G ender, P lace and C ulture , V ol. 5 , N o. 2 , p p. 1 4 1 ± 1 5 8 , 1 9 9 8
C ontesting P atriarchies: N lha7 pam ux and S tl’atl’im x
w om en and colonialism in nineteenth- century B ritish
C olum b ia
N AD IN E SCHUUR MA N, U niversity of B ritish C olum b ia, C anad a
A BSTRACT
I n the second half of the nineteenth century , a num b er of F irst N ations (N ative) w om en
in the southern interior of B ritish C olum b ia b egan to live w ith and m arry w hite settlers and gold m iners.
D em ographic shifts in b oth w hite and N ative pop ula tions, paired w ith the p recedent of liaisons b etw een
fur traders and N ative w om en, co ntrib uted to the m ob ility of N ative w om en. T heir dep arture from
indigenous com m unities w as, how ever, b itterly contested b y N ative m en as w ell as b y w hite politicians
w ho sought to p rotect `racial purity’ in the province. D espite opp osition, N ative w om en pursued this
historically constituted p ossib ility of living w ithin an alternative patriarchy . B y the late 1 8 9 0 s, w aves
of B ritish im m igration b rought y oung, single, w hite w om en to the province and, in a political clim ate
increasingly hostile to `m iscegenation’, m ale settlers b egan to m arry w hite w ives instead. T hus, ironically ,
discurs ive and dem ographic pressures again closed the w indow through w hich N ative w om en had travelled
into a different culture. D raw ing on colonial records and inference s, this article analy ses historical
com ponents of agency over several generations of N ative w om en. I n the process, it exam ines w ay s in w hich
relations of pow er shifted along the axes of race and gender over 3 0 y ears of colonialism in B ritish
C olum b ia.
W e were m arked by the seasonal body of earth, by the terrible m igrations of
people, by the swift turn of a century, verging on change never before
experienced on this greening planet. (Le Sueur, cited in Sm iley, 1991; p. 1)
No subject is its ow n point of departure. (Butler, 1992; p. 9)
In colonial Canada, interactions between Native groups and European colonists were
geographically and culturally varied. In particular, the decisions that First Nations
w om en m ade in positioning them selves between indigenous and colonial cultures differed
remarkably over space and time. Using archival evidence from British Columbia,
Canada, this article follow s the trail of Native wom en in the of®cial record as they
responded to incom ing European settlement in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
I argue that discursive and dem ographic pressures created a conte xt for First Nations
w om en to leave their own com m unities to live with European settlers. The w indow
through which Native women travelled between these distinct, culturally de®ned patriarchal family structures w as later closed as a virulent discourse of racial purity gripped the
province.
C o rrespondence: N adine Schuurm an, Departm ent of G eograp hy, University of British C olum bia, 217±1984 W est
M all, Van couver, B ritish C olu m bia C an ad a, V6T 1Z 2.
0966-36 9X /98/020141- 18 $7.00
Ó1998C arfax Publishing Ltd
141
142
N . S chuurm an
I begin this article by establishing a context for the m ovement of women from two
N ative tribes across racial and cultural boundaries to live with and marry white settlers.
To this end, I provide a sketch of characteristics of British colonialism and the nascent
Canadian state which affected the political geography of early British Colum bia. A
discussion of possible m otivations for the exodus of women from traditional com munities
follow s. In the latter half of the article, I exam ine responses of white politicians to a
perceived incursion of Indian blood into European settler society. Their attempts to
create a legal and political environm ent inhospitable to `m iscegenation’ are assessed in
the con text of developing puritanical ideologies of racial purity in British Columbia. I
conclude with a discussion of the means by w hich colonial discourses of racial purity,
despite their effect in limiting these liaisons, were also subverted by them.
H istoriograp hy a nd the Ad vent of C olonialism
M arriage aÁ la facË on de pay s between Native women and fur traders was a com mon
occurrence across eastern Canada and Northe rn British Colum bia w ell into the nineteenth century (Brow n, 1980; Van K irk, 1980). Despite the prevalence of this practice,
the people of the N lha7pam ux and Stl’atl’imx tribes, on w hom this study focuses, were
an exception to the pattern. Archival evidence does not link women from their
com m unities to m en involved in the fur trade. Although it is likely that the Nlha7pam ux
and Stl’atl’im x had knowledge of the fur trade, their geographic situation along the
Fraser R iver, marginal to the fur trading nexus of British Colum bia’s interior, limited
their participation in its social practices. (See Fig. 1.)
