history short answer

HSTR 324B Powerpoint Notes 18 July

ap of Canadian Treaties to 1975

Bridge, 1868ould qualify as recent academic secondary sources?

00000000000000000000000000000000Lecture July 10: Fraser River Gold Rush

Footnotes

• When are footnotes necessary?

• When are footnotes not necessary?

Footnotes

• When to use footnotes:

  • Quoting (author’s words must be in quotes)

  • Using another author’s ideas or findings

  • Quotes longer than 2 lines are single-spaced and indented on both sides

  • Use quotes sparingly – better to explain in your own words

  • Footnotes not necessary: own analysis, common knowledge, intro/conclusion

• Recommended: 3-5 footnotes per page

• See History Essay Style Guide

Footnote Formats

• Edmund Hope Verney to his father, 1 March 1864, in Pritchard, Allan, ed. Vancouver Island Letters of Edmund Hope Verney, 1862-65 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996), 193.

• Roderick Finlayson, Fort Victoria Journal, 3 September 1846; http://www.fortvictoriajournal.ca/1846-september.php

• “Dairymen’s Opinions,” Victoria Daily Colonist, 12 February 1896, 6.

• Despatch to London, Douglas to Labouchere, 8657, CO 305/8, p. 108; received 18 September, No. 22, Victoria Vancouver's Island, 15th July 1857, Colonial Despatches, https://bcgenesis.uvic.ca/getDoc.htm?id=V57022.scx&search=thompson%27s%20river#searchHit1

Outline

• Mining by First Nations

• Arrival of miners

• Regulating miners

• Hostilities

• Colony of British Columbia

Trade in Gold

• 1850s: HBC buying gold from Haida, Stó:lō, Nlakap’amux

• 1851: Haida stop HBC from mining

• 1857: Nlakap’amux expel American gold seekers

An Influx of Miners

• Victoria pop. 1854: 562

• 400 arrive April 1858

• Victoria pop 1858: 5000

• May-June 1858: 10,000 miners

• Fall 1858: 25,000

• 1861: 50,000

• 1871: 10,124 non-Indigenous

Image: Steamer Commodore from San Francisco, arrived in Victoria on 25 April 1858 with 400 miners

Controlling territory, regulating miners

• 1852: Douglas made Lieutenant Governor of Queen Charlotte’s Island

• December 1857: Douglas declared that Crown had rights to gold on Fraser and Thompson rivers

• Miners needed a license from Victoria

• Approval from Colonial Office after the fact

Image: James Douglas

Extracting the Gold

Mining techniques:

• Gold pan

• Wooden rocker

• Sluice box – mats or ridges caught the gold dust and nuggets

• Redirecting waterways

What was so attractive about mining for gold?

Images: William Hind, Prospecting for Alluvial Gold in BC, 1864; First Nations family with sluice boxes and rockers, ca. 1895 (BC Archives, I-55718)

Chinese Miners

• 30 Chinese passengers on the Commodore

• June 1858, 300 Chinese newcomers

• Working claims

• Other employment

Images: William G.R. Hind, Chinese Gold Washers on the Fraser River, ca. 1864;

Nam Sing, ca. 1895 (BC Archives, G-03059)

Extension of Sovereignty

• Summer 1858: Fraser River War

• August 2: Britain passed an act to est. direct rule over mainland – British Columbia

  • Exclusive trade by HBC ended

  • Douglas became governor of both colonies, gave up ties to HBC

• Peace treaties signed at Lytton between American miners and Nlaka’pamux, Shuswap and Okanagan people

• September 13: Douglas arrived in Yale with 20 Royal Marines and 15 Royal Engineers

• November 19: new gov’t at Fort Langley

Image: E. Mallandaine, Sketch of Fort Langley, 1858, BC Archives, PDP03395

ap of Canadian Treaties to 1975

Bridge, 1868ould qualify as recent academic secondary sources?

00000000000000000000000000000000Film: Canyon War

ap of Canadian Treaties to 1975

Bridge, 1868ould qualify as recent academic secondary sources?

