The Terror of the Coast. Chris Arnett
The Comiaken si’em, Lohar, and Jean-Baptiste Glasetatem invited Rondeault to use their houses to perform mass and baptisms which were well-attended. 62 Samuel Harris, a Hwunitum trader who established himself in the valley around 1858, reported seeing “over 900 clean-washed, well-dressed Indians at mass in one of their own lodges.” 63 Others travelled long distances “to hear the priest and to see him … From the islands they came, and from all parts of the coast—big canoes full of men, women and children. He likes best to see the little children come. ‘Bring them all,’ he told the old people, and he held them and washed (baptized) them and gave them names like the white man.” 64
Rondeault visited villages outside of the Cowichan Valley to preach and baptize. Hulkalatkstun developed a special relationship with Rondeault who “used to come to Penelekhut. Ah, Hul-ka-latkstun did like that man! Often he used to come and talk to the Cowichans.” 65
Hwulmuhw converts soon pooled their labour to build a church, St. Ann’s, on the summit of the hill overlooking the village of Comiaken. Built of logs, the church measured “about 50 feet by 20,” and “some distance from it, in front, a huge wooden Latin cross stood in the ground.” 66 When St. Ann’s was finished the people built “a humble shanty adjoining the church” for Father Rondeault’s living quarters. Si’em from various villages contributed, as Quon-as recalled:
For this house the Indians gave one board from each village; one from Comiaken, one from Quamichan, one from Yekoloas and Penelekhut on Kuper Island, and so on, and in that way every place helped to make a house for that good man. 67
Other Catholic missionaries assisted Rondeault to convert Hwulmuhw on the east coast of Vancouver Island. The Oblate priest, Father Casimar Chirouse from the Puget Sound Tulalip Mission came north to visit Rondeault in May 1859. During his brief visit, it was sais that Chirouse, the “Apostle of Puget Sound”:
… baptized about four hundred children and induced over two thousand adults publicly to renounce gambling, conjuring and murdering. So successful was his preaching and so sincere were the Indians in their promises, that they loaded his canoe with the paraphernalia of the medicine-man, or conjurer, as well as with knives, gambling discs and similar accessories to sin. 68
Chirouse made a similar trip in April 1860 with another priest, Father Fouquet.
By the end of 1860, as a result of their efforts and Rondeault’s mission at Comiaken, the traditional way of life was effectively undermined and the majority of Hul’qumi’num First Nations were, at least nominally, Roman Catholics. Over time, as Roman Catholic influence grew, the ancient system of hereditary si’em and inherited rights and privileges was displaced in part by si’em appointed by the Bishop. 69
Protestant missionaries arrived late on the scene and found their labours hampered by the influence their Catholic rivals had over the Hwulmuhw. One of them, an Irishman named Alexander Garrett, arrived in the colony in 1860 at the invitation of the Anglican Bishop, George Hills. 70 Garrett established a school for aboriginal children at the Songhees reserve across from the town of Victoria and made occasional visits to the Cowichan Valley, but his ministrations met with little success. An arrogant, dishevelled man, Garrett despised and distrusted the French-speaking Roman Catholic priests whom he often referred to as “foreigners.”
Others were much more charitable in their regard for the labours of the Romanist missionaries. The Hwunitum trader, Samuel Harris, wrote a letter on March 26, 1861, in which he described the profound influence of the Roman Catholic priests on Cowichan society after only two years residence among them:
I reside in the above district [Cowichan] in the midst of about 2,000 Indians who, eighteen months ago, carried on a system of drunkenness and murder too horrible to relate. At this date they may be said to be a reclaimed people. Drink is forbidden by them, and a penalty attached to drunkenness by order of their chiefs. Consequently, other crimes are of rare occurrence. And to what is all this owing? To the honest and persevering labours of a poor Catholic priest who receives no salary, and is fed by the Indians as far as their means will enable them. Within eighteen months he has baptized upwards of 250 children and 50 adults who can repeat the catechism in their own language. Besides cutting timber, they have subscribed their dollars to build a substantial church, capable of containing 400 people, and it is, every Sabbath, full to overflowing. I have seen hundreds standing in the rain to catch a sound of the priest’s exhortation. They are now collecting funds to furnish their church and make it like the white man’s place of worship. 71
As Harris points out, the Quebecois priests took an active role in suppressing the liquor trade which plagued the Cowichan people. On one occasion, “illicit whiskey dealers, who, attempting to land alcohol from their sloops, were driven off and their casks rolled into the sea.” 72
The fundamental influence of the church, however, was not so much spiritual as economic. The Roman Catholic Mission of St. Ann’s diverted attention from traditional food resources by encouraging the people to cultivate cash crops such as potatoes, tobacco, timber and dairy products. 73 As a result, a growing percentage of people stayed in their winter villages during the annual summer migration to the Fraser River in order to tend their crops under the guidance of the priests.
Similarly, the Church competed with the stlun’uq (potlatch)—the complex system by which wealth was redistributed amongst the people in exchange for witnessing and thereby validating important changes in status. The priests:
… recognized that the giving that was the foundation of Indian religious beliefs was a field of strength that was worth their while to cultivate. Potlatching is a two-way process. Within this present world you give, and sooner or later, you receive in return. The priests attempted to replace potlatching with the practice of giving worldly goods to the church in exchange for everlasting life … When they gave, the priest would promise that it would all be returned in the next world … But the Church wanted cash, not swaddling blankets for the Baby Jesus. So the devout learned to turn their goods into cash … When the goods were turned into cash which flowed across the seas and upward toward the heavens, the cycle that had perpetuated itself for so long was broken. The imperial chain was complete. 74
Modeste Demers, first Roman Catholic Bishop of Vancouver Island.
British Columbia Archives and Records Service, Photo HP 2533
Vancouver Island Colony showing area of land purchase agreements, from 1850 to 1852, and illegally acquired Cowichan territories, July 22, 1859.
Courtesy of Surveyors General Branch, Victoria
Chapter Four
After the Gold Rush
While Roman Catholic missionaries infiltrated the territories of Hul’qumi’num First Nations, two inter-related events prompted Douglas to begin the process of alienating aboriginal lands without mutual agreements. Reports of the discovery of gold on the mainland reached Great Britain, and in 1857 a bill was passed in parliament to establish a second colony in the Pacific Northwest. It was also decided that the Royal Licence to Vancouver Island given to the Hudson’s Bay Company would be terminated on May 30, 1859, along with the company’s right to exclusive trade with the aboriginal people. The subsequent influx of Hwunitum miners to the Fraser River in 1858, and the end of the Hudson’s Bay Company charter, altered forever the balance of power between the indigenous people and the newcomers and hastened the erosion of Hwulmuhw sovereignty in the unceded territories adjacent to the Colony of Vancouver Island.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1858, upwards of thirty thousand Hwunitum flooded into Victoria before pressing on through Hwulmuhw territories and across the Gulf of Georgia to the gold fields of the newly created Colony of British Columbia.
Aboriginal people on the east coast of Vancouver