What Can a Fifty Seven Year Old History Book Tell Us?
We learn about the past from stories; written or told. We can sometimes learn as much about the past by what is left out as by what is expressed. We generally understand in modern BC that the pendulum has swung from repressing and ignoring First Nations a few short years ago, to the present situation where the Constitution enshrines their rights and the Courts steadily define just how Aboriginal peoples and the rest of Canada interact. Just how far we have come along this path was brought home to me in spades when I stumbled across UBC Professor Margaret Ormsby’s, British Columbia: A History in a used book store, which I promptly purchased for the princely sum of $2.00. (Not bad when the original cost was $4.75). I liked that it was published in 1958, just after I came to Canada from England as a little boy of three in short pants and long socks.
The ancient looking map on the dustcover immediately got my attention. Before attacking the 558 pages of the hardcover volume, I pulled off this jacket and spread it out on the table. I examined it carefully, mining it for what it could reveal, both by what was there and by what was missing. The inside flap identified it as part of a chart of the N.W. Coast of America … 1778-1779 by Lieut. Henry Roberts, “under the immediate Inspection of Captain Cook.” (To be precise, this is the updated map from a second edition issued 1794.)
Some immediate things jumped out at me. One was; Vancouver Island was missing! Barkley Sound was named, but there was only the slightest recognition that it was on the west side of a big island. (A dotted line indicated the supposed track of the American Sloop Washington through the later named Strait of Georgia, 1789. If this voyage had been better documented and verified it would have beat Captain Vancouver’s discovery voyage into the protected waters behind the Island by three years). Captain Cook had re-discovered the ‘Nootka’, (the Spanish were there first), so Nootka Sound is shown, as well as ‘Tiuquet’; presumably the present day Toquaht. The Straits of Juan de Fuca ended on the map some 150kms inland as Juan de Fuca, the “Greek Pilot in the service of Spain” (as I learned from another note on the map), only sailed the straits for 20 days back in 1592. Captain Vancouver arrived fourteen years after Cook to ‘discover’ the Island and the Salish people. The Fraser River itself was not well understood by Europeans until Simon Fraser descended it to its mouth in 1808, 16 years after Vancouver. So, no Fraser River (and no Skeena River either), on the map.
Up the Coast, the ‘Queen Charlotte Isles’ were plotted, as were several “villages” in Tsimshian territory.
The interior of what is now B.C. and Alberta was blank until Lieut. Roberts got far enough east on his map to pick up what was known and roughly mapped in the same time period by the explorers and fur traders who had moved north and westward along the rivers from the east as far as the Rocky Mountains. ‘Arathapescow’ Lake, Great Slave Lake, ‘Chipewas’ Indians and ‘Dog Rib’d’ Indians were all listed, although their relative positions were wrongly plotted by several hundreds of kilometers. A note printed in the blank space on the map where the Coast Ranges and the Interior Plateau are detailed today anticipated “a ‘Sea of the West’ somewhere in the interior which communicated with the ‘Mishinipi’ (great water) Lake …”.
Another thing that caused me to look more closely at the map was another note that ran along the Coast: “FOOSANG of the Chinese Navigators about the year 453”. I looked that one up on Google and discovered that Foosang was a land across the sea written about by the Chinese as being 9000 kms to the east. This is a historical concept completely poo-pooed out of existence by the time I first heard about Canadian History from 1960 to 1963 in a one room schoolhouse in rural Ontario. All 40 students spread across eight grades would listen spellbound as the sole teacher; Mr. Palmer would place one arm on the windowsill and the other on the top of the piano, lean back against the wall and tell stories in the afternoon about explorers like Henry Hudson, David Thompson, and Samuel Hearn. Indians were involved in the stories, but only so far as the lives of the explorers interacted with them. Columbus in 1492 was totally credited as the discoverer of the New World. We did not hear about the Vikings because excavations of what later were revealed to be a Norse Colony in Newfoundland dating around the 10th century were only starting as Mr. Palmer wove his tales of early Canada from memory. The Chinese in Canada in 453?....A thousand years before Columbus?…..In a bigoted country where the Chinese were looked upon as lowly imported labourers? No way!
