154 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. ix. 



In March 1861, the House of Assembly of Vancouver Island 

 prepared a memorial, recapitulating the means adopted by the 

 Hudson Bay Company to extinguish the Indian title, stating 

 that the Indians of the Island have a strong sense of property in 

 land, and that regions then being settled still belonged to the 

 natives. It was feared that bad feeling would arise between the 

 races ; but the Colony, being unable to raise £3,000, which 

 would be necessary to purchase the rights of the Indians, asked 

 the Home Government to advance this sum, which was afterwards 

 to be repaid by the sale of public lands. The Secretary of State 

 for the Colonies, however, though ready enough to oflfer good 

 advice, as we have seen, promptly answers this communication in 

 a curt note, stating that the affair being purely a colonial 

 matter, Her Majesty's Government could not undertake to supply 

 any money. 



In a voluminous correspondence, from different sources, ex- 

 tending from 1861 up to the date of the Confederation, it would 

 seem that the idea of recoornizins; the Indian title to the whole 

 mainland country never appears to have occurred to the authori- 

 ties ; but that the method adopted was to ask the Indians of any 

 particular locality what plot of land they wished to possess, and 

 to make this reserve for them. It generally appears that all the 

 land asked for was given, and sometimes even more than requested, 

 the Governor indeed expressly directing that when a larger area 

 was requisite to the support of the Indians, it should at once be 

 allotted to them. In most cases the natives seem to have been 

 satisfied with this arrangement, thousrh we discover that certain 

 priests, missionaries among them, were already advising the In- 

 dians to make larger claims for land. It is evident, in fact, that 

 at this time — to quote from a report by T. W. Trutch, as Chief 

 Commissionner of Lands and Works in 1867, which, though 

 referring specially to the lower part of the Fraser, may be taken 

 as representing the state of affairs over the whole interior : — '' The 

 subject of reserving land for the Indians does not appear to have 

 been dealt with on any established system during Sir James 

 Doudas's administration. The rights of the Indians to hold 

 lands were totally undefined, and the whole matter seems to have 

 been kept in abeyance, although the land proclamations specially 

 withheld from pre-emption all Indian reserves or settlements. 

 No reserves of lands specially for Indian purposes were made by 

 official notice in the Gazette^ and those Indian reserves which 



