GEOGRAPHIES of the LOWER SKEENA, 1830-1920 by Daniel
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GEOGRAPHIES OF THE LOWER SKEENA, 1830-1920 By Daniel Wright Clayton B.A., The University of Cambridge, 1986 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Geography) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA October 1989 © Daniel Wright Clayton, 1989 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of ££o<3 g A f-H/ The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date QcJ-^,^ fx, If?^- DE-6 (2/88) ABSTRACT This study generates a number of geographical ideas and methods for analysing north coastal British Columbia, attempting to show how and why historical geography is a valuable mode of inquiry. During the nineteenth century the human geography of the lower Skeena region was altered by three influential institutions: the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), the Christian Church, and the government. Three settlements were created, within easy access of one another by water. The HBC established a fur trade post (Fort Simpson), the Anglican Church created a missionary site (Metlakatla), and government laws and officials regulated a salmon canning town (Port Essington). All three settlements brought the Coast Tsimshian into sustained contact with 'whites'; HBC traders, missionaries, and government officers had important impacts on aboriginal economies and societies. These institutions comprised a discursive triad that rotated around commercial monopoly, evangelical-humanitarianism, and property-contract laws. However, the three settlements did not simply reflect these institutions, but in part they constituted their underpinning discourses. Port Essington, the most complex of these settlements, was established in 1871 as a trade settlement, but from the 1880s its economy was dominated by the salmon canning industry. Two canneries were built in the town 1883; another in 1899. From the 1880s until the 1920s, Port Essington was the canning centre of the lower Skeena, and was the chief port and commercial centre in the region. Until the 1890s, Victoria merchants extended credit to Port Essington's canners and traders. But by 1902, the town's three canneries were owned and run by Vancouver-based companies. Port Essington's canneries produced for an international salmon market and were implicated in international circuits of financial and industrial capital. The canneries brought Chinese, Japanese, 'whites', and Coast Tsimshian to Port Essington, giving the town the largest and most diverse population in the region. Port Essington harboured many forms of cultural expression. From 1893, provincial police constables monitored social relations within and between these cultural groups, and collected taxes. It is claimed that Port Essington's changing economic, cultural, and political make-up characterise the making of modern British Columbia. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT viii INTRODUCTION . 1 PART I: ON THE MAKING OF PLACES: COMPANY, CHURCH AND GOVERNMENT IN THE LOWER SKEENA REGION DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Introduction 6 Fort Simpson: Company Monopoly on the coast. ... 7 Metlakatla: Christianity and the humanitarian narrative 25 Port Essington: property, commerce, and government 48 End remarks on the Skeena region 66 PART II: PORT ESSINGTON, 1871-1920: A MINIATURE BRITISH COLUMBIA Introduction 71 1. Robert Cunningham and the Victoria business community 72 2. Port Essington and the salmon canning industry. 89 3. Diagramming a salmon canning town 137 Conclusion 173 CONCLUSION: PORT ESSINGTON AS HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY 175 NOTES AND REFERENCES 180 BIBLIOGRAPHY 220 Appendix 1 228 Appendix 2 233 iv Appendix 3 235 Appendix 4 ...... 243 Appendix 5 253 Appendix 6 256 Map 1 260 Map 2 261 Map 3 262 Map 4 264 v LIST OP TABLES TABLE 1 • . 80 (a) Total Credits and Debits ($), Cunningham and Hankin Account, July 1871 - Sept. 1874. (b) Itemised Credits and Debits ($), Cunningham Account, 1878 and 1879. (c) Itemised Credits and Debits ($), Hankin Account, March - Oct. 1878, March - Nov. 1879. TABLE 2 83 Proceeds ($) from the exchange and sale of furs and gold dust, Jan. 1872 - Sept. 1874, 1878 and 1879. vi LIST OF FIGURES Appendix 1: Port Essington: Population Estimates 1881-1920 228 Appendix 2: Goods with a total value of over $1,000 purchased by Robert Cunningham and Thomas Hankin from merchants in Victoria, Jan. 1, 1872 - Aug. 31, 1874 233 Appendix 3: Summary of Capital and Shares of B.C. Packers Association, 12 Sept., 1904. 235 Appendix 4: Estimates of the aggregate distribution of British Columbia's salmon pack by number of cases 243 Appendix 5: Total pack of sockeye and other species of salmon by number of cases for the Skeena river, 1900-1920 253 Appendix 6: Canning statistics for the B.A. Cannery Port Essington, 1906-1920 256 Map 1: HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY FORTS: 1825-1850 . 