Topic
Scroll through hundreds of years of human drama along BC's Central Coast. Part of this week's series.
Captain George Vancouver's ship Discovery ran aground in Queen Charlotte Strait in August 1792. Artist unknown, from Vancouver: A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World, 1801 edition.
[Editor's note: Earlier this year, a special team of Tyee Solutions Society reporters had the chance to spend some time on B.C's Central Coast. This is their latest report. Scroll down to see the visual timeline. See all of their reports here.]
To a first-time visitor, B.C.'s Central Coast may seem "wild" and "pristine." Really, it is neither. The coast is the longest-inhabited part of the continent -- with a deep and often tumultuous past.
Some 12,000 years in the past, a mere geological moment ago, most of the coast was buried beneath hundreds of metres of ice that filled what today are river valleys rich in forests and wildlife, scraping them bare to their rock. The landscape they left behind would have been post-apocalyptic in appearance.
As Jude Isabella reported earlier in this special series of reports, archaeological evidence is confirming that soon after those ice sheets receded, people arrived, settling the coast even before cedar forests rose from the bracken and shrubs that found the first foothold or the retreating glaciers re-opened rivers to salmon. Over time, those people harvested, managed and modified their surroundings "from mountain top to sea-floor," developing a resilient resource-based economy that endured for ten millennia.
That balance began to change in the late 18th century. Invisible and undetected, pathogens likely borne on trade goods or carried by asymptomatic traders themselves unleashed the first of what would prove to be several waves of deadly plague -- including but probably not limited to smallpox -- which devastated river and coastal communities.
In 1775, the first Europeans to visit the coast of what would become British Columbia were Spanish explorers led by Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra who reached the site of present-day Sitka, Alaska. But it was the English, who arrived a few year's later under Captain George Vancouver, who would stay to make the coast and eventually the interior a colony of the British Crown.
In 1843, Hudson Bay Company fur-trader James Douglas established a trading post at the southern tip of the coast's biggest island, naming it Fort Victoria after the newly crowned Queen. Twenty-eight years later, it became the capital of the new Canadian province of British Columbia.
To follow more of the dramatic history of B.C.'s enduring Central Coast, scroll through time, starting here:
Yesterday's "BC's Enduring Central Coast" series included a story about exciting finds from archaeological digs showing ancient human settlement going back 10,000 years, and a video explaining the ancient technique of capturing salmon in stone fish traps.
Tomorrow: First Nations guard their history and defend their claim to the coast.
The entire multi-part series is collected here as each part is published this week. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Read more: Aboriginal Affairs, Rights + Justice, Environment
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snert
28 weeks ago
The order may have seemed fateful at the time.
"With smallpox racing through Victoria, chief medical officer Dr. John Helmcken orders hundreds of visiting natives back to their homes on the BC coast and in the interior. The decision spreads the infection and 100,000 people died in the plague that ensues."
The end result would have, more than likely, been the same eventually.
Bob Watts
28 weeks ago
The Ships.
I live on Northern Vancouver Island and overlook the Ocean, I love watching the ships go by, but now I know they are dumping their SHIT as they go by, great!
Boy that blew that picture all to hell.
Harper can take away the Coast Guard, but can't tell ships to safely dump their waste.
Our leaders are such a waste of skin!
Smallpox, as I've heard good church men gave the infected blankets of the dead to other first nations up the coast, thus spreading death faster. Did we even know it was us that carried smallpox.
Did you know we took back venereal disease from contact with the natives in central America that killed millions in Europe and beyond, that will teach us.
Great subject and well written.
PS: First Nations people are fantastic, I'm so glad I live here. I have no idea, Why people live in the city.
Wal-mart is just a 3 hour drive south to Campbell River and the big box stores are located on First Nations Land, LOL.
skeletor
28 weeks ago
mainlaners
The broughton archipelago is one of the most magnificent places on earth. From pre-contact through slight contact and the waves of white folk fishing and hand logging, what an amazing history.
Recommend reading: heart of the rainforest by billy proctor and Alexandra Morton, the curve of time by Blanchet, Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nudist Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound by Grant Lawrence
Amor de Cosmos
28 weeks ago
Snert
What a disgusting comment.
In 1780-81, an even larger smallpox epidemic lead to the deaths of up to 80% of many First Nations from the prairies to the Kootenays and throughout the whole of the Columbia River system. The best evidence indicates that it actually spread up the Columbia and then through the mountains to the prairies.
This small-pox epidemic did not affect most of the West Coast Vancouver Island First Nations.
The more recent epidemic you comment on was started by a white person and eventually infected a few others in Victoria. The available documentation from the time (and yes, I have gone through the archives)indicates that persons (including possibly Helmken) actually instructed the First Nations people to take their small-pox scabs and rub them onto the skin of others in order to stop the disease. The sickness spread like wildfire. They then, eventually, literally ordered the Northen Natives home, in the midst of their sickness, up the whole coast guided by gunship and under threat of death.
Based on history, there is no evidence to suggest, as you do, that the Coastal First Nations all the way to Haida Gwaii would have been almost wiped out by that epidemic if this sequence of events did not occur.
SteveA
28 weeks ago
Not so Amor
May I suggest you read a well researched forensic study of the history of smallpox in the Americas by Elizabeth Fenn. While your at it check out the ship journal of Capt. Vancouver, who noted the local population of natives to have been victims of a great plague a generation previous to his arrival.
The early practice of introducing small amounts of a dangerous pathogen to the human body is in fact a primitive method of innoculation. Bear in mind this was decades before the discovery of what a "germ" is.
Your blaming the outbreak of 1862 on a "white" person is blatent racist hate propoganda.
SteveA
28 weeks ago
Timeline in article - Amor
Check the article as it accuratly depicts a timeline (1782) that will help you understand the history of coastal events.
snert
27 weeks ago
Amor de Cosmos
I think it odd that you find my comment disgusting. It's a non judgmental observation, that's all.
My point (and that is based in history) is that once small pox enters an area it will spread. The only effective way to stop the spread was to invoke quarantine. That, however, is no guarantee that it would not come back sooner or later. I.E. The coastal first nations would probably have been decimated later rather than sooner.
What's disgusting about that?
Also, there's not much point in continually rehashing this incident because, to the best of my knowledge, the disease was never spread maliciously and those that spread it were usually victims themselves.
With the incredible clarity of 20-20 hindsight maybe some of the tragedy could have been avoided so let me know when you get your time travelling device working and we can go back and try to fix things otherwise, get over it.