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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 Island and on the Gulf Islands struggled to maintain their sovereignty and jurisdiction 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. ¹⁹

By July 1859, 9,880 acres in what were now called the “Eastern Districts,” including a large portion of the Cowichan Valley, had been selected and sold to nineteen purchasers. ²⁰ The ownership of these lots was for a time purely symbolic, for none of the purchasers could occupy their claims. Cowichan families rightly resented Hwunitum trespass on and occupation of their potato fields, food gathering resources and burial sites and they removed the surveying stakes placed by Wells. ²¹ Lieutenant Richard Mayne, who had a downpayment of £25 on his own section, visited the area in the summer of 1859, and wrote:

[The Cowichan] have shown no favour to those settlers who have visited their valley. Although it has been surveyed it cannot yet be settled as the Indians are unwilling to sell, still less to be ousted from their land. ²²

Meanwhile, events in the Colony of British Columbia put extra pressure on the Vancouver Island colony to alienate Hwulmuhw land for Hwunitum settlers. Within months of the initial rush to the gold-bearing bars of the Fraser Canyon, most of the Hwunitum returned to the Colony of Vancouver Island. By the fall of 1858, the majority of them booked passage south, leaving behind their less fortunate comrades. As one observer explained:

The tens of thousands that had pressed into the city in ’58, were diminished to not more than 1,500, embracing “the waifs and strays” of every nationality, not excepting a good many whose antecedents were not above suspicion. ²³

To deal with this influx of potentially troublesome unemployed, Douglas ordered the construction in Victoria of a Police Court and Barracks, “the most expensive government building in the Colony,” and gave authority to Augustus Frederick Pemberton, a Protestant Irish immigrant, and uncle of the Surveyor General, to raise the first police force in western Canada. ²⁴ Clothed in blue uniforms trimmed with brass buttons, the colonial police were organized “on the London Metropolitan model” which, in addition to Pemberton as Commissioner of Police, included an inspector, two sergeants, and eleven constables. ²⁵ Their salaries were to be paid, Douglas informed the Colonial Secretary, “by the Hudson’s Bay Company out of the proceeds of Land Sales effected in Vancouver’s Island.” ²⁶ The Victoria colonial police had the daunting task of enforcing British law on the ground in the colony and in the unceded territories. The new Commissioner of Police soon gained “a reputation for fearlessness and determination” and it was claimed “that next to Governor Douglas there is no man to whom the country is more greatly indebted for the establishment of a law-abiding course than to Mr. Pemberton.” ²⁷ Unfortunately, long hours and low wages “caused senior officers to succumb all too frequently to graft or bribery.” ²⁸

During the winter of 1858–59 the unemployed miners, who far outnumbered resident Hwunitum in the colony, eked out a living as best they could. Jonathan Begg of Scotland, who arrived in the colony from California, worked at odd jobs and grew cabbages on vacant city lots. ²⁹ Other industrious men, such as William Brady of the United States, turned to hunting elk and deer to supply the demand for fresh venison. ³⁰ Those less scrupulous turned to the lucrative and illegal business of selling alcohol to Hwulmuhw customers.

Others had had enough of gold mining and wished to take up farms and make a living from the land. It seemed to many, however, that arable land was accessible only to those associated with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Unemployed Hwunitum began to organize into committees to pressure the government for access to the agricultural land in the Cowichan Valley which had been surveyed and sold but not opened to settlement because the government had yet to extinguish Hwulmuhw title. A petition of July 2, 1859, called for the creation of a preemption system, whereby individuals (and not “capitalists”) could select land for a nominal fee and, over time, as the land was developed or “improved,” acquire title. ³¹

Douglas informed the petitioners “that if there are a hundred farmers ready to settle in the Cowitchen valley, let them present themselves, and facilities will be afforded them, the Indian title extinguished as soon as practicable; that no immediate payment will be required for the land.” ³² Douglas, however, was still unable to negotiate a land sale agreement with Hul’qumi’num First Nations.