260 Map 2: PRE-EMPTIONS AND "INDIAN RESERVES" IN THE LOWER SKEENA REGION, ca. 1900 261 Map 3: LOCATION OF CANNERIES IN THE LOWER SKEENA REGION 262 Map 4: PORT ESSINGTON, ca. 1915 264 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank Ken Campbell, Becky Elmhirst, Bob Galois, Ed Higginbottom, Richard Mackie, Andrew and Janine Stevenson for helping me with this study. I wish to express profound gratitude to Derek Gregory and Cole Harris, who have taught me the political and practical purpose of a geographical imagination. viii INTRODUCTION This two-part study considers the nineteenth and early twentieth century human geography o£ the lower Skeena region - the intricate coastal area from the mouth of the Skeena to the Nass river. It is, concurrently, empirical, methodological and theoretical. Part I analyses the ideological topographies of the region's three largest nineteenth century settlements - Fort Simpson, Metlakatla, and Port Essington. It discusses how and why they were established, and the series of cultural discourses associated with them. They were either created or supported by British Columbia's most important nineteenth century institutions: the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), the Christian church, and the government. They each brought the Coast Tsimshian (the region's aboriginal population) into daily contact with non-aboriginal groups, and each presented a different face of modernisation. Part II focuses on Port Essington - the most complex of the three settlements. It was established in 1871 by the Irish trader, Robert Cunningham, on a narrow strip of land around a rocky point that had previously been an autumn camping ground for Coast Tsimshian groups. From 1883 it was a salmon canning town. By 1900 it had the largest and most diverse population in the region. During the summer, Chinese, Japanese, "white," and aboriginal peoples congregated to work in the town's three canneries, and during the winter there was 1 a resident "white" and Coast Tsimshian population of over 200. In part I, Port Essington's institutional complexion is contrasted with that of Fort Simpson and Metlakatla, and in part II the town's changing economic and social make-up is considered in relation to the coastal economy of the lower Skeena river and British Columbia. Parts I and II deploy different textual strategies. Part II is more empirically introspective than part I; part I is written with a more narrative style than part II. Both approaches are, in part, responses to serious methodological problems. One of the original aims of this study was to describe Coast Tsimshian reactions to these non-aboriginal groups, and Chinese and Japanese perceptions of each other, their "white" and aboriginal neighbours, and the North Coast. All Northwest Coast aboriginal groups had oral cultures and the Coast Tsimshian left no written nineteenth century accounts. Their contact experiences have always been reconstituted by others: in fur trade journals, missionary texts, and the reports of government officials. These documents discuss aboriginal societies, but cannot be treated at face value. They do not record "facts" so much as a series of cultural codes that themselves have to be interpreted before the Coast Tsimshian can be approached. It is equally difficult to appraise the Chinese and Japanese cannery workers, who left few written records, and those few in Chinese of Japanese. 2 There is remarkably little information, of any kind, about Port Essington itself. The town had stores, bars, restaurants, churches, schools, and an active set of social and political clubs. Diaries, ledgers, and account books were no doubt kept, but no longer exist. Like many towns in British Columbia, Port Essington was swept, periodically, by fires. The two largest - in 1899 and 1909 - destroyed nearly the whole town, and most of its written records. There is an abundance of aggregate canning data, but very little that pertains to Port Essington's three canneries. Government record collections yield valuable information about places like Port Essington, but usually contain only the letters received by officials in Victoria, making it exceedingly difficult to work out when, how, or if government policies were implemented. The social world of Port Essington's "white" business elite can be partially discerned from the town newspapers published intermittently from 1904 to 1909, but it is difficult to ascertain their attitudes towards the other groups in the town. The Sunf one of Port Essington's newspapers, did not welcome the Japanese, but it is difficult to tell whether this was the personal view of its editor or the general feeling of the "white" population; the town's aboriginals and Chinese were seldom discussed by any newspaper.