The Terror of the Coast. Chris Arnett
which left several people killed and one of the si’em badly wounded. 12 Penelakut was put on military alert and it was only by chance that two Roman Catholic missionaries, Fouquet and Chirouse, were not killed in an ambush during a visit to the village shortly after the raid. 13 Around this time Hulkalatkstun, another si’em of the village, was wounded in a fight with northern people near Esquimalt, setting the stage for retaliation. 14
A potent reminder to Hwunitum settlers of Hwulmuhw sovereignty occurred on the fourth of July 1860, when resident Lamalcha and Penelakut warriors attacked the occupants of a Bella Bella canoe at the head of Ganges Harbour on Salt Spring Island, killing ten of them. According to one of the settlers, the attack was in retaliation for previous events, the Hwulmuhw warriors having “owed them a grudge for some injury done years ago.” 15
A canoe carrying “nine men, two boys and three women of the Bella Bella tribe” was on its way to Victoria when a Hwunitum by the name of McCawley met them at the Salt Spring Settlement where he convinced the Bella Bella to take him to Victoria. Lieutenant Mayne, who described the passenger as “one of the settlers on the north end of Saltspring Island,” writes that McCawley “asked them to take him to Victoria, calling at the settlement in Ganges Harbour on the way. They were willing to take him to Victoria, but objected going to Ganges Harbour on account of the Cowitchins. The settler, however, overruled their objections, and they finally assented to his wish.” 16
Thomas Lineker, the settler with whom McCawley “had business,” recalled that there were fifty Indians of the Cowichan tribe encamped there,” no doubt in their houses at the head of the harbour. 17 Lineker noted that they “manifested an unfriendly spirit” when the Bella Bella canoe arrived, but “professed friendship, which misled the Bella Bella.” 18 According to Lineker, “while McCawley was up at my house, we were startled by the sound of firearms on the beach. The Indians by this time had got into a regular fight, which lasted about an hour and terminated in the Cowichans killing eight men and plundering the canoe, which they carried off with the women and boys, whom they took prisoners. This occurred close to the beach. They fired some 200 shots, some of the bullets flying close to our heads.” 19
Two of the female Bella Bella prisoners were subsequently killed. 20 There were no Hwulmuhw casualties. 21
In a letter written to Governor Douglas five days after the fight, Lineker outlined the precarious position of the settlers. 22 The Penelakut and/or Lamalcha warriors had departed and without their protection Lineker feared for the safety of the settlers in the event of a retaliatory attack by relatives of the vanquished Bella Bella. He wrote: “The Indians have all left here, probably anticipating an attack, in such an event we should be anything but safe, especially should they in any way molest the Settlers. We number here twenty-six men, scattered over about two miles square. Considering their defenseless position the Settlers trust that Your Excellency will deem it expedient to afford them such protection as you in your wisdom may think necessary.” 23
The HMS Satellite, a twenty-four-gun corvette, was dispatched to the area, where its commander, Captain James Charles Prevost, ensured that the settlers were safe. On the shores of Ganges Harbour, Prevost located the bodies of six victims, noting that they “were slaughtered with the most barbarous wanton cruelty … there were marks of bullets discernible all around their hearts, and … their heads were fearfully battered in.” 24 The British negotiated the release of the sole surviving Bella Bella woman from “the offending tribe” and re-united her with the sole male survivor who, it turned out, was her husband. 25
Douglas was later informed that the Hwunitum at Ganges Harbour “though greatly alarmed suffered no molestation whatsoever from the Victorious Tribe, who, before leaving the settlement expressed the deepest regret for the affray, pleading in extenuation that they could not control their feelings, and begging that their conduct might not be represented to this government in an unfavourable light.” 26 Apparently it was not. The Battle of Shiyahwt [Ganges Harbour] was an important victory for the Lamalcha/Penelakut. Most significant was the fact that the fight occurred in the midst of the largest Hwunitum settlement outside of the Colony of Vancouver Island. The settlers were endangered by the fighting. Bullets flew over the heads of the Lineker family and hit the walls of their cabin. 27 The fact that there were no reprisals or censure made against the Kuper Island people suggests British recognition of Hwulmuhw jurisdiction and sovereignty over their lands on Salt Spring Island. Although there were calls for a resident magistrate on Salt Spring Island, Douglas refused. As he pointed out in correspondence to the Colonial Office, he only selected magistrates “from the respectable class of Settlers,” and that none of the resident settlers on Salt Spring Island had “either the status or the intelligence requisite to enable them to serve the public with advantage in the capacity of local Justices.” 28 Douglas knew that any interference with local Hwulmuhw jurisdiction could precipitate an attack on Hwunitum settlers.
Douglas took no direct action against the Lamalcha and Penelakut, but the fight at Ganges Harbour and other violence caused by the presence of northern people in the south prompted him to request that the three British warships, HMS Plumper, HMS Termagant and HMS Alert, then present in the colony, be sent north under the command of Captain George Henry Richards to visit the major northern aboriginal settlements “to extract promises from their chiefs that they would live according to the [British] law and stop fighting each other, especially during the annual voyages to Victoria.” The success of the cruise was negligible. Although it has been claimed that the cruise “put an end to marauding expeditions among Northwest Coast Indians,” the fact is that internecine violence continued well into the following decade. 29
The HMS Termagant arrived in the colony on July 12, 1860, as an escort for two gunboats, the Forward and the Grappler, both of which were to play an important role in the subjugation of Hwulmuhw populations and the enforcement of Hwunitum law. The one-hundred-foot steam-powered gunboats were part of a large group of small warships specially built for service in the shallow waters of the Black Sea and the Baltic during the 1854–56 Crimean War with Russia. 30 It was soon realized by the Admiralty that the these “Crimean Gunboats” would be equally useful in similar conditions along the Pacific Coast. In addition to state-ofthe-art steam engines, the gunboats were equipped with simple fore and aft rigs and were reported to sail “remarkably well for the small amount of canvas [they] could spread.” 31 They were armed with a thirty-two-pound rifled cannon located aft on a pivoting carriage, which enabled the gunboat to fire exploding shrapnel and other projectiles in any direction, and two twenty-four-pound howitzers amidships. With thirty-six well-armed sailors and marines, commanded by aristocratic naval officers, the gunboats were formidable opposition to lightlyarmed aboriginal forces. The Forward and Grappler represented a permanent force which the colonial government could rely upon to assist the civil power in exercising its jurisdiction over aboriginal people.
For the British seaman, service on board these small gunboats was unpleasant: “With the machinery and boilers taking up over half the space between decks, the crew of thirty-six were squeezed into the remainder at the extremities, officers aft, the men forward. In an age when seamen had nothing in the way of luxuries afloat, life on these little craft was well below the already low average and pretty unpopular.” 32
Shortly after its arrival, the Forward was involved in its first fight against aboriginal people at Tsuqlotn on Quadra Island when its commander, Charles Robson, went in pursuit of Lekwiltok warriors who had robbed some boats off Salt Spring Island owned by Chinese traders. 33 Robson found the Lekwiltok in a fortified position at Cape Mudge on the south end of Quadra Island and a fire-fight ensued. “Had it not been for the rifle-plates,” wrote Lieutenant Mayne, “a good many might have been hit, as the Indians kept up a steady fire upon them for a considerable time.” 34 Mayne observed that the Lekwiltok “are alone as yet in standing out after the appearance of a man-of-war before their village,” but Tsuqlotn would not be the last battle fought between the Forward and aboriginal fighters.
The gunboats added to a growing British military presence in the region, augmented by