00000000000000000000000000000000Lecture July 11: Smallpox, 1862

Symptoms

• Incubation, fever, vomiting, skin eruptions

Image: smallpox sufferers

Origins of smallpox

• Developed along with agriculture, from 9,000 years ago

• Evidence/record of smallpox in Egypt, India, Greece ca. 3000 years ago

• 16th C – endemic in Europe, epidemic in Americas

• Late 18th C, 10%-30% mortality in infected pops Europe

• Up to 90% mortality for Indigenous people in Americas

Resisting and eliminating smallpox

• Variolation – inoculation from a smallpox pustule into a cut

• Vaccination – Edward Jenner, 1796: inoculation with cowpox virus

Images: Edward Jenner, 1749-1823; vaccination experiment from cowpox

Resistance to vaccination

Cartoon from 1802 – people growing cow-like appendages from the cowpox vaccination

Smallpox reached Central America in 1520s

Smallpox in Americas: virgin-soil epidemic

Image: The Columbian Exchange

Smallpox epidemic of 1775-83

• Most extensive smallpox epidemic

• Boston, 1777

• Mexico City 1779 (18,000 died)

• Why did disease spread further than before?

Smallpox returns to Salish territory, 1862-63

• Victoria a business centre for miners

• Access to vaccination

• From 1860 – efforts at segretation

• 13 March 1862, passenger on Brother Jonathan arrives in Victoria infected with smallpox

Image: Brother Jonathan (BC Archives A-01784)

Image: Fort Street, 1862

18 March: British Colonist reported that one passenger from the Brother Jonathan was infected with smallpox, staying in a “thickly populated neighbourhood” (BC Archives A-02999)

Native camps near Victoria

1859: 2235 people in Northerners’ camp

Map available here: http://web.uvic.ca/vv/student/smallpox/overview/

Responding to the health crisis

• March 27: Douglas and Helmcken met with FN leaders, vaccinated 30 people

• March 28: children in Songhees village showing symptoms

• 16 April: 30 more vaccinations

• 26 April: 500 Aboriginal people vaccinated

• Missionary responses

Image: Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken, 1864

At a makeshift hospital run by Anglican missionaries at the Tsimshian Camp:

“Who should care for these poor savages amongst whom the plague spread like wild fire? They refused with very few exceptions to be vaccinated, nor was there vaccine enough within seven hundred miles to go around… Neither doctors nor nurses were willing to take the risk involved in caring for Indians with smallpox. An old Canadian sailor, badly marked with the disease, was engaged. He with a handy man as carpenter and cook, helped Mr. Garrett to care for the patients, but as the fever grew hot upon the patients, they left their beds and plunged into the sea to cool themselves, and returning shortly to die. The Missionary and his helper were little else than grave diggers, placing beneath the sod an average of four a day.”

-what factors limited care for Tsimshian sufferers of smallpox?

-how is this observer representing Tsimshian, settler society?

Police and First Nations responses

• Pemberton refused request for police to bury dead

• 28 April: residents of Northerners’ camp ordered to leave

• Songhees to Discovery Island

• 11 May: police gunboats escorted Haidas camping at Cadboro Bay north past Nanaimo

• Police destroy remaining lodges at Northerners’ camp

• Result of forced evacuation?

Image: Augustus Frederick Pemberton, Commissioner of Police, 1858-1867

Responses from the Victoria public

• Unwilling to bury the dead

• Smallpox provided an excuse to ban Aboriginal people from urban areas

Image: Cricket match at Beacon Hill Park, Queen’s Birthday, 1862

“When we come to look at the effects of the mere contact of the Indians with the whites the result has been truly frightful. For disseminating vice profligate whites received in return the most horrible of diseases. The place became a moral as well as physical pest-house, and all this was not only tacitly allowed, but actually encouraged by the authorities; for we had squaw dance-houses – no better than brothels – licenced during last winter. Now for all this mass of corruption in our midst, what was our compensation? The sale of a few blankets and trinkets to the Indians – ‘cheap’ labor at the expenses of a white immigrant population – and a large illegal traffic in poisonous liquors. The morality and health of the town were bartered away for these results.” (Victoria Press, 17 June 1862)

How is the relationship between white settlers and Indigenous people depicted? Who or what is to blame for disease? What might be the solution?