The unemployed found support in the columns of the British Colonist, a Victoria newspaper founded in 1858 by an eccentric Nova Scotian immigrant and future premier of British Columbia named Amor De Cosmos. In an article published on the fourth of July, 1859, De Cosmos exclaimed:

Why is Indian title to Cowichan not extinguished at once? This [demand] is repeated over and over again, and yet no response is heard from the government. It may require judicious management, but it has to be done. The country expects it without delay. We want farmers,—and the best way to get them is to open the lands of Cowitchen to actual settlers by extinguishing the Indian title.

A committee of “Messrs. Copeland, Sparrow, and Manly” was appointed at a July 11 meeting in Victoria “to present a petition to the Governor to permit them to settle in Cowichan,” but the committee was informed “that it could not be done at present.” ³³ No explanation was given but, aside from opposition by Hul’qumi’num First Nations to settlement in their territories, the revocation of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s grant placed the colonial government in an awkward position, legally, to grant title. ³⁴

The British Colonist of July 13, 1859, had no sympathy for the plight of the Hudson’s Bay Company and berated the government for its inability to open the Cowichan Valley to Hwunitum settlement. It echoed the cry of land-hungry Hwunitum frustrated at the government’s delay in providing agricultural land for settlers:

All are convinced that if the Company had last year fulfilled the conditions of the grant, or the government done its duty, the Cowichan Valley would today have been filled with thrifty farmers … the united voice of this community advocates the claim of the hardy pioneers who wish to settle in Cowichan.

Douglas saw in the petitioners an opportunity to concentrate them in a settlement within unceded Hul’qumi’num First Nations territories, and he began to formulate a plan. The Surveyor General had advised Douglas not to permit Hwunitum settlers into the Cowichan Valley until suitable arrangements, such as a land sale agreement, could be made with the Cowichan. ³⁵ However, Douglas writes in a letter to Newcastle that:

[I do not] feel disposed to adopt Mr. Pemberton’s suggestion respecting the Cowitchen Country. It has for good reasons been the invariable policy of the Government to concentrate as much as possible the white population when forming settlements in Districts inhabited by powerful tribes of Indians, but that object is attainable now as fully as at any former period in the history of the Colony, and I therefore do not consider it expedient or adviseable to close, for some time, the Cowitchen valley against the settlement of Whites, as Mr. Pemberton suggests. To adopt such a course would naturally give rise to much clamour and dissatisfaction among the people, and in effect retard the legitimate progress of the Colony. ³⁶

However, Douglas did not direct settlers to the Cowichan Valley, but instead announced that the “Chemainus District,” left unsurveyed by Oliver Wells a few months previous, would be thrown open to settlement. “They were offered the Chemainus country,” the British Colonist explained, “which is unsurveyed and commences ten miles north of the southern end of Cowichan, towards Nanaimo. The land is reported good. Whether this will be accepted [by the petitioners] has not been decided.” ³⁷ The Hwunitum were unfamiliar with the “Chemainus District,” which included the Chemainus Valley and Salt Spring Island, and on July 18, thirty prospective settlers left Victoria, “for the purpose of exploring the unsurveyed Chemainus lands.” ³⁸ One of them, Jonathan Begg, a principal organizer of the land reform movement, described their impression of Salt Spring Island:

The band of adventurers … including myself finding the island beautifully situated in the midst of an archipelago more beautiful than the 1000 islands of the St. Lawrence we determined to form a settlement here this being the most convenient to Victoria. ³⁹

The exploring party may also have visited the mouth of the Chemainus River where they would have noticed the flourishing potato fields of Hwulmuhw farmers.

The Hwunitum returned to Victoria on July 24 to announce that they were “highly pleased with the country and consider it a beautiful agricultural country.” ⁴⁰ There was no mention of the aboriginal inhabitants, most of whom, at this time of year, would have been absent at the Fraser River sockeye fishery.

Within days of the return of the Hwunitum explorers, Douglas and Pemberton devised a “make-shift pre-emption system,” which was limited to the unsurveyed land of Hul’qumi’num First Nations in the Chemainus Valley and on Salt Spring Island. ⁴¹

Douglas deliberately aimed the first pre-emption system in western Canada directly at the territories owned by those most actively opposed to Hwunitum settlement. The open prairie land of Hwtlelum (place having salt), on the north east side of Salt Spring Island, chosen by the Hwunitum as an ideal site for settlement, was an important food-gathering area used by Lamalcha and Penelakut families. The resources of the Chemainus River were also accessed by families from Kuper Island, and the valley itself was home to the Halalt and other people. ⁴² Douglas hoped that his unofficial pre-emption strategy would satisfy the unemployed miners-turned-settlers and, at the same time, establish de facto Hwunitum presence in unceded Hwulmuhw territories.

