INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

By Stephen A Royle

THE ECCLES CENTRE FOR AMERICAN STUDIES www.bl.uk/ecclescentre

The Sixth Eccles Centre for American Studies Plenary Lecture given at the British Association of Canadian Studies Annual Conference, 2011 Published by The British Library The design, setting and camera ready copy was produced at The British Library Corporate Design Office

ISBN 0 7123 4460 8

Copyright © 2011 The British Library Board INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

By Stephen A Royle

THE ECCLES CENTRE FOR AMERICAN STUDIES www.bl.uk/ecclescentre

The sixth Eccles Centre for American Studies Plenary Lecture given at the British Association for Canadian Studies Annual Conference, 2011 STEPHEN ROYLE studied geography at St John’s College Cambridge and then took his PhD at the University of Leicester. He moved to Belfast in 1976 to take up a lectureship in geography at Queen’s University where he is now Professor of Island Geography and Director of the Centre of Canadian Studies. Two research topics have defined his career: studies of small islands, and also the city of Belfast. His books include North America: a Geographical Mosaic (edited with Frederick W. Boal, 1999); A Geography of Islands (2001); Enduring City: Belfast in the Twentieth Century (edited with Frederick W Boal, 2006); The Company’s Island: St Helena, Company Colonies and the Colonial Endeavour (2007); Doing Development Differently: Regional Development on the Atlantic Periphery (edited with Susan Hodgett and David Johnson, 2007); Company, Crown and Colony: the Hudson’s Bay Company and Territorial Endeavour in Western Canada (2011); and Portrait of an Industrial City: ‘Clanging Belfast’, 1750-1914 (2011). Royle is Treasurer of the International Small Island Studies Association; Deputy Editor of Island Studies Journal; Chair of the Northern Ireland Regional Branch of the Royal Geographical Society and is a past-President of the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies, the Geographical Society of Ireland and the Belfast branch of the Geographical Association. Stephen Royle is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Picture: Stephen Royle, drawn whilst presenting the Eccles Plenary Lecture. Copyright: Heather Spears. INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 1

INTRODUCTION

The theme of the 2011 British Association of Canadian Studies conference at the University of Birmingham at which this lecture is presented is ‘Peace and (In)security: Canada's Promise, Canada's Problem?’ Under this heading, matters such as Canada’s role in international peacekeeping, NATO and relationships with the US might be covered. Whilst military engagement has brought death to Canadian families and Canada-US relations have been more fraught than usual recently with possibilities of further tensions over border controls and the Northwest Passage, outside of periods of global conflict Canada itself has been relatively peaceful. Further, the way in which fiercely held differences of opinion about the sovereignty of Quebec have been expressed almost without violence has been a model followed in too few parts of the world (writes this resident of Northern Ireland). However, it was not inevitable that Canada or the various lands that became Canada would tread this relatively peaceful path. In the early days of European colonial endeavour there was opportunity, sometimes taken, for violence between contesting colonial powers fighting on what became Canadian soil, between British North America and the USA and between competing groups within what became Canada’s borders.

One part of today’s Canada that potentially was affected by such insecurities was Vancouver Island Colony and this western outpost, now a detached part of British Columbia, forms the subject of the 2011 Eccles Plenary Lecture. The author was supported in his researches on Vancouver Island by appointment as The Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow in North American Studies at the British Library, 2007-08. He also spent time in the British National Archives at Kew, the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives held within the Archives of Manitoba in Winnipeg and the British Columbia Archives in Victoria. The pleasant city of Victoria is the successor to Fort Victoria, the Hudson’s Bay Company post, and it is with this earlier manifestation that this lecture deals. There is nothing left now of Fort Victoria other than some marks picked out in the modern pavement, but there is a stone chimney from the company’s other early settlement on Vancouver Island at Fort Rupert near modern Port Hardy and the author took a trip there, hacking his way through dense, wet vegetation to reach it. The researches led to the publication of the author’s Company, Crown and Colony: The Hudson’s Bay Company and Territorial Endeavour in Western Canada.1 2 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

Vancouver Island Colony Sir John Pelly, the London-based Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, became anxious about the prospects for his company in the west of North America after the Oregon Treaty in 1846. This was the treaty that settled the boundary between British North America and the USA west of the Rocky Mountains, which was to continue the line along the 49th parallel until it reached the west coast when it dipped to the south to put the whole of Vancouver Island north of the line. This placed in jeopardy HBC posts on the Columbia River, which lay now within the United States, but secured the future of Fort Victoria on the southeast coast of Vancouver Island. In 1842 the company had sent James Douglas and six men from Fort Nisqually to Vancouver Island to select a site for a new trading post. That chosen was the harbour at Camosack, later (Fort) Victoria, largely because of the agricultural potential of the plains in its hinterland and good timber reserves. Roderick Finlayson, one of Douglas’s companions, managed the post from its inception in 1843 and he described it as having ‘cedar pickets 18 feet high, round a space of 150 yards square, with houses and stores within, and two large block houses, bastions at two angles armed with 9 pounder cannonade, blunderbusses, cutlasses etc taken from the dismantled forts named with ammunition’.2

Sir John Pelly opened negotiations with the colonial secretary, Earl Grey, about the company being granted land north of the border in compensation for the loss of the Columbia district. The government was ‘ready to receive and consider the draft of such a grant as the Company would desire to receive of lands belonging to the British Crown’,3 as it was of strategic importance to the British to have organised settlement in the region. Sir John aimed high and asked that the HBC receive all lands north and west of Rupert’s Land, the immense Hudson’s Bay drainage basin, which had been their original grant in 1670. This huge new area the HBC promised to govern and colonise, ‘as far as may be possible’,4 this caveat perhaps identifying a reluctance of the fur- trading company to station people on the land it wished to reserve for its principal activity. Her Majesty’s Government refused to offer up so much land to a private company and there began a protracted and somewhat confused negotiation for a smaller area to be made available. Pelly was instructed to prepare a more limited proposal which would ‘embrace a plan for the colonization and government of Vancouver’s Island’,5 which the government anyway wanted to be settled to stop it falling into the hands of illegal squatters. Sir John did not accept this without protest, arguing that colonisation of the region earlier identified would benefit from being under INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 3

unified control. Further, this area was already ‘studded’ with HBC posts and the company had influence with the indigenous peoples, a matter worthy of consideration. However, the company ‘would accept any grant, even for the island of Vancouver alone’.6 Having ‘fully considered’ the matter; Earl Grey ruled that the HBC grant indeed ‘should be confined to Vancouver’s Island’.7

