Returning to the case for Victoria in his despatch, Seymour began to muse that making it the capital would ‘please the greater number of persons’. Then his lengthy thoughts, which, characteristically, had reached at that point no definite conclusion, were put on hold by the arrival of the duke’s October despatch, which required further consideration. This consideration necessitated consultation with the Legislative Council, which debated a motion that ‘Victoria is the place most suitable for the seat of Government of the United Colony’ with the contrary position being debated as an amendment. Much of the amendment covered old ground such as the expense of moving the capital and the unrest its move would cause. One new point was that the possibility of BC entering the Canadian confederation, which would be best suited by having a mainland capital. The amendment sought a delay in the decision, in effect that the capital remain at New Westminster. The voting was 14:5 against the amendment and 14:5, without any changes of side, in favour of the motion that the capital be moved to Victoria. The Vancouver Island representatives all voted for Victoria. Seymour accepted the verdict of the council and immediately announced that he would proclaim Victoria as the place most suitable for the location of the capital. He then, as had been offered, stated that Her Majesty’s government was of the same mind and that the declaration would be made on the Queen’s birthday. He wrote a mercifully brief note to the colonial secretary, stating that he had indeed invoked the government’s name in backing the choice of

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Victoria, thus invoking ‘the assistance of a stronger power than my own in order to prevent disturbance’. Even with the decision made, Seymour’s uncertainties remained and he added that ‘I sincerely trust I have acted for the best. I well know I have secured but present tranquillity. In my own heart, I must allow, there was a feeling in favour of the manly, respectable, loyal and enterprising community established on the banks of the Fraser.’154 The proclamation was duly made on 25 May 1868 and reported to the Colonial Secretary.155 In reply the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos expressed his satisfaction that the seat of government had been placed ‘where the greatest stationary population has collected, and where maritime communication is easiest.’156 Victoria remains the capital of BC, though Vancouver, laid out from 1885 and developing as the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, has over six times Victoria’s population.157 New Westminster is a Vancouver suburb.

8 CONCLUSION: COMPANY, COLONY, ISLAND AND FRONTIER

‘Canada’s merchants since 1670’ The 1857 parliamentary enquiry into the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was partly in response to ‘the necessity of providing suitably for the administration of the affairs of Vancouver’s Island’, especially given that the exclusive right of trade in ‘Indian Country’ the company had been granted in 1838 for twenty-one years was about to expire as was the period of the grant of the island itself. There was, too, the larger question of the relationship between Rupert’s Land, including Red River, and Canada to be explored, with the expectation that territory would be ceded to Canada. Regarding Vancouver Island the report’s recommendation was unequivocal: ‘Your Committee are of opinion that it will be proper to terminate the connexion of the Hudson’s Bay Company with Vancouver’s Island as soon as it may conveniently be done, as the best means of favouring the development of the great natural advantages of that important colony.’1 There was some evidence in the report that this decision would be favoured by the company: ‘I have heard it admitted by themselves abroad that they [the HBC] wish the government would take it; that they do not hold it to be of value.’2 However, as these were the words of James Cooper, one of the enemies of the HBC on Vancouver Island, they must be treated with caution. The HBC grant of Vancouver Island was not renewed. The colonial secretary, Henry Labouchere, announced in 1858 that ‘Her Majesty’s Government [is] to take immediate steps for taking under their control and constituting as a British Colony in the ordinary manner the island of Vancouver’.3 The HBC lost also its right of exclusive trade in what was no longer called ‘Indian Country’ and, later, in 1869, under the 1868 Rupert’s Land Act, sold that vast territory to Canada for a modest £300,000. Red River became Manitoba after the Louis Riel rebellion. On the other hand, the company continued to push forward in its trading operations and well into the twentieth cen-

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tury was opening new posts in the Arctic, as with King William Island (Qikiqtaq) in 1926.4 The HBC, ‘Canada’s Merchants since 1670’, as The Bay, also trading as Fields, Home Outfitters and Zellers, remains a significant retail presence across Canada. The company website maintains a well presented history section and in The Bay stores and online, traditional goods, including the famous blankets, remain on sale.5 ‘The worst instrument that could be selected for colonizing’? A number of questions and themes about the HBC and about its role in the development of colonialism in what became western Canada were raised in Chapter 1 and can now be addressed, given the evidence presented in Chapters 2 to 7. Colonisation: ‘sending persons as settlers and miners’ The HBC period on Vancouver Island was an experiment in colonisation that largely failed; this outcome was widely predicted but, perhaps, the reasons for failure were not those which had been expected. Critics such as James Fitzgerald assumed that the company would not wish for settlement to take place as it was against their interests as fur traders (Chapter 1). This was not the case. Vancouver Island was never particularly important for local furs; right from the inception of Fort Victoria in 1843 the HBC plans were that this holding should be used as a depot for the central collection of furs from around the region. The concern of James Douglas during the Crimean War that the vessel exporting the furs might be attacked was because it contained the year’s fur collection from the entire district, which explains why its cargo was worth up to £80,000 (Chapter 7), in today’s value perhaps £4m. Indeed, rather than try and keep people away, the company was ready and willing to spend money in bringing migrants to Vancouver Island not only to fulfil the terms of the grant but also to try and make profit from the wider reaches of its ‘fur trade’ department, that term being used as a catch-all for every productive economic activity. At the parliamentary enquiry, Edward Ellice, an MP who was also a director of the HBC, noted that the company had laid out about £80,000 ‘in sending persons as settlers and miners to work the coal-mines, and in doing other things which they were urged to do by the Government and the pubic in consequence of their accepting a grant of the island; everything hitherto has been outlay, there has been no return’. Thus, coalminers were brought, first from Scotland, then England to attempt to make initially Fort Rupert and then Nanaimo productive. Stream engines were imported; investments were made in both men and materials. That Fort Rupert was an expensive failure was due to early over-optimism about its prospects when the indigenous people were collecting surface coal, followed by an unwillingness to accept that in reality

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there was no prospect of establishing a modern mine there. There were also poor management practices. Putting what, given the tiny scale of the venture, was a high proportion of the workforce in irons and throwing them into gaol to be fed on bread and water is not good practice in that it does not engender co-operation or loyalty, especially as the other members of the workforce were related to one of the men locked up. That, later, Nanaimo was only properly successful after the company had sold out might be down to luck, to market conditions, or to management style, but not a lack of interest or a will to succeed. After all, James Douglas, ever careful with his own finances, wanted to buy personal shares in the Nanaimo mine (Chapter 4). The company did bring in settlers to the island as required by their grant, or at least they attempted to do so. Their timing was bad, especially in the early years when there was much competition for labour in western North America and also perceived ‘get rich quick’ opportunities in the California gold rush. Their strategies of forbidding ships to land en route theoretically ensured the migrants reached Vancouver Island, even if they deserted subsequently. However, the captains of the chartered vessels did not, or could not, always follow such instructions as with Colinda, which, having stopped in South America, lost almost all its passengers and delivered just seventeen migrants to Fort Victoria from the 214 who had embarked in England (Chapter 2). That the company were often not fully prepared to receive their migrants can certainly be seen as a fault, although the difficulties of communication might take a share of the blame: the company on the island might have been unaware of how many were coming and when. There was also the constant labour shortage in the early years, which may have been a factor in the lack of preparation. The land issue was certainly a disincentive to migrants; charging a Wakefieldian £1 per acre for land when it was locally available elsewhere just for the asking was counterproductive. The Wakefield Theory must have worked better in more isolated places where such opportunities were not available. Edward Ellice testified before the 1857 enquiry that ‘if one could account to this committee all the misery and mischief which has been done to our colonies by jealous and capricious restrictions imposed by the Colonial Office upon the dealings in land in our colonies they would be astonished’.6 He went on to state most firmly that land had no value until it was cultivated and to charge so much for the land prior to cultivation was to remove from the settler funds that could have been spent more effectively in bringing the land into production. It must be significant that James Douglas constantly tried to get the charge reduced but succeeded only too late in the day. That it took the local company a long time to have the island explored and get it properly sur-

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veyed were other problems; the ineffectiveness of Walter Colquhoun Grant as the first surveyor was certainly a part of this (Chapter 2). The geographical situation of Vancouver Island was a further difficulty. Chapter 2 described some awful voyages; there were places that were easier to reach and with more to offer the migrant; perhaps Fitzgerald was right when he thought that people with money and brains would go elsewhere. He was also correct when he assumed the colony would be dominated by HBC servants, for that was certainly the case in the early years: as exemplified by Richard Blanshard having few to govern but company people and Grant’s repeated claims to have been the only settler. The charge by The Times in 1848 that the HBC were unsuitable colonial agents for Vancouver Island because they were fur traders and monopolists does not hold water for the former characteristic;7 regarding their being monopolists, there is certainly a case to answer. The Times, a decade later, at the end of the company period, returned to the case: ‘settlement languished under their auspices; they are accused of overbearing private trade by the weight of an irresistible competition’.8 Certainly, the HBC were very jealous of their rights over trade with the indigenous people in what became western Canada, perhaps because this region was accessible to Russian and, especially, American competitors. The company would act against individuals, as with James Cooper and his purchase of cranberries from indigenous people, even though Cooper was on council and this action could have been predicted to poison relationships thereupon and make the colony more difficult to govern (Chapter 7). On a larger scale, James Douglas showed he was prepared to operate outside his area to try to sustain the HBC trading monopoly as when he acted as a self-appointed authority in the gold rushes first in the Queen Charlotte Islands and then on the mainland of what was still New Caledonia, amidst accusations that he was really just an HBC chief trader with an eye to the company’s balance sheet (Chapter 4). When it was obvious that the HBC trading monopoly with the indigenous people in New Caledonia could not be held, Douglas asked that compensation be paid in an ingenuous letter to the colonial office cast in a rather different tone to one he had written to the HBC (Chapter 4). Chapter 1 noted that by the mid-nineteenth century there were relatively sophisticated management systems for colonial oversight, although James Fitzgerald thought that Vancouver Island’s colonial office would be located in the Fenchurch Street headquarters of the HBC and such sophistication would not apply. There was certainly some evidence of the colonial government of Vancouver Island having to satisfy two masters, as evidenced by Pelly and other HBC officials offering Douglas advice on colonial matters in addition to the copious correspondence he received

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from a succession of colonial secretaries. Earl Grey asking the HBC if they had a gentleman in mind to replace Blanshard as governor of Vancouver Island (Chapter 5) was also telling. However, the copious correspondence between the actual Colonial Office and Fort Victoria shows that the Colonial Office was certainly a major player in the administration of Vancouver Island despite that phrase in the grant about the company being ‘true and absolute lords and proprietors’. As to whether the Colonial Office were sophisticated, one fact that counted against the development and delivery of properly considered policy was that the colonial secretary kept changing; there were thirteen during the short life of Vancouver Island Colony (counting the Duke of Newcastle twice as he served from 1852–54 and again from 1859–64). New incumbents could bring new policy directions, which could cause disruption, as with Sir John Pakington’s decision to have two separate colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, followed by the Duke of Newcastle’s drive to unify them. Some insight as to how the colonial office worked came from inspection of notes written on the back of despatches received in London, from which it is clear that material was passed between officials and discussions would take place before responses were made. Sophistication, too, perhaps in the gentility of the language, for even severe scoldings were couched in a diplomatic fashion. It was also impressive to see what care went into the correspondence from both the Colonial Office and the Hudson’s Bay Company in their dealings with what was for both of these great institutions a small and peripheral place. Joel Wainwright’s comment that colonial power is always woven through a broad web of social relations was certainly true for Vancouver Island from the early, rather cosy correspondence between Earl Grey and Sir John Pelly to, on the negative side, the vituperation between Richard Blanshard and James Douglas, which had such an effect on the colony. Blanshard’s theoretical power from his commission was constrained by the actual power of the company on the ground in Fort Victoria. This caused friction which cannot have been good for Blanshard’s already delicate health and helped to drive him from Fort Victoria up to Fort Rupert where his folie de grandeur caused such problems to the indigenous peoples, the company and, ultimately, the colony (Chapter 3). Some of the other disputes about power and authority could also be traced to personal rancour, as shown in Chapter 6 and the cases of James Cooper, annoyed about more than just cranberries, Robert Staines and Edward Langford, all of whom had run-ins with ‘Old Square Toes’, the authoritarian Governor Douglas, which rankled for years. Finally, there was Patricia Seed’s phrase about English colonies possessing the land through fences, gardens and houses. In Vancouver Island there were gardens and houses certainly, if perhaps fewer fences,

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especially in the early days when livestock management consisted of shooting feral cattle freely roaming the pastures and woods. Postcolonialism in a ‘small spot’ Chapter 1 featured a quotation from Joel Wainwright about the way in which space was organised in a colonial encounter transforming the geographies of indigenous communities, an aspect of postcolonialism. Here the indigenous people lost most of their land; rather in most cases in early colonial Vancouver Island it was purchased from them. One might almost have used inverted commas around ‘purchased’ for the contractual relationship certainly favoured one side with large tracts of land being exchanged for some blankets or the ability to obtain a few goods from the company store. There is also the issue as to how much the preliterate indigenous people who made their marks to the deeds of sale understood what was going on. The man who represented the company buying the land, James Douglas was, as was shown in Chapter 3 a ‘mulatto’, a term used more in the past than today, whilst his wife was the daughter of an indigenous woman and an HBC man. It would be too simplistic to ascribe Douglas’s relatively benign attitude towards the native peoples with whom he shared the island to these facts. He certainly did not identify with non-European people: they were his Other: the British were his band. He followed anyway the practical HBC response to their employees’ living amidst a much larger number of indigenous people, who if roused could destroy the company posts. Fully committed to this ‘Indian trades policy’, some of his antipathy towards Richard Blanshard was predicted upon the latter’s heavy handed campaign of collective punishment against the peoples from whom the Fort Rupert murders came rather than a selective punishment of guilty individuals (Chapter 3). Indeed, James Douglas’s most vehement response to the Colonial Office came in 1857 when he took strong objection to instructions from Henry Labouchere about how he should deal with indigenous people (Chapter 3). His seemingly mild ‘I trust I may be permitted to make a few explanatory observations’ was, stripped of diplomatic niceties, quite a challenging response.9 The sad Huu-ay-aht chief who asked Gilbert Sproat to let the KingGeorge men stay in their own country and not place his people in a ‘small spot’ performed a dignified but unavailing act of resistance.10 His island fellows were inevitably reduced to an underclass of reserve labour and procurer of goods for the said King-George men, as Rossiter observed.11 Further, there was an expectation that indigenous people would inevitably fade away in the face of colonial possession, which was seen as curious then, but would be regarded as chilling today. That the compatriots of the Vancouver Island peoples were faring worse and shedding

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blood to the Boston men in the USA at this period made the experiences of the island bands only relatively more palatable. Not all the British Columbia First Nations did fade away, even when things worsened for them after the reduction in influence of the HBC, although there are a number of names in the nineteenth century records that cannot be traced today. The First Nations have now a powerful voice in British Columbia’s political and economic life; indeed, as Lynne Davis has recognised, the influence of Coastal First Nations over their own lands has increased in recent years.12 ‘Adapted for a new country’?: the frontier One might dispute whether Vancouver Island by the mid-nineteenth century represented a frontier, but not that it was very remote, at least for its population of European origin. This has been demonstrated amply through depictions of voyages overland from Rupert’s Land as repressented by that of Roderick Finlayson (Figure 1.1), those from England which included crossing the isthmus of Panama, as shown by the journey of Richard Blanshard and Thomas Robinson (Figure 5.2) and those around Cape Horn, as recreated from the log of Norman Morrison (Figure 2.3). These records all testify to the difficulties of reaching the region. The impacts of the isolation were apparent most obviously in the problems of first getting migrants to come and then getting them to stay (see Chapter 3). The operation of the local economy was another factor, for, whilst Vancouver Island was involved in international trade: principally furs, coal, timber, fish and fish oil, some berries and agricultural products and, as an agency, gold (see Chapter 4), such trade had to be operated alongside a subsistence economy for local consumption. All the settlements had to produce their own food. Regarding the frontier thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, this quintessentially American theory may have to be filtered through a different history here and certainly Vancouver Island suffered, if anything, from an excess of oversight and interference from government of various sorts – the company and the colony – rather than being remote from such influences. Turner expected characteristics such as self-reliance, individuality and a distrust of government to become developed in frontier communities. On Vancouver Island there was certainly resistance to government but, rather than early settlers displaying frontier-like characteristics, some seemed rather fey: the Reverend Staines’ ‘uppishness’, his lady’s disgust at muddy streets, and the Puget Sound Agricultural Company bailiffs Edward Langford and Thomas Skinner who did not ‘seem adapted for a new country or for establishing farms in the wilderness’ (Chapter 6).13 The first settler, Walter Colquhoun Grant, sought to recreate a romantic, idyllic Scottish settlement, with piper and

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Gaelic-speaking teacher. In reality, the teacher died on the voyage out and Grant was so frustrated with the rigours of life isolated on a pioneer farm that he contemplated suicide before running off to seek excitement elsewhere (Chapter 2). It must be noted that Turner’s frontier characteristics developed over generations and that the Vancouver Island people mentioned above were all directly from the UK and thus carried the social norms of their homeland, so maybe frontier characteristics should not have been expected. Further, despite being remote, Vancouver Island was a west coast entry point into North America and was, thus, perhaps less of a frontier than areas of the prairies that were settled a generation or two later. The west coast entry allusion references Ron Johnston’s gateway city model mentioned in Chapter 1. He later crafted a definition of his term ‘gateway city’: ‘a settlement linking two areas whose physical situation means it can command entrance to and exit from its hinterland’.14 Fort Victoria/Victoria was certainly such a city. It was from the start a depot for the collection of furs and also was the place where the annual ‘outfits’, the supplies for the HBC posts in the region, would be received. Further, the migrants both trickling into Vancouver Island and then, from 1858, flooding into New Caledonia/British Columbia came through Victoria. The ‘outlying island’ Island characteristics outlined in Chapter 1 were to be found for Vancouver Island, from the inability of the colony to attract or keep settlers to the problems caused by the small scale of its economy and society. Another issue with island life is that individuals may have to take employment for which they are not suited owing to a lack of people with appropriate skills to take up responsible jobs. For the moment, let us dismiss any charge of nepotism and take the appointment of David Cameron as chief justice by his brother-in-law, Governor Douglas, at face value. Then, that he was the best person for the job despite having had no legal training, becomes a scale, a small island scale, issue – there was no lawyer amongst the handful of educated men on the island from which Douglas had to choose his chief justice and Cameron was the best of the unqualified persons on offer. James Douglas himself illustrates another small island characteristic, occupational pluralism, there being a lack of scale to sustain full-time employment in different positions. Douglas led the HBC, was governor (or lieutenant governor) of Vancouver Island, British Columbia and the Queen Charlotte Islands, managed the Puget Sound Agricultural Company and the Nanaimo coal mine. Joseph Despard Pemberton was the surveyor, then the police commissioner; many HBC officials served in the council or the assembly;

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Walter Colquhoun Grant was made colonial surveyor without even knowing such a position was open; more worryingly, the barely literate and contrary coalminer Andrew Muir became sheriff of Victoria before succumbing to an alcoholic’s death (Chapter 4). There are positives to life on an island as was recognised for Vancouver Island by The Times in Chapter 4 using the phrase ‘happy insular position’ in 1858 as its island nature was protecting it from some of the pressures of the gold rush on the mainland.15 However, when the happy place became associated with the mainland, insular powerlessness was seen. The 1857 parliamentary enquiry had made a recommendation that Vancouver Island Colony should be extended eastwards to the adjoining continent ‘on which permanent settlement may be found practicable’.16 However, power relationships shifted when negotiations about such a union were taking place and the island became instead the junior partner and was absorbed into the mainland colony. During this process the BC governor made his dismissive comment about not wishing his colony to become ‘the dependency of an outlying island’.17 It was somewhat surprising then, that, after much debate, Victoria should become the capital city of the united colonies (Chapter 7). Company, crown and colony: ‘cause to regret’? In theory, both the company and the crown should have benefited from the Hudson’s Bay Company grant of Vancouver Island. The crown gained British occupation of the strategic island at little direct cost, and then attempted to spend almost nothing on it, trying to pass off expenses to the company or the Vancouver Island government at every opportunity. The most telling example was the account rendered to Governor Blanshard for passage in a navy ship that was being used in connection with the action against the Newitty band after the murder of the seamen at Fort Rupert. Having to recompense the company at the expiry of the grant for monies expended upon colonisation was an unpleasant reality and perhaps explained the long dispute over the costs of the new government buildings in Victoria erected at the end of the company’s rule (Chapter 5). Throughout the period, this reluctance by the crown to lay out money or supply matériel extended to the protection of Vancouver Island, despite foreign relations and defence being reserved powers. Douglas frequently pressed for men and/or ships in his almost constant concerns about the Americans – the nation or citizens – the Russians and/or the indigenous people of the area and often his pleas fell on deaf ears. And when he acted on his own initiative, as with the charter of the HBC’s Otter as a guardship during the Crimean War, there was a dispute over how the charges would be met. Douglas ended up basically bribing Admiral Bruce with offers of spars, coal, provisions, water and the build-