The colonial government’s pre-emption policy within the unceded territories of Hul’qumi’num First Nations “was never officially proclaimed, nor was its authorization sought from the Imperial Government” possibly because Douglas knew that it was illegal. ⁴³ In official correspondence to the Colonial Office Douglas only asked for authorization to apply the new pre-emption strategy to vacant lands already ceded by Hwulmuhw in the treaties of 1850, 1852, and 1854—lands that were, by and large, unsuitable for agriculture. ⁴⁴ This suggests that Douglas, frustrated by Hwulmuhw unwillingness to part with their lands, planned to circumvent the land sale agreement process to provoke reaction from militant Hwulmuhw factions which would, in turn, allow for military retaliation and the forceful alienation of their lands without agreement. Douglas seemed confident that any Hwulmuhw resistance would be futile.

Once again, the British chose the time of year when the majority of Hul’qumi’num First Nations would be involved in the sockeye fishery at the Fraser River.

On July 26, 1859, Pemberton informed Copland that he had received the names of twenty-five persons “for whom you are agent and who apply through you for permission to settle on the unsurveyed lands of Tuam or Salt Spring Island … The permission asked for I am empowered to give.” Pemberton added that “none of these persons shall occupy or allow other persons to occupy lands at any time occupied by Indians,” an interesting caveat given that all of the land in question was unceded and owned by numerous families. ⁴⁵

On July 27, 1859, eighteen men left Victoria on board the Nanaimo Packet for the fertile prairies of Hwtlelum on Salt Spring Island. ⁴⁶ Due to the shoaling sandstone shoreline, the schooner landed them on a sandy beach two miles south, the site of a major Hwulmuhw clam harvesting and processing site which the Hwunitum named “Walker’s Hook,” after Edward Walker, master of the Nanaimo Packet. After exploring the land they “drew choices of [lot] selection.” ⁴⁷

When the Penelakut and Lamalcha returned to their villages on Kuper Island, there was anger over the unannounced arrival of Hwunitum in their midst. In light of information received from Jonathan Begg, the New Westminster Daily Times wrote:

We have to urge upon the Government the necessity of some immediate measures being adopted to settle the Indian claims, if any exist, upon these islands as the settlers are subjected to constant annoyance and insult from these claimants more especially by the “Penalichar [Penelakut] tribe,” who boldly tell the settlers that the Island is their’s, and that Gov. Douglas has “cap-swallowed” it, which, in the elegant Chinook jargon (we believe), means stolen it. The subject deserves immediate attention. ⁴⁸

On the southern part of the island, where 5,000 acres had been surveyed between Hwaaqwum (Burgoyne Bay) and Hwne’nuts (Fulford Harbour), Douglas promised compensation to Tsoiclum, the Clemclemalits si’em whose family owned the land and resources in the Burgoyne Valley, on condition that he leave. ⁴⁹ According to Robert Akerman, a descendant:

My Grandmother [Tuha’wiye] said that Douglas promised her dad [Tsoiclum] compensation for the Burgoyne Valley if he’d leave it and go back to his camp at Cowichan Bay. So he left … Douglas must have recognized that the Indians owned the land or why else would he offer to buy it. ⁵⁰

Local opposition to the Hwunitum settlements at Hwaaqwum and Hwtlelum on Salt Spring Island was soon tempered by marriage between many of the settlers to the daughters of local si’em from Penelakut and elsewhere. At Hwtlelum (Salt Spring Settlement), one of the settlers, Henry Sampson, eventually married Lucy, the daughter of Hulkalatkstun, a si’em at Penelakut. ⁵¹ Others followed his example. The Anglican Bishop George Hills, visiting the settlement a year later, found “sixteen settlers mostly young men” and observed that “nearly all are living with Indian women.” ⁵² Intermarriage made legitimate, according to Hwulmuhw custom, Hwunitum occupation of family-owned lands. The rights to the land and access to local resources “came” with the women upon marriage and were transferred to the men. ⁵³

