The Terror of the Coast. Chris Arnett
during the onset of the Gold Rush. The gold seekers travelled the long-established canoe route between Vancouver Island and the mainland which, before reaching the Gulf of Georgia, passed through territories and waterways owned by Saanich, Cowichan, Penelakut, and Lamalcha families. Some Hwulmuhw welcomed the foreigners as trading partners or employers, and offered their skills as canoeists, teamsters and commissaries. At Elelen 1 (Miners’ Bay), on the Mayne Island side of Active Pass, Saanich owners allowed Hwunitum to use the beach as a temporary camp and staging area for the perilous journey across the Gulf of Georgia. Other Hwulmuhw resented the trespass and enforced their jurisdiction over the land and waterways. Enforcement ranged from verbal threats to homicide according to the dictates of personalities, situations, and the seriousness of transgression of Hwulmuhw law.
Those most actively opposed to the Hwunitum invasion included members of Cowichan, Penelakut and Lamalcha families whose traditional food-gathering territories lay along the route taken by the Hwunitum miners through the southern Gulf Islands.
Active Pass, the body of water separating Galiano and Mayne Islands, was the major route through the Gulf Islands and a traditional ambush site. 2 In 1858 “a certain bad Indian … in company with several others” is said to have killed “three white men at Plumper’s Pass [Active Pass] and sunk their canoe.” 3 According to information later given by a Hwulmuhw informant to a Hwunitum settler, great care was taken by the assailants to remove all traces of their work:
It seems that it is the practice of these pirates, after committing a murder, to sink the bodies of their victims in deep water, by means of a stone tied around the neck, and also to scuttle any vessel that may, in such a manner, fall into their clutches, and sink her to avoid their crime being discovered and punished. 4
Another incident, not well-documented, was said to have taken place near Active Pass in 1858, where eight Lamalcha and Penelakut warriors fired upon the Hudson’s Bay Company steamer Otter. 5 There were no casualties and no reprisals, which suggests that the encounter was a symbolic demonstration of Hwulmuhw sovereignty. The colonial government recognized these warriors as a serious obstacle to Hwunitum settlement but took no direct action against them for fear of jeopardizing land sale agreements and to avoid the danger that a war would pose to the thousands of Hwunitum en route to the mainland through the unceded territories of the Gulf Islands. 6
The announcement that the Hudson’s Bay Company charter to Vancouver Island would be revoked on May 30, 1859, prompted the colonial government to take active measures to acquire as much additional Hwulmuhw land for the company as possible before the charter expired. By the middle of 1858, unbeknownst to the people living there, the Colony of Vancouver Island initiated the appropriation of land in the Cowichan Valley by issuing scrip to Hwunitum speculators which would entitle them to purchase land in the area at the going rate of one pound (five dollars) an acre upon completion of a survey. 7 The “Cowichan Scrip” was issued on a first-come-first-served basis to Hudson’s Bay Company associates, politicians, merchants and Royal Navy officers. 8 Douglas made no attempt to arrange land sale agreements with the Cowichan people but went ahead with the sale of their lands solely, it seems, to secure for the Hudson’s Bay Company and its friends the prime agricultural lands within the unceded Cowichan territories. This was in direct violation of imperial policy established in North America since the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
Most of the “Cowichan Scrip” was issued, and initial installments paid, before the actual survey took place. The first purchaser, Thomas J. Skinner, Bailiff for the Puget Sound Company’s farm at Esquimalt and member of the Legislative Assembly for that district, bought his “Cowichan Scrip” on June 25, 1858. He, like Thomas Gardinier a week later, “paid into the office … $250 … to secure installment proper on 1,000 acres of land at Cowichan when surveyed.” 9
Because Hwulmuhw title had not been formerly extinguished, as occurred elsewhere in the colony, purchasers were only required to pay one quarter of the purchase price with the balance payable “when the Indian question of title of the land was settled.” 10 The Surveyor General, Joseph Pemberton, who apparently handled many of these sales, reassured the buyers that a resolution of the title was imminent. When questioned by Douglas two years later concerning statements he made to purchasers “with regards to extinguishing the Indian title at Cowichan,” Pemberton wrote in reply “that if in 1858 any Purchaser of the lands in question [asked] whether within a reasonable time the Indian title to those lands would be extinguished as had been previously the practice I should have replied in the affirmative.” 11
On Wednesday, March 16, 1859, Pemberton and his assistant surveyor, Oliver Wells, along with a party of five men, left Victoria for the Cowichan Valley for a preliminary inspection prior to the actual survey of the land. 12 The surveying party apparently calculated their arrival to coincide with a seasonal migration of the Cowichan people, “large bodies of whom were absent at the Herring fisheries.” 13
Pemberton returned to Victoria and on March 22, 1858, Wells began his survey at Mill Creek Bay at the mouth of the Saanich Inlet and worked his way north. 14 By May 14 all of the coastal land lying north of the mouth of Saanich inlet to present-day Crofton was surveyed into one hundred acre lots comprising five districts named after Hwulmuhw winter villages: Shawnigan, Cowichan, Quamichan, Somenos, Comiaken and Chemainus. 15 Shawnigan was the southernmost district above Mill Bay. To the north, the Cowichan District surrounded Cowichan Bay, encompassing the heartland of the Cowichan people, including the fertile river delta and most of the winter villages and potato fields. West of Cowichan District was another quadrant of lots drained by the Cowichan and Koksilah Rivers. It contained the winter villages of Somenos and Koksilah and was named Quamichan after the village of the same name which the surveyors placed at its eastern boundary. Somenos was the name given to the district directly above Quamichan, a region without permanent winter villages, but with numerous food gathering areas, which embraced the fertile lands surrounding Somenos lake at the base of the ancestral mountain Swuqus (Mount Prevost). East of Somenos District was the less arable land of Comiaken District, unoccupied by permanent Hwulmuhw settlements but used extensively for hunting and the gathering of edible and medicinal plants.
The surveyors had intended to proceed into the so-called Chemainus District, encompassing the Chemainus Valley, but on the thirty-first of May, a day after the Hudson’s Bay Company grant to Vancouver Island expired, Pemberton wrote Wells to congratulate him “on the admirable progress you are making” and instructed him to “omit the survey of unsaleable land” in the Chemainus District. 16 The survey of the most valuable land was complete. In his official report Wells stated that 57,658 acres of land had been surveyed of which “45,000 acres of plain and prairie lands may be set down as superior agricultural districts, the remaining 17,600 acres being either open or thickly wooded land, partly arable, will likewise be chiefly occupied. There is thence a sufficient quantity of good level land laid out in this valley to provide farms for a population of from 500 to 600 families at an average of about 100 acres each.” 17
Although most Hwulmuhw inhabitants were away at the herring fishery during his survey, Wells claimed that “the Indians have shown throughout a perfectly friendly disposition, and a strong desire to see the white man settled among them. Their services may prove of utility to the early settler by way of cheap labour.” 18
In marked contrast to Wells’ positive report, Douglas informed the Colonial Office on May 25 that “much excitement prevails among the Cowitchen Tribes in consequence of a detailed Survey of the Cowitchen Valley which is now being executed by the Colonial Surveyor of Vancouver Island.” Douglas reported that there was:
… a general belief among the “Cowitchens” that their lands are to be immediately sold and occupied by white settlers, an impression which it is difficult to remove and that gives rise to much contention amongst themselves about the disposal of their lands; one party being in favour of a surrender of a part of their country for settlement; while another party comprising nearly all the younger 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 adjustment of those disputes before the land can be acquired for settlement.