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ing of a naval hospital when asking for assistance during the dispute with the Americans over the San Juan Islands (Chapter 7). The Hudson’s Bay Company benefited from its ‘profit’, the ten percent share of monies from land sales and royalties and from the possession of the island and its important harbour facilities at a time when it was having to withdraw from the Columbia area and needed another base. However, James Fitzgerald wrote in 1848 even before the HBC had been granted Vancouver Island that ‘the whole idea of founding a free Colony, through the agency of a Commercial Company, whose interests are necessarily hostile to those of the Colonists, is an absurd one’.18 In this pithy remark he encapsulated some of the tensions of the company colony, either working from first principles or, perhaps, extrapolating from a knowledge of colonial history for a number of such ventures had collapsed by that time. These included some of the original American colonies, also Bermuda and Providence Island, whilst the East India Company, rulers of the longest lived of the company colonies had only a few years earlier, in 1834, given up St Helena to the crown, having held it since 1659.19 Fitzgerald also made the charge that the HBC grant would leave Vancouver Island with ‘a Government the most despotic and tyrannical in the world’.20 Trumpeting absolutes in this fashion must always be a doubtful debating tactic and, certainly, in the mid-nineteenth century there would have been places more tyrannical than Vancouver Island, where, after all, there were no deaths from political violence. However, the governor appointing his brother-in-law to high office certainly led to understandable accusations of a family-company contract in the governance of the colony (Chapter 5); also, there were implications of skulduggery against James Cooper regarding his place on the council where his was the one voice not belonging to a company man. Further, Douglas was most reluctant to see the establishment of an assembly and some of his excuses for not wishing to proceed, such as his lack of experience, seem specious, leading one to think that perhaps he was unwilling to see his own and/or his company’s power diminished (Chapter 6). Even HBC director Edward Ellice, in evidence to the body that would recommend the ending of the company’s control, observed that: ‘The anomalous institutions of a monopoly on the one hand and, ultimately, a free legislation on the other [are] antagonistic powers that never could agree.’21 Part of the antagonism undoubtedly related to the perception of conflicts of interests as the company and its officials were in charge of the government and justice; right from the first appointment as magistrate, that of John Sebastian Helmcken, the HBC doctor (Chapter 5), there was unease on this score: ‘the objection of appointing the servants of the HBC holds good’ wrote a colonial office mandarin.22 And matters at least appeared to worsen in this regard when Chief Factor Douglas

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became governor. The Colonial Office entertained a complaint from James Cooper against the council and Douglas, even though it had not been put through the proper channels. Those channels were to go through Governor Douglas, the subject of the complaint (Chapter 6). As well as tensions between the company and the colonists (i.e. settlers), either as individuals or with their legislature (Chapter 7), there were inevitably strains between the company and the crown for the former had a commercial imperative, the latter a political, strategic imperative. In Chapter 5 there was a telling piece of evidence in this regard; upon learning that Douglas had been appointed lieutenant-governor of the Queen Charlotte Islands, Archibald Barclay from the HBC hoped that this would not ‘interfere materially with the business of the Fur Trade’.23 Perhaps he need not have been concerned for when later Douglas went into New Caledonia to try and bring order to the gold exploitation he wrote that he was ‘actuated by motives in the first place to do every justice to the HBC and, secondly, to promote by every means the welfare and prosperity of the Colony’.24 Company first: did this mean the Hudson’s Bay Company was, as Walter Colquhoun Grant had predicted, ‘the worst instrument that could be selected for colonizing’ Vancouver Island?25 Probably not. However, one might have to agree with James Fitzgerald’s prediction that ‘The Hudson’s Bay Company will probably have good cause to regret … asking for fresh territory’.26

Appendix 1 ARCHIVES: ‘YOURS TO EXPLORE’ The story of Vancouver Island under the Hudson’s Bay Company and its links with New Caledonia/British Columbia has been told. The classic history of western Canada by Arthur Silver Morton and the scholarly account in the pages of the Hudson’s Bay Company Record Society publications are two excellent places to read about it.1 More recently a number of modern historians have published papers on parts of the story; there is a biography on James Douglas and his wife by John Adams,2 and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography has produced extensive portraits of the lives and activities of all the key players in North America, usefully in an online edition.3 What this book brings to the table is a fresh look at the story from first principles, from interrogation of primary material – hence the hundreds of footnotes in the preceding pages – although, of course, one has to accept that even original documents do not retain ‘traces which in themselves were often non-verbal, gestural, and performative, or which said in silence something other than what was actually printed’.4 Some contemporary collections were published. The correspondence relating to the original grant of Vancouver Island to the Hudson’s Bay Company and the parliamentary enquiry into the company in 1857 are the two most important of a considerable list of parliamentary papers,5 and records of the legislature on Vancouver Island have been printed, although they exist also in manuscript.6 In addition, there is voluminous unpublished material. The British Library in London holds some, along with its collection of contemporary published accounts of the region, which were also consulted. There is original material relating to naval matters in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, east of London. The bulk of the manuscript holdings are in the British Columbia Archives, Royal BC Museum in Victoria; within the holdings of the British Colonial Office in the National Archives at Kew, west of London and in the Archives of Manitoba in Winnipeg which houses the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives with its welcoming banner draping the building proclaiming ‘Hudson’s Bay Company Archives … yours to explore’.7 The National Archives holds warrants and commissions for colonial appointments, sometimes in more than one draft, so one can see how things changed. The archives present a range of manuscript material – journals, accounts, shipping lists, reports, etc. – but much is in the form of letters,

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often called despatches: the Vancouver Island governor and other officials’ correspondence with the HBC and the Colonial Office in London. There are also letters between people within North America and some private letters, an important source in some colonial Canadian studies.8 There is some duplication, the parties would send off their despatch and keep a copy themselves, so there should be two copies of everything, but this is not always the case, not all the material has survived and the only way to be sure of seeing everything is to do what the author did and to spend extensive periods in each of the archives. Where there is more than one copy of the same letter or other material, the footnotes here relate to where the author first read it. Visiting all the archives had an unexpected benefit. The author had read the letters of Richard Blanshard to the Colonial Office in the BC Archives; thus on a later visit to the National Archives there seemed little point in calling up the same letters. However, he did so to discover that the Colonial Office officials would often fold over a corner of a despatch and make cramped notes on the back in the small triangle thus revealed. This has a pleasing and useful immediacy, revealing what the official was thinking as he was reading the letter just received after its long journey from remote Vancouver Island. Interrogating these particular versions of the despatch was particularly revealing, as with Herman Merrivale’s irritated note that ‘I cannot help remarking on the inconvenience of Lieut Blanshard’s habit of indulging his hostility to the company’, whilst Earl Grey formulated policy on the back of the same letter, instructing his officeials to ask the HBC ‘if they have any other gentlemen to recommend for the appointment’,9 a request that led to the appointment as governor of that important actor in the history of western Canada, James Douglas

Appendix 2 ABBREVIATIONS BC BCA

British Columbia British Columbia Archives (Royal BC Museum, Victoria) BL British Library (London) BPP British Parliamentary Papers HBC Hudson’s Bay Company HBCA Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg) NA National Archives (Kew) NMM National Maritime Museum (Greenwich) PSAC Puget Sound Agricultural Company

Appendix 3 DRAMATIS PERSONAE Armstrong, W.J. Arrowsmith, John Babbington-Ring, D. Ball, J. Balls, George Banfield, William Bannister, Thomas Barclay, Archibald Barnes, Ellis Barr, Robert Barrett-Lennard, C.E. Batimean, Bazil Baylee, R.C.P. Bayley (Baillie), Charles Bayley, Eliza Bayley, Thomas Baynes, Robert Lambert Beacon, n/k Beardsmore, Charles Begbie, Matthew Baillie Berens, Henry L. Birch, Arthur Blackwood, Arthur Blanshard, Richard Blenkinsop, George Blinkhorn, Thomas Britius Brodie, Nivian Brooker, William Brotchie, William Brown, n/k. Brown, Peter Brown, Robert Brownfield, n/k Bruce, Sir Henry William Buchanan, James Buckingham & Chandos, 3rd Duke of

President, Municipal Council of New Westminster British cartographer merchant, Victoria Colonial Office official passenger, Norman Morrison timber merchant barrister, London HBC Company Secretary Sheriff of Whatcomb County, Washington schoolmaster naval captain and yachtsman HBC servant missionary clerk; passenger, Tory; Nanaimo schoolmaster? passenger, Tory PSAC bailiff; passenger, Tory Admiral, Royal Navy HBC doctor HBC official BC judge HBC board member BC official Colonial Office official Governor, Vancouver Island HBC manager, Fort Rupert estate manager; magistrate pseudonym of a missionary cousin of W.C. Grant British Consul, San Francisco HBC captain; timber merchant; harbourmaster Captain, England HBC shepherd leader, Vancouver Island Exploration Committee Gravesend pilot Admiral, Royal Navy President of the United States Colonial Secretary, 1867–68

APPENDICES Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward (Lord Lytton) Burgess, William Cameron, Cecilia Cameron, David Cameron, Lord Cardwell, Edward Carey, George Hunter Carnarvon, 4th Earl of Cate, n/k Chancellor, Eliza Charbono Cheealshlae Clarke, n/k Clewston, Robert Colvile, Andrew Colvile, Eden Connolly, Matthew Cooper, James Cornelius, Peter Courtney, n/k Crofton, John ffolliott Cutlar, Lyman Dallas, Alexander Grant David, Jules De Cosmos, Amor Demers, Modest Disraeli, Benjamin Dodd, Charles Domer, John Douglas, Amelia Douglas, (Sir) James Dundas, Adam Dunsmuir, Robert Duntze, J.A. Ebay, n/k Ellice, Edward Enderby, Charles Fathlasut Finlayson, Roderick Fitzgerald, James Edward Fitzwilliam, Charles W.W. Floyd, John B. Forbes, Charles Fortescue, C. Fraser, Donald

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Colonial Secretary, 1858–59 passenger, Norman Morrison wife of David Cameron; sister of James Douglas mine manager; magistrate; Chief Justice Colonial Office official Colonial Secretary, 1864–66 Attorney General Colonial Secretary, 1866–67 HBC servant potential settler HBC servant Songhees chief schoolmaster, Maple Point HBC official HBC Chairman HBC administrator Royal Navy officer HBC captain; publican; trader; councillor a European who lived with indigenous people Captain, Royal Navy military commander, Red River Colony American squatter (or settler), San Juan Island HBC representative President, Victoria Chamber of Commerce activist; newspaper editor; politician Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vancouver Island British politician HBC Chief Factor contemporary commentator wife of James Douglas HBC Chief Factor; Governor, Vancouver Island; Lieutenant Governor, Queen Charlotte’s Island; Governor, British Columbia Lieutenant, Royal Navy coalminer; mine owner; businessman; politician Captain, Royal Navy American official British MP contemporary commentator indigenous man, Vancouver Island HBC Chief Factor; councillor emigration proponent, New Zealand politician British politician American Secretary of War Surgeon, Royal Navy government official journalist; councillor

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Fraser, Thomas Garipie, n/k Gilmour (Gilmore), Boyd Glenelg, Lord Goodfellow, S.J. Gordon, George Grand, n/k Grant, Walter Colquhoun Grey, Sir George Grey, the 3rd Earl Griffin, Charles Halcombe, John Joseph Hall, Thomas Hamilton, William A.B. Hamilton, William R. Harney, William Hawes, Benjamin Hawkins, C.S. Helmcken, Cecelia Helmcken, John S. Houston, Wallace Hornby, Geoffrey Hornsby, Sir Phipp Hunt, Lewis Cass Jake Jim John, Captain Johnson, Charles Richard Jones, Richard Kane, Paul Kennedy, Arthur E. Kennedy, John Keppel, William Coutts, Viscount Bury Kuper, Augustus Leopold Labouchere, Henry Lagacé, n/k Lamphrett, n/k Langfield, n/k Langford, Edward E. Langley, Alfred John Legacé, Josette Lord, John Keast Macdonald, Duncan C.F. Macdonald, L. Macdonald, William Mason, Charles

HBC official in London HBC servant coalminer Colonial Secretary, 1835–39 doctor, London Captain, H.M. Steamer Cormorant HBC servant HBC surveyor; settler at Sooke Colonial Secretary, 1854–55 Colonial Secretary, 1846–52 HBC servant; magistrate, San Juan Islands writer on religious affairs labourer, Esquimalt Secretary to the Admiralty President, Royal Geographical Society General, US Army MP, Colonial Office minister military officer, member of Boundary Commission wife of John Helmcken; daughter of James Douglas HBC doctor; magistrate; Speaker, Vancouver Island House of Assembly; BC councillor Captain, HMS Trincomalee Captain, HMS Tribune Admiral, Royal Navy Captain, US Army indigenous man at Victoria indigenous man at Fort Rupert Haida chief Captain, HMS Driver labourer, Constance Cove farm travelling artist Governor, Vancouver Island HBC Chief Trader contemporary commentator; British MP Captain, HMS Thetis Colonial Secretary, 1855–58 HBC servant French missionary Roman Catholic missionary PSAC bailiff; elected to Vancouver Island Assembly businessman; councillor; commentator wife of John Work naturalist contemporary commentator Commander, Victoria Voltageurs; HBC servant HBC clerk; passenger Tory; politician Acting Governor, Washington Territory

APPENDICES Mayne, Richard Charles McAuley, Donald McDonald William McDonald, Angus McDougal, n/k McFarlane, A. McGregor, John McKay, Joseph William McKenzie, Kenneth McLean, Donald McLouglin, John McMullan, Harry McNeil, William H. McTavish, Dougald Merrivale, Herman Michael, George Miller, William Mills, John Powell Moffett, Hamilton Molesworth, Sir William Monroe, Thomas Montrease, n/k Moody, Richard C. Moortrake, F. Moresby, Fairfax Muir, Andrew Muir, Archibald Muir, John Muir, Robert Newcastle, 5th Duke of Newton, n.k. Nicolay, C.G. Ogden, Peter Skene Pakington, Sir John A. Parker, J. Parker, n/k. Pascoe, Joseph F. Pearce, Benjamin Pelly, Sir John H. Pemberton, Joseph D. Phelps, M. Pickett, George Prevost, James Charles Rabasca Rattray, Alexander Reid, James Riel, Louis Ritchie, n/k

243

settler; contemporary commentator PSAC bailiff; magistrate carpenter HBC clerk, Fort Colvile. Captain, John Hancock passenger, Norman Morrison coalminer HBC clerk; assemblyman PSAC bailiff; settler at Craigflower; magistrate HBC Chief Trader, Thompson’s River HBC Chief Factor, Fort Vancouver Governor, Washington Territory HBC official HBC Chief Factor Colonial Office official seaman, Norman Morrison contemporary commentator Captain, Colinda HBC official Colonial Secretary, 1855 settler Captain, HMS Calypso Colonel; Lieutenant Governor, British Columbia German pastor, San Francisco Admiral, Royal Navy coalminer; Sheriff of Victoria coalminer coalminer; timber merchant; assemblyman coalminer Colonial Secretary, 1852–54; 1859–64 farm manager, Esquimalt writer on religious affairs HBC official, Columbia District Colonial Secretary, 1852 Admiralty official Captain, Lord Western Victoria merchant assistant surveyor, HBC Chairman, HBC surveyor; assemblyman; BC councillor HBC official Captain, US Army Captain, HMS Virago and HMS Satellite indigenous man, Vancouver Island contemporary commentator HBC ship’s captain leader, Red River rebellion HBC ship’s pilot

244

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Robinson, George Robinson, Thomas Rogers, Sir F. Romily, C. Rooney, n/k Rosenberg, Nickolay Rowland, Mattias Russell, Lord John Samsun, Arthur Sangster, James Sangster, Robert Selkirk, 5th Earl of Seymour, Frederick Seymour, Sir George Shadd, Mary Ann C. Shepherd, John Simpson, Sir George Skea, James Skinner, Thomas Smith, G. Smith, John Smith, William G. Smith, William Southgate, Joseph Spring Rice, Thomas, 1st Baron Monteagle Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm Spurgeon, John Staines, Mary Staines, Robert John Stamp, Edward Stanley, Lord Stanton, Alfred Starling, Edmund Steptoe, Edward Jenner Stevens, Isaac Stewart, James C. Swanston, Robert Swartwout, Robert Tenatman Thomas, n/k Tilton, James Tod, John Tolmie, William J. Tomlin, n/k Trevelyan, Sir Charles E. Trutch, Joseph Urqhart, n/k

mine manager, Nanaimo servant to Richard Blanshard Government official Colonial Office official Captain, Susan Sturgess Governor, Russian America publican; public executioner Colonial Secretary, 1855; Foreign Secretary Lieutenant, HMS Thetis settler collector of taxes, Vancouver Island developer, Red River Colony Governor, British Columbia Admiral, Royal Navy American anti-slavery campaigner HBC Governor HBC Governor in North America HBC shepherd PSAC bailiff; magistrate HBC official coalminer HBC Company Secretary see Amor de Cosmos BC councillor British politician settler at Alberni; timber merchant doctor, London schoolmistress HBC chaplain and schoolmaster timber merchant Colonial Secretary, 1858 seaman, Norman Morrison American Indian Agent, Cape Flattery Colonel, US Army Governor, Washington Territory US official merchant, San Francisco Captain, US Steamer Massachusetts T’Souke Chief HBC servant Officer Commanding, Washington Territory HBC Chief Trader; councillor HBC doctor owner, Colinda Treasury official Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works, BC missionary

APPENDICES Vavasour, M. Wakefield, Edward G. Wakeford, Henry P. Ward, James Warre, Henry J. Watson, Arthur Weber, n/k Wellesley, George Williams, Thomas Wishart, David Durham Work, John Worthington, n/k Yates, James Young, W.A.G.

Lieutenant, Royal Navy politician; proposer of ‘systematic colonisation’ private secretary to Arthur Kennedy contemporary commentator Lieutenant, Royal Navy Treasurer, Vancouver Island US inspector, San Juan Islands Captain, HMS Daedalus HBC shepherd Captain, Norman Morrison HBC Chief Trader; councillor timber importer carpenter; publican; landowner Colonial Secretary, Vancouver Island; Treasurer, BC

245

Appendix 4 TABLES 2.1 Items supplied to surveying party, Vancouver Island, 1852. Arms

Comestibles

Survey items

Tools

Utensils

Flint Gunpowder Powder Shot

Beef Biscuit Brandy Bread Butter Flour Mustard Pepper Rum Salt Suet Sugar Tea Vinegar

Bunting Cartridge paper Sealing wax

Axes Baskets Chisels Cloth Hammers Leather Paint Spades Turpentine Twine

Candles Candlesticks Cutlery Glasses Kettles Pans Saucers

Source: Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts: Ledger, 1848–1861, HBCA, E.22/2. 2.2 Migrants to Vancouver Island, 1848–52. Year 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 Total

Males 21 67 99 28 56 271

Females

Children

Total

5 5 25 2 43 80

6 0 27 0 51 84

32 72 151 30 150 435

Source: Andrew Colvile to Sir John Pakington, 24 November 1852, Return Made Since 1849 by the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, BPP, 1852–53, lxv.61.

APPENDICES

247

2.3 Hudson’s Bay Company passengers for Vancouver Island, 1848–54. Year

Ship

Men

Women

Children

1848 1849 1850 1850 1850 1851 1852 1853 1853 1853 1854 1854 1854 Total

Harpooner 11 Norman Morrison 55 Tory 67 Pekin 6

5 5 12 5

6 0 12 12

Norman Morrison 27 Norman Morrison 34 Colinda 96 Otter 9

0 24 41 0

0 24 77 0

Princess Royal Marquis of Bute

34 4

25 2

44 4

343

119

179

Total 22 60 91 23 114 27 82 214 9 223 103 10 113 641

Source: Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts: Ledger, 1848–61, HBCA, E.22/2. 2.4 Passengers for three voyages to Vancouver Island, 1850–52. Ship Men Steerage Intermediate Cabin Women Steerage Intermediate Cabin Children Steerage Intermediate Cabin Total

Tory 1850 Norman Morrison 1851 Norman Morrison 1852 93 74 11 8 20 9 6 5 17 4 9 4 130

23 21 0 2 2 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 26

59 53 3 3 40 36 2 2 45 28 6 11 144

Sources: Tory: HBCA, B.226/z/1; Norman Morrison: HBCA, C.1/614.

248

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

2.5 Purchasers of land in Vancouver Island before 1858. Name Bamfield, William Blenkinsop, George

Acres

79 261 338 365 Total 964 Botineau, Baptiste 40 Casleton, Richard 27 Cornelius (sic) 201 Clouston, Robert 114 Cooper, James 64 20 Total 84 Dallas, Alexander Grant 825 Deans, George 112 De Mers, Modeste 112 Dodd, Charles 247 179 262 Total 688 Douglas, James 12 418 100 247 Total 777 Finlayson, Roderick 103 170 385 Total 658 Fish, James and Robert 50 Foote, William 97 Fraser, Paul 250 Galllion, Charles 114 Gliddon, William H. 86 Grant, Walter Colquhoun 374 Greenwood, George 80 Gregg, John 37 Halcrow, Gideon G. 200

Roods 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 3 1 3 4 0 0 3 0 0 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0

Perches 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 32 0 32 0 0 0 0 0 38 38 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

District Sooke Victoria Victoria Lake District Victoria Lake District Victoria Victoria Victoria Esquimalt Lake District Victoria Victoria Esquimalt Esquimalt Lake District Victoria Victoria Victoria Esquimalt Victoria Victoria Metchosin Lake District Victoria Metchosin Victoria Victoria Sooke Victoria Esquimalt Esquimalt

APPENDICES

Name

Acres

Hawkins, George F.