There was considerable opposition to the HBC as a private company even being granted just Vancouver Island, but in a House of Lords debate Earl Grey focused on the need for swift action fearing that otherwise the island ‘would inevitably fall prey to the irregular appropriation of squatters, of whom a large body comprised chiefly of Mormons already contemplated moving thither. The Government was not prepared to found a colony itself, but had lent a willing ear to the proposal of the Hudson’s Bay Company.’8 The Times protested on the grounds that the HBC would want ‘beavers and sables to multiply, hunting grounds to be preserved, and hunters and trappers to thrive. Their function is to perpetuate what it should be the aim of a colony to destroy.’9 Such sentiments were echoed in Benjamin Disraeli’s later observation that ‘In the case of Vancouver’s Island which possessed resources likely to render it of incalculable benefit, they had surrendered them all into the hands of a company whose interests lay not in peopling but in depopulating the country in order that they might carry on [the fur] trade.’10 The HBC refuted such charges, noting that the indigenous people on Vancouver Island were fishers and root diggers rather than hunters, and that their holding the island would not be for ‘a game preserve’.11

Other proposals put forward for the development of Vancouver Island were not acceptable. The Colonial Office explained that:

Many parties manifested a desire to colonise Vancouver’s Island. They were invited to send in their plans, but not one of those sent in was accompanied with anything like the show of security that the parties would be able to carry out the object in view. In every instance there was a desire to meet their views; but until the Hudson’s Bay Company made their offer, the communications all ended in this, that the parties all thought the island might be colonised with advantage, but that they had not the means of carrying that object into effect.12

The HBC, the only organised body operating in the region and with a post already established there, was granted Vancouver Island in 1849. This was to 4 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

the approval of a correspondent to The Times who pointed out that the company ‘possessed the capital, ships, and local influence which rendered their exertions likely to be attended with success’. The HBC was required to share power with an elected assembly and as the Colonial Secretary noted, ‘will be bound to colonise the island’.13

To attract settlers to their new colony, the HBC mounted extensive campaigns, advertising in The Times, Morning Chronicle, The London & Mercantile Journal and the Irish and Scottish papers. One, the Edinburgh Weekly Register, editorialised: ‘when so many young men of the professional and mercantile classes are unable to push their way at home, it may not be amiss to direct their attention to Vancouver Island’.14 However, Richard Blanshard, the first Governor of Vancouver Island Colony reported in April 1850 that ‘no settlers have at present arrived’.15 Earl Grey replied that: ‘it is a subject of much regret to the Hudson’s Bay Company that the colonisation of Vancouver Island has not been attended with the success at first anticipated from that enterprise. The attractions of California have probably contributed with other causes to deter immigrants away from Vancouver Island.’16 In evidence to the 1857 parliamentary enquiry held on the HBC, one witness opined that the principal reason was ‘the distance at which it is from the mother country’;17 migrant voyages from the UK had to round Cape Horn, took several months and were far from comfortable. Sir John Pelly himself blamed the California gold rush, which had become a ‘discouragement to persons who might otherwise have desired to settle at Vancouver Island, as it was evident that there could be no confidence placed on hired labourers fulfilling their engagement.’18 Vancouver Island’s first actual settler, Walter Colquhoun Grant, stated that: ‘Of the 400 men who have been imported in all during the past five years, about two-thirds may be said to have deserted.’19 Many deserted on their way to Vancouver Island, which led to a policy of not allowing ships to enter dock anywhere en route which, of course, meant that there was no opportunity of getting fresh food, making the voyages even less agreeable.

Settlers, as distinct from HBC servants, were to be agriculturalists. They had to pay for their land, following the ‘systematic colonisation’ scheme of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796–1862).20 Wakefield observed that the UK suffered from an abundance of labour but a shortage of land whilst the colonies had abundant land but lacked labour (and capital). Migration should be encouraged, but granting migrants free land could promote speculation as people might just hold the land, hoping to sell it on at profit. Better, then, to charge and at a price which would force purchasers to utilise the land to see a return on their investment. This, the Wakefield Theory as it became known, had some success in isolated colonies but INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 5

met problems in Vancouver Island so close to the United States where land was available to settlers without cost. James Douglas, the HBC man who had originally laid out Fort Victoria and then became the second governor of Vancouver Island Colony from 1851, dealt with the practice of colonisation rather than its theory. He took issue with land sales, reporting in 1853 that colonists ‘complain of the price of land which they contend is sold at a price above its value and that every colonist is [i.e. should be] entitled to a free grant of land’.21 Another issue dissuading potential settlers was the fear of the indigenous people, which will be explored below.

The failure of the HBC to attract enough settlers saw it criticised at the 1857 government enquiry, as it was for the impossibility of it trying to run a commercial company organisation in tandem with a colony. Then the discovery of gold at the Fraser River on the mainland of New Caledonia as British Columbia was then known both overwhelmed Vancouver Island Colony as people moved through it to the goldfields and made it imperative that the British organise a colony on the mainland. British Columbia was born with James Douglas appointed its governor. Vancouver Island became a normal colony remaining for a while under Douglas, too, he giving up his position with the HBC. After some dispute following Douglas’s retirement in 1864, the two colonies, then under separate governors, united under the name of British Columbia with the capital eventually being assigned to Victoria.

James Douglas was governor of Vancouver Island from 1851 until 1864 and the rest of this presentation will deal with the security issues he faced, regarding the indigenous people within and close to Vancouver Island, with Russian America to the North and the USA to the south.

Indigenous peoples Paul Kane, an American artist, observed in 1847 that indigenous people on Vancouver Island subsisted almost entirely on wild vegetables (including quamash and berries as well as cultivated potatoes) and a range of fish – whale blubber, cod, sturgeon, clams, oysters, herrings and, especially, salmon – ‘which they obtain with so little trouble during all seasons of the year that they are probably the laziest race of people in the world’.22 Halibut and ‘woolikan’ (presumably oolichan or eulachan, indigenous terms for smelt) were also recorded.23 Regarding their society, the First Nations had a tradition of recompense for bloodshed or other wrongs which constrained warfare to some extent: presents would be made to the victims and/or their chiefs, who held sway over their people. Another social control mechanism was the 6 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

Vancouver Island and its region in the 1850s. INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 7

elaborate potlatch ceremony, where feasting took place and gifts were given in expectation of return. Indigenous society was well organised, as can be seen, for example, in the complex land holding systems which supported substantial populations in a resource-poor area down the generations.24 However, they were commonly described as ‘savages’ throughout contemporary archives. For example, James Edward Fitzgerald, who had hoped to organise a colony on Vancouver Island himself, wrote of the indigenous peoples of North America that: ‘We conquered his land by that conquest which needs no battle – the civilised man over the savage – we hoisted a flag and called the land our own.’25 (Despite holding such views, Fitzgerald went on to campaign for Maori rights in New Zealand). Many colonialists genuinely believed that they were doing good to the indigenous peoples with whom they interacted, including Sir John Pelly who wrote that one of the main objects of his Hudson’s Bay Company was ‘to civilise the native tribes by fixing settlers amongst them’.26

