History of British Columbia

Front matter

VICTORIA UNIVERSITY

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Hubert Ijcnne Bancroft

Preface

More than a century elapsed after a charter was granted by Charles II. to Prince Bupert and a company of seventeen others, incorporated as the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay, before the first trading posts were built among the almost unpeopled solitudes of British Columbia, or, as the Mainland was then termed, New Caledonia. And yet it was but an accident that the construction of these little picket-fenced enclosures did not lead to the acquisition by Great Britain of an empire no less valuable than is now the dominion of Canada.

In 1579, Sir Francis Drake anchored in the bay that still bears his name on the coast of California, and, in behalf of his sovereign, took possession of the country, which he called New Albion, this name being afterward applied to all the territory northward from Drake’s Bay almost to the Columbia Biver. Long before the first American settlers, bringing: with them their flocks and herds, had crossed the snow-clad mountains which form the eastern boundary of Oregon, forts and trading posts had been established in the valleys of the Umpqua and the Willamette. Toward the north ^ the English claimed, by right of discovery,

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the country in the neighborhood of Nootka Sound. Finally, in 1840, a proposition was considered by the manager of the Hudson’s Bay Company to purchase the Boss colony, established by the Bussians on the coast of New Albion. That the bargain was not concluded was probably due to the fear of troublesome complications with the United States. Thus to the right of discovery and prior occupation in the far northwest would have been added the right of purchase, and if, at the time of the gold excitement, a few years later, the English had gained a foothold in the country, it is probable that they would have laid claim to a part of the territory ceded by Mexico to the United States in 1848.

Originally a mere portion of the vast game preserve of the Hudson’s Bay Company, little has been handed down to us of the early records of British Columbia, although that little forms perhaps the most interesting portion of its history. Among the sources whence I have derived the information that I now lay before the reader, are valuable manuscripts handed to me by some of the principal actors in the events which they describe ; as, Boderick Finlayson, James Deans, and Alexander Caulfield Anderson. For other portions of my narrative, I have also depended largely on manuscripts, all of which have received due mention in this volume.

In 1856 gold was discovered in the bed of the Fraser Biver, and in 1857 the San Juan Island difficulty was approaching a crisis. It was probably due in part to both of these causes, and also to the fear that New Caledonia, already largely occupied by Americans, might be absorbed into the territory of the United States, that, in 1858, an act was passed by the parlia-

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Vll ment of Great Britain to provide for the government of British Columbia, by which name was known thereafter the domain of England on the western mainland of North America. And now the reign of the great monopoly had come to an end. In the following year Vancouver Island was constituted a separate colony, and so remained until 1866, when, on account of the enormous expense of maintaining the machinery of government among a handful of people, the two dependencies were merged into one.

Between 1862 and 1871 gold was shipped by the banks of British Columbia to the value of more than $16,650,000, while the amount of treasure carried away by miners from the several districts cannot be estimated at less than $6,000,000. But though rumor of golden sands and gold-bearing river-beds seldom fails to attract hordes of fortune-hunters from all quarters of the globe, such an element forms by no means a desirable addition to the population of a young, ambitious, and thriving colony. As in California, in Australia, and in New Zealand, the wealth thus acquired was seldom turned to good account; and little of it remained to enrich the country whence it was gathered, those who collected it becoming not infrequently a burden on the more staid and industrious portion of the community. To British Columbia flocked a heterogeneous gathering of adventurers from the eastern and western states, from Spain, from Mexico, from California, from China, and from Australia. Thus the necessity for some stable form of government to control this lawless and turbulent population made all the more welcome to the settlers who had established there a permanent home the organization of the two colonies as a province of the dominion of Canada.

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PREFACE.

As to geographical position, British Columbia has the same advantages over the Pacific states and territories as the eastern provinces enjoy over the states bordering on the Atlantic. As St John’s in Newfoundland is nearer by some hundreds of miles to the great commercial ports of northern Europe than is the city of New York, so Victoria is nearer to the great seaports of western Asia than is the city of San Francisco.