58 20 78 40 1,212 1,130 710 172 140 24 55 119 6,190 9,752 139 40 179 205 20 128 164 87 199 450 319 29 200 170 370 250 247 20 20 113 153 82 20 40 180 220

Total Hillier, William Hudson’s Bay Company

Total Helmcken, John S. Total Henry, N. Peers Huggins, W.J. Irving, John Kennedy, John Frederick Total Kitson, Edwin Lemon, John Mackenzie, George Total Mackenzie, George Mackenzie, Kenneth Macdonald, William J Total McDougal, John McKay, Hugh McGregor, John Total

Roods 2 1 3 0 0 0 0 2 3 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 2 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

249

Perches 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 25 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

District Victoria Esquimalt Lake District Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Esquimalt Esquimalt Esquimalt Nanaimo Esquimalt Esquimalt Esquimalt Metchosin Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Metchosin Victoria Victoria Victoria Lake District Victoria Esquimalt Esquimalt Victoria Victoria Sooke Sooke Metchosin

250

Name McNeill, William H.

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Acres

264 50 Total 314 Merriman, Peter 262 Morell, Leon 40 Muir, Andrew 89 Muir, Archibald 100 Muir, Michael 71 Muir, John 205 Owen, Arthur 150 Parsons, William R. 40 Pearse, Benjamin 190 Pemberton, Joseph D. 356 177 Total 533 Pike, William 40 Pike, Caleb 40 60 Total 100 Porter, Robert 80 Public Reserve, Clergy 2,188 Public Reserve, Governor’s 596 Puget Sound Agric Co 630 606 610 605 213 210 Total 2,274 Ross, Isabella 145 57 Total 202 Sangster, James 20 Scott, Robert 256 Skinner, Thomas 20 Smith, Richard 41 Staines Robert J 46 400 Total 446 Stockand, James 100

Roods 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 2 0 2 0

Perches 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 16 16 0 0 34 34 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 34 0 16 0 0 0 0

District Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Sooke Sooke Sooke Sooke Esquimalt Esquimalt Victoria Victoria Victoria Lake District Esquimalt Lake District Lake District Victoria Victoria Esquimalt Esquimalt Esquimalt Esquimalt Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Esquimalt Victoria Esquimalt Lake District Victoria Victoria Victoria

APPENDICES

Name

Acres

Tod, James

100 100 200 109 164 273 272 99 311 682 210 312 60 372 20 27 27 27 27 708 290 998 87 117 23 227

Total Tod, John Total Tolmie, William F Total Von Almen, Henry Von Almen, John Caspar Total Weir, Robert Williams, Edmund William, John, Jnr Williams, John, Snr Williams, William Work, John Total Yates, James Total

Roods 0 2 2 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

251

Perches 0 0 0 24 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 14 8 22 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

District Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Lake District Metchosin Lake District Lake District Lake District Lake District Victoria Victoria Victoria Victoria Esquimalt

Note appended: ‘There is no information obtainable as to the amount of lands brought under cultivation.’ Measurements: 1 acre=0.4047 hectare 1 rood=0.1012 hectare (4 roods to the acre) 1 perch=0.0025 hectare (40 perches to the rood, 160 to the acre) Source: A Return of All Lands in Vancouver’s Island Sold to any Individual or Company, with the Names of the Persons or Company to whom such Lands have been Sold, the Extent to which Such Lands are Under Cultivation, and the Localities in which they are Situated, BPP, 1857–58, xli.571.

252

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

2.6 Agricultural holdings in Vancouver Island Colony sold in 1858. District Saanitch Cowitchan Lake District Sooke Victoria Total

Number of purchasers

Sections sold

47 34 2 8 35 126

38 27 2 8 35 110

Total acres 11,210 14,620 450 2,040 1,894 30,214

Source: James Douglas to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 13 October 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 4.1 Exports from Vancouver Island, 1853. Exports

Value ($)

Coal Coal & piles Coal & squared timber Coal, salmon, cranberries Berries, salmon, lumber, potatoes Furs & wool for HBC Merchandise [intra-HBC] Oolachnus [a fish] Oysters Piles Piles & squared timber

8,200 1,800 5,000 4,000 2,500 n/k 2,000 n/k 500 4,400 2,100

Piles, salmon & squared timber Salmon Salmon and whale & fish oil Salmon & squared timber Salt Spars Spars & piles Timber & squared timber

4,000 23,000 3,000 4,100 2,000 1,500 1,300 1,000

Quantity 1,492 tons n/k n/k n/k 150 barrels cranberries n/k n/k 150 barrels 1,000 bushels 128,800 feet piles 16,500 feet piles; 10,000 feet sawed timber n/k 3,540 barrels 200 barrels oil n/k n/k 22,000 feet spars n/k n/k

Source: Grant, Walter Colquhoun, ‘Description of Vancouver Island by its first colonist’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 27 (1857), pp. 268– 320.

APPENDICES

253

4.2 Vancouver Island financial statistics (£), 1864–65. Year

Imports

Exports without gold

Gold exports

Public revenue

Public expenditure

1864 1865

742,842 594,297

79,209 120,254

555,946 426,198

71,267 88,894

74,247 90,278

Source: Vancouver Island Statistics, BPP, 1867–68, lxxi.57. 6.1 Puget Sound Agricultural Company holdings, Vancouver Island, 1853. Bailiff Edward Langford Kenneth McKenzie Kenneth McKenzie Thomas Skinner Donald McAuley

Holding (acres)

Roads

630 213 606 610 605

10 0 10 10 10

Rocky areas 20 5 135 100 135

Other

Cultivable land

0 0 50 0 0

600 208 411 500 460

Source: Joseph Pemberton to Archibald Barclay, 12 September 1853, HBCA, A.6/120.

Appendix 5 FIRST NATION NAMES Names in contemporary documents

Names used today

Aht Cowegans, Cowitchans, Cowegins Heydah Keechamista Naskeemo Neweete Nootka Quackolls, Queackay, Quaeakean, Quakold, Quakeolteh Samuna Sanetch, Sonitch, Sanitch Skatchats [?] Sokes, Sioks Suanaimuch, Sarlequum Tsclallum, Clellum, Collalams, Tsomass, Sougass, Songies Whetlances

Huu-ay-aht Quw’utsun’ Haida Newitty Nuu chah nulth Kwakwaka’wakw Saanich Scia’new T’Souke Snuneymuxw Songhees/Lekwungen

Notes Chapter 1 1 Rossiter, David A., ‘Lessons in possession: colonial resource geographies in practice on Vancouver Island, 1859–1865’, Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007), pp. 770-90. 2 Laidlaw, Zoe, Colonial Connections, 1815–45: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 2005). 3 Wainwright, Joel, ‘“The first duties of persons living in a civilised community”: the Maya, the church, and the colonial state in southern Belize’, Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009), p. 431. 4 Wainwright: ‘“The first duties”’, p. 431. 5 Seed, Patricia, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1995) p. 39. 6 Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Frontier in American History (H. Holt: New York, 1921). 7 Cross, Michael S. (ed), The Frontier Thesis and the Canadas: The Debate on the Impact of the Canadian Environment (Copp Clark: Toronto, 1970). 8 Limerick, Patricia Nelson, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (W.W. Norton: New York, 1987). 9 Johnston, Ronald J., The American Urban System: A Geographical Perspective (Longman: London, 1983), pp. 70-71. 10 McKay, Douglas, The Honourable Company (2nd revised edition, McClelland and Stewart: Toronto, 1966). 11 Blussé, Leonard and Gaastra, Femme S. (eds), Companies and Trade (Leiden University Press: Amsterdam, 1981). 12 Lee, Robert C., The Canada Company and the Huron Tract, 1826–1853 (Natural Heritage Books: Toronto, 2004). 13 Royle, Stephen A., The Company’s Island: St Helena, Company Colonies and the Colonial Endeavour (I.B. Tauris: London, 2007). 14 Neu Guinea Compagnie, ‘Annual Report for 1893-94’, in Peter Sack and Dymphna Clark (eds), German New Guinea: The Annual Reports (Australian National University Press: Canberra, 1979), p. 90. 15 Royle, Stephen A., A Geography of Islands: Small Island Insularity (Routledge: London, 2001). 16 Copy of the Existing Charter or Grant by the Crown to the HBC, Together with Copies or Extracts of the Correspondence which Took Place at the Last Renewal of the Charter, BPP, 1842, xxviii.521; Newman, Peter C., Company of Adventurers (Viking: Toronto, 1985); Newman, Peter C., Caesars of the Wilderness (Penguin: Toronto, 1987). 17 Sir John Pelly to the Lords Commissioners of the Committee of Privy Council for Trade, 7 February 1838, Copy of the Existing Charter. 18 Reid, Jennifer, Louis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada: Mythic Discourse and the Postcolonial State (University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque, 2008).

256 19 20

21 22 23

24 25 26

27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38

39 40 41 42

43 44 45

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Morton, Arthur Silver, A History of the Canadian West to 1870–71 (2nd edition, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1974). Report: The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of those British Possessions in North America which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. Copy of the Existing Charter. Sir George Simpson to Pelly, 1 February 1837, Copy of the Existing Charter. Thorner, Thomas (ed.), ‘A Few Acres of Snow’: Documents in Pre-Confederation Canadian History (Broadview: Peterborough, Ont., 2003), Chapter 8, ‘“An unwanted explosion of commercial rivalry”: North West Company vs Hudson’s Bay Company’, pp. 194-225. Pelly to the Lords Commissioners, 7 February 1838, Copy of the Existing Charter. Sir George Simpson to Pelly, 1 February 1837, Copy of the Existing Charter. Burley, Edith I., Servants of the Honourable Company: Work, Discipline and Conflict in the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1770-1879 (Oxford University Press, Don Mills, Ont., 1997). Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. Extract of despatch from the Board of Management, 6 November 1847, NA, CO 305/1. Pelly to Earl Grey, 7 September 1846, Copy of Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Relative to the Colonization of Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1847-48, xlii.693. Benjamin Hawes to Pelly, 3 October 1846, Copy of Correspondence. Pelly to Hawes, 24 October 1846, Copy of Correspondence. Hawes to Pelly, 2 February 1847, Copy of Correspondence. Pelly to Grey, 5 March 1847, Copy of Correspondence. Hawes to Pelly 25 February 1848, Copy of Correspondence Pelly to Grey, 5 March 1848 (1st letter that day), Copy of Correspondence. Pelly to Grey, 5 March 1848 (2nd letter that day), Copy of Correspondence. Hawes to Pelly, 13 March 1848, Copy of Correspondence. In the archives the island is usually termed ‘Vancouver’s Island.’ That usage will be reserved to quotations, with the modern form used in the text. Monteagle, Baron (Thomas Spring-Rice), Colonization of Vancouver’s Island. Substance of the Speech of the Lord Monteagle in the House of Lords, Thursday, August 24 1848. Extracted from Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 1848 (George Woodfall: London, 1848) p. 7. See also the report in The Times, 25 August 1848. Royle: Company’s Island, Chapter 6. The Times, 25 August 1848. Fitzgerald, James Edward, Vancouver’s Island, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Government (Simmonds: London, 1848), p. 28. Bennett, Richard and Jewsbury, Arran, ‘The lion and the emperor: the Mormons, the Hudson’s Bay Company and Vancouver Island, 1846-1858’, BC Studies 128 (2000-2001), pp. 37–62. Henry Labouchere to James Douglas, 1 February 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. Bennett and Jewsbury ‘The lion and the emperor.’ The Times, 21 August 1848.

NOTES 46

47

48 49 50 51

52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59

257

Fitzgerald: Vancouver’s Island, the Hudson’s Bay Company, p. 26; see also Keith Wilson, ‘John ffolliott Crofton’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=39577 (accessed 20 February 2010). Fitzgerald, James Edward, Vancouver’s Island: The New Colony (Simmons: London, 1848); also Fitzgerald to Herman Merrivale, 2 June 1848, NA, CO 305/1. Fitzgerald; Vancouver’s Island: The New Colony, pp. 11-12 and p. 15. The Times, ‘Parliamentary Intelligence’, 17 April 1849. Vancouver’s Island n.d., NA, CO 305/1. Fitzgerald, James Edward, An Examination of the Charter and Proceedings of the Hudson’s Bay Company with Reference to the Grant of Vancouver Island (Trelawney Saunders: London, 1848), pp. 245-46; p. 246, p. 250, p. 263, p. 268 and pp. 292–93. Fitzgerald, James Edward, Proposal for the Formation of a Colony in Vancouver’s Island on the West Coast of North America (For Private Circulation, 1847), BL, Mic.F.252/16845; also Fitzgerald to Hawes, 9 June 1847, NA, CO 305/1. Hawes to Fitzgerald, 18 February 1848, NA, CO 305/1. Fitzgerald to Merrivale, 2 June 1848, NA, CO 305/1. Note by Grey on the back of Fitzgerald to Merrivale, 30 June 1848, NA, CO 305/1. Hawes to Fitzgerald, 24 February 1848, reproduced in Fitzgerald: Vancouver’s Island: The New Colony. An Intending Emigrant to Vancouver [Island, probably Walter Colquhoun Grant], ‘Vancouver’s Island’, The Times, 7 September 1848. Walter Colquhoun Grant to Merrivale (probably), 8 November 1848, NA, CO 305/1. An Intending Emigrant: ‘Vancouver’s Island’.

Chapter 2 1 James Douglas to John McLoughlin, 12 July 1842, enclosure in Sir John Pelly to Benjamin Hawes, 24 October 1846, Copy of Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Secretary of State for the Colonies Relative to the Colonization of Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1847–48, xlii.693. 2 Post Journal, Fort Victoria, 18 June 1849, HBCA, B.226/a/1. 3 Richard Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of those British Possessions in North America which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. 4 Joseph Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 25 January 1852, HBCA, A.6/120. 5 Douglas, James, ‘Report of a canoe expedition along the east coast of Vancouver Island’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 24 (1854), pp. 245 and 247. 6 Sir John Pakington to Douglas 18 December 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 7 Douglas to the Duke of Newcastle, 20 May 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 8 Douglas to Newcastle, 24 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 9 Douglas to William Smith, 1 September 1857, HBCA, B.226/b/15. 10 Grant, Walter Colquhoun, ‘Description of Vancouver Island by its first colonist’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (1857) 27, pp. 268–320.

258 11 12 13 14 15 16

17

18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33

34

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Douglas to Henry Labouchere, 10 June 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Brown, Robert, Vancouver Island Exploration (Government of Vancouver Island: Victoria, 1864), pp. i–ii. Forbes, Charles, Prize Essay. Vancouver Island, Its Resources and Capabilities as a Colony (The Colonial Government: Victoria, 1862). Brown: Vancouver Island Exploration, p. i. Walter Colquhoun Grant to Herman Merrivale (probably), 8 November 1848, NA, CO 305/1. Richard Blanshard to Earl Grey, 8 April 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Printed as Vancouver Island Despatches, Governor Blanshard to the Secretary of State, 26th December 1849 to 30th August 1851 (Government Printing Office: New Westminster, 1863). Grant received £162 for his year’s employment and ‘for extra services’, Statement of payments applied to the colonization and improvement of Vancouver’s Island to the 31 October 1852, enclosure in Andrew Colvile to Pakington, 24 November 1852, Return Made Since 1849 by the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in Conformity with the Grant of Vancouver’s Island to the Said Company, BPP, 1852–53, lxv.61. Archibald Barclay to Peter Skene Ogden, Douglas and John Work, 4 August 1849, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Barclay to Douglas, 16 August 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Sir John Pelly to Earl Grey, 14 January 1852, enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Barclay to Joseph Pemberton, 15 February 1851, HBCA A.6/120. Statement of payments applied to the colonization and improvement of Vancouver’s Island to the 31st October 1852, enclosure in Andrew Colvile to Pakington, 24 November 1852, Return Made Since 1849. Pemberton to Barclay, 6 February 1854, HBCA, A.6/120. Charles W. Wentworth Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Smith to Pemberton, 28 July 1854, HBCA, A.6/120. Pemberton to Barclay, 7 March 1855, HBCA, A.6/120. Pelly to Earl Grey, 14 January 1852 enclosure in Earl Grey to Douglas, 11 February 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. A draft of the grant of Vancouver’s Island to the Hudson’s Bay Company was an enclosure in Pelly to Earl Grey, 20 July 1848, Copy of Correspondence. The grant itself was dated 13 January 1849: Vancouver’s Island: Royal Grant, Papers Relative to Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1849, xxxv.629. Vancouver’s Island, no date, NA, CO 305/1. Edinburgh Weekly Register, 5 September 1849, cited in Anon, Colonization of Vancouver’s Island (Burrup and Son: London, 1849). Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts: Ledger, 1848-1861, HBCA, E.22/2. Andrew Colvile to Pakington, 24 November 1852, Return Made Since 1849. Commission to Richard Blanshard as Governor of Vancouver’s Island, 21 July 1849, with great seal, BCA, MS–0611 (9) (special permission is needed to consult this; a typed copy is at MS–0611 (1)). Blanshard to Earl Grey, 8 April 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1, Vancouver Island Despatches.

NOTES 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70

259

Earl Grey to Blanshard, 23 October 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1A. Charles Johnson to Sir Phipp Hornsby, 21 June 1850, NMM, PHI/3/5. Barclay to Douglas, 3 May 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2. Grant to Nivian Brodie, 8 August 1851, in Hendrickson, James E., ‘Two letters from Walter Colquhoun Grant’, BC Studies 26 (1975), p.9. History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2. J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846-1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. Douglas to Roderick Finlayson, 11 April 1849, HBCA, B.226/b/2. Vancouver Island Colony: BCA, MS-0611 (8). Douglas to Grant, 17 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Barclay to Douglas, 5 July 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Grant to Brodie, 29 August 1848, in Hendrickson: ‘Two letters’, p. 13. Grant to Brodie, 29 August 1848, in Hendrickson: ‘Two letters’, p. 13. Fairfax Moresby to the Admiralty, 7 July 1851, enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Hudson’s Bay Record Society, Hudson’s Bay Company 1670-1870, Volume II, 1763–1870 (Hudson’s Bay Record Society: London, 1959) p. 757. Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. Grant to Brodie, 29 August 1848 in Hendrickson: ‘Two letters’. Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’. James Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2. Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’. Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Pelly to Douglas, 23 May 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1/ Moresby to the Admiralty, 7 July 1851, enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Pelly to Earl Grey, 14 January 1852, enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. Barclay to Douglas, 26 September 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. Andrew Colvile to Pakington, 24 November 1852, Return Made Since 1849. See also Mackie, Richard, ‘The colonization of Vancouver Island, 1849–1858’, BC Studies 96 (1992-93), p. 24. Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. Douglas to the Governor, Deputy Governor and Committee of the HBC, 18 March 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. Douglas to Barclay, 9 July 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. Douglas to Newcastle, 28 July 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 24 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Hudson’s Bay Record Society: Hudson’s Bay Company 1670–870. De Bertrand Lugin, N., The Pioneer Women of Vancouver Island, 1843–1866 (The Women’s Club of Victoria: Victoria, 1928), p. 123.