Similarly, in the Burgoyne Valley marriages between Roman Catholic Hwunitum settlers such as Michael Gyves, Theodore Traige and John Maxwell, and the daughters of Clemclemalits si’em, allowed these men to occupy their claims unmolested. ⁵⁴

Other Hwunitum on Salt Spring Island who did not marry into Hwulmuhw families were tolerated because of their value as trading partners. Jonathan Begg followed the example of Samuel Harris at Cowichan Bay and opened a trading post on his north end claim, catering not only to the settlers but to nearby Hwulmuhw clients. In a March 10, 1860, letter to family in the United States, he boasted that: “It is very cheap living here as the Indians who are very useful and very good to white men bring us large quantities of the best the water, woods and forest can produce for a mere song.” ⁵⁵ Begg’s store and farm became such a fixture that the Salt Spring settlement on the north end of the island was often referred to as Begg’s Settlement.

The Salt Spring Island Stone Company Ltd. laid claim to a thousand acres of land encompassing the entire northwest tip of the island, a region characterized by dry rocky outcrops, forested ravines, and little arable land. Owned by Lamalcha and Penelakut families who “had shacks here and there,” this area was valued for the hunting of deer and elk and the gathering of food plants and other resources. ⁵⁶ Pqunup (Southey Point, Cupple’s Beach) was an important clam digging area and the site of a burial ground. ⁵⁷ The stone cutters’ claim was technically made up of five lots but because the area was controlled by the Lamalcha it remained unsur-veyed and the four or five Englishmen employed by the company occupied only a tiny area of the shoreline north of Stonecutter’s Bay on the west side of the island. How the company managed to occupy traditional Lamalcha territory is not known but it seems likely that some sort of payment or mutually beneficial agreement was made.

The Salt Spring Island Stone Company may have commenced operations as early as 1859 under the direction of John Lee, “a first class mechanic who understood stone as anyone would bread and butter.” He and his four co-workers “true to nature and instinct … built a house of stone,” parts of which still stand at the top of a sloping incline above the shore where they cut sandstone blocks. ⁵⁸ The stonecutters understood too well their precarious situation; archaeological investigations of their stone house reveal blocks of stone specially cut to provide embrasures for rifles fitted into the wall facing the sea. ⁵⁹

At the Admiralty Bay settlement, which spread across the centre of the island, there was much less tolerance towards the newcomers. The lands occupied by Hwunitum and qihuye’ (black) settlers encompassed Shiyahwt (Admiralty Bay) and Stulan (Booth Canal), both of which were important camps and food-gathering areas accessed by Hul’qumi’num First Nations. According to Lamalcha elder Henry Edwards, “People from all over go there [Shiyahwt] to harvest seafood. Families had cabins built all along the shore—each one had a smokehouse for clams, herring, ducks [and] seal. People from Lamalcha, Penelakut, Valdez, Saanich people, all went to Shiyahwt.” ⁶⁰ The land between the head of Booth Canal and Admiralty Bay (now Ganges Harbour) was used as a canoe portage by Lamalcha families. According to Roy Edwards, “They used Booth Bay when they went to fish at the Fraser River. They went to the head of the bay and they used skids to pull their canoes over to Ganges.” ⁶¹ Hwunitum occupation of these areas interfered with established Hwulmuhw use of the land. There was also little, if any, trade between the two peoples and no intermarriage.

Jonathan Beggs’ store at the Salt Spring Settlement (now Fernwood) on the northeast side of Salt Spring Island, 1860. Sketch by Edward Mallandaine.

British Columbia Archives and Records Service, Photo PDP 1278

Section of stone blocks from the walls of the stonecutter’s house on Salt Spring Island overlooking Houston Passage, showing embrasures for rifles.

Photo by Chris Arnett

Early map (c. 1860) of Hwunitum occupation of lands on Salt Spring Island between Booth Canal and Ganges Harbour (Admiral’s Harbour). The Lamalcha canoe skid may have followed the route of the public road between lots 2 and 3.