On Vancouver Island, that matters were normally peaceful, at least during James Douglas’s governorship, may have been due to the symbiosis between indigenous and migrant peoples. The company needed First Nations’ labour and furs, and their land – which was purchased, although surrendering rights over large areas in return for a few pounds or a pile of blankets seemed a one-sided deal. The indigenous people traded for manufactured goods, including HBC blankets, and also gained employment, increasingly important as their way of life was transformed in a postcolonial process. Evidence of this can be found in the book by Gilbert Sproat, a settler at Alberni, who recorded a conversation with a chief in western Vancouver Island:

‘They say more King-George men [British] will soon be here, and will take our land, our firewood, our fishing grounds; that we shall be placed on a little spot, and shall have to do everything according to the fancies of the King-George men.’ ‘It is true that the King-George men are coming – they will soon be here; but your land will be bought at a fair price.’ ‘We do not wish to sell our land, or the water, let your friends stay in their own country... We do not want the white man. He steals what we have. We wish to live as we are.’27

The King-George men came. Sproat’s writing was unusually sensitive for its time; as were James Douglas’s nuanced views that the indigenous people: ‘are hospitable and exceedingly punctilious in their natural intercourse, grateful for 8 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

acts of kindness… Though generally dishonest they are seldom known to violate a trust.’28 However, others, such as the first settler, Walter Colquhoun Grant, wrote about the people with whom they shared Vancouver Island in disparaging terms. Especially in the south of the island, Grant said, the indigenous people were ‘by no means courageous; their character may be described as cruel, bloodthirsty, treacherous and cowardly. They are ready to receive instruction, but are incapable of retaining any fixed idea.’29 Such descriptions cannot just be discounted as being ignorant or racist because they had currency and reports in the journals or press of the day must have impacted upon the decision making of potential migrants. Would anybody after having read Fraser’s Magazine in 1858 want to move to Vancouver Island where the indigenous people ‘are without exception treacherous when they have anything to obtain by treachery; they lie by instinct; thieving is their natural propensity’?30 So, whilst the indigenous people were indispensable, they were also a source of fear: whites were ‘liable to get our throats cut at a moment’s notice’ reported a witness to the 1857 enquiry.31 Company policy was to erect defences – the stockade at Fort Victoria has been described – but even more important was the ‘rule and practice of the service’ to protect employees in the field through ‘temperate and prudent conduct’ towards the indigenous inhabitants.32 In 1850 at the HBC mining settlement of Fort Rupert when axes had been stolen from miners, the manager threatened to burn the lodges of the local people, which ended the situation with furs being offered as reparation. In the post journal was the comment that ‘We gained our point ... showed we are not afraid, yet did not get into a fight which is an Indian Trades policy.’33

This HBC tradition can be identified in Douglas’s despatches. Using a surprisingly modern concept, he wrote that the:

Management of the natives is an object that must always have strong claims upon the attention of the government of this colony as no probable event can ever prove more disastrous to the settlements than collisions with them … By retaining their confidence and taking advantage of their mutual animosities we may therefore always manage to prevent extensive combinations of the tribes for the purpose of assailing the settlements.34

Acculturation took place, a visitor to Victoria in 1860 wrote that the indigenous people there ‘seemed to have learned to respect the authority of the white man and conform in their intercourse with him to many of the INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 9

customs of civilization; we have occasionally seen them dressed like Englishmen’.35 It was not the ‘British Indians belonging to this settlement’ as Douglas called them,36 that caused fear, rather it was the ‘Northern Indians’, including the Haida from the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) who came south in the summers to trade, to seek work and, on occasion, to socialise. In 1853 a potlatch hosted by the local First Nation, the Songhees, saw 3000 ‘Northern Indians’ arrive, about 1000 of whom were armed men which had ‘the effect of alarming the white inhabitants and [proved] dangerous to the peace of the settlement’ and Douglas delayed the departure of a naval ship as a precaution.37 In the event there was no trouble and the party ‘quietly dispersed’.38 In 1855 Douglas spoke ‘to them seriously on the subject of their relations with the whites and their duties to the public,’ after which he gave permission for them to seek employment with settlers and in the public works. ‘They begin ... to have a clearer idea of the nature and utility of laws having for their object the punishment of crimes and the protection of life and property [and this] may be conceived as the first step in the progress of civilisation,’39 although later Douglas compared the situation ‘to a smouldering volcano, which may at any moment burst into fatal activity’.40 When he had a naval ship at his disposal Douglas could use it to send the ‘Northern Indians’ packing as in 1859 when their canoes were escorted by HMS Tribune ‘beyond a point where they would be likely to commit any outrages on white settlements and would at the same time give them sufficient protection against a tribe near to that locality whom they represent they are unable to pass at the present time unless protected’.41

Colonial law was applied to indigenous people who committed crimes against Europeans. For example, in 1853 Douglas reported that a local had been imprisoned for assaulting and wounding a white man with a reaping hook when they were working in the fields ‘without exciting any ill-feeling in the minds of the natives at large who appear to approve and feel the justice of all the proceedings connected with these cases’.42 Rather more concern was expressed in a number of incidents in the archives concerning cattle and, three times, ships which were robbed or plundered. On two occasions when white people were murdered by indigenes Douglas was able to identify, capture and execute the perpetrators without engaging in collective punishment for their nation or stirring up armed resistance. In the case of the two murderers of a shepherd, Peter Brown, Douglas described the expedition he mounted with two ships and 130 seamen and marines to capture them. At an arranged meeting place, the indigenous people: 10 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

made a furious rush towards the spot where I stood, a little in advance of the force and their deportment was altogether so hostile that the marines were with difficulty constrained by their officers from opening a fire upon them. When the first excitement was abated the fellow [i.e. one of the accused], fully armed, was brought into my presence. I managed after a great deal of trouble in taking him quietly into custody and sent him a close prisoner on board the steam vessel. His capture having removed all cause of dispute, I assembled the Indians and spoke to them long and seriously about the subject of their relations with the Colony and the rules which must govern their conduct in future. They expressed utmost regret on the death of Brown and a sincere desire to be at peace in the Colony, a feeling which was strengthened by the imposing force before them. They left in the course of the afternoon in the best possible temper and the forces were immediately after embarked, having fortunately concluded the day’s work without firing a shot in anger.43