Missionary vaccinations

Combining vaccination with baptisms

Father Leon Fouquet, Oblate missionary

• Vaccinated 3400 Indigenous people from New Westminster to Yale

Catholic and Anglican missionaries vaccinated Cowichan and Nanaimo

Images: Father Leon Fouquet

Results of 1862 smallpox epidemic

• 1862-3: at least 20,000 Indigenous people in BC died of smallpox

• Overall population decline of 62%

• Communities along the Northwest Coast: population loss of 90%

ap of Canadian Treaties to 1975

Bridge, 1868ould qualify as recent academic secondary sources?

00000000000000000000000000000000Lecture July 12: Christianity and Missionization

Missionaries as part of colonial project

• Remaking Native people in European image: beliefs, behaviours, daily life

• Missionaries distinct from settlers and government

  • Hierarchy of “races” vs potential equality

  • Representing Aboriginal interests i.e. over land

Early missionaries

• Spanish missionaries

• 1836: Anglican minister Herbert Beaver

• 1852: Cowichan people drove out Catholic missionary

• Fur traders teaching about Christianity

• Before 1860s, missionaries had little success – why was this?

William Duncan

• Anglican missionary

• Duncan born in England, travelling salesman, conversion

• 1857: to Victoria, then Fort Simpson (Lax-Kw'alaams)

• learned Tsimshian language, opened a school

• 1857-1860: few converts

• May 1862 – smallpox

• Duncan and 50 Tsimshian to Metlakatla

• Community grew to 1,100 by 1879

Image: William Duncan (1832-1918)

Duncan’s rules for Metlakatla:

• To give up their Ahlied or Indian devilry

• To cease calling in conjurers when sick

• To cease gambling

• To cease giving away their property for display

• To cease painting their faces

• To cease drinking intoxicating liquor

• To rest on the Sabbath

• To attend religious instruction

• To send their children to school

• To be cleanly

• To be industrious

• To be peaceful

• To be liberal and honest in trade

• To build neat houses

• To pay the village tax

What general changes did Duncan hope to bring about?

How did these fit with nineteenth century western values?

Creating a Victorian village

• Desire for control

• Est. western civil and religious institutions

• Residents continued to fish, hunt, trap

• International funding from missionary societies

• Changing to western forms of housing

• Dufferin visit 1876…

Image: St. Paul’s Anglican Church, women spinning wool at Metlakatla

Tsimshian interest in a Methodist Missionary

• Alfred and Kate Dudoward converted to Methodism in Victoria, 1873

• Interest in western material goods, Methodist services, Christian belief, protection against disease

Image: Kate Dudoward

Thomas Crosby in Port Simpson

• Methodist missionary

• Arr. Victoria 1862

• Appointed to Port Simpson 1874

Image: Thomas Crosby (1840-1914) with his wife, Emma, and five children, Port Simpson, ca. 1885 (BC Archives, B-06308)

Remaking Fort Simpson

• Church, services, itinerancy

• Crosby Girls’ Home (est 1879)

• 1890: boys’ home, hospital

• Replacing long houses with single-family homes

• Eliminating potlatching

• Building a modern town

Image: Crosby Girls’ Home, residents of the Girls’ Home

ap of Canadian Treaties to 1975

Bridge, 1868ould qualify as recent academic secondary sources?

00000000000000000000000000000000Lecture July 13: Resettlement of British Columbia

Rural Resettlement, 1860-1890

• Land settlement system

• Indigenous responses

• Settler experiences

Wakefield theory of colonization

• Transfer structure of British society to colony

• Sell land at different rates, rather than offering it for free

• Political power tied to land ownership (20 acres to vote, 300 acres to be elected)

• Goal: capitalist society with labour pool

How well did this system work for Vancouver Island before 1858?

Pre-emption System:

• A type of homesteading that allowed settlers to occupy and develop their lands before they paid for them

  • Cheap land

  • Deferred payment

  • Continued residence

How pre-emption worked

• Claim 160 acres and make improvements

• Certificate of improvement

• Survey

• Purchase

• How was the land “improved”?

