267_Arnett_Shiyahwt-History-Ganges_2013.mp3

otter.ai

19.04.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:01
For those of you don't know, I'm Chris Arnett, I've lived here for 25 years. I'm currently a PhD candidate. And at University of British Columbia. I'm doing a PhD doctorate on Salish, and rock painting. But I'm interested in all kinds of stuff. And today, I'm going to talk about a I'm going to present a history of xi, Haute Ghanzi Saltspring Island. And when bought for South Africa, I want to give a talk at my first title was the history of xi hald, Ghandi, Saltspring. But as an anthropologist, I know that history is socially and culturally constructed. And so we have multiple histories. And so it's an anthropologist, what I tried to do is look at the narratives of the European settler community, as well as the narratives of the indigenous peoples who have lived here in this area for since at least the glace the de lacy ation. So people probably lived in this area for eight, possibly 10,000 years. But we don't have a lot of evidence for it. In fact, even if this history I'm gonna present to you today is a lot of pieces missing. So this is probably one of the first times someone's ever kind of tried to piece it together, putting together to give you a sort of content economy, a continuum of, say, the last 5000 years. So we'll just start out, we're just gonna situate you geographically and culturally. Here, quartz, it's Saltspring Island, and in relation to the Lower Mainland, and this is what has been being turned out in the Salish Sea. And in reference to the Salish and seeking people that live in this area. And this, this map here sort of gives you an idea of the different Coast Salish nations. And there's about 24, that they're mostly defined linguistically. So there's about 24 different languages in this one area, so very kind of diverse group of people, but they share a lot of common cultural traits. And as you can see, right here, the Gulf Islands and Saltspring island right at the center of this huge cultural area. And people have been here, you know, 10,000 11,000 years ago, this is covered by ice. But as the ice receded, people began to populate this area. And Sumi had enormous populations. And the greatest concentration of populations in the Salish Sea area was probably right here in the Gulf Islands, some of the largest villages were located here. And it's just you know, as it is today, back in the past, it was a nice place to live. And, but people here, you know, didn't sort of live in one spot. They lived in new major villages, but they access all the country around here. And the Center for this whole world, basically, was the Fraser River drainage. Now, this is kind of Mafia as follows. It's like a schematic map. And this is basically gives you kind of a cultural schematic of the indigenous economy. So each one of these little squares represents a town or a village. This is supposed to be the Fraser River. Here's the Gulf and Strait of Georgia, here are the islands and Vancouver Island over here. So there's villages out here. And the round circles represent smaller villages. different zones represent different zones where resources were acquired, you know, the ocean, the short areas, the forests, and the alpine areas are all accessed. And this is probably the focus of this whole area of the Salish Sea was the rich, incredibly rich fishery at Yale, in the Fraser Canyon. But you can see through all all these lines here show all the interconnections between these villages here on the Fraser River, and the villages on the coast, and how they would go back and forth, and access all these different areas. This was the the the basis of the indigenous indigenous economy, which was a seasonal access to resources. And but the most important one was the sockeye fishery in the Fraser. So that's kind of a brief schematic of the sort of the economy that supported the people here for 1000s of years. So how do we learn about the past we can learn about the past, you know, through archaeology, which is a detailed kind of forensic analysis of subsurface remains. Basically, as an archaeologist, what we're trying to do is create a three dimensional map of what's in the ground. So if you can appreciate that you can see how detailed and time consuming and expensive that kind of work really is. It's not like the old days where people would just dig anywhere they wanted to do archaeology is very systematic, but so that's one