It is significant that the most serious incident in Vancouver Island Colony involving indigenous people took place under the brief governorship of Richard Blanshard. Blanshard had been appointed by the Colonial Office and brought a very different attitude to the ‘management’ of the First Nations to that of his successor, James Douglas, the experienced HBC official. The series of events is encapsulated under the label of the Fort Rupert murders. Fort Rupert was the abortive HBC coalmining venture on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. John Helmcken, the company doctor, who was also the magistrate there, wrote to Governor Blanshard in July 1850 reporting that three Europeans, thought to be absconding miners, had been killed by Newitty (a Kwakwaka’wakw band).44 Helmcken took a canoe to catch up with a ship, England, that had just left Fort Rupert, because, in addition to the problem with the miners, there were deserting seamen to be discovered. Helmcken then found the miners, still alive, in another canoe but they reported having been told by indigenous people that three other white men, who turned out to be the deserting sailors, had been stabbed by Newitty and robbed of their clothes. The situation is complicated by reports that the local HBC official at Fort Rupert, George Blenkinsop, had offered blankets as a reward for the return of absconding men, dead or alive. One of the miners wrote:

was ever such barbarity heard off [sic], giving these bloodhounds ten blankets for one white man’s head these INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 11

savages who care no more about taking of a man’s head than you should do of taking a meal of meat, surely these things will not pass without punishment … we were knocking about in our canoe when we heard from the Indians that there was three killed belonging to the ship. There is the effect of the blankets, I can say no more on the subject.45

In his autobiography, Helmcken later wrote that:

Even if Blenkinsop had offered blankets for the arrest of the deserters, he would have done no more than followed the practice of the naval ships here … Men were of great importance at Fort Rupert at the time, for if more had deserted the place would have been without defenders against the three thousand Indians outside. As to Blenkinsop’s offering a reward for the deserters ‘dead or alive’ this bears the lie on the face of it. As a matter of fact the murder seems to have had no connection with Blenkinsop or the reward for deserters … as the Indians [who killed them] were foreign to Rupert altogether.46

Governor Blanshard, who detested the HBC and spent his period in office at loggerheads with Douglas who was already on Vancouver Island as the senior company man, magnified the situation and suggested to Earl Grey that the ‘unfortunate men had been murdered by order of the Hudson’s Bay Company’.47 He decided to take personal charge of matters at Fort Rupert.48 This concerned Douglas who feared that Blanchard would:

act with decision … therefore our position on Vancouver Island will be insufferable and the civil government worse than a dead letter … I do not know what will be done with the murderers of the poor unfortunate deserters. Mr Blanshard appears disposed to hold the Neweete tribe responsible for the deed, but that cause, as unpolitick as unjust, will lead to many evils and may involve us in a disastrous warfare with these savages … I have strongly recommended moderate measures to all and endeavour to demonstrate the justice and expediency of punishing the guilty alone and continuing friendly relations with other members of the tribe.49

Douglas’s advice went unheeded. Blanshard waited until HMS Daedalus arrived at Fort Victoria in September 1850 when he took sail to Fort Rupert 12 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

and the First Nations settlements. One of the naval party wrote: ‘I had been sent to the Indian village to parley with them and I told them that if they did not give the murderers up I should be there again in twenty-four hours to take them.’50 Rather than wait, the Newitty abandoned their village, one report stating that they fired on the boats of the Daedalus, wounding an officer and two crew.51 Blanshard then had the sailors burn down the lodges of the deserted village.52 This was just the collective punishment Douglas had feared and, from London, the Colonial Office expressed displeasure at the conduct of the Daedalus expedition, its advisability, even its morality, given that the murdered seamen were deserters. Earl Grey told Blanshard that:

I by no means feel satisfied of the prudence of the step which you took in directing this expedition which appears to me to have failed in its main object. And at all events it is necessary that I should state for your guidance on future occasions that Her Majesty’s Government cannot undertake to protect or attempt to punish injuries committed upon British subjects who voluntarily expose themselves to the violence or treachery of the native tribes at a distance from the settlements.53

A later historian thought that Blanshard was ‘seeking to put into force the white man’s law in what still remained a red man’s country’,54 a punitive law, which ignored the traditional First Nation concept of reparations and payment of damages. The following year Blanshard once more visited Fort Rupert in a naval vessel, HMS Daphne. Douglas forewarned Blenkinsop: urging that ‘the Neweete Indians ... be induced to give up the criminals ... as it will save the effusion of blood on both sides. Exert all your influence to accomplish that desirable object.’55 As in 1850, the Newitty fled, having fired on the British, who then burnt canoes and houses.56 Blenkinsop then offered peace to the band at large on condition of the delivery of the three men concerned with the murder. These terms were accepted but the murderers themselves fled, only to be captured in the woods and put to death by their own people. Their bodies were taken to Fort Rupert and, after being identified by the Kwakwaka’wakw chief, were interred near the fort. Douglas concluded that ‘the war with that nation may be now considered as nearly at an end’,57 and the following year confirmed that ‘we had ... renewed peaceful relations’.58

Blanshard offered his resignation in November 1850, finally leaving in September 1851. A local HBC official had it thus: ‘Governor Blanshard … finding but few people to govern except the Company’s people, who looked INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 13

more to the Company’s officers with whom they had to deal than the governor, ... got disgusted with the state of affairs and left for England,’59 but Blanshard himself wrote about his health – he may well have contracted malaria on his journey to Vancouver Island when he crossed the Isthmus of Panama – and the state of his finances, given his position was unpaid.60 Under his replacement, James Douglas, the First Nations on Vancouver Island were treated reasonably well, if only because the HBC and the infant colony needed them; matters became much worse for indigenous groups after the company period when a settler colony developed. Dealing with the established indigenous population was only one aspect of the insecurities which faced Vancouver Island Colony; there were potential foreign foes, too, both to north and south.

The Crimean War, 1853–56 The Crimean War – Russia versus Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire – although largely focused on the Crimea itself, did spread into other theatres including the Pacific with naval engagements between Russia and the allies at the siege of Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula and an allied landing in 1854. It seemed as if Britain might take action against Alaska, which was then before its sale to the USA in 1867, Russian America. The nearest organised British territory to Russian America was Vancouver Island Colony, and whilst there had been trade and contacts between the two places, there had also been conflicts in the region.61 During the Crimean War, this proximity to Russian territory had the potential to entangle Vancouver Island in a large- scale geopolitical conflict, in fact James Douglas actually advised the British Government to invade Russian America.62 With regard to his actual area of responsibility, in May 1854 Douglas informed the Colonial Secretary that he was considering raising an ‘irregular force of whites and Indians’, on the island. However, the Vancouver Island council considered it ‘dangerous to arm and drill the natives, who might then become more formidable to the colony than a foreign enemy’ and did not approve the militia plan.63 Instead, Douglas the colonial governor hired, presumably with the approval of Douglas the company chief factor, the HBC ship, Otter, to watch over the safety of the colony. Otter could hardly have warded off the Russian navy, but offered protection against ‘predatory vessels acting under the authority of letters of marque’.64 The Colonial Office also counselled against Douglas’s irregular force but offered scant protection itself to the distant colony so close to Russian territory. There were just to be occasional naval visits: ‘there is nothing in present circumstances of the war with Russia to forbid the hope and expectation that [this] will not suffice for the protection of the island’.65 14 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