• Settler land use as “productive”

Image: Beddis Farm, Saltspring, ca. 1880 (Royal BC Museum, BC Archives, G-00694)

How did Indigenous people respond to settlement?

Resistance:

• Dismantling settler farms

• Maintaining farms that met European criteria of improvements

Image: Growing potatoes in Bella Coola, 1913 (BC Archives, H-07279)

Selling potatoes to fur traders

James Douglas at Fort Langley, 1839:

“I may be permitted to mention… as a matter to interest the friends of our native population, and all who desire to trace the first dawn and early progress of civilization, that the Cowegians around Fort Langley, influenced by the counsel and example of the fort, are beginning to cultivate the soil, many of them having with great perseverance and industry cleared patches of forest land of sufficient extent to plant, each ten bushels of potatoes; the same spirit of enterprize extends, though less generally, to the Gulf of Georgia and de Fuca’s straits, where the very novel sight of flourishing fields of potatoes satisfies the missionary visitors that the Honourable Company neither oppose, nor feel indifferent to, the march of improvement.”

Indigenous resistance

Letter to the Department of Lands and Works, 1864 from a settler near modern-day Campbell River, Vancouver Island:

“I the undersigned am compelled to trouble you at this time to let you know how I am troubled here with the Indians the Lekwiltok have come and camped on my ground alongside of my garden and are selling the Potatoes and pulling down the fence, so that, the hogs and cattle is destroying what they can’t. I have taken some of them in the act and the others came and walked up with their Bow Knives so you will see that my life as well as property is not safe.”

What does the author want? How does he portray Lekwiltok vs. settler rights to land?

Pre-emptions on Salt Spring Island

Showing:

• Land pre-empted but not improved or purchased by 1881 (grey)

• Land improved, but not purchased by 1881 (red)

• Land purchased by 1881 (yellow)

Pre-emption policy and practice on SSI

Official goals:

• Settling families on the land

• Ensure residency

• Avoid speculation

Popular use:

• Commercially viable farms in the minority

• High rates of abandoning pre-emptions

• Benefits of land ownership without payment

Map of pre-emptions on Salt Spring Island available here:

http://canadianmysteries.ca/sites/robinson/images/view.php?id=1956&lang=en&size=3

Map of Ruckle Provincial Park, Salt Spring Island

Ruckle Family

Henry Ruckle, originally from Ireland, pre-empted land on SSI in 1872

1877 – Henry married Ella Anna Christenson, a widow from Norway

Henry became marketer, Anna the farmer

Traditional resource harvesting by First Nations continued

Image: Henry and Ella Anna Ruckle and children, ca. 1880 (BC Archives, G-00695)

Ruckle Farm

• Eggs, butter, lambs

• Problem of transportation: rowing to N. Saanich, wharf for CPR steamship

• Neighbours from Ireland, Germany, Hawaii

1895: 100 acres under cultivation, 600 tree orchard

Image: Ruckle Farm, 1880 (Salt Spring Island Archives)

Immigration and farming in 19th C BC

• Immigrants of European origin could claim Indigenous land with support of the state

• Clearing land was slow without capital

• Transportation systems essential

• Japanese and other Asian immigrants could not access land through pre-emption when removed from voters’ lists

Image: Japanese workers: Omadan and wife

The Research Essay

• Length: 6-7 pages (1750-2000 words)

• Due: Friday 21 July (in class, on paper)

• Sources:

  • Primary source(s) used for 1st paper

  • At least 4 recent academic secondary sources

Start with a question

• Is it narrowly focused?

  • How can we narrow the focus of a research question?

• Is it open-ended?

• Can it be answered with available secondary sources?

• Be willing to adjust question

• Answer to research question will be thesis.

In small groups

• Introduce your primary source

• Discuss potential research questions

• Are questions focused/open-ended?

What is an academic secondary source?

Academic Secondary Sources:

• Books or articles written by historians

• Books are generally published by a university press, articles should be peer-reviewed

• Should be at least 15 pages long

• Must have footnotes, or otherwise reference all evidence to specific sources

• Should be published after 1985

Sample bibliography: which of these sources would qualify as recent academic secondary sources?