In the mid-nineteenth century, at the end of the fur trade, a num ber of Nlha7pam ux
and Stl’atl’im x wom en suddenly left their villages along the Fraser River to live with
w hite men. In 1878, as Indian Reserve Comm issioner Gilbert Malcolm Sproat travelled
through the southern interior of the provin ce, he `noticed the absence of a fair proportion
of young women’ (Sproat, 1878). This article explores the particular historical
con®gurations which conspired to propel a signi®cant num ber of indigenous wom en
from the familiarity of their lives into a startlingly foreign cultural realm . It remains
dif®cult to determine conclusively why these women chose to leave, especially given the
paucity of historical references to Native wom en in British Colum bia. Com pounding this
archival lacuna is an absence of academ ic w riting which considers First Nations women.
D espite considerable evidence that Native wom en responded differently than men to
early colonialism, research in British Colum bia has been alm ost exclusively focused on
m ale experiences (Fisher, 1977; Tennant, 1990; Galois, 1993± 94; H arris, 1997).
There is also a time±space consideration which in¯uences the interpretation of Native
experiences of colonialism in British Colum bia. The Cordillera, separating British
Columbia from eastern Canada, remained an immense physical and psychological
barrier to exploration and settlement. Thus, while QueÂbec was ®rst explored in the
sixteenth century, it was not until 1793 that Alexander M ackenzie crossed the Rocky
M ountains in his capacity as an employee of the North W est Com pany. The fur trade
did not actually com mence in British Columbia until 1785, almost 200 years later than
in territories to the east. Governance of the territory was the domain of the Hudsons Bay
Com pany until 1858 when, months after gold was found, the mainland was hastily
incorporated into British Colum bia. Confederation with Canada follow ed in 1871.
Processes of colonialism were greatly contra cted in British Columbia. Spread over 300
years in eastern Canada, the colonial experience w as com pressed into less than 50 years
C olonialism in N ineteenth- century B ritish C olum b ia
143
in British Colum bia. As a result, many administrative and legal record s kept by other
such governm ents w ere simply not collected. The ®rst governm ent census, for instance,
w as not conducted until 1881. The energies of the British, and later, Canadian
governm ents w ere, instead, directed at making N ative land available to an in¯ux of
m iners and settlers as quickly as possible.
In the Fraser ca nyon , hom e to the N lha7pam ux and Stl’atl’im x peoples,
the absence of E uro pean con tact during the fur trade m eant that colon ialism, w hen
it arrived, w as an intense pro cess. In 18 58, tho usands of m en charged no rth alon g
the Fraser R iver, precipitating the establishm ent of colon ial adm inistration over a
people and territo ry w hich had retained an intact lifeworld, largely devoid of European in¯uence, w ell into the nineteenth centu ry (H aberm as, 1984 ). U nlike area s
east of the C ordillera m ountains, there are relatively few anthro pological accou nts
of the Fraser canyon in the nineteenth centu ry (H ayden, 1992 ). O nly tw o
nineteenth-centu ry anthro polo gists, Franz Boas and Jam es T eit, w orked in the
pro vince and only T eit spent tim e am on g the N lha7pam ux and Stl’atl’im x peoples.
T eit, w ho m arried an N lha7pam ux w om an and lived in the area for several decades,
is thought to be one of the early ethn ographers m ost sensitive to w om en’s issues.
H is observations, how ever, tend ed to con cern very speci®c projects such as basketm aking and blanket-w eaving. H e does not prov ide a detailed ethnographic account of
the sociocultural relations in N lha7p am ux and S tl’atl’im x societies, no r a gend er
analysis.
Before con tact, N ative wom en con tributed to the collection of an abundant
foo d supply pro vided by salm on . W om en’s w ork m ay have increased as m issionaries,
and later, Ind ian agents encou raged N ative peoples to turn to sedentary agriculture.