Further, the view was taken that there was insufficient danger even to warrant the expense of chartering Otter and, as that decision had been taken without permission, its charges were disallowed,66 although in the end after protests from Douglas,67 the British government did pay.68

Naval visits were, indeed, occasional, just a brief call from the fleet returning from action against Russian positions in summer 1854. That neither the colony nor its shipping including the valuable cargo of the annual fur trade had been molested Douglas ascribed to the hand of providence alone given his difficult position of having a responsibility to protect the colony without the means to do so. The British authorities, always reluctant to spend money on the colony, including on its defence, instead negotiated an agreement in 1855 that secured ‘neutrality … so far as regards the possession and ships of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Russian American Company.’69 However, the following year, following a petition from the inhabitants of Vancouver Island, the Admiralty to the ‘utmost satisfaction [of] the inhabitants of this colony’,70 did finally supply some material protection in the form of HMS President, an elderly fifty-eight gun frigate which had been launched in 1829.71

The Crimean War ended in 1856 without any action taking place on or off Vancouver Island, but tensions remained and in 1859 Esquimalt, the rather better harbour just to the west of Fort Victoria’s own harbour, was being fortified perhaps against the Russians.72 Expenditure for military cantonments there was duly recorded in the 1860 colonial accounts.73 More troublesome in terms of foreign relations than the Russians to the north with whom the British and, thus, its colony were actually at war, was the nation to the south and its people.

Vancouver Island and the USA Vancouver Island was granted to the HBC largely to ensure that it did not fall into the hands of Americans and the interactions of the colony with the USA and its citizens remained fraught throughout the company period. One source of friction regarded the mainland to Vancouver Island’s east, then the unorganised British territory of New Caledonia. Many Americans came here when the goldfields of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers were exploited from 1858. This created a management problem for the British given their limited physical presence in that territory, which was unorganised politically until 2 August 1858 when New Caledonia became the colony of British Columbia, with James Douglas adding its governorship to that of Vancouver Island Colony. Even before then, Douglas had taken it upon himself to administer the exploitation of INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 15

gold along the Fraser River from Vancouver Island. He was supported in this action by the British government, although the colonial secretary warned him about his relationship with Americans: ‘I need hardly impress upon you the importance of caution and delicacy in dealing with those manifold cases of international relationship and feeling which are certain to arise.’74 The US president, James Buchanan, sent Special Agent John Nugent to New Caledonia to remind Americans there to respect the law but also to obtain from the ‘functionary’, who governed Vancouver Island ‘abrogation of the rigorous system of extractions’, the fees payable for licences to seek gold. The Americans thought Douglas imposed these ‘as factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and not as governor of Vancouver Island’.75 Douglas and Nugent did not get on: Douglas reported contemptuously that Nugent was ‘disqualified by disposition and temper for the position he holds’;76 Nugent claimed that he had been treated disrespectfully but was patronising and racist, writing of an executive ‘hitherto dealing for the most part with savages and possibly unprepared … for the more refined exigencies imposed by governmental regulations with a white population’.77 Of more significance than this mutual dislike was Nugent’s report to President Buchanan that the British territories could be taken by the USA whenever they wished, their ‘ultimate accession to the American possessions on the Pacific coast’ being assumed.78 The first and so far only step along that ultimate accession was the San Juan Islands.

In 1846 the Oregon Treaty had established the western border between British North America and the USA:

The line of boundary between the territories of the United States and those of her Britannic Majesty shall be continued westward along the said forty-ninth parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fuca’s Straits, to the Pacific Ocean: Provided, however, that the navigation of the whole of the said channel and straits, south of the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, remain free and open to both parties.79

This article caused problems given its imprecise definition of the location of the channel mentioned and thus the sovereignty of the San Juan Islands, which lie between different candidates. The British claimed the usual sea lane taken at that time must have been meant, namely the easternmost passage, the Vancouver or Rosario Channel (or Strait) which made the islands British. 16 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLANDNGING

By contrast, the Americans, claiming that only Vancouver Island itself was to be British, stated the westernmost channel, the Canal de Haro (or Arro) must be the boundary and that the San Juan Islands consequently were American.

Douglas vigorously asserted British sovereignty of the islands, on one of which, San Juan Island itself, the HBC had operated a fishing station from 1850. People discovered squatting on nearby Lopez Island were told they were committing trespass on British territory and were liable to be expelled. Then, ‘artfully changing their tactics, the leader of the party declared that he was a British subject and intended to settle and purchase land in the colony’. Upon this declaration, a formal licence for cutting timber was issued, duty to be paid to the government of Vancouver Island Colony. British sovereignty was thus demonstrated and soon afterwards the party, probably Americans, abandoned Lopez Island.80 To deter further encroachments from ‘our unscrupulous neighbours’, Douglas established an agricultural settlement on San Juan Island, receiving permission from the HBC in London to utilise company staff. Charles Griffin was placed in charge from November 1853 and it was hoped that his establishment would be joined by civilian settlers, land actually being offered free, 500 acres (202 hectares) available to any British subject who would take the land and improve it. There had been no takers, but the company’s Belle Vue sheep farm was ‘in a most flourishing state’ with 2300 head and much land under cultivation.81

In a lengthy despatch to the colonial secretary, the Duke of Newcastle, in February 1854 Douglas noted that the Rosario Channel was the only one that ran southerly as mentioned in the treaty, whilst the Canal de Arro was hardly a passage at all, being impeded by numerous islands. He also stated that at the time the treaty was written it was not known these westerly islands or the Canal de Arro existed, all land in that region being thought to be part of Vancouver island itself. His argument he considered to be ‘conclusive’. However, the Oregon Assembly had claimed the San Juan Islands and the collector of customs of Washington Territory (formed out of Oregon Territory in 1853) had threatened to tax residents there. Douglas, in return, had strengthened the British civil position by appointing Charles Griffin as magistrate in 1854, instructing him that should ‘the collector of customs appear there for any unlawful purpose he will be treated precisely as a common offender’.82 Douglas arranged for Vancouver Island’s collector of taxes to visit San Juan Island to remind those there, including the American official, that this was British territory.83 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 17