way to acquire knowledge about the past. Another way is to look at the ethnographies the oral traditions of the area and something that really excites me a place names, because when start to learn the place names, you begin to learn the indigenous history of these places. And fortunately in Salt Spring, we have about 27 Different place names. So not all here, these are just some of the major ones. But each one of these names describes either the shape of the land, the type of resource found there, or some sort of history, those templates. So today we're gonna look at a very important place on Saltspring island called she call it. Now this is Ganges harbor. This is a large these numbers here are archaeological site designations, we have a system for the whole country called the Borden system, whole country is basically divided into quadrants with four sort of letters. And then as you locate a site, it gives a number so you go do the FR you for the next CFR you five on the random until, you know, you just keep going on sites and sites is down all the time. So we're gonna look here at what is called VFR, you know, that's just like Ganges. As you can see, it's a large area, and this is an area determined by the presence of subsurface remains. You can see here to Walter days, another large site, there's another one at Churchill beach, and there's one over here in Long harbor. These is the range of former village sites with extensive deposits. But very, very little work has been done in on Saltspring Island. In fact, the only real investigative work has been done a long harbor here. And at Churchill Beach. This is a very interesting site, a few 1000 year old burial ground, where in the 70s, they discovered 22 burials carrying burials with 32 individuals on that little spit of land to the left of Churchill beach. So anyway, here's so I'm gonna talk now we'll finally get to Chiho. This is this photo was taken an aerial photo taken in 1930s, of Ganges and I liked this photo because it shows you the original landforms before it was altered by Phil especially around Ganges here. This of course, is full for Ganges road coming down the hill here, and this is the market area, it's all been filled in, of course, but this was the major site of she hopes this, the spirit here, this whole area will basically from the base of the hill cluding, all this area, long spit and The Rock Islands out here, including Grace island. So this was she helped us she hoped conforms to a classic Gulf Island settlement pattern, you find this pattern throughout the Gulf Islands, I'm just going to show you a few quick ones. in different places this isn't put up. This is taken in the 40s. So this place has been heavily altered. But what you have here is an estuary. It was it's slowly been filled in along the front by a day of a shell that's been built up over centuries of use maybe 5000 years of use has built up this sort of dike that goes along the front, then houses will be built along this is a lot of good drainage. So it make an ideal place for long houses and have an estuary behind. It would have lots of plants and things that you could also access for food. And of course very rich clam that here. They call these cuspid spits. And of course over time, they eventually fill in and become dense concentrations of cultural deposits. Here's another place the original humaneness at police Bay. And here again we have one of these slips that goes out and compasses a lagoon and on the spit are these long houses and these are later saw long houses, they got peaked roofs, and they were emulating a western style houses prior to but eating 50 They would have been single sloping, roofs but just kind of gives you an idea of what the early the original abilities that she holds may have looked like. Here north of us on Cooper Island, it which is now called Panella cut Island is another similar thing we go along spit that goes out to a bunch of rocks out here. And this spit up until about 1850 to about 15 or up until the 1900s are about 15 long houses range lawn this fit and you know similar kind of pattern. And here is another example again from Saltspring Island is the sidewalk or SIP or CFA, right. This is also an anthropogenic landscape. This is all built up by hundreds, maybe 1000s of years of shellfish harvesting and then eventually houses would be replaced and built up along the spirit. And then of course over time, it would gradually fill up in and become quite a large village.

