Admittedly overgeneralizing from our limited experience and knowledge, we are still struck by the lack of open and brutal warfare conducted by settler colonialism in Canada against First Nations, at least in comparison to the U.S. Canada had “the same greedy, dominant Anglo-Saxon race, and the same heathen,” wrote the Minnesota Episcopal bishop Henry Whipple in the 1870s. “They have not spent one dollar on Indian wars, they have had no Indian massacres.” Cultural genocide, yes. A residential school system as brutal if not more brutal than the U.S., yes. Denial of suffrage and human rights, yes. Illegal expropriation of land, yes. Racism, yes. But none of the massacres and wars that we learned so much about on our previous travels to the Plains and Southwest Indians, and that are so much a part of settler colonialism throughout the U.S.
Our trip to Nlaka’pamux territory, and learning about their “Fraser Canyon War” in 1858 and its aftermath, perhaps sheds some light. The gold-craving white hordes from the U.S. that invaded their land in the 1850s were not the first non-Indigenous people to come to the region. Fur traders had come earlier, but they treated the First Nations with respect and this was reciprocated: “[t]hey did not try to force their conceptions of things on us to our harm. Nor did they stop us from catching fish, hunting, etc. They never tried to steal or appropriate our country, nor take our food and life from us. They acknowledged our ownership of the country, and treated our chiefs as men. They were the first to find us in this country. We never asked them to come here, but nevertheless we treated them kindly and hospitably and helped them all we could. They had made themselves (as it were) our guests.”
But the gold miners were different. Disrespectful and thieving, thousands invaded the canyon, many coming from California where they had learned to let nothing stand in the way of their greed, especially native peoples. Conflict ensued with the Nlaka’pamux and at first the natives prevailed, forcing the miners south and out of their territory, but many lives were lost on both sides. The miners regrouped, forming six regiments with some bent on exterminating the natives. They had large numbers and more modern arms than the Nlaka’pamux. In addition American troops were massing on the America side of the border to join the fight if needed. Nlaka’pamux Chief Sexpinlhemx (Splintum) took a leading role in arguing for negotiations rather than further fighting. His view won out and this resulted in a series of treaties with the whites, outlining a path to coexistence and allowing them to continue gold mining. “The natives in good faith created a peaceful solution in 1858,” a BC historian has said. “It ended the war with the Americans and was supposed to give them rights and land and resources — promises that 150 years later still haven’t been realized.”
Things indeed worsened considerably for the First Nations in the 1860s and 1870s as colonialism became institutionalized, with British Columbia becoming a British colony in 1858 and then being incorporated into Canada in 1871. At this time, it appears that additional factors promoted pacification. First, a smallpox epidemic decimated the native population of British Columbia in the early 1860s (down to 28,000 in 1885 from 100,000 in 1835). Second, there was a feeling of hope, faith and respect for the Queen and the whites despite what they knew had happened in the U.S.: “We knew what had been done in the neighboring states, and we remembered what we had heard about the queen being so good to the Indians and that her laws carried out by her chiefs were always just and better than the American laws.” So even as white settlement and resource appropriation continued, and a new breed of colonialists gained control, they had faith. Their inherent welcoming nature won out. And so the First Nations of Canada, at least here in the Fraser Valley, were colonized and controlled by means other than war.
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| Chief Sexpinlhemx of the Nlaka’pamux |
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| Fraser River where gold worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars was recovered in the late 1850s. |
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| Chief Sexpinlhemx burial site behind Lytton's Anglican Church Parish Hall |
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| Scene from documentary, "Canyon War: The Untold Story." |
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