In early 1855 there were three American incursions: a detachment of US troops, a US revenue cutter, Jefferson Davis, whose commander informed Douglas that he was there to impose the US law whilst Sheriff Ellis Yankee Barnes of neighbouring Whatcom County in Washington Territory three times visited San Juan Island to tax the British residents. All were resisted – ‘we still remain masters of the field’ – but Douglas attributed ‘our success … in some respect to their fear of the Northern Indians, who have become the terror of the American settlements’.84 Sheriff Barnes returned with an armed party and demanded $80 taxes from Charles Griffin. Griffin refused, but reported that Barnes then menaced him and stole thirty-four sheep, regaining US territory before help could be sent from Victoria. Douglas regretted that this situation came during the emergency of the Crimean War and asked, once again, for naval protection.85 He also corresponded with the governor of Washington Territory, Isaac Stevens, who maintained ‘a guarded reserve’ on the subject of government backing for Barnes’s incursion, leading Douglas to conclude that ‘the American party on San Juan were certainly not discouraged by the Federal authorities’, who seemed unwilling to displease ‘the mob’.86 The Colonial Office instructed Douglas to treat the islands as British possessions.87 He sought help from Rear Admiral Henry Bruce, commander-in-chief of the British Pacific fleet, appealing to his patriotism but also offering practical inducements regarding supplies including coal and spars and also land for a naval hospital.88 A naval visit did take place, but American squatters still took land in the islands. In 1857 boundary commissioners visiting the region to mark on the ground the line of 49˚N, were also tasked to fix the boundary between Vancouver Island and the USA, settling the San Juan Islands sovereignty issue,89 but this did not happen, the British and American positions remaining unaltered.90 Douglas made his case once more to the British government,91 whilst Douglas’s American enemy, Special Agent Nugent, reported the familiar contrary case to his President, adding significantly that the San Juan Islands had good land, decent harbours, timber, fresh water and access to fishing grounds.92

The dispute escalated, making the pages of the press.93 In July 1859 64 US troops under Captain George Pickett had landed on San Juan Island. General William Harney, commander of the US forces in Washington Territory, informed Douglas that this was to protect US citizens against ‘insults and indignities’ from the British authorities.94 Such indignities included the threat by Douglas to evict all Americans as trespassers after a pig belonging to the HBC found rootling in his garden had been shot by an American, Lyman 18 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

Cutlar – thus the name for this dispute, the Pig War.95 Douglas, having the temporary support of naval vessels, sent in HMS Tribune with the Vancouver Island Attorney General to support the San Juan Island authorities in the ‘ordinary exercise of civil power’. However, Douglas, who when he had the military at his elbow could be bellicose, planned to try and repel Pickett’s initial force before any reinforcements could be sent. The attorney general thought that the Americans were strong enough to resist and the British naval officers on hand also ‘entered their protest against any forcible demonstration.’ Meanwhile, HMS Plumper was sent to British Columbia to collect marines to boost British forces and Captain James Prevost of the Boundary Commission was instructed to use his influence with his American counterparts to persuade General Harney ‘to refrain from taking a course which was likely to promote collision’ and damage the ‘harmonious relations’ existing between the USA and Great Britain.96

A council of war in Victoria on 1 August concluded that Pickett’s operation was on too grand a scale to have been mounted under General Harney and must have had federal support. Whilst the British were strong enough to clear the islands at that time, bloodshed might ensue and any escalation of hostilities would see Vancouver Island itself unable to resist an American invasion force, while it was thought that a formal war between the UK and the USA might be stimulated: ‘under the circumstances [it would be] more prudent to abstain from anything that can excite a collision at present’ and matters should be left to the home government. Douglas, with the politician’s meaningless assurance of profound respect, grudgingly accepted the counsel but wrote that ‘I still believe vigorous measures on our part would soon dispose of the question in our favour.’97

A week later Douglas, having engaged in ‘mature reflection’ and retaining ‘every deference’ to the council of war, decided to land British troops on San Juan Island under Captain Hornby of HMS Tribune. The purpose was not to expel the Americans, but to establish a British presence on the islands. However, ‘Captn Hornby did not deem it advisable to carry out these instructions,’98 a decision that received the backing of his Admiral, R. Lambert Baynes, whose HMS Ganges had now arrived at Vancouver Island. Douglas wanted to invade – ‘a bold and resolute stand … [which] would have nipped their pretensions in the bud, increased the influence and added to the dignity of this government’ – but the admiral did not, for fear of bloodshed over what he regarded as a minor issue. Meanwhile, General Harney had adopted ‘a spirit of levity’,99 affronting Governor (and Commander-in-Chief) James INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 19

Douglas, commonly known, if presumably not to his face, as ‘Square Toes’, a man renowned for his pomposity.

The Americans did reinforce, to 400, with artillery, and erected a barracks,100 and by September occupied the hill Douglas had thought would become the British base. The following month US revenue collectors were on the islands and vessels were being required to clear customs at Port Townsend in Washington Territory. Douglas once more urged action.101 The Times, meanwhile, obviously unaware that Douglas was unable to be as bellicose as he wished, praised ‘his great prudence and judgement’, editorialising that ‘It would be hard indeed if children of the same stock … should find much difficulty in adjusting a petty boundary question.’102 In November Douglas once again pressed the Duke of Newcastle to permit joint British and American occupation, this time as a civil venture with reduced troop numbers. The Duke ruled that a civil magistrate should remain on San Juan, doing nothing to provoke the Americans and expressly forbade Douglas to land troops unless to save British lives or property. Meanwhile, the American forces had been drawn down to a company of fifty with a civil magistrate and customs officer. Douglas, not to be thwarted, again demanded British troops be stationed on the island as to allow an armed party of Americans in sole occupation would have ‘the worst possible moral effect throughout the country’:

Under all the circumstances of the occupation of San Juan, confident that the offensive movement was that of an individual [Harney] and not of a government I must confess I had some doubt in my own mind as to whether the passive and non- resistant policy we had followed would be altogether acceptable to HM Govt considering the large and magnificent force we fortunately had at our disposal and that if any collision had unhappily occurred it would not have resulted from any aggressive deed on our part but simply from the responsibility forced upon us in defence of a national honour and integrity.103

In January 1860, six months after Pickett’s invasion, following discussions between the Foreign Secretary and the Americans, finally Douglas was authorised to land troops on San Juan.104 Admiral Baynes, perhaps not surprisingly, required to see a copy of Douglas’s orders from the Duke of Newcastle before he would assist.105 The Americans in residence claimed not to know that joint occupation had been agreed but did not resist and 20 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

Douglas, once the troops were in place, advised that joint occupation should continue until ‘the entire removal’ of both powers could be arranged.106 Early the following year all civil administration was removed from San Juan as ‘sovereignty of the island was admitted on both sides to be in suspense’.107 The Times, to ‘terminate a protracted dispute by sensible compromise’, proposed that a channel within the archipelago become the boundary, making San Juan Island itself British,108 but neither party would agree and the San Juan Islands remained under joint military occupation until the dispute was arbitrated by Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany in 1871. Following guidance from a three-man commission, which met in Switzerland for a year, the emperor decided in favour of the American position, that the Canal de Arro (Haro) be the boundary between the USA and British North America and consequently the San Juan Islands were American, part of Washington Territory. In 1872 the boundary was ratified and the British troops withdrew.109 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 21