Unknown Speaker 9:43
So and this is a shot that I took years ago at Walker's hook with some erosion and what we hear you see here is the plows zone. Up here it's just a surge about 20 centimeters, but below that plows down close plows down pause zone. You have Callie's intact cultural deposits and what we have here, you might is a horizontal House floor with the remains of house posts sunk into the sides of what would have been the side of a long, long house, that would have been along the shoreline here that shots taken right around here. So that's what the spirits are composed of dense concentrations emitted. And of course, when they did work down at Walker's whip building pipelines, they went right through this area, and of course, found all kinds of burials features, how many individuals, nine, at least, just in this one single trench through this extensive former village site. So getting back to the house. Now, why this is, this is a very important place like I've interviewed a lot of elders in this area from different surrounding communities who do have memories about the place and many different groups access. She holds, because it's sort of centrally located. People from Nanaimo came here from both as islands from Jamaica theory from pouch and from Saanich. All these people had were connected to various resources and areas in she hoped area, probably for centuries. And yeah, it was very rich in sea mammal hunting. Herring spawn is incredible herring spawning here, I interviewed elders who have called coming here in the 20s. And just, you know, throwing branches into the water and collecting slime from herring as a lot of duck hunting. And of course, shellfish harvesting. Always a very important draw to this area. But I want to draw your attention to this, this. This is a feature of the landscape that makes it particularly interesting. And that's the existence of a canoe skit that existed between the head of booth Canal, which is called chakras, that went followed up Duck Creek and then went through this area, and then eventually came out here at the mouth of the Ganges Creek. We don't know the exact route. But I interviewed an elder who told me that he a guy who was born in 1919, on Cooper Island, and he told me about coming up here in the 30s and tracing the roots that his ancestors took, you know, and he found remnants of logs where people would skidded canoes over. And according to the elders, it would take about two hours to skip your canoe, from here down to Ganges as opposed to maybe seven or eight hours rolling around the island. So this is a very important access route used by people mainly from the south island of Cooper Island, and from the chumminess area, you can see just very easy access to this route, which would take you then to active path and then to the Fraser River because the Fraser River game was a major focus for all the people in this area that was the major source of winter supplies of food sockeye salmon. So people in the Gulf Islands every summer for since time immemorial, we basically dismantled the houses and move them over to the Fraser River. And some of them actually came through this route. Okay, and this just shows you know, Creek, part of the original Portage. Now, this is an interesting this is an indigenous name, short sale, which means to drag a canoe, and I have a feeling this name, like I've asked what elders with names she called me, she hoped and the sanics think it has something to do with being cautious. The fact that the place is very exposed place to southeasterly winds and to to Northern Raiders. But the name may be derived from the but the hope of young people. They're not able to train with that Namie. So it tells you a few things. It's a very ancient name, but I have a feeling it may be derived from this practice of dragging canoes over should sail or such itself should hold. I don't know. And these are just some of the shoreline artifacts. These are some of the things found along the course of that canoe Portage by different property owners. We have quite a range of different dates here over the last 2000 years. 3000 years possibly just represented here. So she hooks so yes, she holds so this is all extensive mid in here. We don't know much about the deposits that are here. I just when I first came to Salzburg about 25 years ago, I noticed they were doing electrical work down here at the corner of Purvis and Phillips Ganges road, and I could see thick mid in deposits and I also saw human pelvis in there. And, but this isn't surprising. I mean, these these places have been occupied for up to 5000 years. In fact, the oldest known sites in the Gulf Islands datafile 1000 years ago, and all these sites are found at the waterline, but this doesn't take into account the rise of sea levels. So they stabilize the 5000 years ago. So what we what a lot of archaeologists believe that there are older sites that are now inundated below sea level, or they're older Sites found up in the the upper areas of salts on the island. But anyway, here long sense of mid and very deep, but a lot of its cast by the town of Ganges. Let's see. Okay, well look at so I'm just gonna look down some of the things that have been discovered over the years. Up here, for example, where the Mark's work wearhouse, there was some work done there when they tore down those stores. And this is just a test pit that they've sunk just to get an idea of what was underneath the foundation, you see very disturbed, I talked to the archaeologists who worked here, and they found it, it was very kind of difficult conditions. Because you know, a lot of there's been a lot of construction in this area over the last 100 years or so, and but you can still see remnants of intact mid layers here and there throughout this deposit. But they did, in their work uncover five burials of humans. And the two are very unusual, they were actually sunk down through the mitten into the clay subsoil, and they were ringed with round stones and each each burial contained to people and like, the only one they were able to identify was male and female. And they were buried with these very exotic goods, which are Jade, Celts, even nephrite Celts, that are from the BC interior. And it's this is the hardest material known to the indigenous people, it can hold an edge like seal. And it's very, very hard to work like in hardness scale, it's about nine or something eight or nine and you know, diamonds tan or something. So a very prestigious item, and very few have been found on the coast in grave. So two burials from the site of Ganges had these burial items in them. And the archaeologists I talked to figure there were still burials there, because they just dealt with the the footprints of the building, and, and dealt with what would be impacted by the construction. Now, this is a place that people have been hearing about lately, Grace points. And that's the indigenous name for this kind of place, schmuck, Leila, which is an interesting word, it means place where many are gathered, like people. So this is a burial place. And it's striking with people because in the indigenous sailors worldview, the dead are not gone, it's still a lot, they're still with us in a in a spiritual capacity. So this is the last sort of intact area of Ganges. And just to give you an idea of these, there's 17 a barrel carrying features found on the property. This is an archeological report of the island, you can see all these camps all over the place, to definitely have human remains in it in them, the others were not sure here's a photograph of one of these rock Karen features. You wouldn't really be able to tell what's in there unless you excavate, but two of them definitely have human remains. So, so she held it, so people were living as she hoped, you know, up until the coming of the Europeans and pass it. So, but but a lot was there's a lot of murky areas like in the night in the 18th century, we know that there was a huge epidemic that hit this area, probably around 7080s and historical geographers trace the root of this epidemic from Mexico City. And they trace it up through Mexico through the Great Basin desert into Eastern Washington through up the Columbia up into George Strait of Georgia and it peters out around Campbell River area, and this caused a lot of disruption. And of course what when this epidemic happened Europeans started to show up trading vessels so exacerbated Well, period warfare and demographic collapse some places populations fell as much as 90%. And one of the