Courtesy of Salt Spring Island Archives

At Shiyahwt, shortly after the Hwunitum occupied their claims, Hwulmuhw owners arrived and erected houses along the beach at the head of the harbour to remind the settlers of the true ownership of the land. ⁶² Henry Lineker, whose two hundred acre claim occupied the Lamalcha canoe portage, built the first house in the Admiralty Bay settlement in November 1859, but his family was often visited by Lamalcha people who made themselves at home in the family’s log cabin:

Bands of Indians might come to the cabin and quite fill up the small space. Before the fire they would sit perhaps a whole day, for no one dared ask them to move. They talked among themselves, and intimated by suggestively drawing a hand across the throat, what would happen to the unlucky mortal who ventured to disturb them. The family did not stay very long on the island. ⁶³

Another Hwunitum settler, James Shaw, took up land on the east side of the island in December 1859, cleared some land, built a house and planted potatoes, but within months was forced to leave when he found his claim “inconvenient and unprotected from Indians” who continued to access their lands despite his residence. ⁶⁴

At least six qihuye’ families, recently immigrated from the United States, also took up land in the vicinity at the Admiralty Bay settlement towards Vesuvius Bay. ⁶⁵ They did not intermarry with Hwulmuhw and their presence was likewise only barely tolerated. A few months after their arrival in early 1860, Lamalcha or Penelakut warriors robbed “some of the black settlers” at the “Ganges Harbour settlement.” ⁶⁶ Black or white, those settlers lacking marriage or economic ties to Hwulmuhw had no rights to the land and the resources and were fair game for depredation. The Lamalcha, in particular, “would await settlers landing at Vesuvius Bay with their sacks and boxes of supplies—swoop down and depart with the supplies before the startled settler knew what had happened.” ⁶⁷ The hostility directed towards the Hwunitum by the true owners of the land was the main reason for the high absenteeism and turnover of Hwunitum pre-emptions on Salt Spring Island. ⁶⁸

A short time after the Salt Spring pre-emptions, another two hundred and twelve Hwunitum applied for pre-emption rights in the Chemainus Valley. A survey was made of the valley between August 11 and August 25, 1859, while the majority of Hwulmuhw inhabitants were absent at the Fraser River. ⁶⁹ It was soon revealed that the government had greatly overestimated the amount of suitable agricultural land in the Chemainus Valley, much of which was “heavy timbered land” confined by precipitous slopes to within three miles of the shore. There was barely enough arable land to accommodate the needs of twenty-five Hwunitum, let alone two hundred and twelve, and much of it was occupied by Hwulmuhw potato fields. ⁷⁰

In the middle of November 1859, Robert Watson and thirteen other pre-emptors “laid in about twelve months provisions and started for Chemainus, with the intention of making it our home on our arrival.” ⁷¹ They arrived as the winter dances were beginning, and the villages on the Chemainus River (at Halalt on Willy Island) and at Lamalcha on Kuper Island were full. The Hwunitum were watched and not made welcome. Eventually they were forced to leave. According to Watson:

… we experienced considerable difficulty with the Indians, as they did not wish us to settle on the land until they were paid for it, as there were only certain portions they would allow us to settle on. Only six of the party remained. I then accompanied one of the Chiefs to the Governor to have our reasons for being there explained to them. The Governor made him some trifling presents which smothered matters a little for some time, when the party went to work, built houses, and prepared a large amount of fencing, with a view to putting in crops for the spring. About the latter end of February [1860] the settlers were informed by the friendly portion of the Indians, that their Indians meditated taking our lives. The whole party returned to Victoria with the expectation that some settlement would be made with the Indians in time to allow us getting in spring seeds, but after purchasing cattle, ploughs, and other necessary implements and seed, we were informed that although the Government was favourable to the settlement, and wished us to go on with our improvements, that they had no money at their disposal to extinguish the Indian title, without which I consider the land system only a farce, as the Indians occupy all the fronts of the small valleys, and their potato patches, although not exceeding ten acres, spread over as many thousand acres … I am not one of those who attach all blame to the Governor in retarding settlement of the colony; it is those legislators that refuse the necessary means to extinguish the Indian title to the soil that keeps Cowichan and Chemainus from being thriving settlements instead of as they now are—merely hunting grounds for the red man. ⁷²

