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ABORIGINAL DEFENSIVE SITES
In this series of articles, Grant Keddie is publishing, for the first time, his original research into defensive sites. This information was painstakingly gathered over his 24 years as an RBCM curator. Grant spent many hours in the provincial archives uncovering new sources and examining unpublished letters, journals, maps and government records. In the process, he discovered errors in earlier published accounts where scholars had misread handwriting, left out important words or mistranslated names and passages. Grant also examined each site in detail. As shocking as it may seem, past researchers did not always visit the sites they confidently described!
Over time, glaciers, sea level changes and climate have reshaped our landscape. Around us today is the evidence of how humans have utilized that environment over thousands of years. By studying types of settlements, archaeologists can get a glimpse of how people related both to the natural world and to other people. In the Victoria area, bounded by Cowichan Head to the north and Metchosin to the west, there are about 100 shoreline shell-midden sites which represent the remains of old aboriginal villages. At least 18 of these have been recorded as defensive sites or villages with large wooden defensive walls and/or defensive ditches. In spite of the many observations of aboriginal defensive sites along the coast by Europeans from 1774 until the 1860s, authors have persisted in referring to the remains of these as old Spanish forts and claiming they were not here before the coming of Europeans. As we will see in this series of articles, the archaeological remains of these forts show a significant change in the human use of our landscape, beginning before the time of the Norman conquest of England. An
illustration by Gordon Friesen shows what The early historic accounts show that these forts were constructed of single and double rows of upright posts sometimes held together by "thin branches interlaced through and through" as well as horizontal boards hung on posts like house boards. An 1842 map (by Lee Lewes) places an "Indian Fort" with two wooden plank houses at the northeast corner of Cadboro Bay. This village was occupied in 1839 by a group of 127 people called the Samus, one of several extended family groups that later amalgamated on reserves and became known as the Songhees. In 1843, Jean-Baptiste Bolduc visited this fort: "Like almost all of the surrounding tribes, this one possesses a stockade fort of about 150 feet square....On top of posts in the fort one sees many human heads sculptured and painted in red or black." In his writings, Alexander Anderson of the Hudson's Bay Company describes a voyage down the Fraser River in 1846 that started at the "palisaded fort" of the Tait people near Yale. This account mentions that the Stalo peoples fished in the 3-mile area below the Yale Canyon and then retreated to their "palisaded dwellings." He further describes: "From point to point as we descend the river, the palisaded villages which I have mentioned appear..." and that due to "local feuds" and to "guard against the incursions of the coast tribes bent on slave-making, the permanent villages are all stockaded." Even the powerful Cowichans of Vancouver Island had "palisaded villages." Anderson also noted that the Cowichan, who under the warrior Tzouhalem attacked Fort Victoria in 1844, had "bullied the other tribes whom they had beaten in war." Elders have told many stories of how, before the coming of Europeans, the peoples of the American Gulf Islands, Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula raided the south end of Vancouver Island and how these people retaliated in kind. Following the devastating smallpox epidemic of 1782, there had been a period of rapid change in lands surrounding the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Gulf of Georgia. The Lekwiltok of Johnstone Strait received guns through trade with peoples on the west coast of Vancouver Island in the 1790s. From the early to mid 1800s, warfare between the Lekwiltok and Salish groups operated on an increasingly larger scale. The Lekwiltok raided far to the south. Salish speaking warriors from as far away as Puget Sound joined forces in retaliatory raids. There were numerous losses on both sides and both sides claimed victories.
The
Songhees Fort described by Bolduc in 1843 was located near When the Hudson’s Bay Company established new fur-trading centres at Fort Langley on the lower Fraser River in 1827 and Fort Nisqually in Puget Sound in 1833, aboriginal alliances began shifting to obtain access to European trade goods. Populations began changing through marriage, migration and warfare. Trading vessels entering the Strait at this time caused further confusion in the trade alliances. By the late 1830s the Lekwiltok had joined with
their northern neighbours and made more frequent raids to Puget Sound
and up the Fraser River as far as Yale, causing heavy casualties in both
regions. In 1838, a significant alliance was made with the Musqueam, and
the Lekwiltok took control over part of the Fort Langley fur trade. Gulf
of Georgia groups now found it more profitable to trade their furs northward
where they could get twice as much for a beaver skin at Fort Simpson.
This change is clearly pointed out in the correspondence of James Douglas: "The affairs of Fort Langley have not, in all respects, closed so prosperously this season as usual. The Fur trade suffered greatly from the interference of the Colquilts [Lekwiltok]...who have succeeded in opening a friendly intercourse with the Musquiams inhabiting the country at the mouth of Fraser's river, and have diverted into another channel, the trade formerly derived by Fort Langley, from the Gulf of Georgia. This evil arises from the difference between the Fort Simpson and Fort Langley Fur Tariffs, which in general exceeds 100 per cent." In the 1840s, the Lekwiltok began moving south, taking over Comox Salish territory and causing part of the tribes on Vancouver Island to move from their traditional villages in exposed locations to more protected areas up the rivers. Posts were continually maintained to keep the tribes informed of the movements of the Lekwiltok and their allies. About 1849, the Salish allies caused considerable destruction among several Lekwiltok groups in the Port Neville/Salmon River area to the north of Comox. Around 1850, the combined forces of Cowichan and other Salish warriors defeated the Lekwiltok and their allies in a major battle at Maple Bay, near Duncan. Many of the raids of the Lekwiltok have been mistakenly attributed to the Haida. It is only in the short period after 1853, when large groups of Haida came to Victoria to trade, that they raided American groups and made a small number of raids on the Cowichan and the Nanaimo. This raiding came to an end with the smallpox epidemic of 1862. The archaeological evidence for an older pattern of warfare in the Victoria area, the history of its study, the kinds of questions archaeologists are trying to answer and the results of the latest investigations will be described in following issues. Grant Keddie is Curator of Archaeology at the RBCM.
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