Now to the book itself. I was curious as to what was written about the Aboriginals of BC in 1958. I turned to the index and scanned for First Nation names. There was Sumas, but only in reference to Sumas plains. There was Yale, but only about Yale the man and the town. Other Nation’s names appeared, but only because the area was known by their name: Sooke, Okanagan Valley, Nootka Sound *, Nanaimo and Esquimalt. Other references are to ‘Indian troubles’: on the Fraser when Indians expelled miners; with whiskey sellers at Metlakatla; more troubles, mediated by Governor Seymour, between ‘Tsimpsean’ and rival chiefs. Finally, the Bute Inlet massacre, where Indians tried to stop a road through the territory in 1864 which turned into the Chilcotin war where 19 (later confirmed as 20) workmen were killed, is quickly retold. The history book concludes that the arrest and subsequent hanging of five Chilcotin chiefs (later this rose to six) and Governor Seymour’s “prompt action, effective measures, and a fair trial of the accused” further established his reputation. He bragged that, “I am now as well-known as my predecessor (Douglas) in the valley of the Fraser and Thompson. No white man better in the ‘Bella coola’ and Chilcotin country.” He was given a raise in pay.
That history, when retold today, must include the apology by the B.C. Government in 1993 for the subsequent ill treatment of the Tsilhquot’in people after the 1864 war and another official apology in 2014 by Premier Clark for the hanging of the Chiefs. Oh, and that apology included regret that the Chiefs were lured into captivity and charged with murder by a deceitful invitation to peace talks by Seymour. Effective measures indeed.
*In reality there are no Nootka people. The name was a linguistic misunderstanding by Captain Cook. A Nuu-chah-nulth job applicant explained to me with great mirth in 2007 that the people were actually shouting up at Cook on his sailing ship, “go around the rock! Nootka, Nootka!”)
In my flipping of the pages I saw a few other references to local Bands, (such as the ‘Tsimpseans’ as noted above) but these names do not appear in the Index. The names of judges, ships, merchants and thieves appear in the Index, but not the Bands. TheSonghees are mentioned in the text in connection with the common occurrence of finding the bodies of Indian women floating in Victoria’s inner harbour in the early days. This was described in that time as a sign of the demoralization and depravity of the Indians, (who, of course, had been forced from their homes to make way for the Legislature building).
In the Index there are exactly 13 references under the heading ‘Indians’. One of the references is ‘enfranchised’ on page 492. When I turned to that page I discovered the reference was to the vote being given to East Indians in 1947, beating the enfranchisement of British Columbia Indians by two years!
I remember the widespread racist views held about Aboriginals when I was an impressionable youngster living on the Oneida Nation of the Thames settlement 30 minutes outside London, Ontario and later in Hay River, Northwest Territories where about half the kids in the lower grades where Aboriginals. There was no road to the ‘Indian village’, no running water or electricity and fishing and hunting were still primary activities. The pungent smell of smoke and fish surrounded almost every Aboriginal student travelling each morning in the open ‘school’ boat used to cross the mouth of the Hay River. It was only a few years since the Indian residential school in the village had closed. Indians in those days were seen as largely drunken, dirty, and not responsible. The transition in my own awakening from this learned ubiquitous viewpoint has been hard won. What changed me was getting to know Aboriginal people one by one who did not fit the stereotypical profile. The ones who did fit the profile? Well,…I now understand, ever so clearly, what massive societal disruptions, racism and historical abuse can do to cause widespread malaise and depression to once self-assured people.
Reading Margaret Ormsby’s history book has reminded me just how common those negative views were and how little Aboriginals mattered in the ‘official’ life of this country in those days. I appreciated the graphic reminder.
D. Sam Hall, 2015