Conclusion James Douglas was governor and commander in chief of a remote, tiny, colonial territory, one which was threatened from both north and south by foreign powers of great size, either of which who could have taken his island without much difficulty. For several years of the brief independent existence of his Vancouver Island Colony the British were at war with the power to the north, the Russians, which put the island at particular risk. The British government was extremely reluctant to spend money on this colony, perhaps more so than others given its unusual and controversial governance arrangement with a commercial company in charge, and thus only occasionally were naval vessels on station despite the threats to the British from America and Russia as well as fears of the indigenous people. Nonetheless, James Douglas kept the peace. His touch was perhaps most secure when facing the threat of the indigenous Other. His training and long experience as a senior official in the Hudson’s Bay Company with its ‘Indian Trades Policy’ of not getting into disputes with the vastly more numerous local people, served him in good stead when wearing his colonial governor’s hat. That he had a half-indigenous wife and was himself of a mixed race, with Scottish and indigenous lineage from his family’s heritage as sugar producers in Guyana, may have helped. His language regarding the indigenous people was somewhat stronger than modern sensibilities can stomach, but his actions spoke louder and there was never an insurrection from the indigenous people on his island, in complete contrast to the situation in neighbouring lands under US control, where the Puget Sound and Yamika Wars took place in the 1850s. Douglas’s success with the capture of those indigenous people who had murdered settlers contrasts well to the blunderings of Governor Blanshard in a similar situation. That there were postcolonial issues about the First Nations losing their land, traditions and culture was down to the time period and the colonial imperatives driven by more powerful people than the man in charge of the local scene. Douglas, of course, had the mission to promote settlement, at which he was relatively unsuccessful, the Hudson’s Bay Company in the end losing its position as colonial ruler (under contract) largely as a result.

With regard to foreign relations, perhaps Douglas was just fortunate regarding the Crimean War, that in the end it did not touch down at the island. The Pig War perhaps showed him at his weakest, if, as always, concerned largely with the position and dignity of not just his company, but his nation. His constant demands to invade San Juan Island when advised not to by naval officers with local experience, by the Admiralty and by the colonial secretary himself 22 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

revealed a character both pompous and stubborn. Nonetheless, in the end there was a British party sent to the island to join the Americans so he had his way. His retirement must have been saddened, though, by the arbitrator’s decision to award the San Juan Islands to the USA. Maybe Douglas was lucky, maybe he had had to be restrained, but the record shows that during his period in office in Vancouver Island despite several serious threats, the principal casualty of war was a pig. INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 23

Footnotes

1 Royle, Stephen A. (2011) Company, Crown and Colony: the Hudson’s Bay Company and Territorial Endeavour in Western Canada, I.B.Tauris: London. 2 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA), E.176/1. 3 Benjamin Hawes to Sir John Pelly, 2 February 1847, Copy of Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Relative to the Colonization of Vancouver’s Island, British Parliamentary Papers (BPP), 1847-48, xlii.693. 4 Pelly to Earl Grey, 5 March 1847, Copy of Correspondence. 5 Hawes to Pelly 25 February 1848, Copy of Correspondence. 6 Pelly to Earl Grey, 5 March 1848 (first letter that day), Copy of Correspondence. 7 Hawes to Pelly, 13 March 1848, Copy of Correspondence. 8 The Times, 25 August 1848. 9 The Times, 21 August 1848. 10 The Times, ‘Parliamentary Intelligence’, 17 April 1849. 11 Vancouver’s Island n.d., National Archives (NA), CO 305/1. 12 Hawes to James Fitzgerald, 24 February 1848, reproduced in Fitzgerald, James Edward, Vancouver’s Island, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Government (Simmonds: London, 1848), p. 28. 13 Note by Earl Grey on the back of Fitzgerald to Herman Merrivale, 30 June 1848, NA, CO 305/1. 14 Edinburgh Weekly Register, 5 September 1849, cited in Anon, Colonization of Vancouver’s Island (Burrup and Son: London, 1849). 15 Richard Blanshard to Earl Grey, 8 April 1850, British Columbia Archives (BCA), C/AA/10.1/1. 16 Earl Grey to Blanshard, 23 October 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1A. 17 Charles W. Wentworth Fitzwilliam, 5 March 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of those British Possessions in North America which are Under the Administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, BPP, 1857 Session 2, xv.1. 18 Pelly to Earl Grey, 14 January 1852, enclosure in Archibald Barclay to James Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 19 Grant, Walter Colquhoun, ‘Description of Vancouver Island by its First Colonist’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (1857) 27, pp. 268–320. 20 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, England and America: A Comparison of the Social and Political State of Both Nations (R. Bentley: London, 1833); Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, A View of the Art of Colonization: With Present Reference to the British Empire: In Letters Between a Statesman and a Colonist (J.W. Parker: London, 1849). 21 Douglas to the Duke of Newcastle, 28 July 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 22 Kane, Paul, Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver’s Island and Oregon Through the Hudson’s Bay Territory and Back Again (Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts: London, 1859), p. 213. 23 Blanshard, 15 June 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 24 Ball, Georgiana, ‘The monopoly system of wildlife management of the Indians and the Hudson’s Bay Company in the early history of British Columbia’, BC Studies 66 (1985), p. 37. 25 Fitzgerald, James Edward, An Examination of the Charter and Proceedings of the Hudson’s Bay Company: With Reference to the Grant of Vancouver’s Island (Trelawney Saunders: London, 1848), p. 285. 24 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

26 Pelly to Hawes, 22 November 1849, NA, CO 305/2. 27 Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life (Smith Elder: London, 1868), pp. 3–4. See also Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm, The West Coast Indians in Vancouver Island, British Library Mic.F.232/16198, (1866) and Anon, ‘Wild tribes in Vancouver’, Chamber’s Journal, 27 June 1868, p. 405. 28 Douglas to Henry Labouchere, 20 October 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 29 Grant: ‘Description of Vancouver Island’, p. 296. 30 Keppel, William Coutts, Viscount Bury, ‘British Columbia and Vancouver’s Island’, Fraser’s Magazine LVIII (1858), p. 495. 31 James Cooper, 21 May 1857, in evidence to The Select Committee. 32 Andrew Colvile to Earl Grey, 18 December 1850, NA, CO 305/2. 33 Post Journal, Fort Rupert, 11 February 1850, HBCA, B.185/a/1. 34 Douglas to Labouchere, 20 October 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 35 Barrett-Lennard, C.E., Travels in British Columbia with the Narrative of a Yacht Voyage Round Vancouver’s Island (Hurst and Blackett: London, 1862), p. 138. 36 Douglas to Labouchere, 19 May 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 37 Douglas to Wallace Houston, 18 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 38 Douglas to Newcastle, 24 October 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 39 Douglas to Lord John Russell, 21 August 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 40 Douglas to Labouchere, 22 July 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 41 Douglas to Captain de Courcy, 8 March 1859: House of Assembly Correspondence Book, August 12th 1856 to July 6th 1859, Memoir IV (Archives of British Columbia: Victoria, 1918). 42 Douglas to Newcastle, 28 July 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 43 Douglas to Sir John Pakington, 21 January 1853, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 44 John Helmcken to Blanshard, 17 July 1850, HBCA, E.243/14. 45 Diary of Andrew Muir, BCA, E/B/M91. 46 John Helmcken Papers 1846-1920, BCA, Add. MSS 0505. 47 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 19 October 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 48 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 August 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 49 Douglas to George Blenkinsop, 27 October 1850, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 50 Notes of a conversation with Mr Beardsmore on board HMS Portland at Honolulu, 23 July 1851, enclosure in Fairfax Moresby to the Admiralty, 5 August 1851, all an enclosure in Barclay to Douglas, 23 January 1852, HBCA, B.226/c/1. 51 Moresby to Blanshard, 27 June 1851, BCA, C/AA 10. 5/1; also BCA, MS–0611 (8). 52 Blanshard to Hornsby, October 1850, National Maritime Museum (NMM), PHI/3/5; Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 November 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 53 Earl Grey to Blanshard, 30 March 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1A. 54 Lamb, W. Kaye, ‘The Governorship of Richard Blanshard’, British Columbia Historical Quarterly XIV (1950), p. 12. 55 Douglas to Blenkinsop, 1 July 1851, HBCA, B.226/b/3. 56 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 4 August 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. 57 Douglas to Earl Grey, 31 October 1851, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 58 Douglas to Earl Grey, 15 April 1852, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 59 Autobiography of Roderick Finlayson, HBCA, E.176/1. 60 Blanshard to Earl Grey, 18 November, 1850, BCA, C/AA/10.1/1. INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND 25