As Watson reveals, Douglas made some sort of promise to local si’em but it was not carried through and the settlers were forced to leave their claims. Commenting on the eviction of the Chemainus Valley settlers, the Victoria Gazette of April 13, 1860, recognized the need to extinguish Hwulmuhw title as “a pragmatic political gesture rather than a strict legal necessity”: ⁷³

However much the title may be disputed, it is and has been usual to subsidize the Indian upon taking possession of his patrimony, and thus while denying a right de jure, admitting it de facto. The system of giving presents for purchase of or in exchange for lands, is attended with the happiest results. By it the friendship of the Indian is gained, he is convinced of our honour, justice, and integrity, and his confidence is at once acquired. The injurious effects of non-extinguishment of title in other districts is shown by the fact of Chemainus settlers having been obliged to leave that part of the country. To suppress a serious broil and bring the offenders to justice would cost more than the sum required to extinguish the title and gain the confidence of the native. Economy invites the Indian title to be extinguished, custom calls for it … We ask the Executive at once to extinguish the title to the land in the Chemainus district … Do it now, for it can be done at small cost. But let priests and missionaries once gain the ear of the Indian then farewell to so easy and so inexpensive an arrangement. ⁷⁴

However, money was not the issue. The aboriginal owners of the Chemainus Valley wanted to keep their lands and had set aside areas for Hwunitum settlement. Robert Watson accompanied a si’em to Victoria, where Douglas assured them that he would make a land sale agreement with the Halalt, Chemainus, Sickameen, Penelakut, and Lamalcha owners that would recognize their rights to their lands and resources. Douglas presented the si’em with gifts in recognition of his promise, but did not act on his word.

As a Victoria newspaper later observed, “promises were made both to Indians and settlers that compensation should be paid to the former for the loss of their summer homesteads, potato plots, and fishing stations, and broken and broken again; and to this day the redskin and the white man have not had that justice which common sense, truth, and honour ought to have compelled the Government to give them, without one day’s necessary delay.” ⁷⁵

In the first week of April 1860, HMS Plumper took time out from its surveying duties to visit the Admiralty Bay settlement, “as it had been reported that some Indians had been troublesome there.” The British, as Lieutenant Mayne recalled, “found however, that the Indians had done nothing more than tell the settlers occasionally, as Indians do everywhere, that they (the whites) had no business there except as their guests, and that all the land belonged to them.” ⁷⁶ Mayne was sympathetic to Hwulmuhw claims for compensation for alienated land on Salt Spring Island and he realized the difficulty of applying Hwunitum concepts of ownership against the ancient and complex indigenous system of land tenure.

It appeared to be most desirable here, as at other places, that the Indians should be duly paid for their land. This is not so simple as it may seem, however, even supposing the money necessary for such a purpose to be forthcoming. In New Zealand the Government spent many thousand pounds purchasing the land, appointing agents, commissioners, &c., and something of the same is no doubt as necessary here. Vancouver Island, however, has 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. Another difficulty would be found in the conflicting claims of the various tribes, arising from their habits of polygamy and inheritance from the female side, together with the absence of any documentary or satisfactory evidence of title.

If, therefore, any one chief or tribe were paid for a piece of land without the acknowledgement on the part of adjacent tribes of the vendor’s right to the land sold, five or six other claimants would in all probability come forward asserting the land to be theirs, and founding their title to it upon some intermarriage of its former possessors. The difficulty arising from the Indian custom of descent from the female side are most perplexing … Admiral Island, [Salt Spring Island] for instance, of which I am now speaking, would, in all probability, be claimed by no less than four tribes, viz., the Cowitchin, the Penalikutson [Penelakut], a small tribe living among these islands, the Nanaimos, and Saanitch Indians. On the occasion of our present visit, the settlers, in reference to this subject, said the Indians had never been there before, and that they had established a village there [at the head of Ganges Harbour] for the sole purpose of asserting their claim to compensation to the land. Upon our telling one of them this, he pointed to a small stump by which we were standing, and said it marked his father’s grave, where he had buried him three years ago [1857]—long before any white settler came to the place. ⁷⁷