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Lugin: The Pioneer Women, p. 75. Keppel, William Coutts, Viscount Bury, ‘British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island’, Fraser’s Magazine LVIII (1858), p. 502. 73 Rattray, Alexander, Vancouver Island and British Columbia (London: Smith, Elder, 1862), pp. 8–9. 74 Keppel: ‘British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island’. 75 Langley, Alfred John, A Glance at British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island in 1861 (Hardwicke: London, 1862), p. 8. 76 Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts: Ledger, 1848–1861, HBCA, E.22/2. 77 Andrew Colvile to Earl Grey, 18 December 1850, NA CO 305/2. 78 Charles Enderby to Earl Grey, 25 August 1848, NA, CO 305/1. 79 Belfast News Letter, 28 May 1773; see Royle, Stephen A. and Ní Laoire, Caitríona, ‘“Dare the boist’rous main”: the role of the Belfast News Letter in the process of emigration from Ulster to North America, 1760–1800’, The Canadian Geographer 50.1 (2006), pp. 56–73. 80 Moresby to the Admiralty, 7 July 1851, enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 81 Vancouver Island Colony: Blanshard papers, BCA, MS-0611 (8); Passengers for Vancouver Island on Tory, HBCA, B.226.z.1. 82 Moresby to the Admiralty, 7 July 1851, enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 83 Barclay to Douglas, 5 November 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 84 Burns, Flora Hamilton, ‘Victoria in the 1850s’, The Beaver (December 1949), p. 37. 85 J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846–1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 86 Ship’s log, Norman Morrison, 1849–1851, HBCA, C.1/613. 87 Ship’s log, Norman Morrison, 1849–1851, HBCA, C.1/613. 88 J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846–1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 89 Ship’s log, Norman Morrison, 1849–1851, HBCA, C.1/613. 90 J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846–1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 91 Ship’s log, Norman Morrison, 1849–1851, HBCA, C.1/613. 92 J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846–1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 93 J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846–1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 94 Ship’s log, Norman Morrison, 1849–1851, HBCA, C.1/613. 95 Ship’s log, Norman Morrison, 1849–1851, HBCA, C.1/613. 96 J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846–1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 97 J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846–1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 98 Barclay to Douglas, 26 May 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 99 Douglas to Barclay, 20 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 100 Barclay to Douglas, 26 September 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 101 Barclay to Douglas, 4 August 1853, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 102 Smith to Douglas, 21 April 1854, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 103 Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 25 April 1851, HBCA, A.6/120. 104 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 26 October 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 105 Douglas to Barclay, 21 February 1854, B.226/b/14. 106 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 26 October 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 107 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 108 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 13 May 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 71 72

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Smith to Board of Management of the Western Department, 1 June 1854, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 110 Barclay to the Columbia District Board of Management, 1 November 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 111 Johnson to Hornsby, 21 June 1850, NMM, PHI/3/5. 112 Ship’s log, Norman Morrison, 1849-1851, HBCA, C.1/613. 113 Douglas to Eden Colvile, 5 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 114 Douglas to Barclay, 15 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 115 Douglas to Eden Colvile, 5 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 116 Douglas to Barclay, 15 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 117 Ship’s log, Norman Morrison, 1852-1853, HBCA, C.1/615. 118 Douglas to Barclay, 7, 15 and 19 March 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 119 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. 120 Fort Victoria Post Journal, 24 August 1849, HBCA, B.226/a/1. 121 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’. 122 Enclosure in Andrew Colvile to Pakington, 24 November 1852, Return Made Since 1849. 123 Andrew Colvile to Pemberton, 15 January 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 124 Douglas to Pakington, 11 November 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 125 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’. 126 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 127 Douglas to Earl Grey, 15 April 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 128 Census of Vancouver Island 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.7 (printed in British Columbia Historical Quarterly (October 1939)). 129 Mackie: ‘The colonisation of Vancouver Island’. 130 Douglas to Lord John Russell, 21 August 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 131 Macdonald: British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island. 132 Arthur Kennedy to Edward Cardwell, 3 August 1866, Reports Exhibiting the State of Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions, Vancouver Island 1865, BPP 1867, xlviii.159. 133 Douglas to Hawes, 7 April 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4.1. 134 Douglas to F. Moortrake, 5 August 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4.1. 135 Douglas to William Brooker, 23 June 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4.1. 136 Douglas to Labouchere, 8 May 1858, in Anon, The New Government Colony. British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island (Effingham Wilson: London, 1858). 137 Kennedy to Cardwell, 24 August 1865, Reports Exhibiting the State of Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions, Vancouver Island 1864, BPP, 1866, xlix.407. 138 House of Assembly debate, 25 January 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, BPP, 1866, xlix.119. 139 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, England and America: A Comparison of the Social and Political State of Both Nations (R. Bentley: London, 1833); Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, A View of the Art of Colonization: With Present Reference to the British Empire: In Letters Between a Statesman and a Colonist (J.W. Parker: London, 1849). 140 Archer, Joanne, ‘Wakefield’s theory of “systematic colonisation”’, NLA News XIII.9 (2003), http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2003/jun03/article2. html (accessed 21 March 2010). 141 Wakefield: England and America. 109

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Wakefield: England and America. Marx, Karl, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Book One, The Process of Production of Capital (Lawrence and Wishart: London, 1954), p. 723 (first published in German as Das Kapital, 1867). 144 Sir George Seymour, despatch, 26 February 1847, in Martin, R.M., The Hudson’s Bay Territories and Vancouver Island (T. and W. Boone: London, 1849). 145 Ward, James, Perils, Pastimes and Pleasures of an Emigrant in Australia, Vancouver’s Island and California (Thomas Cautley Newby: London, 1849) pp. 10–13. 146 History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2. 147 Grant to Brodie, 29 August 1848 in Hendrickson: ‘Two letters’. 148 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 272. 149 Blanshard Papers, BCA, MS–0611 (5). 150 Macdonald: British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island, p. 281. 151 Macdonald: British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island, p. 382. 152 Anon, ‘Our North Pacific colonies’, The Westminster Review CLXX (1866), p. 206. 153 Macdonald: British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island, p. 349. 154 Douglas to Newcastle, 28 July 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 155 Douglas to Barclay, 9 July 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 156 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 11 December 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 157 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 158 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 3 October 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 159 J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846-1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 160 Belyk, Robert, John Tod, Rebel in the Ranks (Hordsall and Schubart: Victoria, 1995). 161 Marx: Capital, p. 718. 162 Domer, John, A Guide to British Columbia and Vancouver Island (William Henry Angel: London, 1858), p. 13. 163 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 320 164 Douglas to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 20 July 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 165 Pemberton to Barclay, 21 January 1854, HBCA, A.6/120. 166 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 12 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 167 Douglas to Newcastle, 22 October 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 168 Douglas to Newcastle, 28 March 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 169 Douglas to Newcastle, 17 December 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 170 Mayne, Richard C., Four Years in British Columbia and Vancouver Island (John Murray: London, 1862) (reprinted, S.R. Publishers: Toronto, 1969), p. 461. 171 Langley: A Glance at British Columbia, p. 8. 172 Vancouver, The Times, 16 November 1868. 173 Mackie: ‘The colonisation of Vancouver Island’, pp. 3, 4 and 32. 174 Mackie, Richard, ‘Joseph Despard Pemberton’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6361 (accessed 11 July 2010). 175 Barclay to Blanshard, 1 May 1851, BCA, C/AA 10.5/1. 176 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 28 April 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 177 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 3 February 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 178 Earl Grey to Douglas 19 September 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 142 143

NOTES

263

Blanshard to Earl Grey, 28 April 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Douglas to Earl Grey, 23 June 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 181 Pelly to Earl Grey, 4 February 1852 enclosure in Earl Grey to Douglas, 11 February 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 182 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 3 February 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 183 Andrew Colville to Pakington, 24 November 1852, Return Made Since 1849. 184 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’. 185 Douglas to Newcastle, 23 July 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 186 Census of Vancouver Island 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.7. 187 Douglas to Smith, 16 October 1856, Copies or Extracts of Any Despatches that have been Received by Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies on the Establishment of a Representative Assembly at Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xxviii.333. 188 Pemberton, 24 June 1858, A Return of All Lands in Vancouver’s Island Sold to Any Individual or Company, BPP, 1857–58, xli.571. 189 Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas 11 February 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 190 Pemberton: A Return of All Lands. 191 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 13 October 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 192 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 13 October 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 193 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 11 December 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 194 Hawes to Pelly, 4 September 1848, Returns to Three Addresses of the Honourable the House of Commons Dated Respectively, 16 August 1848, 6 February & 1 March 1849, BPP, 1849, xxxv.629. 195 Barclay to Blanshard, 1 May 1851, BCA, C/AA 10.5/1. 196 Post Journal, Fort Victoria, 18 March 1849, HBCA, B.226/a/1. 197 Vancouver Island Colony, Blanshard Papers, BCA, MS–0611 (5); another, MS–611 (8). 198 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1, p. 39. 199 Barclay to Douglas, 16 August 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 200 Douglas to Robert Staines, 27 August 1850, HBCA, b.226/b/3. 201 Andrew Colvile to Pemberton, 1 July 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 202 Pemberton to Barclay, 1 November 1852, HBCA, A.6/120. 203 Andrew Colvile to Pemberton, 15 January 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 204 Pemberton to Barclay, 15 July 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 205 Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts: Ledger, 1848-1861, HBCA, E.22/1. 206 Douglas to Newcastle, 11 May 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 207 Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts: Ledger, 1848-1861, HBCA, E.22/1. 208 Douglas to Roderick Finlayson, 14 March 1849, HBCA, B.226/b/2. 209 Barclay to Douglas, 31 December 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 210 Douglas to Finlayson, 11 April 1849, HBCA, B.226/b/2. 211 Vancouver Island Colony School Return, HBCA, A.11/74; also BCA, Add MSS 2774. 212 Barclay to Douglas, 31 December 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 213 Douglas to Earl Grey, 15 April 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 214 Vancouver Island Colony, Blanshard Papers, BCA, MS-0611 (5); another, MS–611 (8). 179 180

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Minutes, 25 March 1853, Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island Commencing August 30th 1851, and Terminating with the Prorogation of the House of Assembly, February 6th 1861, Memoir II (Archives of British Columbia, Victoria, 1918). 216 Douglas to Newcastle, 11 April 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 217 Smith to Douglas, 5 June 1854, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 218 Douglas to Newcastle, 24 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 219 Douglas to Barclay, 15 March 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 220 Douglas to Newcastle, 17 August 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 221 Smith to Douglas, 21 April 1854, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 222 Census of Vancouver Island 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.7. 223 Proclamation from James Douglas, 15 December 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 224 For example, Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island, 12 July 1854, 21 June 1855, 27 February 1856, BCA, GR0819. 225 Douglas to Newcastle, 23 July 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 226 Minutes, 7 April 1853, Minutes of the Council. 227 Douglas to Sir William Molesworth, 10 June 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 228 Douglas to the House of Assembly, 9 August 1858, House of Assembly Correspondence Book, August 12th 1856 to July 6th 1859, Memoir IV (Archives of British Columbia, Victoria, 1918). 229 Forbes: Prize Essay. 230 Minutes, 27 July 1858, Minutes of the House of Assembly of Vancouver Island August 12th 1856 to September 25th 1858, Memoir III (Archives of British Columbia, Victoria, 1918). 231 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. 232 Ogden and Douglas to Sir George Simpson, Fort Vancouver 19 March 1846, enclosure in Pelly to Hawes, 24 October 1846, Copy of Correspondence. 233 Fitzgerald: Vancouver’s Island, p. 4. 234 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 28 April 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 235 Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 14 December 1851, HBCA, A.6/120. 236 Pemberton to the Governor, Deputy Governor and Committee of HBC, 20 January 1852, HBCA, A.6/120. 237 Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 18 June 1852, HBCA, A.6/120. 238 Andrew Colvile to Pemberton, 16 November 1852, HBCA, A.6/120. 239 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 6 March 1855 (2nd letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 240 Douglas to Lord Stanley, 15 June 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 241 History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2. 242 Rattray: Vancouver Island and British Columbia, p. 157. 243 Mayne: Four Years in British Columbia, pp. 44–45. 244 Rattray: Vancouver Island and British Columbia. 245 Jules David, President, Chamber of Commerce, 6 March 1865 sent via Arthur Kennedy to Edward Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Reply of the Victoria VI Chamber of Commerce to His Excellency Frederick Seymour, Governor of British Columbia Forwarded to the Secretary of State for the Colonies (Victoria Chamber of Commerce: Victoria, 1865). 246 Lord, John Keast, The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia (Richard Bentley: London, 1866) pp. 37–38. 215

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Anon: ‘Our North Pacific colonies’, p. 200. The Times, 24 August 1858. 249 Douglas to Labouchere, 8 May 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 250 Douglas to Smith, 9 June 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/15. 251 Douglas to Finlayson, 9 July 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/15. 252 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 23 March 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 253 Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 25 March 1859, BCA, GR 0819. 254 Douglas to Newcastle, 25 January 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7 255 Rattray: Vancouver Island and British Columbia. 256 Mayne: Four Years in British Columbia, p. 28. 257 Pemberton, Joseph Despard, Vancouver Island and British Columbia (Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts: London, 1862), pp. 62–63. 247 248

Chapter 3 1 Extract from a report by Lieutenants [Henry J.] Warre and [M.] Vavasour, 26 October 1845, Copies and Extracts of Despatches and Other Papers Relating to Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1849, xxxv.629. 2 Charles W. Wentworth Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of British Possessions in North America Which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. 3 Richard Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 4 Adam Dundas to Earl Grey, 30 May 1848, NA, CO 305/1. 5 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to in evidence to The Select Committee. 6 Kane, Paul, Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver’s Island and Oregon Through the Hudson’s Bay Territory and Back Again (Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts: London, 1859), p. 213. 7 Ball, Georgiana, ‘The monopoly system of wildlife management of the Indians and the Hudson’s Bay Company in the early history of British Columbia’, BC Studies 66 (1985), p. 37. 8 Girard, Charlotte S.M., ‘Sir James Douglas’ mother and grandmother’, BC Studies 44 (1979–80), p. 26; see also Adams, John, Old Square Toes and His Lady (Horsdal and Schubart: Victoria, 2001). 9 Fitzgerald, James Edward, An Examination of the Charter and Proceedings of the Hudson’s Bay Company: With Reference to the Grant of Vancouver’s Island (Trelawney Saunders: London, 1848), p. 285. 10 Sir John Pelly to Benjamin Hawes, 22 November 1849, NA, CO 305/2. 11 Oliver, William Hosking, ‘James Edward Fitzgerald’, in A.H. McLintock (ed.) An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/F/ FitzgeraldJamesEdward/en (accessed 23 July 2009). 12 Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. 13 William McNeill to James Douglas, 20 November 1851, HBCA, B. 226/c/1. 14 Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, Stolen Lands, Broken Promises: Researching the Indian Land Question in British Columbia (UBIC: Vancouver, 2005). 15 Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm, The West Coast Indians in Vancouver Island, BL Mic.F.232/16198, (1866), p. 244.

266 16 17

18

19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41

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Sproat: The West Coast Indians, pp. 244–45. Rossiter, David A., ‘Lessons in possession: colonial resource geographies in practice on Vancouver Island, 1859–1865’, Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007), pp. 770–90. Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life (Smith Elder: London, 1868), pp. 3–4. See also Sproat: The West Coast Indians and Anon, ‘Wild tribes in Vancouver’, Chamber’s Journal, 27 June 1868, p. 405. See Appendix 5 for a table of contemporary and modern names used for the various First Nations in the region. Grant, Walter Colquhoun, ‘Description of Vancouver Island by its first colonist’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 27 (1857), p. 296. Walter Colquhoun Grant to Nivian Brodie, 8 August 1851, in Hendrickson, James E., ‘Two letters from Walter Colquhoun Grant’, BC Studies 26 (1975), p. 13. Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 287. Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 296. Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, pp. 300–301. Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 304. Sampson, W. R., ‘John Work’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=4783 (accessed 11 July 2010). Domer, John, A guide to British Columbia and Vancouver (William Henry Angel: London, 1858). The Times, 4 May 1849, reported in Anon, Colonization of Vancouver’s Island (Burrup and Son: London, 1849). Keppel, William Coutts, Viscount Bury, ‘British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island’, Fraser’s Magazine LVIII (1858), p. 495. Lord, John Keast, The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia (Richard Bentley: London, 1866), p. 167. George Gordon to J.A. Duntze, 7 October 1846, in Copies and Extracts of Despatches and Other Papers Relating to Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1849, xxxv.629. Douglas to Grey, 15 April 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Archibald Barclay to Douglas, 3 September 1852, HBCA, B. 226/c/1. Baylee, R.C.P., ‘Vancouver and Queen Charlotte’s Island’, Colonial Church Chronicle May 1854, p. 414. Baylee: ‘Vancouver and Queen Charlotte’s Island’, p. 415. Baylee: ‘Vancouver and Queen Charlotte’s Island’, p. 415. Britius, ‘Mission to Vancouver’s Island’, Colonial Church Chronicle May 1855, p. 74. Douglas to Grey, 31 October 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Henry Labouchere, 20 October 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Pelly to Grey, 7 September 1846, Copy of Correspondence between the Chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Secretary of State for the Colonies Relative to the Colonization of Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1847–48, xlii.693. Sir George Simpson to HBC, Red River Settlement, 21 June 1844, Copy of Correspondence between the Chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Secretary of State for the Colonies Relative to the Colonization of Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1847– 48, xlii.693.

NOTES 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

267

John McLaughlin to Roderick Finlayson, 9 Nov 1844, HBCA, B. 226/b/1. Post Journal, Fort Victoria, 11 May 1847, HBCA, B226/a/1. Post Journal, Fort Victoria, 3 July 1847, HBCA, B226/a/1. Post Journal, Fort Victoria, 20 August 1847, HBCA, B226/a/1. Finlayson to McLaughlin, 25 June 1845, HBCA, B. 226/b/1. Finlayson to McLaughlin, 26 March 1845, HBCA, B. 226/b/1. Douglas to Lord John Russell, 21 August 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Anon, Midshipman’s Diary: A Few Notes Extracted From the Cockpit Journal of a Man of War (J.D. Potter: London, 1862). Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Gordon to Duntze, 7 October 1846, Copies and Extracts. Douglas to Finlayson, 11 April 1849, HBCA, B. 226/b/1. Post Journal, Fort Victoria, 23 August 1849, HBCA, B226/a/1. The Times, ‘Naval Intelligence,’ 27 January 1848. Journal of Thomas Robinson, 1844-1851, BCA, Add MSS 1007. Mayne, Richard Charles, Four Years in British Columbia and Vancouver Island (John Murray: London, 1862) (reprinted S.R. Publishers: Toronto, 1969), p. 76. Finlayson to McLaughlin, 11 January 1845, HBCA, B. 226/b/1. Kane: Wanderings of an Artist. Douglas to James Cooper, 14 October 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Grey, 31 October 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Post Journal, Fort Rupert, 2 and 3 July 1849, HBCA, B.185/a/1. Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E. 176/1. Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. Gordon to Duntze, 7 October 1846, Copies and Extracts. Charles Johnson to Sir Phipp Hornsby, 21 June 1850, NMM, PHI/3/5. Barclay to Douglas, 30 August 1850, HBCA, B. 226/c/1. Blanshard to John Helmcken, 22 June 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Mackie, Richard, ‘The colonisation of Vancouver Island, 1849–1858’, BC Studies 96 (1992–93), p. 38. Douglas to Barclay, 15 November 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. Finlayson to William Tolmie, 13 January 1845, HBCA, B.226/b/1. Finlayson to McLaughlin, 10 March 1845, HBCA, B.226/b/1. Douglas to Labouchere, 5 March 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Domer: A guide to British Columbia. Langley, Alfred John, A Glance at British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island in 1861 (Hardwicke: London, 1862), p. 8. Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Agents for the Puget Sound Agricultural Company to James Douglas, 3 August 1849, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Douglas to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 25 May 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to the Duke of Newcastle, 7 July 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. Kane: Wanderings of an Artist. Agents for the Puget Sound Agricultural Company to James Douglas, 3 August 1849, HBCA, B.226/c/1.

268

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Post Journal, Fort Rupert, 11 February 1850, HBCA, B.185/a/1. Barclay to Douglas, 16 August 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 85 Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs: Stolen Lands. 86 Register of Land Purchases from Indians in the Neighbourhood of Fort Victoria, 1850-52, Records of Agreements with Indians at Fort Rupert, 1851, and Nanaimo 1854 and of Agreements at Barclay Sound 1859 and Port Alberni 1860 by Vancouver Island Government Agent William Banfield, BCA, MS 0772. 87 Barclay to Joseph Pemberton, 15 February 1851, HBCA, A.6/120. 88 Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts Ledger 1848-1861, HBCA, E.22/1–3. 89 Morton, Arthur Silver, A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71 (2nd Edition, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1973). 90 Blanshard to Grey, 12 February 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 91 Barclay to Pemberton, 15 February 1851, HBCA, A.6/120. 92 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, pp. 294–95. 93 Barclay to Douglas, 3 September 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 94 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, pp. 294–95. 95 Mayne: Four Years in British Columbia, p. 164. 96 Douglas to Barclay, 27 September 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 97 House of Assembly to Douglas, 25 January 1859, Minutes of the House of Assembly of Vancouver Island August 12th 1856 to September 25th 1858, Memoir III (Archives of British Columbia: Victoria, 1918). 98 Douglas to the House of Assembly, 5 February 1859, BCA, C/AA/20/2K1. Published as House of Assembly Correspondence Book, August 12th 1856 to July 6th 1859, Memoir IV (Archives of British Columbia: Victoria, 1918). 99 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 9 February 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 100 Douglas to the House of Assembly, 5 February 1859, BCA, C/AA/20/2K1. 101 Rossiter: ‘Lessons in possession’, p. 776. 102 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 295. 103 Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 31 July 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 104 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 25 May 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 105 Douglas to Sir John Pakington, 21 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 106 Miller, Bruce Granville, A Short Commentary on Land Claims in BC, 11th Annual National Land Claims Workshop, http://www.ubcic.bc.ca/Resources/shortcommentary.htm (accessed 12 July 2009). 107 Douglas to Newcastle, 7 July 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 108 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 109 History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2. 110 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. 111 Finlayson to William Tolmie, 23 May 1849, HBCA, B.226/b/2. 112 Post Journal, Fort Rupert, 11 February 1850, HBCA B.185/a/1. 113 Andrew Colvile to Grey, 18 December 1850, NA, CO 305/2. 114 Fitzgerald to Hawes, 9 June 1847, NA, CO 305/1. 115 Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island, 12 July 1854, BCA, GR 0819. 116 Blanshard to Grey, 10 July 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Published as Vancouver Island Despatches, Governor Blanshard to the Secretary of State, 26th December 1849 to 30th August 1851 (Government Printing Office: New Westminster, 1863). 83 84

NOTES

269

Blanshard to Grey, 18 September 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Grey to Blanshard, 30 March 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1A. 119 Blanshard to Grey, 10 July 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 120 Vancouver Island Colony, Act Regulating Importation of Spiritous Liquors, 13 May 1850, BCA, GR 771. 121 Vancouver Island Council 3 August 1854, BCA, GR 0819. Published as Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island commencing August 20 1851 and terminating with the Prorogation of the House of Assembly February 6 1861, Memoir II (Archives of British Columbia: Victoria, 1918). 122 Barclay to Douglas, 3 September 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 123 Douglas to Labouchere, 20 October 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 124 Douglas to Grey, 15 April 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 125 Macdonald, Duncan G.F., Lecture on British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island Delivered at the Royal United Service Institution on March 27 1863 (Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green: London, 1863), p. 48. 126 Post Journal, Fort Rupert, 14 July 1849, HBCA, B.185/a/1. 127 Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. 128 Douglas to Barclay, 5 June 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 129 Mayne: Four Years in British Columbia, p. 30. 130 Post Journal, Fort Victoria, 8 August 1846, HBCA, B.225/a/1. 131 Finlayson to McLoughlin, 4 September 1844, HBCA, B.226/b/1. 132 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 294. 133 Barrett-Lennard, C.E., Travels in British Columbia with the Narrative of a Yacht Voyage Round Vancouver’s Island (Hurst and Blackett: London, 1862), p. 138. 134 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1, p. 12. 135 Douglas to Labouchere, 19 May 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 136 Douglas to Wallace Houston, 18 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 137 Douglas to Newcastle, 24 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 138 Douglas to Russell, 21 August 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 139 Douglas to Sir William Molesworth, 1 March 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 140 Douglas to Isaac Stevens, 6 March 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 141 Douglas to Labouchere, 10 April 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 142 Douglas to Labouchere, 7 June 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 143 Douglas to Labouchere, 22 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 144 Douglas to House of Assembly, August 12th 1856: Memoir III. 145 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 25 May 1859, BCA, CAA/10.1/7. 146 Douglas to Captain de Courcy, 8 March 1859: Memoir IV. 147 Douglas to Newcastle, 7 July 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 148 Barrett-Lennard: Travels in British Columbia, p. 61. 149 Douglas to Newcastle, 7 July 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 150 Douglas to Newcastle, 7 July 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 151 Douglas to Newcastle, 8 August 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 152 Douglas to Newcastle, 25 August 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 153 Douglas to Newcastle, 7 July 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 154 Post Journal, Fort Victoria, 20 August 1847, HBCA, B.226/a/1. 155 Douglas to Newcastle, 28 July 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 156 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1, p. 12. 157 Finlayson to McLaughlin, 20 February 1845, HBCA, B.226/b/1. 117 118