61 Pelly to the Lords of the Committee of Privy Council for Trade, 7 February 1838, Copy of the Existing Charter or Grant by the Crown to the Hudson’s Bay Company Together with Copies or Extracts of the Correspondence which Took Place at the Last Renewal of the Charter, BPP, 1842, xxviii.521. 62 Douglas to Newcastle, 16 May 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 63 Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 12 July 1854, BCA, GR 0819. 64 Minutes, Vancouver Island Council, 12 July 1854, BCA, GR 0819. 65 Sir George Grey to Douglas, 5 August 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 66 Sir George Grey to Douglas, 18 December 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 67 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 6 March 1855 (first letter that day), BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 68 Douglas to Sir William Molesworth, 10 December 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 69 Earl of Clarendon to the Admiralty, 22 March 1855, enclosed in Russell to Douglas, 26 June 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 70 Douglas to Labouchere, 14 August 1856, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 71 Lyon, D., The Sailing Navy List (Conway Maritime Press: London, 1993). 72 Message of the President of the United States Communicating in Compliance with a Resolution of Senate the Report of the Special Agent of the United States Recently Sent to Vancouver Island and British Columbia, 35th Congress, 2nd Session, Ex. Doc. 29, 31 January 1859. 73 Vancouver’s Island Colony Accounts 1848-1861, HBCA, E.22/1. 74 Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton to Douglas, 1 July 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 75 Message of the President of the United States. 76 Douglas to Lord Napier, 15 November 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 77 Victoria Gazette, 13 November 1858, in Message of the President of the United States. 78 Message of the President of the United States. 79 The Oregon Treaty, 15 June 1846, reproduced in New Perspectives on the West, http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/two/oretreat.htm (accessed 19 March 2011). 80 Douglas to Sir William Molesworth, 15 December 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 81 Douglas to Molesworth, 15 December 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 82 Douglas to Newcastle, 27 February 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 83 Douglas to Newcastle, 17 May 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 84 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 3 January 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 85 Douglas to Sir George Grey, 18 May 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 86 Douglas to Russell, 12 June 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 87 Sir George Grey to Douglas, 21 September 1854, BCA, C/AA/10.2/1. 88 Douglas to Sir Henry Bruce, 7 May 1855, BCA, C/AA/10.4/1. 89 Douglas to Labouchere, 16 April 1857, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 90 Douglas to William Smith, 14 January 1858, HBCA, B.226/b/15. 91 Douglas to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 11 December 1858, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 92 Message of the President of the United States. 93 The Times, ‘Editorial’, 22 September 1859. 94 Adams, G.R., General William S. Harney: Prince of Dragoons (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, 2001). 95 Morton, Arthur Silver, A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71 (2nd edition, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1973); see also National Parks Service, US Department of the Interior, ‘San Juan Island’, http://www.nps.gov/sajh/historyculture/the-pig-war.htm (accessed 19 September 2011). 26 INSECURITY IN CANADA’S PAST: JAMES DOUGLAS KEEPS THE PEACE ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

96 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 1 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 97 Minutes of a Council [of War], 1 August 1859, included in Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 1 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 98 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 8 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 99 Douglas to Bulwer-Lytton, 27 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 100Douglas to Newcastle, 22 August 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 101Douglas to Newcastle, 16 October 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 102The Times, ‘Editorial’, 22 September 1859. 103Douglas to Newcastle, 15 December 1859, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 104Douglas to Newcastle, 27 January 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 105Douglas to Newcastle, 23 June 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 106Douglas to Newcastle, 7 August 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 107Douglas to Newcastle, 17 January 1860, BCA, C/AA/10.1/7. 108 The Times, ‘Editorial’, 30 January 1860. 109Bancroft, G., Memorial on the Canal De Haro as the Boundary Line of the United States of America (R. Decker: Berlin, 1872). ECCLES CENTRE FOR AMERICAN STUDIES PLENARY LECTURES AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR CANADIAN STUDIES ANNUAL CONFERENCE

2006 Abenaki People From Where the Sun Rises, by Alanis Obomsawin (unpublished presentation)

2007 Hunting, Shooting and Phishing: New Cybercrime Challenges for CyberCanadians in the 21st Century, by David S. Wall

2008 Governance, Globalization and Unruly Populations: Governing the Aboriginal Cross-Border Economy in Canada, by Jane Gilmore-Dickson

2009 Mouthy Enemies: Canadian Writers and the Power of Being, Belonging and Celebrity, by Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson

2010 Citizen Reader: Canadian Literature, Mass Reading Events and the Promise of Belonging, by Danielle Fuller

THE ECCLES CENTRE was founded by David and Mary Eccles in 1991. Based at the British Library – which houses one of the world’s foremost collections of American books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers and sound recordings – the Centre has two broad aims: to increase awareness and use of the Library’s North American holdings, and to promote and support the study of North America in schools and universities in the United Kingdom.

The Centre’s programme includes lectures, conferences, concerts, seminars, teacher and student events and web based study resources. The Centre works in co-operation with the Library’s American curatorial team, with members of the American Studies community in the UK, and with other partners interested in the advancement of knowledge about America. The focus of the Eccles Centre is on North America, in particular the US and Canada, but can extend to include the hemispheric, comparative and international topics in which the US and Canada play a major part.

Full details of the Eccles Centre’s programme can be found at www.bl.uk/ecclescentre