Unknown Speaker 19:31
major response to any demographic collapse in any area is for people to congregate into small into the Yeah, just to congregate, you know, to the survivors from us place stricken villages just reconstitute there's the tribes and get in different new places. With but the major thing that happened this period was at 43 when fort Victoria was established and Fort Victoria was like like to tell Pete was like the Walmart. Costco is a day Imagine one particular bet British Columbia. I mean, everybody came down for this. And it caused a lot of disruption because people from the north are coming down, they wanted to shop at this place. And of course, a lot of trouble as going down to these places stricken areas. You know, a lot of the stories we hear about warfare, you know, the natives fighting and stuff, this is not something they did all the time. This is something that was historically contingent, we always had to bear this in mind, when we read ethnographies, about the historical period, we have to understand what's going on in the bigger picture in North America. So yeah, it's just shows possibly some northern canoes based on the style here and then going back toward Victoria and waiting some severed heads to at the garrison. So 1846 and markable picture, let's take a look at 37 in a Chartist meeting in London, so Europe is bursting at the seams after the pulley wars, and there's all these schemes for colonization, you know, the focusing on New Zealand and other places, including British Columbia. So there was a real, the ruling classes in Europe were very, getting very worried about the growing working population. So there was a real net set a desire to, you know, sort of move the workers, you know, get them to emigrate out of England and established, you know, colonies throughout the world. Of course, this was the largest migration in history, I think 80 million people moved in just a number of decades. And, but they didn't come here. But even though the British had great plans, and they, there was no British colony in the western Pacific, until 1849, when the British government established a gave a charter granted Hudson's Bay Company to try and start a colony on Vancouver Island. And James Douglas undertook this monumental task. And the first thing he did was quiet the title and this is the, the Douglas, the so called story of the Douglas treaties. Here's for Victoria. And he treated with all the people around here held meetings with the heads of the different families, and basically guaranteed that their way of life would continue in exchange for allowing white settlement on the land. So I think the newcomers got their side of the bargain. But as far as the indigenous people don't think their way of life continued at all. So the treaties were were violated, basically. But and it's interesting, the legal status of these treaties are definitely not out of the wall yet out of the woodwork. So the said this treaty, Douglas treaties are limited, as you can see, just to this area, you see this purple area, which includes the Gulf Islands, they were not included in these land land sale agreements. Now, Salisbury Island 1859, there's a lot of pressure on the colonial government to the Gold Rush, it just happened gold record the bust. So Douglas, enacted the preemption system, imitating American models and basically this system and he did this without the approval of the colonial government is sort of on the sly, just because he wanted to deal with the crisis. So he basically the preemption system is you could go out and you could claim to 100 200 acres of land, improve it and then you get a certificate of improvement and then once you add it further improvements, you would own the land outright for about $1 An acre is something different prices. And anyways, so the pixel three Island 1859, they went over here and surveyed it so there's not a lot of information about how the survey was done. It just kind of appeared. And you can see the three different focuses here of Saltspring there was the upper Saltspring settlement. There was a central Ganges harbour settlement and then the south Burgoyne Fulford Bay, or Fulford harbour settlement. Now these two are kind of interesting in that there was a lot of a cooperation and negotiation on the ground between the First Nations owners of this area who are the Panella cut, and the First Nations owners of this area who were the whole community, and well, not so much the Spanish but the whole community were definitely involved with the settler families here. And then then the north, the south or the middle center settlements, which include a Ganges harbour, there was no such there was no you know, familial, or alliances made between First Nations and local settlers. Now, here's a close up of an early map from 1859 A showing the the original preemptions in Ganges area. Now this is a really interesting map because here we can see the lot slate laid out in ranges. And right here is Ganges and it's kind of it's literally left off the preemption map. And one of the one of the stipulations in the preemption Act was that you could not preempt a piece of land that had a native settlement on it. And an 1859 Eight 60 Native people were living here on site again, he's on. Here's a Ganges here. That's a little spit and downtown Ganges right here. And I believe that this was intended to be set aside as an Indian reserve, as was this area. Nevertheless, settlers came here, this fella, George Richardson, he was a black man, and basically preempted most of what is now downtown Ganges, and gardens here and his neighbor, Walter Isaacs, was also an early black settler. And then this fella here, Linacre was from New Zealand, or Australia, there's different accounts and settled up here. Now, seeking 60, it's interesting, we have some information about these early days, because we had two very important visitors came. First one was this guy was 10. And Richard main. He was coming up here in a gunboat. And they stopped again, because of their complaints by the settlers, that I probably these two gentlemen, that the crops are being robbed. Because you know, the native people were still accessing this canoe skid. In fact, you can probably see remnants of it here, here's this canal, then there's this sort of little Oconto Creek and then public road, you know, these could have been remnants as a canoe, skip it, in any event, indigenous people are still coming here and using this area, and they weren't really stealing, they saw themselves as the rightful owners of anything that these people would grow. And we also know from other settlers from the liquors that they had to just put up with the owners of the land. And there's even an account she was interviewed in 1908, one of the women who lived there, and she said that, you know, they'd be in a cabin at night, and need us to just come in and sit down there and just make themselves at home. You know, so they knew, you know, there was there was no question about who owns the land. So let's set and maintain to investigate these complaints. Any any, and he he wrote a book? Yeah, he's talking. He wrote a book. And in it, he talks about his visit to Saltspring. And you know.