270

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Douglas to Grey, 15 April 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Grey, 15 April 1852, C/AA/10.1/7. 160 Dougas to Grey, 15 April 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 161 Douglas to Grey, 29 January 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 162 Douglas to Grey, 11 February 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 163 Pakington to Douglas 27 September 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 164 Douglas to Edmund Starling, 11 February 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/4. 165 Douglas to Barclay, 14 February 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 166 Douglas to Barclay, 24 December 1852, HBCA, B. 26/b/6. 167 Douglas to James Prevost, 8 June 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 168 Pakington to Douglas, 27 September 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 169 Douglas to Barclay, 24 December 1852, HBCA, B 226/b/6. 170 Douglas to Prevost, 8 June 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 171 Douglas to Newcastle, 5 January 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 172 Helmcken to Blanshard, 17 July 1850, HBCA, E.243/14. 173 Fairfax Moresby to the Admiralty, 7 July 1851, enclosure in letter from Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 174 Blanshard to David Wishart, 1 August 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 175 Helmcken to Blanshard, 17 July 1850, HBCA, E.243/14. 176 Lamb, W. Kaye, ‘The governorship of Richard Blanshard’, British Columbia Historical Quarterly XIV (1950), p. 12. 177 Moresby to the Admiralty, 7 July 1851, enclosure in letter from Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 178 Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. 179 Blanshard to Grey, 19 October 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 180 Barclay to Douglas, 6 December 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 181 Notes of a conversation with Mr Beardsmore on board HMS Portland at Honolulu, 23 July 1851, enclosure in Moresby to the Admiralty, 5 August 1851, all an enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 182 John Helmcken Papers 1846-1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 183 Blanshard to Grey, 18 August 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 184 Blanshard to Helmcken, 12 August 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 185 Governor Blanshard’s proclamation at Victoria of 12 August 1850 about riots at Fort Rupert, BCA, C/AA/10.3/2. 186 Blanshard to Douglas, 2 July 1851, enclosure in Moresby to the Admiralty, 7 July 1851, itself an enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 187 Douglas to Blanshard, 3 July 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 188 Douglas to George Blenkinsop, 27 October 1850, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 189 Notes of a conversation with Mr Beardsmore. 190 Notes of a conversation with Mr Beardsmore. 191 Moresby to Blanshard, 27 June 1851, BCA, C/AA 10. 5/1; also MS–0611 (8). 192 Blanshard to Hornsby, October 1850, NMM, PHI/3/5; Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 November 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 193 Douglas to Blenkinsop, 3 November 1850, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 194 Grey to Blanshard, 30 March 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1A. 195 Notes of a conversation with Mr Beardsmore. 158 159

NOTES

271

Fisher, Robin, Contact and Conflict: Indo-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774–1890 (University of British Columbia Press: Vancouver, 1977), p. 51. 197 Lamb: ‘The governorship of Richard Blanshard’, p. 16. 198 Moresby to Blanshard, 27 June 1851, BCA, C/AA 10.5/1; also MS–0611 (8). 199 Douglas to Blenkinsop, 1 July 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 200 Blanshard to Grey, 4 August 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 201 Douglas to Grey, 31 October 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 202 Douglas to Grey, 31 October 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 203 Douglas to Grey, 15 April 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 204 Douglas to Augustus Kuper, 26 May 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 205 Douglas to Pakington, 11 November 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 206 Douglas to Pakington, 9 December 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 207 Douglas to Kuper, 21 December 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 208 Douglas to Arthur Sansum, 4 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 209 Douglas to Barclay, 24 December 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 210 Douglas to Pakington, 21 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 211 Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts: Ledger, 1848-1861, HBCA, E.22/2. 212 Douglas to Pakington, 21 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 213 Douglas to Pakington, 21 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 214 Douglas to Pakington, 21 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 215 Douglas to Pakington, 21 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 216 Douglas to Pakington, 21 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 217 Administration of Justice, October 1853 and June 1854, Vancouver Island Colony Accounts, HBCA, E.22/1. 218 Douglas to Pakington, 21 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 219 Fisher: Contact and Conflict, p. 55. 220 Douglas to Newcastle, 14 May 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 221 Douglas to Labouchere, 20 October 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 222 Douglas to Newcastle, 25 August 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 223 Douglas to Labouchere, 22 August 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 224 Douglas to Sir Henry Bruce, 5 September 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 225 Douglas to Labouchere, 6 September 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 226 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 227 Douglas to Bruce, 25 August 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 228 Labouchere to Douglas, 13 November 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 229 Douglas to Labouchere, 24 February 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 230 Douglas to Labouchere, 24 February 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 231 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 232 Finlayson to McLaughlin, 10 March 1845, HBCA, B.226/b/1. 233 Finlayson to McLaughlin, 10 March 1845, HBCA, B.226/b/1. 234 Douglas to Grey, 16 December 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 235 Douglas to James Stewart, 19 October 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 236 Douglas to Grey, 16 December 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 237 Douglas to Mr Newton, 2 December 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 238 Douglas to Grey, 16 December 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 239 Pakington to Douglas, 18 March 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 240 Pakington to Douglas, 18 March 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 241 Finlayson to Tolmie, 23 May 1849, HBCA, B.226/b/2. 196

272

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Douglas to Stewart, 19 October 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Fisher: Contact and Conflict. 244 Sproat: Scenes and Studies of Savage Life. 245 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. 246 Post Journal, Fort Victoria 1846-1850, 9 June 1846, HBCA, B.226/a/1. 247 Douglas to Newcastle, 20 May 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 248 Douglas to Newcastle, 20 May 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 249 Newcastle to Douglas, 15 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 250 Douglas to Barclay, 2 November 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 251 Douglas to Labouchere, 25 August 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 252 Douglas to Labouchere, 13 June 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 253 Douglas to Lord Stanley, 15 June 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 254 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 25 May 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 255 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 25 May 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 256 Douglas to Newcastle, 7 July 1860, Vancouver Island, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 257 Douglas to Newcastle, 7 July 1860, Vancouver Island, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 258 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 259 See Eckrom, J.A., Remembered Drums: A History of the Puget Sound Indian War (Pioneer Press: Walla Walla, 1989). 260 Douglas to Molesworth, 8 November 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 261 Douglas to Molesworth, 8 November 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 262 Douglas to James Tilton, 19 November 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 263 Douglas to Labouchere, 31 October 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 264 Douglas to Labouchere, 5 December 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 265 Douglas to Stanley, 17 May 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 266 John Floyd to James Buchanan, 27 January 1859, BL, Mic. F.232/17437. 267 Douglas to Molesworth, 1 March 1856, BCA, C/AA/10. 1/7. 268 Douglas to Labouchere, 10 April 1856, BCA, C/AA/10. 1/7. 269 Douglas to Labouchere, 5 December 1856, 5 December 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 270 Robert Swanston to Thomas Bannister, 4 January 1856, enclosed in Labouchere to Douglas, 8 July 1856, Copies or Extracts of Any Correspondence between Mr Langford and the Colonial Department, Relative to Alleged Abuses in the Government of Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1863, xxxviii.487. 271 Douglas to Captain McDougal, 15 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 272 Douglas to Robert Swartwout, 4 April 1857, 15 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 273 Douglas to Labouchere, 20 April 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 274 Douglas to Stevens, 14 May 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 275 Douglas to Labouchere, 5 May 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 276 Douglas to Labouchere, 13 June 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 277 New York Times, 14 July 1858. 278 Douglas to Stanley, 15 June 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 279 McNeill to Douglas, 20 November 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 280 Douglas to Barclay, 18 March 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 281 Douglas to Labouchere, 15 July 1857, BCA, C/AA/10. 1/7. Printed in Anon, The New Government Colony. British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island (Effingham Wilson: London, 1858), p. 24. 242 243

NOTES

273

Douglas to Labouchere, 29 November 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 11 October 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 284 Douglas to William Smith, 27 November 1857, HBCA, B.226/b/15. 285 Douglas to Smith, 27 November 1857, HBCA, B.226/b/15. 286 Douglas to Labouchere 6 April 1858, BCA C/AA/10.1/7. Printed in Anon: The New Government Colony, p. 29. 287 Douglas to Captain Montrease, 24 August 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 288 Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs: Stolen Lands. 289 Roderick Finlayson, n. d. to Captain Courtney, NMM, PHI/3/5. 290 Blanshard to Grey, 8 April 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 291 Douglas to Labouchere, 20 October 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 292 Macdonald; British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island. 293 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 294 Anon, ‘Christian work’, Monthly Chronicle, 1 September 1863. 295 Fitzgerald: An Examination of the Charter, pp. 284–85. 296 Sproat: The West Coast Indians, p. 253-55. 297 Durkheim, Émile, De la Division du Travail Social (Alcan: Paris, 1893). 298 Sproat: Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 273 and 274. 299 Warre and Vavasour, 26 October 1845, Copies and Extracts. 300 Vancouver Island Colony, Act Regulating Importation of Spiritous Liquors, 13 May 1850, BCA, GR 771. 301 Douglas to Newcastle, 28 July 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 302 Rattray: Vancouver Island and British Columbia, p. 172. 303 Barrett-Lennard: Travels in British Columbia, p. 49. 304 Halcombe: Stranger than Fiction, pp. 71-72. 305 Anon: ‘Christian work’, p. 471. 306 Post Journal, Fort Victoria, 14 July 1848, HBCA, B.226/a/1. 307 Modeste Demers to Hawes, 26 August 1850 and Hawes to Demers, 12 September 1850, NA, CO 305/2. 308 Douglas to Father Langfield, 26 May 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 309 Douglas to Pakington, 4 March 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 310 Demers, Modeste Letter from Mgr Demers, Mission of Vancouver Island, founded in 1846 (Convent of the Most Holy Redeemer: New York, 1866). 311 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 309. 312 Douglas to Grey, 25 Jane 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 313 Anon, ‘Our North Pacific colonies’, The Westminster Review American Edition CLXX (1866), p. 203. 314 Baylee: ‘Vancouver and Queen Charlotte’s Island’, p. 416. 315 Lord Lytton to Douglas, 14 August 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 316 Vancouver Island Council 25 March 1859, Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island, GR 0819. 317 Nicolay, C.G., ‘Vancouver’s Island’, Colonial Church Chronicle April 1855, p. 417. 318 Cameron to Douglas 11 April 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 319 Anon: The New Government Colony, p. 47. 320 The Times, ‘Editorial’, 28 June 1858. 321 Reports Exhibiting the State of Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions, Vancouver Island, BPP, 1865, xxxvii.161. 282 283

274

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Chapter 4 1 Sir John Pelly to James Douglas, 23 May 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 2 James Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of British Possessions in North America which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. 3 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 4 Richard Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 5 Invoices of furs, 1851-54, Columbia District Statements, HBCA, B.226/l/1. 6 Fisher, Robin, Contact and Conflict: Indo-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774–1890 (University of British Columbia Press: Vancouver, 1977), p. xiv. 7 Rossiter, David A., ‘Lessons in possession: colonial resource geographies in practice on Vancouver Island, 1859–1865’, Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007), pp. 770–90. 8 M. Phelps to William Tolmie, 20 January 1869, HBCA, B.226/c/2 and G. Smith to HBC Victoria, 22 August 1869, HBCA, B.226/c/2. 9 Roderick Finlayson to John McLaughlin, 11 January 1845, HBCA, B.226/b/1. 10 Finlayson to McLaughlin, 18 June 1845, HBCA, B.226/b/2. 11 Post Journal, Fort Victoria, May to July 1846, HBCA, B.226/a/1. 12 William Miller to the Foreign Office, 23 October 1848, NA, CO 305/2. 13 Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. 14 Archibald Barclay to Douglas, 16 August 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 15 Pelly to Lord Glenelg, 10 February 1837, Copy of the Existing Charter or Grant by the Crown to the Hudson’s Bay Company; Together with Copies or Extracts of Correspondence which Took Place at the Last Renewal of the Charter, BPP, 1842, xxviii.521. 16 Sir George Simpson to Board of Management, Columbia District, 15 October 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 17 Walter Colquhoun Grant to Nivian Brodie, 8 August 1851, in Hendrickson, J.E., ‘Two letters from Walter Colquhoun Grant’, BC Studies 26 (1975), p. 11. 18 Arthur Kennedy to Edward Cardwell, Reports Exhibiting the State of Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions, Vancouver Island 1864, BPP, 1866, xlix.407. 19 J.S. Helmcken Papers 1846-1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 20 Census of Vancouver Island 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.7 (printed in British Columbia Historical Quarterly October 1939). 21 Mackie, Richard, ‘George Blenkinsop’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6568 (accessed 11 July 2010). 22 Barclay to Douglas, 20 June 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 23 Douglas to Sir John Pakington, 2 July 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 24 Bill of Sale, Vancouver Island pine masts from Norman Morrison sold in London by Churchill and Sim for HBC, 19 August 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 25 Churchill and Sim to Barclay, 19 August 1852, enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 3 September 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 26 Joseph Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 10 February 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 27 Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 23 September 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 28 Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 10 February 1853, HBCA, A.6/120.

NOTES 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61

275

Andrew Colvile to Pemberton, 1 July 1853, HBCA A.6/120. Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 23 September 1853, HBCA, 6.A/120. Gough, Barry M., ‘Forests and sea power: a Vancouver Island economy, 1778-1875’, Journal of Forest History 32.3 (1988), pp. 117–124. Douglas to Newcastle, 7 January 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 5 January 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to House of Assembly, 24 April 1860, BCA, C/AA/20.2K/1. Rossiter: ‘Lessons in possession’, pp. 770–90. Grant, Walter Colquhoun, ‘Description of Vancouver Island by its first colonist’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 27 (1857), pp. 268–320. Andrew Colvile to Pemberton, HBCA, A.6/120. Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, HBCA, A.6/120. Douglas to Newcastle, 21 August 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 27 February 1854, BCA, C/A/10.1/7. Charles W. Wentworth Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Rattray, Alexander, Vancouver Island and British Columbia (Smith, Elder: London, 1862), pp. 115–16. Charles Enderby to Earl Grey, 25 August 1848, NA, CO 305/1. Edward Ellice, Memorandum, 19 January 1856, BCA, Add MSS 310. Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Douglas to Sir George Grey, 3 October 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 16 July 1857, BCA, GR 0819. Mackie: ‘The colonisation of Vancouver Island’ p. 11. Jules David to Edward Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Reply of the Victoria Vancouver Island Chamber of Commerce to His Excellency Frederick Seymour, Governor of British Columbia Forwarded to the Secretary of State for the Colonies (Victoria Chamber of Commerce: Victoria, 1865). Anon, The New Government Colony. British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island (Effingham Wilson: London, 1858). Edward Ellice, 23 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Fitzgerald, James Edward, Vancouver’s Island, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Government (Simmonds: London, 1848). Extract from a report by Lieutenants [Henry J.] Warre and [M] Vavasour, 26 October 1845, Copies and Extracts of Despatches and Other Papers Relating to Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1849, xxxv.629. George Gordon to J.A. Duntze, 7 October 1846, Copies and Extracts of Despatches and Other Papers Relating to Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1849, xxxv.629. Peter Skene Ogden and Douglas to Duntze, 7 September 1846, NA, CO 395/1, Copies and Extracts. Sir George Seymour to the Admiralty, 8 February 1847, Copies and Extracts. The Times, 29 January 1848. Benjamin Hawes to James Fitzgerald, 24 February 1848, in Fitzgerald: Vancouver’s Island, p. 9 and p. 12. Morning Chronicle, 21 August 1848. The Times, 21 August 1848.

276 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Hawes to Pelly, 25 February 1848, Copy of Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Secretary of State for the Colonies Relative to the Colonization of Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1847-48, xlii.693. Pelly to Earl Grey, 4 March 1848, Copy of Correspondence. Hawes to Pelly, 4 September 1848, Copies and Extracts. Wyld, James, Vancouver’s Island (James Wild: London, 1843), BL, Maps, 71450 (1). Arrowsmith, J., Map of Vancouver Island and the Adjacent Coasts (Arrowsmith: London, 1849), BL, Maps, 71450 (3). Hamilton, William Richard, ‘Address to the Royal Geographical Society of London’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 19 (1849), p. 81. Fort Rupert Post Journal, 1 May 1849, HBCA, B.185/a/1. Fort Rupert Post Journal, 30 June 1849, HBCA, B.185/a/1. Barclay to Douglas, 21 June 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Belshaw, J.D., ‘The standard of living of British miners on Vancouver Island, 1848-1900’, BC Studies 84 (1989-90), pp. 37–64. Fort Rupert Post Journal, 31 October 1849, HBCA, B.185/a/1. Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. Fort Rupert Post Journal, 8 November 1849, HBCA, B.185/a/1. Charles Johnston to Sir Phipp Hornsby, 21 June 1850, NMM, PHI/3/5. Blanshard to Earl Grey, 8 April 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1, printed in Vancouver Island Despatches, Governor Blanshard to the Secretary of State, 26th December 1849 to 30th August 1851 (Government Printing Office: New Westminster, 1863). Johnston to Hornby, 21 June 1850, NMM, PHI/3/5. Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. Fort Rupert Post Journal, 22 April 1850, HBCA, B.185/a/1. Fort Rupert Post Journal, 16 April 1850, HBCA, B.185/a/1. Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. Fort Rupert Post Journal, 26 April 1850, HBCA, B.185/a/1. Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. John Muir to Barclay, 2 July 1850, enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 25 October 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Blanshard to John Sebastian Helmcken, 22 June 1850 (1st letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Blanshard to Helmcken, 22 June 1850 (2nd letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Blanshard to George Blenkinsop, 22 June 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. Helmcken to Blanshard, 2 July 1850, HBCA, E.243/14. Johnson, P.M., ‘Fort Rupert’, The Beaver (1972), pp. 4–15. Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. Notes of a conversation with Mr Beardsmore on board HMS Portland at Honolulu, 23 July 1851, enclosure in Admiral Fairfax Moresby to the Admiralty, 5 August 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1.

NOTES

277

Gallagher, Daniel T., ‘Andrew Muir’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=4099 (accessed 11 July 2010). 95 Hudson’s Bay Record Society, Hudson’s Bay Company 1670-1870, Volume II: 1763-1870 (The Hudson’s Bay Record Society: London, 1959). 96 Muir to Barclay, 2 July 1850, enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 25 October 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 97 Barclay to Douglas, 25 October 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 98 Pelly to Earl Grey, 4 October 1850, NA, CO 305/2. 99 Barclay to Douglas, 1 November 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 100 Grant to Brodie, 8 August 1851, in Hendrickson: ‘Two letters’, p. 12. 101 Andrew Colvile to Sir John Pakington, 24 November 1852, Return Made Since 1849 by the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in Conformity with the Grant of Vancouver’s Island to the Said Company, BPP, 1852–53, lxv.61. 102 Barclay to Douglas, 16 April 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 103 Barclay to Douglas, 6 December 1850, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 104 Barclay to Douglas, 1 December 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 105 Boyd Gilmour to Douglas, 22 April 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 106 Barclay to Douglas, 16 April 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 107 Barclay to Douglas, 23 May 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 108 Eden Colvile to the Board of Management, Columbia District, 10 July 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 109 Douglas to Blenkinsop, 29 May 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 110 Eden Colvile to the Board of Management, Columbia District, 10 July 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 111 Gilmour to Douglas, 22 April 1851, B.226/c/1. 112 Barclay to Douglas, 15 April 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 113 Douglas to Blenkinsop, 15 August 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 114 Douglas to Eden Colvile, 16 March 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 115 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’. 116 Douglas to John Work, 4 June 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/4. 117 Barclay to Douglas, 3 September 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 118 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 276. 119 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 120 Douglas to Barclay, 15 June 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 121 Douglas to Barclay, 3 April 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 122 Simpson to the Board of Management, HBC Western District, 18 June 1853, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 123 Douglas to Barclay, 3 April 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 124 Mayne, Richard C., Four Years in British Columbia and Vancouver Island (John Murray: London, 1862). 125 Mackie: ‘George Blenkinsop’. 126 Johnson: ‘Fort Rupert’, pp. 4–15. 127 Douglas to Hamilton Moffett, 17 February 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/16. 128 Douglas to Pakington, 27 August 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Published as Douglas, James, ‘Report of a canoe expedition along the east coast of 94

278

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Vancouver Island’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 24 (1854), pp. 245– 49. 129 Douglas to Pakington, 27 August 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 130 Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 28 September 1852, HBCA, A.6/120. 131 Douglas to Joseph McKay, 24 August 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 132 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 277. 133 Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 28 September 1852, HBCA, A.6/120. 134 Douglas to Newcastle, 21 August 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7 135 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. 136 Douglas to McKay, 24 August 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 137 Douglas to Pakington, 11 November 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 138 Barclay to Douglas, 10 November 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 139 Simpson to Board of Management, Columbia District, 31 December 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 140 Douglas to Barclay, 6 October 1852, HBCA B.226/b/6. 141 Douglas to Barclay, 7 December 1852, B.226/b/6. 142 Douglas to Barclay, 23 May 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 143 Douglas to Pakington, 11 November 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 144 Douglas to Newcastle, 20 May 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 145 Douglas to Newcastle, 24 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 146 Douglas to Newcastle, 21 August 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 147 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 279. 148 Douglas to Barclay, 28 September and 15 October 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 149 Douglas to Barclay, 5 December 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 150 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 278. 151 Douglas to Barclay, 10 November 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 152 Douglas to Barclay, 10 November 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 153 Douglas to Barclay, 11 February 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 154 Douglas to Barclay, 13 July 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 155 Douglas to Barclay, 25 December 1854, B.226/b/14. 156 Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 14 November 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 157 Douglas to Barclay, 25 December 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 158 Douglas to Barclay, 22 October 1854 and 15 November 1854, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 159 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 314. 160 Pemberton to Andrew Colvile, 14 November 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 161 Douglas to Barclay, 23 January 1855 and 10 February 1855, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 162 Douglas to Barclay, 23 April 1855, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 163 Douglas to William Smith, 24 July 1855, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 164 Douglas to William Smith, 11 October 1855, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 165 Douglas to William Smith, 4 August 1856, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 166 Douglas to William Smith, 5 November 1855 and 20 November 1855, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 167 Douglas to William Smith, 22 September 1856 and 12 February 1857, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 168 Douglas to William Smith, 4 April 1857, HBCA, B.226/b/14.