G iven the roc ky, sloping terraces alon g the Fraser R iver as w ell as the attendant
dif®culties of irrigation, farm ing involved on erou s w ork. Post-con tact evidence suggests
that the daily ro utines of N ative w om en involved m uch physical labou r. T he m inutes
of a m eeting held by the N lha7pam ux council in Lytton in July of 1879 record a
resolu tion that `[t]he w om en are not to w ork so m uch in the ®elds as has been the
case hitherto, w hen the m en w ere doing noth ing. T he w om en are to look m ore
after the hou ses’ (Sproa t, 1879 ). T he resolu tion prov ides som e insight into the burden
of w om en’s w ork, but it is dif®cult to establish whether their load was increa sed in
the w ake of con tact w ith E uropeans. G ilbert M alcolm S pro at, an Ind ian Com m issioner
jointly appointed by the prov incial and federal governm ents, recorded the notes of
the m eeting and volunteered that `[t]he w om en do so m uch w ork that, cou ld it
be found w ho was the w ife, I think she sho uld join in any transference of cultivated land from Indian to Ind ian’ (Sproat, 18 79). T ranscripts from a R oyal
C om m ission on Ind ian A ffairs, 40 years later, con tained references to w om en clearing
®elds and tilling land (T ranscripts of the R oyal C om m ission, 19 14 ). W hile scarce,
docum entation suggests that N ative W om en w ork ed very hard in the early years of
colo nialism.
Though relatively little has been written about the quotidian life of Nlha7pamux and
Stl’atl’im x women before colonialism, archival records suggest they lived in a polygam ous society (Sproat, 1878). Slavery, a product of warfare, was also com mon. James Teit
w rites that the Nlha7pamux and Stl’atl’imx had separate histories w hich included `a long
series of wars ¼ in w hich the latter had been great sufferers’ (Teit, 1975a; pp. 410± 412).
Teit record s that one Nlha7pamux chief travelled across the country buying up
Stl’atl’im x slaves to use as a bargaining tool. Peace between these tw o nations was
achieved just prior to the gold rush of 1858.
144
N . S chuurm an
F IG . 1. N lha7pam ux an d Stl’atl’imx Territory, circa 1885.
The gold rush effectively ended traditional life in the canyon. H ordes of miners, many
of them veterans of the Californ ia rush of 1849, were the ®rst whites that many Native
people in the Fraser canyon encountered. The gold rush was the harbinger of an intense
process of colonialism.
C olonialism in N ineteenth- century B ritish C olum b ia
145
T A BLE I. C ensu s of B ritish C olum bia Indians,
1876± 77 conducted by G eorge B lenkinsop
Trib e
C ooks Ferry
N icom en
Lytton
K anaka Flat
Booth royd
Right Ban k Indian Res.
Boston Bar
M ales
Fem ales
57
43
554
32
81
115
88
48
28
480
29
76
76
77
Sou rce: Public A rchives of C anada (RG 88).
N lha 7p am ux and Stl’a tl’im x W o m en in a M a elstrom of C han ge
By the 1860s, Native tribes along the Fraser River were faced with massive population
losses as a result of epidem ics. This was com pounded by w ar with gold miners and the
beginnings of what would be massive British settlement. For Native women these changes
deepened awareness of cultural, econom ic and political differences between patriarchies.
Some First Nations w omen responded to these changes by leaving their kinship groups
to live with and m arry European men. W hile the vast majority of archival references and
historical accounts describe wars and treaties between whites and Natives, Indian wom en
`lived with white m en, translated their words and bore their children’ (Kidwell, 1992;
p. 97). These relationships ultim ately drew Native societies m ore rapidly into the w eave
of colonial rule.
The number of women who left their kinship groups to live with settlers varied
between com munities. G eorge Blenkinsop, a ®eld assistant to the Indian Reserve
Com mission, con ducted a census of Indian people in each village visited by the
Com mission between 1876 and 1878. This document is the best indicator of the male
to female ratios am ong Nlha7pamux and Stl’atl’imx. In every Nlha7pamux village, there
w ere fewer women than men and in most com m unities, the difference was 10±15% (see
Table I).
A sm aller Oblate missionary census from 1876, conducted in Stl’atl’imx territory,
slightly north of the Fraser canyon, shows that of 13 bands enumerated, nine had fewer
w om en than m en; in ®ve com munities there were 20% fewer w omen; and in three
bands, there were 45% fewer females (Oblate census or `Recapitulation’, Public Archives
of Canada, 1876). Another Oblate census conducted in 1874 in the Shuswap, west of the
Fraser River, show s a similar pattern, with fewer women than men in ®ve of six
com m unities enumerated. Am ong one tribe there were 115 men but only 64 wom en
(G randidier, 1874). These ®gures clearly indicate a signi®cant exodus of women from
N ative com munities.