Unknown Speaker 27:22
What year was April 1860. So, he comes here, and he says, oh, there's nothing really here. What's happening, it's just the Indians are complaining that the settlers have sold the land which they do everywhere. But he acknowledged that there should be some kind of land settlement made and he cited the example of New Zealand, but he also wrote about the complexity, but the multiple ownerships of a place like Ganges harbour, and said that this is something that, you know, they would have to deal with eventually. And one of the settlers came up to him and complained and said, you know, that he, he said that the Indians never lived here, they just built these put up these cabins recently, but you know, this is the guy who just arrived in the last few months, and so upon and Richard me and asked somebody about it, and the guy has pointed to the grave of his father, who had died three years previous, and said, you know, before any white men had ever shown up, so me was, was very sympathetic to the indigenous claims for land and but also acknowledge the complexity of settling the claim. A few months later, Bishop John Hill, comes to, to BC and makes a tour and keeps a journal. And it's a fascinating journal. Some of you may have read Roberta backsies, the count of one of his journals and edited the year of the travels, and it's got a very nice description of him visiting a Ganges harbour and interviewing some of the settlers and including the mother or the Linacre, head of the family of linkers. She talked about living in dread and fear of the Indians. I mean, it was and what she was referring to, was this, the so called Babel again, which happened in July 1860. Just a couple of about 10 weeks or so before he showed up so we got a very good firsthand account for that. We also have another did firsthand account and this isn't the lady. I wish I had a picture was Miss Eliza Griffis octogenarian here, she was interviewed in the 30s and talks about Indian massacre at Saltspring Island related by Pioneer and this is a fast and eating a town that she was a little girl. And it talks about the hardships of living in Ganges harbour how, you know, the reliance on you know, the resources land was very hard life. I don't think they I think they were only there for a couple of years. But she also has a very detailed account about the Battle of Ganges and what happened and some of the aftermath. It's just see if and we also have a counseling starts and we also have a town Linacre. So we have a three or four eyewitness accounts of What happened here? And basically what happened was there was a, you know, we're in the sign of turmoil from all these northern people were coming down. And they're always they're often running into trouble and fighting with the local people. And so there was a group of high slept neither people from Kitimat. So they're coming down. And they stopped at the Fernwood area, and he picked up a white guy named Macaulay. And there's different version of the story that just call the guy said, Look, I'd like you to give me a lift to Victoria. He said, Okay, so they take him down. It's going past Ganges Harvey said I'd like to pop in here. That's okay. And of course, they were really worried about going into Ganges harbour, but, you know, he insisted is he wants to visit this Linacre guy who lives up here somewhere. So the canoe of heights left come into Ganges harbor, and apparently in this area and the couch are apparently camped all along here on this side of the Ganges in houses and shacks and tents. And so he lands on the beach and I presume it's here. And Linacre goes off up to the up the road to visit or McCauley goes up the road to visit Linacre. But as soon as he's out of sight, gunfire erupts. And apparently the Haida are no doubt that the height of the the high schooler were on this area in the vicinity where Mohammed says and you know, within a short time, they were most of them killed. They're only about 13 to 14 High slet in this canoe and 10 were killed in the fight. And yeah, 10 were killed and in a matter of minutes and reports where the 200 Shots fired. Anyway, so that's that was the battle again, this little lopsided, but this lady Eliza Griffis had a very interesting account. In her story, she talked about how the Cowichan collected the dead and buried them on a small island. Again, she's harder under stone slabs, Indian stuff, something like that. And so they put the bodies on this island under the slabs and then the settlers came out and added dirt and soil to these parents because presumably their bodies were decomposing, so they actually took