NOTES

279

Douglas to Vancouver Island House of Assembly, 8 June 1857, BCA, C/AA/20.2K/1. 170 Douglas to William Smith, 12 August 1857, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 171 Douglas to William Smith, 20 January 1857, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 172 Douglas to William Smith, 26 July 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 173 Douglas to Thomas Fraser, 24 February 1859, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 174 Belshaw, J.D., Colonization and Community: the Vancouver Island Coalfield and the Making of the British Columbian Working Class (McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal, 2002). 175 Gallacher, Daniel T., ‘Robert Dunsmuir’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5496 (accessed 11 July 2010). 176 C., J., ‘Vancouver’s Island’, The Times, 31 May 1858. 177 Douglas to Peter Skene Ogden, 14 August 1850, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 178 Douglas to Barclay, 12 July 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 179 Douglas to Barclay, 31 July 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 180 Draft of the commission to James Douglas as Lieutenant Governor of Queen Charlotte Island, NA, CO380/18. 181 Simpson to Board of Management, Columbia District, 15 October 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 182 Simpson to Board of Management, Columbia District, 31 December 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 183 Douglas to Barclay, 2 May 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 184 Douglas to Pakington, 7 March 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 185 James Douglas, Proclamation, 7 April 1853, Vancouver BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 186 The Hudson’s Bay Record Society: Hudson’s Bay Company, p. 782. 187 Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 16 July 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 188 Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 14 August 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 189 Douglas to Henry Labouchere, 16 April 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 190 Douglas to Labouchere, 22 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 191 Douglas to Labouchere 29 October 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 192 Douglas to Lord Stanley, 16 June 1858, BCA, C/A/10.1/7. 193 Douglas to William Smith, 7 June 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/15. 194 Douglas to Stanley, 16 June 1858, BCA, C/A/10.1/7. 195 Shadd, Mary Ann, A Plea for Emigration or Notes of Canada West in its Moral Social and Political Aspect with Suggestions Respecting Mexico, West Indies and Vancouver’s Island for the Information of Coloured Emigrants (George W. Pattison: Detroit, 1852). 196 Rattray: Vancouver Island and British Columbia, p. 128. 197 Morton, Arthur Silver, A History of the Canadian West to 1870–71 (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1973), p. 780. 198 Dallas, Alexander G., ‘Letter’, The Times, 1 January 1862. 199 Macdonald, Duncan G.F., Lecture on British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island (Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green: London, 1863). 200 Frederick Seymour to Cardwell, 17 February 1866, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, BPP, 1866, xlix.119. 201 Helmcken, in House of Assembly, 25 January 1865, enclosure in Kennedy to Cardwell, 1 December 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 169

280

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Kennedy to Cardwell, 1 December 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union; see also Anon, ‘Our North Pacific colonies’, The Westminster Review CLXX (1866), p. 202. 203 Anon: ‘Our North Pacific colonies’, p. 199. 202

Chapter 5 1 Hendrickson, J.E., ‘Richard Blanshard’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5979 (accessed 23 December 2009). 2 Sir John Pelly to Earl Grey, 13 September 1848, Returns of Three Addresses of the Honourable the House of Commons, BL, Mic.F.232/18538. 3 Benjamin Hawes to Pelly, 27 September 1848, Returns of Three Addresses. 4 Commission of Governor Richard Blanshard, 13 January 1849, NA, CO 380/18. 5 Commission of Governor Richard Blanshard, 16 July 1849, BCA, MS–0611 (9). MS-0611 (1) is a reading copy. 6 Earl Grey to Blanshard, 21 July 1849, BCA, MS-0611(1). The commission appointing Blanshard vice admiral is MS-0611 (4). 7 Journal of Thomas Robinson, BCA, Add MSS 1007. 8 William Hamilton to Blanshard, 9 August 1849, BCA, C/AA/10.5/1. 9 Pelly to Earl Grey, 28 July 1849 and Merrivale to Sir Charles Trevelyan, 23 October 1850, NA, CO 305/2. 10 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, The Rivals (John Wilkie: London, 1775), Act 1, Scene 2. 11 Thomas Robinson journal, BCA, Add MSS 1007. 12 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 26 December 1849, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 13 Thomas Robinson journal, BCA, Add MSS 1007. 14 Blanshard to Earl Grey 8 April 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 15 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. 16 Fort Victoria post journal, 9 and 12 March 1851, HBCA, B.226/a/1. 17 Earl Grey to William Smith, 18 June 1849, NA, CO 380/18. 18 Barclay to Blanshard, 1 January 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.5/1. 19 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of those British Possessions in North America which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. 20 Commission of Governor Richard Blanshard, 16 July 1849, BCA, MS-0611 (9). 21 Fairfax Moresby to Blanshard, 27 June 1851, BCA, MS-0611 (8). 22 Blanshard to George Blenkinsop, 22 June 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 23 Archibald Barclay to James Douglas, 3 August 1849, HBCA B.226/c/1. 24 Barclay to Douglas, 3 August 1849, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 25 Charles Johnson to Sir Phipp Hornsby, 21 June 1850, NMM, PHI/3/5. 26 Blanshard to Earl Grey 8 April 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 27 Johnson to Hornsby, 21 June 1850, NMM, PHI/3/5. 28 Blanshard to Douglas, 26 June 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 29 Blanshard to Douglas, 5 August 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 30 Douglas to Blanshard, 5 August 1850, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 31 Douglas to Blanshard, 10 September 1850, HBCA, B.226/b/3.

NOTES 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65

281

Barclay to Douglas, 16 April 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a; Pelly to Earl Grey, 14 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Barclay to Douglas, 23 May 1851, HBCA B.226/c/1. Barclay to Blanshard, 1 January 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.5/1. Barclay to Douglas, 1 March 1851, HBCA B.226/c/1. Blanshard to Earl Grey, 28 April 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Blanshard to John Helmcken, 22 June 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Blanshard to Earl Grey, 10 July 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. AB [A. Blackwood] in note written on Blanshard to Earl Grey, 10 July 1850, NA, CO305/2. Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 August 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Blanshard to Earl Grey, 29 March 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Blanshard to Douglas, 3 July 1851, enclosure in Moresby to the Admiralty, 7 July 1851, itself an enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Douglas to Barclay, 9 July 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Blanshard to Earl Grey, 15 June, 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Blanshard to Earl Grey, 28 April 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Blanshard to Earl Grey, 12 May 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. Merrivale, 29 March 1851 in a note on the back of Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 November 1850 (2nd letter that day), NA, CO 305/2. J.S. Helmcken papers, BCA, Add MSS 0505. John Sebastian Helmcken reminiscences, 1892, BCA, Add MSS 0505. John Sebastian Helmcken reminiscences, 1892, BCA, Add MSS 0505. J.S. Helmcken papers, BCA, Add MSS 0505. See also Belyk, R.C., John Tod, Rebel in the Ranks (Horsdal & Schubart: Victoria, 1995). Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 November, 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. The author gratefullyacknowledges advice from Dr Fiona Royle regarding this section on medical matters. Douglas to Blenkinsop, 14 November 1850, HBCA, B.226.b/3. J.S. Helmcken papers, BCA, Add MSS 0505. John Spurgeon to Thomas Blanshard, 28 March 1851, NA, CO 305/2. S.J. Goodfellow to Thomas Blanshard, 29 March 1851, NA, CO 305/2. Returns of the Names of All Governors, Lieutenant-Governors and Persons Administering the Different Colonies, BPP, 1857 (Session 2), xxvii.107. Pelly to Douglas, 23 May 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Douglas to the Governor, Deputy Governor and Committee of the HBC, 15 November 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/14. Earl Grey to Smith, 18 June 1849, NA, CO 380/18. Enclosure in Andrew Colvile to Sir John Pakington, 24 November 1852, Return Made Since 1849 by the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, BPP, 1852–53, lxv.61. See also Lamb, W. Kaye, ‘The governorship of Richard Blanshard’, British Columbia Historical Quarterly XIV (1950), pp. 1– 40. Trevelyan to Merrivale, 9 October 1850, NA CO 305/2.

282

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Enclosure of communication from the Colonial Office to the Admiralty, 19 September 1850 in Earl Grey to Blanshard 20 April 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1A 67 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 11 August 1851 (1st letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 68 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 11 August 1851 (3rd letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 69 J. Parker to Barclay, 1 December 1851, HBCA B.226/c/1. 70 Barclay to Parker, 17 December 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 71 Hamilton to Barclay, 22 December 1851, HBCA B.226/c/1. 72 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 73 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 74 Anon, The New Government Colony. British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island (Effingham Wilson: London, 1858), p. 50. 75 Barclay to Douglas, 3 August 1849, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 76 Anon: The New Government Colony, p. 51. 77 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 November 1850 (1st letter of the day), 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 78 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 November 1850 (2nd letter of the day), 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 79 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 12 February 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 80 Earl Grey to Blanshard, 3 April 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1A. 81 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 82 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 November 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 83 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 11 August 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 84 Thomas Robinson journal, BCA, Add MSS 1007. 85 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 86 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 11 August 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 87 Blanshard to Pakington, 9 August 1852, enclosure in Pakington to Douglas, 28 August 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 88 The Times, 2 December 1851. 89 Morton, Arthur Silver, A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71 (2nd Edition, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1973), p. 761. 90 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 91 Lamb: ‘The governorship of Richard Blanshard’, p. 3. 92 Barclay to Douglas, 15 April 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 93 Herman Merrivale to Pelly, 7 April 1851, NA, CO 305/2. 94 Pelly to Douglas, 23 May 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 95 Barclay to Douglas, 16 April 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 96 Barclay to Douglas, 23 May 1851, HBCA B.226/b/5a. 97 Vancouver Island warrants, NA, CO 380/18. 98 Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island, 30 August 1851, BCA, GR0819; see also Blanshard to Earl Grey, 30 August 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 99 Barclay to Blanshard, 1 May 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.5/1; also HBCA B.226/b/5a. 100 Draft of Commission to James Douglas as Governor of Vancouver Island, NA, CO 380/18. 101 Douglas to Earl Grey, 31 October 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 66

NOTES

283

Pelly to Douglas, 23 May 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Barclay to Douglas, 23 May 1851, HBCA, B.226/c/1; Barclay to Douglas, 16 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 104 Barclay to Douglas, 2 July 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 105 Barclay to Douglas, 2 July 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 106 Douglas to Barclay, 15 October 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 107 Douglas to Barclay, 14 October 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 108 Douglas to Pakington, 7 March 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 109 Douglas to Merrivale, 29 October 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4.1. 110 Douglas to Labouchere, 31 January 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 111 Douglas to Lord John Russell, 13 September 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 112 Sir George Grey to Douglas, 19 June 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 113 Belyk: John Tod, p. 164. 114 John Mills to Sir George Grey, 9 January 1855, enclosure in Sir George Grey to Douglas, 16 January 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 115 The Select Committee. 116 Smith to Douglas, 9 November 1857, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 117 See, for example, Marshall, D.P., ‘John Sebastian Helmcken’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01e.php?&id_nbr=7436 (accessed 11 July 2010). 118 The Times, 1 July 1862. 119 Alexander Dallas to Thomas Fraser, 14 September 1859, enclosure in the Duke of Newcastle to Douglas, 1 December 1859, BCA C/AA/10.2/1. 120 Henry Berens to Newcastle, 10 August 1859, enclosure in Newcastle to Douglas, 3 September 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 121 Douglas to Newcastle, 24 November 1859, BCA, C/A/10.7/7. 122 Douglas to Newcastle, 27 January 1860, BCA, C/A/10.7/7. 123 Newcastle to Douglas, 20 October 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 124 Newcastle to Douglas, 1 December 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 125 Blackwood to Newcastle, 9 May 1863, NA, CO 380/19. 126 Smith to Douglas, 12 March 1858, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 127 Douglas to Newcastle, 12 September 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.7/7. 128 Douglas to Newcastle, 12 September 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.7/7. 129 Newcastle to Douglas, 12 July 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 130 C. Fortescue to Berens, 12 July 1859, enclosure in Newcastle to Douglas, 12 July 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 131 Berens to Newcastle, 19 July 1859, enclosure in Newcastle to Douglas, 1 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 132 New Government Buildings, January 1861, Vancouver Island Colony Accounts, HBCA, E.222/1. 133 Douglas to Newcastle, 12 September 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.7/7. 134 Douglas to Newcastle, 8 May 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 135 Douglas to Newcastle, 28 March 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 136 Newcastle to Douglas, 1 December 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 137 Berens to Newcastle, 16 December 1859, enclosure in Newcastle to Douglas, 2 January 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 138 Hudson’s Bay Record Society: Hudson’s Bay Company 1670–1870, p 764. 139 Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 14 August 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 102 103

284

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Fraser to Dallas, 22 October 1858 (1st letter that day), HBCA, B.226/c/1. Some of this letter is illegible. 141 Fraser to Dallas, 22 October 1858 (2nd letter that day), HBCA, B.226/c/1. 142 Fraser to Douglas, 22 October 1858, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 143 Douglas to Simpson, 11 December 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/15. 144 John Work to Donald MacLean, 11 April 1859, HBCA, B.226/b/17. 145 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 4 October 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.7/7. 146 Douglas to Simpson, 11 December 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/15. 147 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 4 October 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.7/7. 148 Dallas, Work, Finlayson and Charles Dodd to Douglas, 17 February 1859, HBCA, B.226/b/17. 149 Berens to Dougald McTavish, 27 July 1863, HBCA, B.226/c/2. 150 Newcastle to Colonial Office officials, 27 March 1863, NA, CO 380/19. 151 Commission of Arthur Kennedy as Governor of Vancouver Island, 11 December 1863, NA, CO 380/19. 152 Commission to Frederick Seymour as Governor of British Columbia, 11 January 1864, NA, CO 380/19. 153 C. Romily to Kennedy, 22 October 1866, NA, CO 380/19. 154 Ormsby, M.A., ‘Frederick Seymour, the forgotten governor’, BC Studies 22 (1974), pp. 3-25. 155 Smith, R.L., ‘Sir Arthur Kennedy’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5622 (accessed 11 July 2010). 156 Ormsby, M.A., ‘Sir James Douglas’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=4955 (accessed 11 July 2010). 157 Adams, John, Old Square Toes and His Lady (Horsdal and Schubart: Victoria, 2001). 158 Joseph Pemberton to Colvile, 25 January 1852, HBCA, A.6/120. 159 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1, p. 45. 160 Douglas to the Governor, Deputy Governor and Committee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 15 November 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 161 Douglas to Barclay, 9 July 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 140

Chapter 6 1 Enclosure in Sir John Pelly to Earl Grey, 20 July 1848, Copy of Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Relative to the Colonization of Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1847–48, xlii.693. 2 Administration of Justice (Vancouver’s Island) (1849), NA, CO 380/18. 3 Earl Grey to Richard Blanshard, 15 September 1849, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1A. 4 Vancouver Island Colony: Act Regulating Importation of Spirituous Liquors, May 1850, BCA, GR 771. 5 Commission of Richard Blanshard, BCA, MS-0611 (9) (reading copy, MS– 0611 (1)). 6 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 8 April 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 7 Earl Grey to Blanshard, 16 July 1850, BCA, C/AA/20.2/1A. 8 Appointment of Councillors, 27 August 1851, BCA, GR 0820; Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island, 30 August 1851, BCA, GR 0819. Published as

NOTES

9

10

11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38

285

Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island, Commencing August 30th 1851, and Terminating with the Prorogation of the House of Assembly, February 6th 1861, Memoir II (Archives of British Columbia: Victoria, 1918). Ormsby, M.A., ‘James Cooper’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=4916 (accessed 11 July 2009). Belyk, R.C., John Tod: Rebel in the Ranks (Horsdahl & Schubart: Victoria, 1995); also Wolfenden, M., ‘John Tod’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5872 (accessed 11 July 2010). Warrants to James Cooper, John Todd (sic) and Roderick Finlayson, 8 January 1852, NA, CO 381/77. Stardom, E., ‘Roderick Finlayson’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6099 (accessed 11 July 2010). Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 7 April 1853, BCA, GR 0819. Douglas to Archibald Barclay, 9 July 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/14. Langley, Alfred John, A Glance at British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island in 1861 (Hardwicke: London, 1862). Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 6 July 1859, BCA, GR 0819. Warrant for Executive and Legislative Councils, 8 October 1862, NA, CO 381/77. Scholefield, E.O.S., in preface to Minutes of the House of Assembly of Vancouver Island, August 12th 1856 to September 25th 1858, Memoir III (Archives of British Columbia: Victoria, 1918). Douglas to Sir John Pakington, 11 November 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Copies or Extracts. Labouchere to Douglas, 28 February 1856, Copies or Extracts. Douglas to Labouchere, 22 May 1856, Copies or Extracts. Labouchere to Douglas, 10 November 1856, Copies or Extracts. Labouchere to Douglas, 23 August 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. Douglas to Labouchere, 22 May 1856, Copies or Extracts. Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 4 June 1856, BCA, GR 0819; Douglas to Labouchere, 7 June 1856, Copies or Extracts. Labouchere to Douglas, 23 August 1856, Copies or Extracts. Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 9 June 1856, BCA, GR 0819. Douglas to Labouchere, 7 June 1856, Copies or Extracts. Enclosures in Douglas to Labouchere, 22 July 1856, Copies or Extracts. Douglas to Labouchere, 22 July 1856, Copies or Extracts. The Governor’s address on the opening of the General Assembly, 12 August 1856, enclosure in Douglas to Labouchere, 20 August 1856, Copies or Extracts. Douglas to Labouchere, 20 August 1856, Copies or Extracts. Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 4 January 1861, BCA, GR 0819. Douglas to Newcastle, 12 May 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 11 April 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to David Cameron, 3 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Newcastle, 14 February 1863, Copies or Extracts.

286 39 40 41 42 43 44

45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68 69

70

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 20 September 1853, BCA, GR 0819. Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 23 September 1853, BCA, GR 0819. Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 2 December 1853, BCA, GR 0819. Proclamation on Supreme Court, James Douglas, 7 January 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Newcastle, 7 January 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of those British Possessions in North America which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. Smith, D.S., ‘Thomas Blinkhorn’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=3793 (accessed 11 July 2010). Establishment of Supreme Court of Civil Justice, 4 April 1856, BCA, GR 2948; Warrant of David Cameron, 25 April 1856, NA, CO 381/77. Labouchere to Douglas, 26 April 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. Proclamation, James Douglas, 19 May 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to William Smith, 2 April 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/14. Warrant of Matthew Baillie Begbie, 2 September 1858, NA, CO 380/18. History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2, pp. 62-63. Salary to Judge Cameron, June 1855, Vancouver Island Colony Accounts, HBCA, E.22/1. Labouchere to Douglas, 6 November 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. Douglas to John Shepherd, 26 January 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/15. Douglas to Newcastle, 14 February 1863, Copies of Any Correspondence between Mr Langford and the Colonial Department Relative to Alleged Abuses in the Government of Vancouver Island, BPP, 1863, xxxviii.487. Douglas, 12 August 1856, address to Vancouver Island House of Assembly, Memoir III. Douglas to the House of Assembly, 6 December 1856, Memoir III. Douglas to the House of Assembly, 10 December 1856, Memoir III. Meetings of 28 August and 3, 6, 13 and 24 December 1856, Memoir III. Meeting of 5 May 185, Memoir III. Meeting of 28 May 1857, Memoir III. Meetings of 25 June and 16 July 1857, Memoir III. Meetings of 14 August, 4, 11 and 22 December 1857, Memoir III. Meetings of 12 May and 16 June 1858, Memoir III. Douglas to the House of Assembly, 21 February 1859, House of Assembly Correspondence Book, August 12th 1856 to July 6th 1859, Memoir IV (Archives of British Columbia, Victoria, 1918). House of Assembly to Douglas, 22 February 1859, Memoir IV. Douglas to the House of Assembly, 6 April 1859, Memoir IV. Douglas to the House of Assembly, 5 May 1860, Memoir IV. Resolutions from the Committee of Supply confirmed by the House of Assembly, 25 July 1866, enclosure in Arthur Kennedy to Edward Cardwell, 8 August 1866, Colonial Office, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union of British Columbia and Vancouver Island (HMSO: London, 1867). Kennedy to Cardwell, 8 August 1866, Further Papers.