The unregulated mixing of transient Hwunitum and Hwulmuhw residents in the Gulf Islands led to more incidents of violence as Hwunitum, often in ignorance, transgressed Hwulmuhw laws and paid the penalty. Following the gold rush of 1858, an unknown number of Hwunitum were killed for trespass, insults, molestation of women or in retaliation for other wrongs, real or imagined. Some attacks had the acquisition of wealth as their objective. However, as one Hwunitum observed: “nine-tenths of the outrages perpetrated by natives upon the superior race, and supposed to be the result of insensate cruelty, can be traced to some wanton violation of the personal or domestic rights of the Indians on the part of the whites.” ⁷⁸

Alcohol, a major feature of inter-racial contact, often served as a catalyst for violence. Oshiane Mitchell relates an incident that occurred in one of the houses at Penelakut:

The boat with the white people anchored off the big house. Like the big house down here at Chemainus. One man came in and wanted to sell. Nobody’s talking. Don’t understand what he say. “You guys drinkin’? I’d like to give you a drink,” that apple cider was in a can. “Here you are.” In the big house, this was the women [indicates a line], this was the man’s [another separate line]. Not drinking, the women. The men drink some more, they got very drunk. The whites want to give some of that to the women. No [said the men, indicating the line of women] this is the women. We want more, you got lots. We want some more, more. They try and dump it. Then they went out to the boat and got all the things. Some got the hatchets, some got the long knives. The white people, they died. ⁷⁹

People from the village of Lamalcha at the south end of Kuper Island “did not like these white men coming.” ⁸⁰ Because their lands on Salt Spring Island were being occupied and used, in most cases without their permission, certain individuals associated with the eight households of Lamalcha emerged as leading opponents of Hwunitum colonization. The preeminent Lamalcha si’em, Squ’acum, was described as “a powerful chief,” and is remembered today as a “war man” who was “mean to the whites.” ⁸¹

While the Lamalcha opposed Hwunitum occupation of their land, they embraced Hwunitum technology. They adopted Hwunitum clothes, used whaleboats as well as canoes, and practiced Hwunitum carpentry. At the centre of the village was a large blockhouse built of squared timbers “well-morticed and tennoned,” and loopholed on three sides for muskets and rifles. ⁸² Eight feet in height, it may have been modelled after Hwunitum blockhouses built the previous decade on Whidbey and San Juan Islands. Rifle pits surrounded the fort. In addition to these defences, Lamalcha was well-situated geographically, with the houses of the village at the head of a crescent-shaped bay, flanked by two points of land. On each point were “lookouts” where warriors kept watch. Lamalcha is “the look-out place.” ⁸³

One incident took place between 1858 and 1860 when a Lamalcha warrior named Palluk, his Lamalcha wife Semallee, and a Nanaimo man named Skiloweet, killed a Hwunitum man at S’tayus (Pender Island). The unidentified victim was on the island to hunt, probably without permission, when the Hwulmuhw party saw him one morning as they passed by in a canoe and landed. The men conversed amiably for some time. According to a Hwulmuhw witness, the Hwunitum gave “no offence, and made use of no angry expressions whatever” when Palluk, without warning, “fired and wounded him in the arm while he was sitting by his tent at the fire … When the white man jumped up to get his gun, Palluk rushed upon him” and Skiloweet went to his aid. The Hwunitum hunter grabbed Palluk and Skiloweet by the hair and “was knocking their heads together,” when Semallee “seized an axe and struck him on the back.” ⁸⁴ Skiloweet then cut the man “across the abdomen with a knife. He fell dead. His intestines came out. The body was left there and not buried or concealed.” ⁸⁵

During these turbulent times, violence was not only directed against Hwunitum newcomers but continued within Hwulmuhw society as well. This “warfare” took the form of retaliatory violence whereby individual acts of violence drew response according to a principle “of a duty … to retaliate in kind for the killing of a member of the nation or kin group.” ⁸⁶ As legal historian Hamar Foster elaborates, although “retaliatory violence is a form of social control … kinship and other relationships usually kept such violence—which was governed by customary expectations and principles of liability—within acceptable limits.” ⁸⁷ Because of complex inter-village kinship, warfare amongst Hul’qumi’num First Nations was practically nonexistent. When it did occur, it was most often limited to quarrels “between nobles of different villages.” In general, these disputes between si’em of nearby villages were “patched up through the intervention of common kinsmen, and seldom resulted in open feuds.”