loads of soil. I'm not sure if this island was graced Island, because in the account, it just says a small island in Ganges Harbor, but it could very well fit the description, but I'm not saying that these cares are all from the Heisler dead, because there's 17 cares 10 Heisler dead. And as other can see there are definitely Salish burials. So what we have here is a burial island that may have also been used to it bury the dead Hi slough in this event that took place on July 18 16th. So it was investigated, you know, the settlers wrote letters to the government. And this book came out the hNf satellite under the command of Captain freebo to prevail islands named after Mount treebo. And they can eat again, it's harder, and they were fired upon by the couch and who were in the village. And so what's interesting, they showed a lot of restraint. They didn't say, turn the fire against the village, but instead shelled some target at Walter Bay. And apparently years later, you can still find cannibals from the satellite on Walter Day. And anyway, we have accounts, I'm going to get a hold of the actual logs of the satellite to get a little more information about the incident in 1860, and the aftermath, because they did an investigation and reported on you know, they saw the bodies and so presumably buried or visited the burial site. And that could be all kinds of information in there. So So we're now in this period of 1860. We've got settlement happening on Saltspring island, but it's things are pretty going smoothly in the North and South Sudan. But in the central area, there's still a lot of tension. And we don't have a lot of data, you know, we just have these little accounts, you know, little article and the colonists will appear. One for example, in 1862. This is the HMS or the HM gumbo forward was taking a group of Haida back to escorting them through the Gulf of Georgia which was a common practice at this time period because of the fighting that was going on between the the different groups. And as was passing Ganges Harbor. The former was fired upon by Native people from a shelter. So the four were downloaded. It's guys a great game, great shot, came into the harbor and landed some boats and managed to capture the ringleaders or who they suppose was the ringleaders took them on board and they flogged them. And this kind of so this sort of tension is this dispute over the land eventually led to a war that I documented one of my books, I'm not going to get it into it. But basically, it was a six or a three month campaign waged by the colonial government to help his Royal Navy that basically broke the back of indigenous resistance in this area, and facilitated settlement because up until that period, settlement was definitely contested around here, people, the indigenous people own this land expected to be paid for the land or to have some sort of compensation, some kind of recognition. And that was never forthcoming. So there was always this tension, particularly in this community between the indigenous people and the settlers, particularly the indigenous people and the black settlers. And as some of you know, two and maybe three of them were killed in the 1860s, by indigenous people. And, and during the fighting during the short war, Richardson here, reported to the times colonists are the British colonists that the Maltese people, Indian people had threatened to shoot Saltspring settlers as they worked in their fields, and Richardson kind of disappears after this. His property gets acquired by the Tulsans. And yeah, we didn't we're not sort of really sure. But you know, it's really interesting. You know, there's always a lot of talk about the black settlers of Saltspring. But his name never comes up for some reason. George Richardson and he had a big garden down here too. Anyway, more research needed here. So anyway, just so we get this period 1860s This war has happened. Again, geez harbor here called admirals harbor turns, it was named renamed Ganges harbor around this time. There was a lot of tension around here, indigenous people kept coming here. There's a fella Hollins. He's just off the map up here. He had a he had a friendship here. And then he relocated and took over this preemption cushions, I believe, or this one. And he wrote a letter in 1869, where he was talking about his family being sought out, they're walking here on the beach, and they noticed a canoe out of there in the harbor. And then the canoe, you know, puff of smoke, and then a ball lands a few yards next to them. So he and he writes in his letter, which I have a copy here, if 1869 how dangerous it was, and that