NOTES

287

Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 73 Andrew Colvile to Joseph Pemberton, 1 July 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 74 Douglas to Newcastle, 14 February 1863, Copies of Any Correspondence. 75 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 76 Edward Langford to Newcastle, 18 June, 1861, Copies of Any Correspondence. 77 Pettit, S.G., ‘Edward Edwards Langford’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6211 (accessed 11 July 2010); Pettit, S.G., ‘The trials and tribulations of Edward Edwards Langford’, British Columbia Historical Quarterly 17 (1953), pp. 5–40. 78 Langford to Douglas, 17 December 1859, Copies of Any Correspondence. 79 Douglas to Newcastle, 23 March 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 80 Sir F. Rogers to Langford, 23 April 1863, Copies of Any Correspondence. 81 Douglas to Newcastle, 14 February 1863, Copies of Any Correspondence. 82 J.S. Helmcken Papers, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 83 John Sebastian Helmcken reminiscences, 1892, BCA, Add MSS 0505. 84 History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2. 85 Douglas to Newcastle, 20 May 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 86 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence The Select Committee. 87 Cooper to Robert Staines, 26 November 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 88 History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2, p. 40. 89 Douglas to Archibald Barclay, 2 May 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 90 John Sebastian Helmcken reminiscences, 1892, BCA, Add MSS 0505. 91 Douglas to Barclay, 2 May 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 92 Douglas to Barclay, 3 May 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 93 Barclay to Douglas, 26 August 1853, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 94 Barclay to Douglas, 26 August 1853, HBCA B.226/c/1. 95 Richard Golledge to Staines, 17 February 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 96 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 11 December 1854, enclosure in Douglas to Newcastle, 14 February 1863, Copies of any Correspondence. 97 Wolfenden, M., ‘Robert John Staines’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=4199 (accessed 11 July 2010). 98 Smith to the Board of Management of the Western District, 5 June 1854, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 99 Sir George Simpson to the Board of Management of the Western District, 4 February 1855, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 100 Charles W. Wentworth Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. See also Smith: ‘Thomas Blinkhorn’. 101 Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 102 Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 28 April 1852, BCA, GR 0819. 103 Barclay to Douglas, 26 September 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/5a. 104 Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 6 October 1852, BCA, GR 0819. 105 Cooper to Pakington, 8 October 1852, enclosure in Pakington to Douglas, 8 February 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 106 Douglas to Newcastle, 11 April 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 71 72

288

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Cooper to Pakington, 8 October 1852, enclosure in Pakington to Douglas, 8 February 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 108 Golledge to Cooper, 4 April 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 109 Cooper to Kuper, 3 January 1853, enclosure in Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 110 Douglas to Cooper and others, 6 May 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/4. 111 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 112 Ormsby: ‘James Cooper’. 113 See, for example, the entry of June 1855, Vancouver Island Colony accounts, HBCA, E.221/1. 114 James Yates et al., n.d., to Blanshard, enclosure in Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 115 Lamb, W. Kaye, ‘The governorship of Richard Blanshard’, British Columbia Historical Quarterly XIV (1950), pp. 1–40. 116 Douglas to Barclay, 9 July 1853, HBCA, B.226/b/14. 117 Douglas to Newcastle, 28 February 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 118 Douglas to Newcastle, 28 February 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 119 Robert Swanston to Thomas Bannister, 20 December 1855, enclosure in Labouchere to Douglas, 8 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 120 Swanston to Bannister, n.d., enclosure in Labouchere to Douglas, 8 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 121 Cooper, William Banfield and Yates to Bannnister, n.d., enclosure in Labouchere to Douglas, 8 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 122 Ninety residents of Vancouver Island to Douglas, 14 February 1854, enclosure in Labouchere to Douglas, 8 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 123 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 11 December 1854, enclosure in Douglas to Newcastle, 14 February 1863, Copies of Any Correspondence. 124 Tod and 12 others to Douglas, 11 January 1854, enclosure in Douglas to Newcastle, 14 February 1863, Copies of Any Correspondence. 125 Cooper et al to Queen Victoria, 1 March 1854, Copies of Any Correspondence. 126 Cooper et al to Newcastle, 1 March 1854, Copies of Any Correspondence. 127 Labouchere to Douglas, 26 April 1854, Copies of Any Correspondence. 128 J. Ball to Swanston, 1 July 1856, enclosure in Labouchere to Douglas, 8 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 129 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 130 Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 131 Langford to Newcastle, 21 May 1862, Copies of Any Correspondence. 132 Langford to Newcastle, 5 June 1862, Copies of Any Correspondence. 133 Douglas to Newcastle, 14 February 1863, Copies of Any Correspondence. 134 Pelly and other agents of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company to Douglas, 3 August 1849, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 135 Douglas to Earl Grey, 15 April 1852, Returns Made Since 1849 by the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Secretary of Sate for the Colonies, BPP, 1852-53, lxv.61. 136 Andrew Colvile to Pemberton, 16 November 1852, HBCA, A.6/120. 137 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 15 June 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 138 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 139 Blanshard to Earl Grey, HBCA 25 February 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 107

NOTES

289

Keppel, William Coutts, Viscount Bury, ‘British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island’, Fraser’s Magazine LVIII (1858), p. 503. 141 Douglas to Barclay, 14 October 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/6. 142 Colvile and Henry Berens to Douglas, 8 July 1853, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 143 Pemberton to Colvile, 4 April 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 144 Colvile to Pemberton, 1 July 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 145 Colvile and Berens to Douglas, 8 July 1853, HBCA, B.226/c/1; also Colvile to Pemberton, 1 July 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 146 Pemberton to Colvile, 18 February 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 147 Pemberton to Colvile, 23 September 1853, HBCA, A.6/120. 148 Colvile and Berens to Douglas, 3 February 1854, HBCA B.226/c/1. 149 Morton, Arthur Silver, A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71 (2nd edition, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1973), p. 756. 150 History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2, p. 38. 140

Chapter 7 1 Instructions to Governor Blanshard, 16 July 1849, BCA, MS-0611 (5). 2 James Douglas to Sir Phipp Hornsby, 28 May 1849, NMM, PHI/3/5. 3 Grainger, J.D., The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia, 1854-1856 (Boydell: Woodbridge, 2008). 4 Archibald Barclay to Peter Skene Ogden, Douglas and John Work, 4 August 1849, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 5 Richard Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of those British Possessions in North America which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. 6 Douglas to Nikolay Rosenberg New Archangel, 31 March 1852, HBCA, B.226/b/4, see also Naske, C-M. and Slotnick, H.E., Alaska: A History of the 49th State (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1979). 7 Sir John Pelly to the Lords of the Committee of Privy Council for Trade, 7 February 1838, Copy of the Existing Charter or Grant by the Crown to the Hudson’s Bay Company Together with Copies or Extracts of the Correspondence which Took Place at the Last Renewal of the Charter, BPP, 1842, xxviii.521. 8 Douglas to Newcastle, 16 May 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 9 Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 12 July 1854, BCA, GR 0819. 10 Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts 1848-1861, HBCA, E.22/1. 11 Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 12 July 1854, BCA, GR 0819. 12 Sir George Grey to Douglas, 5 August 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 13 Sir George Grey to Douglas, 18 December 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 14 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 6 March 1855 (1st letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 15 Douglas to Sir William Molesworth, 10 December 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 16 Henry Labouchere to Douglas, 14 May 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1; Lyon, D., The Sailing Navy List (Conway Maritime Press: London, 1993). 17 Douglas to Labouchere, 14 August 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 18 ‘Message of the President of the United States communicating in compliance with a resolution of Senate the report of the special agent of the United States

290

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

recently sent to Vancouver Island and British Columbia’, 35th Congress, 2nd Session, Ex. Doc. 29, 31 January 1859. Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts 1848-1861, HBCA, E.22/1. Douglas to Thomas Fraser, 10 February 1859, HBCA, B.226/b/15. James Douglas to Isaac Stevens, 22 January 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Harry McMullan, 6 April 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 1 July 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. ‘Message of the President of the United States.’ Douglas to Lord Napier, 6 October 1858 (two letters), BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. For example, Richard Golledge to John Nugent, 8 October 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. ‘Message of the President of the United States.’ Victoria Gazette, 13 November 1858, in ‘Message of the President of the United States.’ Douglas to Napier, 15 November 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. ‘Message of the President of the United States’. The Oregon Treaty, 15 June 1846, reproduced in New Perspectives on the West, http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/two/oretreat.htm (accessed 17 March 2010). Douglas to Newcastle, 24 November 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Molesworth, 15 December 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Molesworth, 15 December 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 27 February 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Charles Griffin, 31 March 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Griffin, 12 May 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Newcastle, 17 May 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Sir George Grey, 3 January 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office, http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/sheriff (accessed 17 March 2010). Douglas to Grey, 18 May 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Stevens, 26 April 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Lord John Russell, 12 June 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Stevens, 14 May 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Grey to Douglas, 21 September 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. Douglas to Bruce, 7 May 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Bruce, 25 October 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Bruce, 3 August 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Labouchere, 16 April 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to William Smith, 14 January 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/15. Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 11 December 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. ‘Message of the President of the United States.’ The Times, ‘Editorial’, 22 September 1859. Adams, G.R., General William S. Harney: Prince of Dragoons (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, 2001). Morton, Arthur Silver, A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71 (2nd edition, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1973); see also National Parks Service, US Department of the Interior, ‘San Juan Island’, http://www.nps.gov/sajh/ historyculture/the-pig-war.htm (accessed 17 March 2010).

NOTES 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

291

Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 12 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 1 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Minutes of a council [of war], 1 August 1859, included in Douglas to BulwerLytton, 1 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 1 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 8 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 27 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 27 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 22 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 9 September 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 16 October 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. The Times, ‘Editorial’, 22 September 1859. Douglas to Newcastle, 9 November 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 15 December 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 27 January 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 23 June 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 16 May 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 7 August 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 8 October 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 27 October 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Newcastle, 17 January 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. The Times, ‘Editorial’, 30 January 1860. Bancroft, G., Memorial on the Canal De Haro as the Boundary Line of the United States of America (R. Decker: Berlin, 1872). James Douglas to Lord Stanley, 16 June 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. The Times, 12 July 1858. Douglas to Robert Baynes, 12 May 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to James Prevost, 15 May 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Prevost, 21 May 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Prevost, 14 June 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Prevost, 5 July 1858 and 3 November 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 18 June 1858, BCA, GR 0819. Douglas to Prevost, 9 July 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Prevost, 20 July 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Prevost, 23 July, 6 October and 23 November 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Stanley, 26 July 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Douglas to Captain Montrease, 24 August 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to C.S. Hawkins, 24 August 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. Douglas to Montrease, 30 August 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1; Douglas to Stanley, 19 August 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 31 July 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 14 August 1858 (1st letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 14 August 1858 (2nd letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 14 August 1858 (2nd letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.2/1.

292

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

San Francisco Bulletin, 20 August 1866. Newcastle to Colonial Office officials (Blackwood, Elliott, Rogers, Fortescue), 27 March 1863, NA, CO 380/19. 99 Arthur Blackwood to Newcastle, 9 May 1863, NA, CO 380/19. 100 Newcastle to Douglas, 15 June 1863, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, BPP, 1866, xlix.119; original draft, NA, CO 380/19. 101 British Columbia Order in Council, 11 June 1863, NA, CO 380/19. 102 The Earl of Carnavon to Arthur Kennedy, 31 October 1866, in Colonial Office, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union of British Columbia and Vancouver Island (HMSO: London, 1867). 103 History of Vancouver Island and the Northwest Coast by Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/2. 104 Rattray, Alexander, Vancouver Island and British Columbia (Smith Elder: London, 1862), p. 143. 105 Jules David via Kennedy to Cardwell, 6 March 1865, Reply of the Victoria, Vancouver Island Chamber of Commerce to His Excellency Frederick Seymour, Governor of British Columbia forwarded to the Secretary of State for the Colonies (Victoria Chamber of Commerce: Victoria, 1866). 106 Seymour to Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Reply of the Victoria, Vancouver Island Chamber of Commerce. 107 David via Kennedy to Cardwell, 6 March 1865, Reply of the Victoria, Vancouver Island Chamber of Commerce. 108 Kennedy to Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 109 Resolution of Vancouver Island House of Assembly, 27 January 1865, enclosure in Kennedy to Cardwell, 21 May 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 110 D. Babbington Ring and others to Cardwell, n.d., enclosure in Kennedy to Cardwell, 1 December 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 111 Kennedy to Cardwell, 16 December 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 112 John Helmcken to Cardwell by telegraph, 20 June 1866, in Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 113 Kennedy to Cardwell, 22 June 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 114 Kennedy to Cardwell, 25 June 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 115 Kennedy to Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 116 Joseph F. Pascoe and 320 others to Seymour, 25 February 1865, enclosure in Seymour to Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 117 Kennedy to Cardwell, 16 June 1866 Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 118 Kennedy to Cardwell, 26 June 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 119 Kennedy to Cardwell, 8 and 31 August 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 120 Seymour to Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 121 North Pacific Times, ‘Resolutions of the Victoria Chamber of Commerce’, 17 March 1865. 122 Seymour to Cardwell, 29 March 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 97 98

NOTES

293

Kennedy to Cardwell, 17 February 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. A Bill for the Union of the Colony of Vancouver Island with the Colony of British Columbia, BPP, 1866, I.389. 125 Seymour to Carnavon, 21 November 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 126 San Francisco Bulletin, 20 August 1866. 127 Carnavon to Kennedy, 1 October 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 128 Kennedy to Carnavon, 1 October 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 129 Seymour to Arthur Watson, 13 November 1866, BL, Mic.F.232/14349; also Seymour to the Earl of Carnavon, 11 January 1867, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 130 Arthur Birch to Watson, 17 January 1867, BL, Mic.F.232/14349. 131 Birch to Watson, 30 March 1867, BL, Mic.F.232/14349. 132 Seymour to Carnavon, 17 January 1867, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 133 Seymour to Carnavon, 21 January 1867, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 134 Seymour to Carnavon, 20 November 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 135 Seymour to Carnavon, 11 January 1867, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 136 Seymour to Carnavon, 20 November 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 137 David to Henry Wakeford, 6 March 1865, enclosure in Kennedy to Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 138 Proclamation by James Douglas, 20 July 1859, enclosure in Seymour to the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, 13 July 1867, Copy or Extracts of Correspondence Between Governor Kennedy of Vancouver Island, Governor Seymour of British Columbia and the Colonial Office on the Subject of a Site for the Capital of British Columbia, BPP, 1867–68, xlviii.337. 139 Proclamation by James Douglas, 14 February 1859, enclosure in Seymour to Buckingham and Chandos, 13 July 1867, Copy or Extracts of Correspondence. 140 Douglas to Stanley, 4 October 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 141 Royle, Stephen A., ‘The Falkland Islands 1833-1876: the establishment of a colony’, Geographical Journal 151.2 (1985), pp. 204–14. 142 Pemberton, Joseph Despard, Vancouver Island and British Columbia (Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts: London, 1862), p. 53. 143 Seymour to Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Reply of the Victoria, Vancouver Island Chamber of Commerce. 144 Seymour to Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Reply of the Victoria, Vancouver Island Chamber of Commerce. 145 Reply of the Victoria Vancouver Island Chamber of Commerce to H.E. Governor Seymour’s despatch, Reply of the Victoria, Vancouver Island Chamber of Commerce. 123 124

294

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

W.J. Armstrong to Cardwell, 26 April 1866, enclosure in Birch to Cardwell, 28 April 1866, A Further Despatch Relative to the Proposed Union of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, BPP, 1866, xlix.165. 147 Kennedy to Cardwell, 3 March 1866, Further Papers Relating to the Proposed Union. 148 Seymour to the Legislative Council, 27 March 1867, Copy or Extracts of Correspondence. 149 Seymour to Buckingham and Chandos, 13 July 1867, Copy or Extracts of Correspondence. 150 Buckingham and Chandos to Seymour, 17 August 1867, Correspondence Relative to a Site for the Capital of British Columbia, BPP, 1867–68, xlviii.337. 151 Buckingham and Chandos to Seymour, 1 October 1867, Correspondence Relative to a Site. 152 Seymour to Buckingham and Chandos, 10 December 1867, Copy or Extracts of Correspondence. 153 Pemberton: Vancouver Island and British Columbia, p. 49. 154 Seymour to Buckingham and Chandos, 29 April 1868, Copy or Extracts of Correspondence. 155 Proclamation by Frederick Seymour, 28 May 1868, enclosed in Seymour to Buckingham and Chandos, 28 May 1868, Copy or Extracts of Correspondence. 156 Buckingham and Chandos to Seymour, 9 July 1868, Correspondence Relative to a Site. 157 Statistics Canada, http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/demo05a-eng.htm (accessed 28 January 2010). 146

Chapter 8 1 Report, The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of British Possessions in North America which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. 2 James Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 3 The Times, ‘House of Commons’, 15 February 1858. 4 King William Island Post Journal, 1926-1935, HBCA, B.427/a/1. 5 Hudson’s Bay Company, http://www.hbc.com (accessed 24 February 2010). 6 Edward Ellice 23 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 7 The Times, ‘Editorial’, 21 August 1848. 8 The Times, ‘Editorial’, 9 July 1858. 9 James Douglas to Henry Labouchere, 24 February 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 10 Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life (Smith Elder: London, 1868), p. 3. 11 Rossiter, David A., ‘Lessons in possession: colonial resource geographies in practice on Vancouver Island, 1859-1865’, Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007), pp. 770–90. 12 Davis, Lynne, ‘The high stakes of protecting indigenous homelands: Coastal First Nations Turning Point Initiative and environmental groups on the B.C. west coast’, International Journal of Canadian Studies 39-40 (2009), pp. 137–59. 13 Andrew Colvile and Henry Berens to Douglas, 8 July 1853, HBCA, B.226/c/1.

NOTES 14

15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

295

Johnston, Ronald J., ‘Gateway city’, in Johnston, R.J., Gregory, D., Pratt, G. and Watts, M. (eds), The Dictionary of Human Geography (4th edition Blackwell: London, 2000), p. 289. The Times, 28 June 1858. Report, The Select Committee. Frederick Seymour to Edward Cardwell, 21 March 1865, Papers Relating to the Proposed Union of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, BPP, 1866, xlix.119. Fitzgerald, James Edward, Vancouver’s Island: The New Colony (Simmons: London, 1848), p. 15. Royle, Stephen A., The Company’s Island: St Helena, Company Colonies and the Colonial Endeavour (IB Tauris: London, 2007); Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, Providence Island, 1630–1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1993). Fitzgerald: Vancouver’s Island: The New Colony, pp. 11-12. Edward Ellice, 23 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. AB [A. Blackwood] in a note written on Richard Blanshard to Earl Grey, 10 July 1850, NA, CO305/2. Archibald Barclay to Douglas, 2 July 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 18 June 1858, BCA, GR 0819. An Intending Emigrant to Vancouver [Island, probably Walter Colquhoun Grant], ‘Vancouver’s Island’, The Times, 7 September, 1848. Fitzgerald, James Edward, An Examination of the Charter and Proceedings of the Hudson’s Bay Company with Reference to the Grant of Vancouver Island (Trelawney Saunders: London, 1848), pp. 292–93.

Appendix 1 1 Morton, Arthur Silver, A history of the Canadian West to 1870-71 (2nd edition, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1974); Hudson’s Bay Record Society, Hudson’s Bay Company 1670–1870, Volume II, 1763–1870 (Hudson’s Bay Record Society: London, 1959). 2 Adams, John, Old Square Toes and His Lady (Horsdal and Schubart: Victoria, 2001). 3 Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/index-e.html (accessed 18 February 2010). 4 Gagen, Elizabeth, Lorimer, Hayden and Vasudevan, Alex, ‘Practicing the archive: some introductory remarks’, in Gagen, E, Lorimer, H. and Vasudevan, A. (eds), Practicing the Archive: Reflections of Method and Practice in Historical Geography, Historical Geography Research Series 40 (2007), pp. 4–5. 5 Copy of Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Secretary of State for the Colonies Relative to the Colonization of Vancouver’s Island, BPP, 1847–48, xlii.693; The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of those British Possessions in North America which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. 6 Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island, Commencing August 30th 1851, and Terminating with the Prorogation of the House of Assembly, February 6th 1861, Memoir II (Archives of British Columbia: Victoria, 1918); Minutes of the House of Assembly of Vancouver Island, August 12th1856 to September 25th 1858, Memoir III

296

7

8

9

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(Archives of British Columbia: Victoria, 1918). For manuscript material see, for example, Minutes of the Council of Vancouver Island, BCA, GR 0819. For example, on environmental matters see Colpitts, George, ‘Accounting for environmental degradation in Hudson’s Bay Company fur trade journals and account books’, British Journal of Canadian Studies 19.1 (2006), pp. 1–32; Ray, Arthur J., ‘Some conservation schemes of the Hudson’s Bay Company: an examination of the problems of resource management in the fur trade’, Journal of Historical Geography 1.1 (1975), pp. 49–68. Martin, Ged, ‘“The workings of my own mind”: the private correspondence of the governor-general of Canada, 1839–1866’, British Journal of Canadian Studies 22.1 (2009), pp. 63–86. On the back of Richard Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 November 1850 (2nd letter that day), NA, CO 305/2.