The ®rst government census gathered in 1881 lists the population of the province as
50,387 , with Native rolls at 26,299 (Harris, 1997). Though indigenous peoples were
underenum erated, the rolls show a close ratio between m en (50.4% ) and women (49.6% ).
The close male to female ratio is misleading for two reasons. First, the ratios represent
the province as a whole while it was primarily Native wom en from the southern interior
of the province who left to live with w hite settlers. Thus, numbers from the densely
populated Paci®c coast tend to balance out the skewed male to fem ale ratios of the
southern interior. The ®gures are deceptive for a second critical reason: Native wom en
146
N . S chuurm an
living w ith white m en were not enumerated as `Indian’. R esearchers can only assess the
ethnicity of indigenous women by paying close attention to indicators such as census
entries which register a wom an’s birthplace as `British Colum bia’ or which record on ly
a ®rst name. M any of the European men enumerated in 1881 also had several children
living in their household without a form al spouse being listed. W hat is striking, however,
is the absence of academic attention paid to these disparities despite arch ival references
w hich corrobo rate the phenom enon.
Census data tell us little about the reasons women left their traditional kinship groups
to live w ith settlers. D espite the mediating role First Nations women may have played
between their two societies, their motives were partly `determined by their own cultures’
(K idwell, 1992; p. 98). D iscussion of cultural factors which may have in¯uenced the
departure of these w omen are addressed in the follow ing section.
R efusing Extinctio n
Fear of European disease was one im petus for women to live with w hite men who
exhibited such inexplicable immunity to sicknesses which had devastated Native villages.
Contracted from whites and spread among Native people who visited the Fraser canyon ,
sm allpox and measles had already had considerable adverse effect alon g the Fraser
canyon by the arrival of the gold rush. James Teit described the im pact of on e smallpox
epidemic:
it m ust have carried off from one-fou rth to one-third of the tribe. In many
cases the Indians became panic stricken, and ¯ed to the mountains for safety.
N um bers of them dropped dead along the trail; and their bodies were buried,
or their bones gathered up, a considerable time afterwards. (Teit, 1975b;
p. 175)
O ther diseases to w hich Native people had little im munity w ere brought by gold miners
and early settlers. Epidemics and other diseases com bined to reduce the Native
population of British Columbia by as much as 90% in some areas (H arris, 1997; p. 30).
D ecreases in population com bined with acute social change, most of which devalued
N ative knowledge, corrobo rated the belief of inevitable N ative demise held by m any.
The premise of Native extinction was internalised by Native people. Its effects were
expressed by SEmali’tsa, an N lha7pam ux woman:
The Indians need not trouble about their lands or anything else, for since the
w hites came we have been dying off steadily, and before long there will be no
Indians left, and the whites will have everything to themselves. (SEmali’tsa
cited by T eit, 1975: section 114)
Teit, in describing Nlha7pamux people, noted that `they are not as proud-spirited as they
w ere, nor do they take as much interest in games, athletic exercises, and fun, as form erly.
D isease and the know ledge that they are doom ed to extinction are the chief causes for
this: while change of pursuits, and the acquirem ent of new ideas, also have their effect’
(Teit, 1975b ; pp. 180± 81).
Am ong white settlers, there was an analogous conviction that Native populations were
destined to disappear. It reinforced the colonial vision of British Columbia as an em pty
land waiting to be settled. Paul Tenant expressed the stance of E uropeans in British
Columbia at the end of the nineteenth century:
C olonialism in N ineteenth- century B ritish C olum b ia
147
[T]hey believed the white m yth that Indians had been prim itive peoples
w ithout land ow nership, and they accepted the white doctrin e that extension
of British sovereignty had transform ed an empty land into unencumbered
crow n land. In the provincial view, the surviving Indians w ere mere remnants
of an irrelevant past with neither the right nor the m eans to in¯uence their ow n
unhappy future. (Tenant, 1990; p. 52)
D isease and a belief in extinction were m anifestations of accelerated and adverse social
change.