How did policy makers justify the head tax of 1885?

• “Head Tax in Canada.” Canadian Encyclopedia.

• Barman, Jean. West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.

• Campbell, Annie Louise. “An Historical Sketch of the Economic and Social Conditions and of the Legislation Affecting Oriental Immigration in California and British Columbia.” Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1922.

• Hern, Frances. Yip Sang: And the First Chinese Canadians. Victoria, BC: Heritage House, 2011.

• Roy, Patricia. A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989.

• Scheinberg, Ellen. “Evidence of ‘Past Injustices’: Records Relating to the Chinese Head Tax.” Archivist 20 no. 2 (1994), 26-30.

Finding Secondary Sources

• America: History and Life

• Search for books in catalogue

• What sources have other historians used?

• I can review a bibliography

• (send by Saturday at noon)

Tomorrow’s Discussion

• Please bring at least one question to discuss:

  • Answerable based on the content of the readings

  • Comparing the two articles

  • “What do you think” question

  • Avoid questions based on specific knowledge beyond the reading

  • Avoid counterfactual questions

Lecture July 18: Confederation and Making Native Space

Cariboo Gold Rush

• Image: Barkerville, 1860s

Other BC gold rushes, 1860s:

Wild Horse Creek
(1863-66)
Leechtown (1864)
Big Bend (1865-66)
Omineca (1870-72)
Cassiar (1870s)

Image: Leech River, near Sooke, in 1865 (BC Archives, A-04473)

Edmund Hope Verney, Naval Officer:

“The Cariboo diggers are rushing down to Salmon river: the Stickeen diggers are tearing away to Cariboo, and the Salmon-river diggers are mad to get up to the Stickeen: numbers of the diggers are coming down the country and settling to work at Victoria, and numbers of Victoria workmen are going up the country to turn diggers: so we are all like the boiling water in a kettle, and no end of bubbles.”

Building Roads

1860: $825 to transport one ton from Victoria to Alexandria

Douglas building better roads with Royal Engineers (public works and military force)

Harrison-Lillouet Route (August-October 1858)

Cariboo Wagon Road (1862-1864)

Dewdney Trail (1860-1865)

Systems of government

• Vancouver Island

  • Land ownership to vote, run for office

• British Columbia (Mainland colony)

  • Douglas had no executive or legislative council

• 1864: new governors

Images: Arthur Edward Kennedy, Frederick Seymour

Colony of British Columbia

• Chilcotin War, 1864

  • Cost $80,000

• Decrease in mining activities

• Continuation of road building

Spent about $1,342,000

Image: New Westminster waterfront, late 1860s (BC Archives, A-01594)

Seymour’s impression of New Westminster

“I had not seen even in the West Indies so melancholy a picture of disappointed hopes as New Westminster presented on my arrival. Here, however, there was a large display of energy wanting in the tropics, and thousands of trees of the largest dimension had been felled to make way for the great city expected to rise on the magnificent site selected for it.

But the blight had come early. Many of the best houses were untenanted. The largest hotel was to let, decay appeared on all sides, and the stumps and logs of the fallen trees blocked up most of the streets. [New] Westminster appeared, to use the miners’ expression, ‘played out’.”

Union of the Colonies

• VI Assembly asked for union “under such constitution as her Majesty’s Government may be pleased to grant.”

• 1866: Colonial Office united colonies

  • VI legislature abolished

  • VI annexed to BC

  • Seymour the governor of both

• Both colonies in debt:

  • British Columbia: $1,002,983

  • Vancouver Island: $293,698

What’s happening in the rest of British North America?

Confederation, 1867

• Union of four provinces

• Support from Britain

• American purchase of Alaska

• Canadian purchase of Rupert’s Land

Options for BC

• Remain a British colony?

• Join the United States?

• Join Canada?