Where villages and kinship ties were more remote, feuds were more likely to occur but, as Hwulmuhw elders informed anthropologist Diamond Jenness:

… they were feuds between individual nobles, as a rule, in which the villages as a whole played the part of spectators only. One noble would challenge another to approach his village and settle their quarrel by single combat; or he would send word through a messenger that he would attack his enemy in his home. The principals then fought out their duel on the beach, while their retainers stood by to guard against treachery. ⁸⁸

Around 1858, there was a feud between a Penelakut man named Acheewun and one Ashutstun, of Valdez Island, that was to have far-reaching consequences for Hul’qumi’num First Nations and the people of Lamalcha in particular.

Ashutstun, for some unknown reason, had killed a man who was making a canoe. ⁸⁹ The victim was a friend or relation of Acheewun, who made plans to avenge his death. Sometime around 1858, Acheewun, accompanied by his brother Shenasaluk and two companions, arrived at “Swamuxum,” a “village” or “camp” in the vicinity of Porlier Pass, where Ashutstun was present with his son, Sewholatza, and others. Sewholatza claimed that Acheewun “came to the camp drunk.” ⁹⁰ As the people gathered to watch, Acheewun and Ashutstun faced each other with their weapons and a fight ensued.

Acheewun later claimed that Ashutstun made the first move: “He first got angry and struck me in the face with a knife.” ⁹¹ Acheewun then struck Ashutstun “who bled very much from the effect of the blow.” Ashutstun was incapacitated and some of “the lookers on” went to carry him to his house. Acheewun “walked proudly about” before firing upon them. ⁹² Sewholatza, who watched the fight from inside the house, recalled that “just as he was being carried to the door, A-chee-wun fired his musket at him, the ball wounding one of the men who was assisting and struck his father on the right side, passing out the left. After receiving the wound his father staggered into the house and fell dead on the ground.” ⁹³ Two more shots were fired into the house. Acheewun called on Sewholatza “to come out and he would serve him the same,” but the fight ended with no further casualties. ⁹⁴

It was a traditional fight between two men of lineage on the beach in front of their followers, but there was no compensation or retaliatory violence for the death of Ashutstun until 1863, when Sewholatza would exploit British naval forces to seek revenge on Acheewun.

After this fight, Acheewun fell out of favour with Hulkalatkstun, the si’em of his house at Penelakut, who, perhaps on account of the death of Ashutstun, characterized Acheewun as “a bad and cruel man.” ⁹⁵ Acheewun moved to Porlier Pass where he may have lived at Khinepsen, a small village site at the north end of Galiano Island named for the home village of the famous warrior Tzouhalem. ⁹⁶

Acheewun also possessed “a number of retreats and hiding places on Galiano and other islands,” including an almost inaccessible “tunnel” high up Mount Sutil at the south end of Galiano Island. ⁹⁷ He married Sally, the daughter of Statumish, a si’em who lived at the “upper settlement” on the Chemainus River. ⁹⁸ By 1859, with the Hwunitum occupation of the north end of Salt Spring Island and the Chemainus River, Acheewun became “the leader of a small band” militantly opposed to Hwunitum colonization. ⁹⁹ As one of his descendants put it, Acheewun “could see what was coming and fought against it to the bitter end.” ¹⁰⁰ Several of his followers were from Lamalcha and Acheewun himself gravitated towards “the look-out place.”

The looser social structure at Lamalcha, ¹⁰¹ and its growing reputation as a centre of opposition to Hwunitum, made it a desireable place for persons who, for one reason or another, were unable to live in their home villages. Lamalcha attracted displaced persons from Penelakut, Nanaimo, and other places, which gave the village a reputation as a place for “men and women who [had] been expelled from their own tribes on account of bad conduct.” ¹⁰² The colonial government saw them as an obstacle to land sale agreements and as a threat to the safety of Hwunitum.