Index Adams, John 237 Alaska 54, 196 Alberni 64, 73, 116, 127 Antigua 169 Archer, Joan 39 Archives of Manitoba 237 Arctic 226 Arrowsmith, John 131 Ascension Island 150 Australia 36, 39, 73 Ball, Georgina 62 Balls, George 29 Baltic 196 Banfield, William 127 Bannister, Thomas 188 Barclay, Archibald 19, 34, 50, 52, 73, 75, 138 Barclay Sound 65, 73 Barnes, Ellis 203 Barr, Robert 52, 53 Barrett-Leonard, C.E. 82 Batimean, Bazil 186 Bay of Biscay 31 Baylee, R.C.P 67, 119–120 Bayley, Charles 27 Baynes, R. Lambert 85, 207, 210 Beardsmore, Charles 90, 91, 93, 136 Beaver Harbour see Fort Rupert Belle Vue 202 Bellingham Bay 105, 109, 141, 143, 144 Bermuda 176, 234 Bermuda Company 4 Berrens, Henry 166 Bilston 186 Blackwood, Arthur 214 Blanshard, Richard 15, 18, 21, 32, 42, 45, 47, 55, 70, 75, 132, 133, 138, 149–159, 160, 172, 182, 186, 187, 189, 195, 233, 238 finances 158

Fort Rupert murders 92–95, 230, 233 health 157–158 house and land 50, 153–154, 158 Hudson Bay Company 91, 152– 157, 185, 191, 238 indigenous people 79, 89, 102, 109, 115 journey 151–152, 231 resignation 157–159 rivalry with Douglas 91, 152, 229 Blenkinsop, George 48, 89, 91, 133, 136, 137, 153 Blinkhorn, Thomas 177, 183 Boston men 65, 111, 188, 230 British Columbia 78, 112 Colony 9, 75, 199, 211-213, 217, 232 Legislative Council 220, 222 New Caledonia 6, 209–211, 228, 235 union with Vancouver Island 209–218, 220 British Columbia Act 217, 220 British Columbia Archives, 237 British Honduras 2, 169 British Library 237 British Museum 65 Brotchie, William 126, 127 Brown, Peter, 95-99, 101 Brown, Robert 18 Bruce, Henry 204 boundary 200, 204 Boundary Commission 71, 204, 205 Buchanan, James 199 Buckingham and Chandos, Duke of 221, 223 Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward (Lord Lytton) 77, 199, 211, 213 Burgess, William 29

298

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

California 21, 23, 24, 35, 36, 70, 91, 140, 153, 158, 193, 227 Callao 59, 152 Cameron, David 164, 173, 176– 179, 183 appointment as Chief Justice 189–191, 232 petition against 181–182, 186, 189–191 Camosack see Fort Victoria Canada 3, 126 Canada Company 4 Canal de Arro (Haro) 17, 201, 202, 209 Cape Flattery 31, 87, 109 Cape Horn 3, 6, 26, 30, 151, 231 Cape Verde Islands 28 Cardwell, Edward 215, 216 Carey, George Hunter 205 Cariboo gold rush 38, 115, 147 Cate 35 Chagres 32, 151 Chagres River 152, 159 Chancellor, Eliza 23, 47 Charbono 186 Charles II 3, 4 Cheeaelshlae 82 Chilcotin War 115 Chile 127 colonial governors, 157 Columbia District 6 Columbia River 6, 146 Colvile, Andrew 26, 35, 51, 55, 141, 181, 191 Colvile Town see Nanaimo companies 3, 5 company colonies 4, 182, 191, 211, 228–229, 234, 235 Company of Colonists of Vancouver Island 13 Connolly, Matthew 100 Constance Cove 37, 103 Cook, James 63, 65 Cookstown 27 Cooper, James, 23, 24, 27, 72, 100, 102, 123, 129, 160, 172, 177, 180, 182, 184, 225, 228, 234 conspirator 183, 185–189, 229

Cornelius, Peter 99 Cowegan 99 Cowegan River 18 Crimean War 79, 163, 196–198, 226, 233 Crofton, John ffolliott 11 cu’mas (camass, quamash) 62 Cutler, Lyman 205 Dallas, Alexander Grant 48, 164, 165 David, Jules 130, 214–215 Davis, Lynne 231 Demerara 189 Demers, Modeste 119 de Cosmos, Amor 164, 215, 218 desertion 33–36 Dictionary of Canadian Biography 237 Disraeli, Benjamin 12 Domer, John 43, 66, 71 Dorset 34 Douglas, Agnes 164 Douglas, Amelia 63, 230, 237 Douglas, Cecilia 190 Douglas, James 15, 19, 25, 31, 32, 48, 50, 53, 54, 58, 138, 142, 145, 150, 155, 160–169, 172, 175, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 189, 191, 195, 215, 226, 227, 234, 237, 238 British Columbia 146, 167, 199, 209–212, 220, 228, 232 coal 130, 140 ethnicity 63, 230 exploration 17–18, 139 faith 110 finances, 142, 157, 162, 193, 227 honours 168, 169 indigenous peoples 67–68, 69, 72, 76–78, 79, 80, 86–87, 95–99, 101, 103, 106–109, 110–111, 114, 118–119, 230 land sales 41–42, 43, 47–48, loses office 169, 214 moral attitudes 36, 37 Mormons 10–11 protests against 187–188, 229, 235

INDEX rivalry with Blanshard 91, 93, 229 Queen Charlotte’s Island 88, 113, 145–146, 162, 228 San Juan Islands 200–209 vice admiral 33 war leader 196–198, 233 Dunsmuir, Robert 143, 144 Durkheim, Émile 117 East India Company 3, 4, 9–10, 31 Eastland Company 3 Edmonton, 8 Ellice, Edward 130, 226, 234 Esquimalt 31, 37, 48, 55, 85, 148, 168, 175, 186, 198, 220 Falkland Islands 219 family-company compact 164 Fathlasut 99–102 Finlayson, Roderick 8, 21, 25, 35, 41, 50, 54, 74, 102, 105, 115, 140, 152, 169, 172–173, 183, 193, 231 Fisher, Robin 94, 104 fishing 61–62, 128 Fitzgerald, James Edward 10, 11, 12, 13–14, 54, 63, 78, 86, 116, 130, 226, 228, 234, 235 Fitzwilliam, Charles 23, 129 Forbes, Charles 18 Fort Colvile 146 Fort Langley 54, 210, 219 Fort Nisqually 6, 15, 54 Fort Rupert 37, 66, 73, 74, 78, 80, 126, 140, 153, 175 coal 67, 70, 71, 131–139, 141, 153, 226 foundation 70 murders 89–95, 152, 230, 233 Fort Simpson 107, 111 Fort Vancouver 6, 8, 182 Fort Victoria 3, 6, 8, 27, 35, 40, 47, 50, 51, 73, 97, 117, 126, 183, 229 foundation 15, 46, 55, 78, 169, 226 Fort William 8 Fraser, Donald 173

299

Fraser River gold rush 6, 37, 56, 76, 110, 112–115, 145–148, 199, 210 Fraser, Thomas 167 Fredericton 222 frontier 3, 231–232 gateway cities 3 Garipie 71, 102-103 Gettysburg, Battle of 205 Gilmour, Boyd 137–138, 142, 144 Gollege, Richard 186 Gordon, George 67 Grand 35 Grant, Walter Colquhoun 14, 26, 30, 41, 47, 125 article 18, 47, 119 racism 65–66, 67 settler 21–23, 231–232 surveyor 18–19, 228, 233 Grey, Earl 8, 9, 14, 19, 93, 158, 159, 171, 213, 229, 238 Grey, Sir George 163, 197 Griffin, Charles 201, 202 Guayaquil 152 Haida Gwaii see Queen Charlotte’s Island Halcombe, J.J. 118 Hall, Thomas 103 Harney, William 205–206, 207 Hawai’i see Sandwich Islands Helmcken, John Sebastian 48, 164, 183 journal 28–31 magistrate 89-90, 135–136, 155, 234 speaker, 148, 175, 182, 215, 218 Wakefield Theory 42 Highland Clearances 5 Hong Kong 59, 169 Honolulu 59 Hornby, Geoffrey 205, 206 Hornsby, Sir Phipp 195 Houston, Wallace 82 Hudson’s Bay 5, 6

300

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Hudson’s Bay Company 1, 4, 8, 11, 25, 35, 45, 52, 75, 117, 131, 168, 195, 212, 225–226, 228–229 colonial endeavour 4–14, 226– 230, 235 criticism 136, 193, 228, 234 fur trade 11, 12, 68–69, 123– 124, 138, 139, 147, 197, 209, 212, 226, 252 ‘Indian Territory’ 5, 6 Indian trade policy 79, 100, 121, 230 landholdings 46, 47, 72–78, 192, 234 parliamentary enquiry 15, 61, 69, 72, 78, 100, 102, 109, 115–116, 123, 129, 157, 159, 164, 181, 182, 183, 186, 190, 191, 225, 226, 233, 237 Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, 237 Hudson’s Bay Company Record Society 237 Hunt, Lewis Cass 208 indigenous peoples 2, 61–121, 230– 231, 254 alcohol 117, 121 British Columbia 212 Cape Flattery 68, 86 character 65–66 coal 69, 131, 141 colonial impacts on 115–118, 120 customs 103 defence against 78 disease 16, 118 disputes between 105–109 fear of 78–86, 196 gold 114–115 Haida 61, 83–84, 85, 107 Huu-ay-aht 65, 230 Keemchamista 74 Kwakwaka’wakw 61, 74, 90 labour 70–72 land sales 72–78 land tenure 62–63, law towards 86-105

Leckwungen 74 magistrates 107 Malahat 74 Naskeemo 106 Newitty 90, 95, 106, 233 Northern Indians 61, 72, 76, 82–86, 99, 107, 108, 109, 111 Nuu chah nulth 65 population 115 Quw’utsun’ 61, 69, 86, 95, 96, 99, 107, 118 resistance 63–65 Saanich 74 Samuna 99 Scia’new 74 Sna-Naw-As 74 Snuneymuxw 61, 74, 98 Songhees 61, 74, 76, 82, 86, 105, 118, 119 Reserve 76, 81–82, 84, 87, 108 Spokane 66 trading 70, 185 Tsilhqot’in 115 T’Sooke 74, 75, 103 insularity, 4, 61, 63, 104, 232, 233 Irwin, Douglas 3 Jake 103 Jamaica, 27, 103 James II, 8, 119, 121, 126 Jim 89 John, Captain 108 Johnson, Charles 21, 34, 153 Johnston, Ron 3, 232 Jones, Richard 103 Juan de Fuca Strait 15, 70, 200 Kane, Paul 62, 70, 73 Kennedy, Arthur 18, 37, 38, 125, 169, 180, 215, 216, 218 Kennedy, John 89, 145 Keppel, William Coutts 25, 66 King George men 65, 111, 188, 230 King William Island, 226 Klein, Peter 7 Kuper, Augustus Leopold 96 Kuril Islands 196

INDEX Labouchere, Henry 102, 174, 190, 198, 225 Lagacé 35 Lamfrett 119 Langfield 118 Langford, Edward Edwards 175, 176, 177, 191, 192, 253 conspirator 181–182, 183, 184, 186, 190, 229, 231 Langley Alfred John, 25, 71, 173 Laidlaw, Zoe 2 Lamb, W. Kaye 90, 94 Legacé, Josette 66 Levant Company 3 Lima 152 Liverpool 151 London 59 Lopez Island see San Juan Islands Lord, John Keest 56, 66 Macdonald, Duncan 43, 80 Macdonald, William 28 Mackay, Douglas 3 Mackie, Richard 45 Manitoba 5 Maple Point 37, 52, 53 Marx, Karl 39–40, 42 Mason, Charles 202 Mauritius 150 Mayne, Richard 44, 56, 59 McAuley, Donald 177, 191, 253 McDonald, L. 100 McDonald, William 187 McFarlane, A. 30 McGregor, John 132, 135, 187 McKay, Joseph 35, 74, 140, 156 McKenzie, Kenneth 25, 53, 177, 191, 192, 193, 253 McNeill, William 52, 112, 133, 135 McNeill’s Harbour 130 Merrivale, Herman 160, 238 Metchosin 23, 47, 48, 172, 175, 185 Michael, George 90 migration voyages 26–33, 227, 228 Mills, John Powell 32–33 missionaries 67, 118–119 Monroe Thomas 187 Monteagle, Baron 9–10

301

Montreal 222 Moody, Richard 208, 219 Mormons 10–11 Moresby, Fairfax 27, 33, 91, 94, 153, 211 Morton, Arthur Silver 25, 75, 187, 237 Muir, Andrew 64, 81, 91, 132, 133– 135, 136, 187 Muir, Archibald 132 Muir family 22, 78, 132–137, 144, 187 Muir, John 127, 132, 133, 135, 136, 141, 175 Muir, Robert 132 Muscovy Company 3 Nanaimo 17, 33, 36, 37, 49, 52, 53, 66, 73, 81, 131, 175, 218 coal 71, 89, 138, 139–144, 226, 227, 232 National Archives 237, 238 National Maritime Museum 237 Neah 87 Nevis 169 New Archangel 196 New Caledonia see British Columbia New Guinea 4 New Westminster 217, 218, 219– 221, 222, 223 New Zealand 39, 101 New Zealand Company 74 Newcastle, Duke of 44, 109, 166, 168, 208, 209, 213, 214, 229 Newcastle Island, 143 Nicolay, C.G. 120 Nisqually 71, 153 North West Company 3, 6 Northamptonshire 182 Norway 126 Nugent, John 199–200, 204 Ogden, Peter Skene 54, 130 Orcas Island see San Juan Islands Oregon 6, 35, 111, 137, 202 Oregon Treaty 6, 8, 46, 54, 109, 200–201, 203

302

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Orkney 33, 96 orphans 52 Ottawa 222 Pacific 128, 196 Pakington, Sir John 17, 103, 229 Panama 26, 151, 152, 159 Panama Canal 3 Panama town 152 Pearce, Benjamin 19 Pelly, Sir John 5, 8, 9, 23, 25, 63, 68, 123, 131, 136, 141, 150, 158, 159, 160, 229 Pemberton, Joseph Despard 16, 18, 19–20, 32-33, 43, 48, 51, 55, 77, 127, 140, 175, 180, 191, 192, 218, 232 Pernambuco 31 Perth 190 Peru 152 Petropavlovsk, Siege of 196 Pickett, George 205 Pig War 196, 205–209 Point Roberts 42 Port Hardy 133 Port Townsend 59, 207 Portland 59 postcolonialism 230 potlatch 62, 82–83 Prevost, James 89, 205, 208, 210– 211 Prince Edward Island 157 Providence Island 234 Puget Sound 6 Puget Sound Agricultural Company 6, 13, 19, 24, 35, 45, 73, 125– 126, 168, 175, 191–193, 232 land holdings 47, 253 Puget Sound War 64, 83, 109, 188, 198 Quebec 222 Queen Charlotte Islands see Queen Charlotte’s Island Queen Charlotte’s Island 61, 64, 67, 88, 89, 107, 110, 112–113, 162, 232 gold, 145–146

Qikiqtaq see King William Island Queensland 169 Rattray, Alexander 55, 147 reciprocity agreements 129, 176 Red River Colony 5, 225 Red River Rebellion 5, 225 Reid, James 33 Réunion 150 Riel, Louis 5, 225 Riga 126 Robinson, George 143, 144 Robinson, Thomas 70, 151–152, 159, 231 Rosario Chanel 201, 204 Rosenberg, Nickolay 196 Rossiter, David 1, 65, 77, 124, 127, 230 Rowland, Matthias 99 Royle, Stephen A. 4 Rupert, Prince 4–5 Rupert’s Land 5, 6, 8, 225, 231 Russell, Lord John 208 Russian America 6, 125, 196, 198 Russian American Company 197 Russian Fur Company 54 St Helena 4, 10, 150, 234 St John’s 222 Sakhalin 196 Samsun, Arthur 97, 98 San Francisco 33, 37, 58, 59, 127, 139, 142, 142, 185 San Juan Islands 111, 198, 200– 209, 234 Lopez Island 201 Orcas Island 201 San Juan Island 37, 201, 202, 203, 208 Sandwich Islands 22, 137, 183, 185 Sangster, James 187 Sangster, Robert 202 Scandinavia 34 Seed, Patricia 2, 229 Selkirk, Earl of 5 Seymour, Frederick 64, 169, 215, 216–223 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 151

INDEX ships Beaver 54, 87, 96, 97, 135 Cadboro 54, 82, 87, 88 California 32 Calypso, HMS 115, 211 Colinda 201, 247 mutiny on 33, 141, 227 Columbia 50, 51 Cormorant, HM Steamer 67, 70, 130 Daedalus, HMS 93, 158 Daphne, HMS 93, 95, 159 Driver, HM Steam Sloop 21, 70, 71, 132, 152, 153 Duchess of San Lorenzo 184 England 90, 91 Exact,113 Fisgard 130 Ganges, HMS 206 Harpooner 22, 64, 131, 247 Jefferson Davis 203 John Hancock 111 Lord Western 89 Marquis of Bute 247 Mary Dare 35, 131, 132 Massachusetts 111 Medway 151 Norman Morrison 23, 27, 28–32, 34, 90, 126, 231, 247 Otter 89, 107, 110, 112, 163, 197, 202, 233, 247 Pekin 137, 247 Plumper, HMS 205 President, HMS 198 Princess Royal 33, 56, 247 Recovery 96, 97, 145, 211 Rob Roy 85 Royal Charley 85 Satellite, HMS 18, 103, 210–211 Susan Sturgess 87, 113 loss of 88 Thetis, HMS 17, 88, 95, 96, 97 Tory 25, 26–28, 181, 185, 247 Tribune, HMS 84, 205, 206 Trincomalee, HMS 82 Una 64, 112 loss of 87-88 Virago, HM Steam Sloop 89, 141

303

Simpson, Sir George 5, 11, 54, 139, 140, 172, 184 Sitkine 196 Skea, James 96 Skinner, Thomas 177, 191, 192, 231, 253 Smith, John 132 Smith, Joseph 10 Somers Island Company 4 Sooke 22, 36, 46, 47, 48, 112, 175 Southampton 151 Southgate, Joseph 218 Sproat, Gilbert 64, 104–105, 116, 117, 127, 230 squatting 99 Staffordshire 143 Staines, Mary 51, 182, 184, 231 Staines, Robert John 50, 231 chaplain 52 conspirator 182–185, 186, 189, 229 teacher 51–52, 183–184 Stamp, Edward 127, 128 Stanley 219 Stanley, Lord 211 Stanton, Alfred 90 Steptoe, Edward Jenner 112 Stevens, Isaac 83, 110, 198 Swanston, Robert 89, 188 Sweden 126 Tasmania see Van Diemen’s Land Tenatman 103 terra nullius 73 Thomas 35 Thompson River gold rush 37, 112, 113, 199 Tolmie, William 48, 71 Tomlin 33 Tod, John 42, 47, 48, 160, 172 Trutch, Joseph 64, 78, 121 Turkey 196 Turks and Caicos Islands 157 Turner, Frederick Jackson 2, 231– 232 United States 2, 42, 126 Urquhart 118

304

COMPANY, CROWN AND COLONY

Valdivia 33 Valparaiso 33 Van Diemen’s Land 169 Vancouver (British Columbia) 223 Vancouver (Washington) 8 Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company 144 Vancouver, George 63 Vancouver Island agriculture, 124–126, 229–230 Assembly 43–44, 53, 84, 128, 144, 163, 171, 173–177, 179– 180, 189–191, 211, 215, 216, 232, 234 constituencies 175 charter 5, 8–14, 171 churches 50–51 Colony 9, 49–50, 54, 138, 148, 199, 217, 232, 234 Council 53, 59, 160, 171, 172– 173, 176, 197, 232 courts and justice 163, 171, 177– 179 defence 197, 233 description 23 economy 123–148, 252, 253 exploration 15–18 exports 128, 231 franchise 174–175 hospital 54 land sales 45–49, 248–251, 252 migration to 13, 26–36, 44–45, 49, 66, 141, 227, 246, 247 population 36–38 revocation of grant 130, 164, 181, 225–226 roads 53 settlement 21, 24 schools 51, 53, 119 survey 18–20, 246

timber 126–128 Trust Fund 123 union with British Columbia 209–218, 220 Victoria 36, 38, 48, 49, 52, 55, 118, 175, 217, 232 capital of British Columbia 218– 223, 33 free port 59, 215–216 gold rush 37–38, 56–58, 14, 1727–148 police 85 public buildings 46, 50, 154, 165–167, 221, 222, 233 see also Fort Victoria trade 54–59 Victoria Voltageurs 99 Virginia Company 3, 4 Wainwright, Joel 2, 229, 230 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon 39 Wakefield Theory 21, 23–24, 39– 45, 227 Ward, James 40. Washington 183, 198, 203, 209 Watson, Arthur 218 Wellesley, George, 93, 158 whaling 128 White Sea 196 Wilhelm I 209 Williams, Thomas 99 Wishart, David 30–31, 34 Work, John 25, 48, 52, 66, 173, 186 Worthington 126 Yakima War 109 Yates, James 180, 187 York Factory 6, 8 Young, Brigham 10, 147 Young, W.A.G. 218