• Economic concerns

• Political concerns

• Differing allegiances

Amor de Cosmos and the Confederation League

• Born William Alexander Smith, NS

• Followed gold rushes

• Founded British Colonist

• Critical of Douglas and HBC elite

• Confederation League (1868)

  • Union with Canada

  • Responsible government

  • Reduce public spending

  • Free trade with US

Britain supporting union with Canada

• Colonial office to Musgrave: union with Canada best for BC

• Transfer of Rupert’s Land fall 1869

• Terms of union – what might BC want from Canada?

Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken on drafting the terms of union:

“At the next meeting or so after we adjourned to luncheon – (in Government House as usual), and after lunch Trutch met me in the hall, and said, “Helmcken, your idea of a waggon road and railroad are good, but on thinking the matter over I think Confederation will be valueless without a railway to the Eastern Canada!” Trutch and I were friends! he almost took my breath away. “Heavens, Trutch, how are they to build it? – and as to operate it – well I do not see the way.” “Well,” says Trutch, “but I

think I do.” “Well you know more about railways than I anyhow.” “Then,” says Trutch, “suppose I propose, that there shall be, not your little tho difficult road, but a railroad all the way to the East, will you assist me?” Yes Trutch with both hands.” Now in the above few words was the embryo of the Canadian Pacific R.R.”

Negotiating Confederation

• BC sent Dr. Robert Carrall, Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken, and Joseph Trutch to negotiate terms

They requested:

-Canadian coverage of debt (1 million dollars),

-responsible government

-a road or railway connection across the continent

Image: Joseph Trutch (BCA, A-01705); Dr. J.S. Helmcken and Dr. R.W. Carrall at Niagara Falls, 1870 (BCA, A-02841)

Terms of Union offered by Canada to British Columbia

• Pay BC’s debts

• A transcontinental railway

• Annual subsidy based on a fictional population of 60,000 (not 36,000)

• 3 Senators and 6 MPs

• Control over land and resources

Population of British Columbia 1871

• Est. 26,000 Aboriginal people (72%)

• 8500 Europeans (24%)

• 1500 Asians (4%)

• Total: 36,000 (approx)

• Non-Aboriginal population: 73% male.

Map of Canada in 1871

BC joined Confederation on 20 July 1871

Native Land Policy

• What do we mean by

  • Title?

  • Treaty?

  • Reserve?

Treaty glossary

Aboriginal title: ownership or control of land by aboriginal groups

Treaty:

• An exchange in which Aboriginal groups agree to share their interests in their traditional lands in return for payments and promises from the Crown.

Reserves:

• An allotment of land set aside for Aboriginal people.

How did James Douglas’ Native land policy change from 1849-1864?

Native Land Policy after 1864

• Joseph Trutch, commissioner of lands and works, 1864: land settlement, public works, allocating reserves

• Refused to recognize Aboriginal title

• Reduced reserves to minimum

• Ended pre-emption rights for FN

• Negotiated terms of union

• BC’s first Lieutenant Governor

Images: Joseph Trutch, Alexandra Bridge, 1868 - Cost: $45,000

Tolls: $70,000-$140,000

Map: Indian Reserves in BC pre-1871

Clause 13, Terms of Union

• Government after the union.

• To carry out such a policy, tracts of land of such an extent as it has hitherto been the practice of the British Columbia Government to appropriate for that purpose, shall from time to time be conveyed by the Local Government to the Dominion Government in trust for the use and benefit of the Indians…”

What was BC’s “liberal” policy in terms of reserve allotment? Pre-emption allotments?

Map of Canadian Treaties to 1975

Dufferin’s concerns, 1876

“We must all admit that the condition of the Indian question in British Columbia is not satisfactory. Most unfortunately, as I think, there has been an initial error ever since Sir James Douglas quitted office… of British Columbia neglecting to recognize what is known as Indian title.

In Canada this has always been done; no government, whether provincial or central, has failed to acknowledge that the original title to the land existed in the Indian tribes and communities that hunted or wandered over them… The result has been that in Canada our Indians are contented, well affected to the white man, and amenable to the laws of Government.”

How was BC unique?

Was Trutch a “man of his time”?

ap of Canadian Treaties to 1975

Bridge, 1868ould qualify as recent academic secondary sources?

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