Unknown Speaker 37:14
he wants the Indians, he goes to the Indians making driven out of the bay entirely. And our lives and property are not safe for a moment. And all the settlers and myself are quite uneasy and unsettled. several murders having been committed over the last few years, of course, referring to the black settlers who were suffering the brunt of that

Unknown Speaker 37:36
those attacks.

Unknown Speaker 37:39
So, and a ship was sending to investigate. So this is kind of an interesting period. So in the indigenous people kept coming here. This is a map done by Wilson and he's got a very interesting narrative here. He talks about interviewing a settler who says, you know, 30 years ago 8500 Indians sticking clams around here. So this is an 18 7500 Native people digging clams on the properties of Scott and Crofton and Scoble soil in this area. They were accessing for accessing the rich resources of clams. And he also talked about the the extensive minutes and but as time wore on, as a settlements on the island grew, indigenous people were slowly alienated from their traditional areas. But people used to come into Ganges harbor into the 20s and 30s. You know, for herring, and clams. Yeah, up until the mid 20th century. Ganges Oh, I don't know why. So, of course, this is Ganges is named after the HMS Ganges. But this ship was only here for three years 1857 1860. And I don't think it left us final. Anyway, just a little anecdote I offer. So that's about the only connection we have to this ship is the name of like a backup to that.

Unknown Speaker 39:12
So it's interesting, the elders always talk about, you know, the white man never lived on Saltspring you know, Saltspring was basically unoccupied. And by, you know, just talking about a few huge farms, and then they always refer to this 1906 When the store came, when the store came to Salt Spring Island, that's when everything changed. The population just went, you know, from the indigenous perspective went exponentially after the store because you know, white people like to shop at a store. And so the Indians I mean, it became a huge draw. And that's of course with the Malcolm Purvis store 1906. And when they, I believe the original store was here, and when they built the store, they there was a burial ground there and covered a lot of skeletons and burial goods and And then of course, the notes Trading Company was built a few years ago, and I can 12 and all around here are still sick deposits, most of them have cultural remains all kept by the millions. Here's a Ganges in the 1950s still hasn't hasn't changed much from the 30s. But you can still you can see the harbor here, gasoline alley, the harbor starting to be slowly filled, but still quite a quite a bit of the old town still intact there. Now, again, Jesus, you know, the show's buddy 1967 With the creation Centennial Park. And, you know, the ongoing alteration of the Ganges areas, you know, ongoing. Maybe they stopped now. But from an archaeological perspective, though, there's still a lot of the, you know, Cap sediments here are kept cultural deposits. That will turn up I mean, you know, when the Mark's work wearhouse things happening. You know, I was not surprised that there were cultural deposits Sunday there, and I expect you'll find the same thing when they rehabilitate from a call property, it's just, yeah, as long as these things are sort of controlled and mitigated. That's just the way it goes. So anyway, that's my talk about she hoped, I hope you had a little more of an idea of sort of the search for the rich history of the place. You know, we've only scratched the surface. The archaeological reports for this excavation are still in, still in the works, they're going to be available probably next year. So that'll give us more information on you know, 2000 year old components, those are 2000 year old burials here. And yeah, who knows what we'll find over the years? Anyway, so thanks for your indulgence and be happy to ask any answer any questions.

Unknown Speaker 42:13
Chris, if you have one place you would want to preserve them Jake?