The attrition of N ative populations by disease was exacerbated by an exodus of
N lha7pam ux and Stl’atl’imx women from traditional com m unities. This was recorded as
a lowered birth rate by of®cials from the Departm ent of Indian Affairs (D IA ) and
attributed to sterility. Teit, who collected dem ographic statistics to corrobo rate his
ethnographic research, con tested this explanation.
M any suppose that the decrease am ong Indian tribes in general is chie¯y due
to the dying-off of the old people and to the sterility of the women. M y
observations lead me to a different conclu sion, at least regarding the Upper
Thom pson Indians. There are com paratively few sterile wom en am ong them.
(Teit, 1975, p. 176)
Though Teit provided statistics to indicate that few married women were sterile, he did
not pursue the matter. Lowered birth rates w ere, I con tend, due to female absence rather
than sterility. By leaving Native com munities, women could travel out of cultures slated
for extinction.
B etw een P atria rchies
M igration into white society was one way Native women could potentially survive the
dread of disease as well as possibly perceived limitations of a com m unity life based on
kinship groups. The exodus began as the ®rst miners started up the Fraser R iver. In
1858, a troop of miners near Lytton w ere warned by a Native woman of danger. Among
them, Edward Stout later recollected the incident:
W hile we were on the Thom pson [river], one good m orning , a klootchm an
[derogatory name for an Indian woman] came along and told us that the
indians had m assacred a number of whites dow n below and w arned us to get
out of the country and they w ere com ing after us. She w as in love with one
of our men and was friendly to us for that reason. A s soon as the klootchm an
told us about the m assacre we gathered our blankets and a little grub and
started down for China Bar. (Stout, 1908)
This woman intervened on behalf of the miners at the expense of her own tribesmen.
H er action was probably an expression of her own cultural circumstances, but these are
dif®cult to glim pse from the recollections of this miner. Later references are more
explicit.
In M arch of 1875, chiefs from the southern interior of British Columbia presented a
petition to Indian agent J. W . Vowell (Chiefs, 1875). The petition stated a grievance
concerning the ¯ight of women from Native com m unities to the hom es of white m en and
began:
Sir, W e the undersigned chiefs of the Shuswap D istrict, hum bly beg to lay
148
N . S chuurm an
before you a grievance w hich is of long standing, and which is becom ing very
hard to bear.
Lately a lawfully married woman, who is a m other, for som e cause of
dissatisfaction left her husband and child, and at K am loops unknow n to her
friends went to a white m an’s house, where she remained concealed, the door
being locked, at length she w as discovered by her friends to whom she refused
to open the door. (Chiefs, 1875)
The petition was turned over to the Indian Com missioner for the Province, w ho sent it
to Ottawa with a mem o, referring to the m any `cases where Indian m arried wom en
desert their families and take up residence with whitemen’ (Powell, 1875).
The chiefs had requested that the (D IA) appoint a local Indian agent to prevent
w om en from leaving their com munities and to aid in securing their return should they
¯ee to white settlements. A justi®cation was offered by the chiefs:
W e have the right to seize our cattle wherever we ®nd it, and if in possession
of others, we can get a warrant and have the unjust detainer punished, and our
cattle returned to us. (Chiefs, 1875)
Indian Comm issioner Powell w as not inimical to the principle of the request, but rather
felt that land allocation was of higher priority than the `disappearance’ of Native women:
`[t]he subject of the appointm ent of local agents to look after and prote ct their interests
¼ is also under consideration of the govt [sic] but it is not likely that any local agent will
be appointed until the dif®culties connected with the land question are disposed of’
(Powell, 1875). The chiefs were disturbed that they were afforded so little protection
under the law:
N ow our fam ilies, the peace of our hom es, the sacred tie of marriage, all that
is far dearer to us, and the law ought to protect it, and if it does not as in the
above m entioned case, we will protect ourselves, no matter what may be the
consequences of our action. (Chiefs, 1875)
Though they had resigned them selves to the political and material borders of the reserve
and the laws which governed property and cattle, the chiefs refused to accept the ¯ight
of Native wom en. Ideas of property introduced by white society com bined with extant
N ative practices m ay have contrib uted to lim iting the agency of N ative wom en, while
m aking white patriarchy seem m ore attractive.