Not least among the factors that contribute to the wealth of British Columbia is the construction of the Canadian Pacific railroad, completed in November 1885, at the expense and risk of the Dominion government. On the line of its route, and at points nearer to the Pacific than to the Atlantic seaboard, are immense tracts of fertile land, certain erelong to be occupied as farms and cattle-ranges, while mineral deposits of untold value await only the capital needed for their devolopment. Until the completion of this road, the commerce of the province was comparatively insignificant; but that a portion of the rich traffic between Europe and Asia will eventually pass through this territory, is almost beyond a peradventure.

Compared with the riper development of California, Oregon, and other Pacific states and territories, British Columbia is yet only in her infancy; but that a brilliant future awaits this province may safely be predicted. As capital and labor are attracted to the country, and both can be obtained at reasonable rates, the Mainland will be more fully explored, and its valleys and plains made fit for settlement. Although the agricultural area is somewhat restricted, it is nevertheless sufficient to maintain a very considerable population; and that population will increase, slowly per-

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IX liaps and unsteadily at first, like the ebb and flow of an advancing tide, there can be little doubt. Mines, of which not even the outcroppings have yet been touched, will be made to unfold their hidden treasures, commercial resources still latent will be developed, and the farmer will gather from the unwilling soil abundant harvests.

Already fleets are being despatched from harbors which a few years ago were unoccupied. Already the province ships to South America, to China, and to Australia her timber and spars; to California, her coal; to English ports, her fish, her silver and lead; and to all the world, her gold; receiving in return raw produce and provisions from the United States, manufactured goods from England, and luxuries from Europe and Asia.

But in reviewing the condition and prospects of British Columbia, we must look beyond her limits, and consider her as linked with her sister colonies, with Vancouver Island as one with herself, and with the dominion of Canada, of which she is the youngest member. The completion of the overland railroad has riveted yet more closely the bonds which unite all British subjects, wherever their lot is cast, and the anticipations held forth in the speech from the throne, when first the Mainland was declared a colony, have already been measurably fulfilled. “ I hope,” said her Majesty, “that this new colony on the Pacific may be but one step in the career of steady progress, by which my dominions in North America may be ultimately peopled, in an unbroken chain from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by a loyal and industrious population.”

CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME.

Chapter I. Summary Of Earliest Voyages

The Spaniards on the Coast of British Columbia — Perez, Heceta, and Arteaga— Expedition of James Cook — Hanna — Maurelle — La P^rouse — Portlock and Dixon — Guise — Lowrie- -Barclay — Meares — Gray — Kendrick — Martinez — Haro — Colnett — .Douglas — Elisa — Quimper — Galiano and Valdes — Bodega y Cuadra — Vancouver

CHAPTEE II.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE NORTHWEST COAST.

Eastern Parallels — Configuration of North-western America — British Columbia Coast — Puget Sound — Vancouver Island — Queen Charlotte Islands — Climatic Sections of the Mainland — New Caledonia — Heights of Land — The Columbia and Fraser Plateau Basin — Skeena and Stikeen — Oregon, Washington, and Idaho — Northwest Coast Climates — The Temperature of Various Localities — Fauna and Flora — The Aborigines — Attitudes of the Fur-traders and Settlers toward the Natives — Peaceful Regime under the Great Monopoly — The Chinook Jargon

CHAPTEE III.

OCCUPATION OF THE DOMAIN.

Aboriginal British Columbia — Forts and Fur-traders— Systems of Communication— Inherent Power of Civilization over Savagism — Fur-trading Districts — Stations — Missionary and Agricultural Settlements — Interior Forts — Coast Stations — The British and the Russian Fur Companies — The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Circulating Library — Joint Occupancy of the Northwest Coast by England and the United States — The Treaty Dividing the Domain — The Northwest Coast Immediately Prior to the Beginning of British Columbia History Proper

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