Unknown Speaker 42:20
Oh, Daddy's jeez, I don't know. Well, might I say grief, I would be interesting, but that people aren't. Nobody's excavating burials these days unless it's necessary. But I think that I would either be interested in the great side of it just because I'd like to test my hypothesis about the high school burial. But unfortunately, the fella who owns that property he's been doing illegal things. Like he he went on to that site and began altering the property without any monitoring without any surveillance. And as a result, you know, he he gathered a lot of soil there. And as I'm an archaeologist, I know you can you can have like a 13 centimeters of soil. It's a heck of a lot of information in that soil. Soil is a is an artifact so it's gonna move to Senate soil, filthy anyway. So I would exclude it here. But anyway, again, is I mean, this the woman I talked to who is investigating the Mark's work wearhouse site, she figured this they only found two grades of quite a large cemetery. She thinks Marple cemetery. This could be 1500 to 2020 500 years old. Mostly end of the sidewalk and road she fix so that would be very interesting placed

Unknown Speaker 43:44
on that little center in the triangle there

Unknown Speaker 43:53
where Oh, up here, come down to the center. Yeah. the very center. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 44:02
I know you're in the water. Oh, right. Here and here. Oh, yeah. That's the center.

Unknown Speaker 44:09
Building. Yeah. Over further over here to your left last way. Yeah. Yeah, that's still not correct. Okay. A little further. Little Shop Yeah. Store Yeah, remember that one? Later. Financial place. Yep. Yep.

Unknown Speaker 44:39
Fingers right.

Unknown Speaker 44:40
If you come down, come down. Yeah. White building. Yeah. That was soft, bring out of trade companies. Cool. People have their horses and buggies Nice. Piece of the roof of the locating.

Unknown Speaker 45:02
Yeah. On the right here. Yep.

Unknown Speaker 45:07
And then if you go across the water and then go over and over that used to be bakery next door to that running after

Unknown Speaker 45:22
that's cool. Identify all these

Unknown Speaker 45:31
games and that's for us to move along because of the fact that it was Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 45:42
what a place I know I just saw that the last and the last bit of that. Yeah, totally. Thanks. Very strong again I could walk away from the room really coming in Yeah, that could relate to that Squamish or that Spanish name about the southwesterly or southeasterly? Yeah. She hot. Yes. The I don't know. I asked elders. I took a whole community course and asked my teacher and she wasn't sure. She hears it said something to do with a camp, like the stuff that sounds like a houses or something. And she called could relate to that. Can you pass it? Yeah, this is one of these ancient, really old names. Because you know, indigenous language has also changed over time to have some words that is so old. We don't know the meaning. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 46:39
Many years ago, they were thinking surrounding a topic. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Did they find bones there?

Unknown Speaker 46:46
They did. Yeah, what happens? They are actually put all over the market to fertilize the roses. That's when it counted. You know, that was back in the 20s. You know, and in those days, you know, people that's interesting about the burial things, because whenever people used to find burial grounds, like here at Harbor house down in COVID Harbor, they always said I was assigned to battle. There's some battle here really is a burial ground. Where, you know, you find dead people. Well, not in those days. Now. It's in fact, it's still you know, being contested. That's the issue. We have a great violent, you know, is it a cemetery or not? This is where you get into social cultural differences. One person cemeteries and another person's but you know, I think, I think cemeteries and cemetery. I can tell.

Unknown Speaker 47:46
1800s use the word store. I heard somewhere along the line that he was up the tree during the battle. Well, I asked him at the start and said, No. No way.

Unknown Speaker 48:02
Oh, I know. They were probably watching it from their place or, you know, climbed up a tree. I mean, they were living up here where they? Yeah, interesting. That's a good one. Okay, who else? What about the

Unknown Speaker 48:26
five people ferry? The Mark's work wearhouse sites? Yes. My understanding is they were reinterred on the islands. And we're all of the burial sites reinjured with. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 48:46
That's sort of Yeah, that's sort of the practice these days. But you know, they're all photographed and it's me You know, I Yeah, artifacts to me the ark, the information is important thing about the artifacts. So once we have all that was the original owners.

Unknown Speaker 49:05
Definitely. Oh, yeah. Any studies about the Salt Springs?

Unknown Speaker 49:13
In just a little, here's a huge site and well, actually, that's a very interesting place like where you live up to Hudson point. That could be one of the largest Marple era villages in the Gulf Islands. Yeah, like a kilometer long. And to some extent, I mean, there's a lot of houses there, but a lot again, it's like a lot of these mirrors, you know, the houses are built, and the lawns in Arabic, this the subsurface means are there, they're just kept. So yeah, I'm, I'm gonna work on that when I finish my PhD. I focus more on Saltspring I cannot be too distracted. Okay, well, thanks very much.