MAKING SETTLER SPACE George Dawson, the Geological Survey of Canada and the Colonization of the Canadian West in the Late 19th Century by Jason William Grek Martin A thesis submitted to the Department of Geography In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (September, 2009) Copyright © Jason William Grek Martin, 2009 Abstract This dissertation examines George Dawson’s efforts to traverse several of the significant blank spaces that pervaded the map of Western Canada in the two decades following Confederation in 1870-71 on behalf of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC). By analyzing how Dawson went about making these vast, remote and hitherto poorly-known territories legible we can better understand how he and his GSC colleagues helped to transform the Canadian West into a settler space that miners, traders, loggers, ranchers and many more could inhabit and exploit. As Dawson’s survey work in British Columbia and the North-West Territories reveals, the GSC helped to transform the Canadian West into settler space in two important ways. First, his western reconnaissance surveys yielded a wealth of practical knowledge about travel routes, natural resources, soils, climates, existing Native populations, potential hazards and the overall suitability of particular districts for settlement and resource extraction. This information was widely distributed in published reports and maps and served to draw the lands, natural resources and Indigenous inhabitants of the West more fully into the administrative orbit of the Dominion government. Moreover, Dawson’s reports and maps often depicted colonization as both inevitable and imminent, giving scientific weight and tangible expression to a colonial imaginary that, in practice, was never as certain nor as swift to unfold as these depictions intimated. Second, the GSC’s scientific surveys signified Canada’s desire and capacity to assert its epistemological dominion over the West. In this context, the work of a publicly-funded scientific survey was a profound symbol of authority because a state’s power to explore and map its national territory signified its power to rule over that territory. By exploring and reporting on these lands, Dawson and ii the Survey helped to cement the Dominion’s authority over its recent territorial acquisitions and affirm their status as a Canadian West. By offering important practical and symbolic contributions to Canada’s colonization of the West in the decades following Confederation, the Geological Survey of Canada played a vital role in transforming this region into a Canadian settler space. iii Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Anne Godlewska, for the unreserved enthusiasm, persistence and wise counsel she provided throughout this protracted project. Her patience was undoubtedly tested on numerous occasions but her staunch support never wavered. I am also grateful to Dr. Peter Goheen, Dr. Laura Cameron and Dr. Sergio Sismondo, not only for their valued feedback as members of my dissertation committee, but also for the numerous edifying conversations I have had with each of them over the course of my degree and for the assistance they have rendered in the formative stages of my academic career. I extend warm thanks to Dr. Matthew Evenden who provided excellent critical feedback at two important moments in the course of this project and who has been unreservedly generous with his time and encouragement. I would also like to thank my many comrades—too numerous to name—within the ranks of the Queen’s Geography graduate program over the past several years. Intelligent conversation, good humour and strong collegial support were all in abundance during my days in Mac-Corry, ensuring that the torments of the doctoral pursuit never became too much to bear. I am likewise grateful to my new colleagues at St. Mary’s, who have been extremely accommodating, supportive and patient over the past two years. I am grateful to my Mom for her frequent words of encouragement and her gentle nudging at crucial moments along the way. Thanks go to my wife Jenn for her cartographic contributions, her editorial élan and her diplomatic skills when called upon as a sounding board. More importantly, I thank her for her love, her faith and her patience over the course of this long journey. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of my father, my first and most enthusiastic geography teacher. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Reconnaissance Surveying and the Debate Over ‘Practical’ Science ............. 29 Chapter 3: The Challenges of Reconnaissance Surveying ............................................. 101 Chapter 4: Evoking Epistemological Dominion and Anticipating Settler Space ........... 159 Chapter 5: George Dawson’s Contributions to Salvage Anthropology .......................... 226 Chapter 6: ‘Vanishing’ the Haida ................................................................................... 272 Chapter 7: Conclusion..................................................................................................... 310 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 348 v List of Figures Figure 1.1: Portrait of George Dawson in 1885 ................................................................ 21 Figure 3.1: George Dawson’s routes in 1877 and 1881 .................................................. 113 Figure 3.2: George Dawson’s route in 1887 ................................................................... 134 Figure 3.3: A portion of George Dawson’s map of the Yukon District, 1889 ............... 155 Figure 4.1: George Dawson’s route in 1878 ................................................................... 162 Figure 4.2: George Dawson’s map of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 1880 ..................... 164 Figure 4.3: A portion of George Dawson’s map showing De la Beche Inlet, 1880 ....... 165 Figure 4.4: A portion of George Dawson’s map showing Lyell Island, 1880 ................ 166 Figure 4.5: A portion of George Dawson’s map showing Burnaby Island, 1880 .......... 167 Figure 4.6: A portion of George Dawson’s map of southern British Columbia, 1881 ... 168 Figure 4.7: A portion of George Dawson’s map of central British Columbia, 1879 ...... 169 Figure 4.8: Two of George Dawson’s geological diagrams, 1880 ................................. 186 Figure 4.9: A portion of George Vancouver’s map of the Pacific Northwest, 1798 ...... 191 Figure 4.10: A portion of a British Admiralty Chart of the BC Coast, 1867 .................. 192 Figure 4.11: A portion of George Dawson’s map showing Juan Perez Sound, 1880 ..... 198 Figure 5.1: George Dawson’s photograph of the village at Forward Inlet, 1878 ........... 226 Figure 5.2: George Dawson’s map of British Columbia’s Native peoples, 1884 ........... 261 Figure 6.1: George Dawson’s map of Virago Sound and Naden Harbour, 1880 ........... 275 Figure 6.2: George Dawson’s lithograph of Skedans village, 1880 ............................... 291 Figure 6.3: George Dawson’s photograph of Chiefs Edenshaw and Weah, 1878 .......... 292 Figure 6.4: George Dawson’s photograph of the village at Forward Inlet, 1878 ........... 307 vi Chapter 1 Introduction Point of Departure On March 7, 1890 an eclectic group of amateur, academic and government- employed botanists, geologists and ornithologists—collectively known as the Ottawa Field Naturalists Club—convened in the nation’s capital to hear one of their own present a paper on “Some of the Large Unexplored Regions of Canada.” George Dawson, a celebrated geologist with the Geological Survey of Canada1, had been a prominent member of the club since its inception in 1879 and would commence a three-year term as president the following year. As a field scientist, Dawson had spent much of the previous fifteen years exploring some of the most remote and poorly known regions of the North- West Territories and British Columbia, following their acquisition from Great Britain in 1870 and 1871.2 He was uniquely qualified to outline the various regions of the Dominion that had not yet been subjected to extensive exploration and to justify the need for such work: Fortunately or unfortunately as we may happen to regard it, the tendency of our time is all in the direction of laying bare to inspection and open to exploitation, all parts, however remote, of this 1 In the interest of brevity, I will generally refer to this organization as the GSC or ‘the Survey’ throughout the dissertation. 2 In 1870 a British Order in Council transferred authority over Rupert’s Land (the land drained by Hudson Bay) and the North-Western Territory (the land drained by the Arctic Ocean) to the Dominion of Canada. These acquisitions were named the North-West Territories and encompassed