Native wom en who lived with European settlers may also have been motivated by
cultural changes in their com m unities as missionaries gained in¯uence. The petition,
referred to above, w as drawn up by the Oblate priest, Father Grandidier, on behalf of
the chiefs. W ith the arrival of the O blates, in the middle of the nineteenth century,
technologies of pow er were contrived to regulate N ative bodies. Oblate Fathers im posed
an intense disciplinary regime within their Native jurisdictions (Stewart, 1997). The body
w as the focus of their regulatory system. W omen’s bodies w ere the most con strained.
N ative women living in Catholic m issionary districts, which included many
Stl’atl’im x com m unities, were ®rm ly placed `under parental or spousal control [for]
the austere management of the visibility of the Native body’ (Stewart, 1997; p. 27).
W omen’s bodies had been deemed the site of sin. W hile these measures found some
support amongst the Chiefs, the subsequent ¯ight of Native w om en may have represented a means of retaining som e control over the ways in which their bodies were
inscribed.
C olonialism in N ineteenth- century B ritish C olum b ia
149
Bodies, as Elizabeth Grosz lyrically expresses, `are historical, social, cultural weavings
of biology’ (Grosz, 1994; p. 12). W hite male settlers viewed wom en’s bodies throu gh a
European cultural lens. W hite women in the nineteenth century were coded as synonym ous w ith rom anticised notions of hom e and hearth. Given the overw helming ratio of
European men to women in colon ial British Columbia, the bodies of Native wom en were
seen as similar to those of white women. Biology had, for a period, more in¯uence on
possible destinies than race. However, during the same period, m issionaries w ere intent
on reinscribing the bodies of Indian women as potentially dangerous and in need of
restraint. In both instances, female sexuality was subject to greater regulatory scrutiny
than that of men. The fact that m any indigenous wom en chose to live w ith white men
can be interpreted as a protest against missionary disciplining of women’s bodies. In the
hom es of white men, women were designated a distinct biological role, but one which
could be negotiated on an individual basis.
Court cases from the period offer further glimpses into the gendered nature of
N lha7pam ux society. Trial transcripts reveal the follow ing story. Skocenecenux, a 10
year-old girl, was betrothed to a man named K esshua. H er mother K luyaklutza had
been responsible for the arrangements of the engagement but was reluctant to allow the
m arriage to proceed. Though Skocenecenux had been betrothe d for 2 years, her mother
testi®ed that she `does not think her daughter was of an age to go with any man. She
stood as high as [her m other’s] own ear’ (R. v. Kesshua, 1863). Kesshua apparently
became impatient to claim his ®ance e; Skocenecenux’s m other testi®ed that `she heard
the prisoner tw ice threaten the deced. [deceased]’. Skocenecenux was down by the river
w hen, according to her mother’s testimony, the `prisoner threatened herÐ she ran but he
overtook her & [sic] stabbed her in the backÐ then w hen she w as fallen, he stabbed her
in the breast’. O n ®rst receiving the wound, Skocenecenux fainted and was carried to her
tent by two white m en. On recovering from her faint, she said to Kluyaklutz: `M other,
I am going to die’. John Cornelius, the trial interpreter, testi®ed about the wounds: `I saw
the wounds: 1 behind and 1 in front. I thought them very seriousÐ they w ere wide and
apparently deep. They gave her some tea in m y presence & it cam e running out of the
w ounds in her back’. Skocenecenux lived for two nights and two days and died from her
w ounds at noon on the third day. The court passed a verdict of `guilty of murder,
recom mend to mercy’.
Elem ents of the gendered power relations in Nlha7pamux society are played out in
this poignant story. Skocenecenux was clearly considered property by Kesshua. This
pattern is corrob orated by an 1863 case in w hich three Native men w ere convicted for
assault against a w hite m an. A Nlha7pam ux wom an had been working for a white m an,
W illiam Boothroy d, doing som e sewing. She became attached to another w hite m an,
w ho was also workin g for Boothroy d, and w anted to stay with him. Three m en from her
com m unity arrived to reclaim her, accom panied by an `old squaw [sic]’. The latter held
the young woman while one of the men hit her. Boothr oyd intervened and was
subsequently assaulted at knifepoint by the three Native men. T he N ative m en were
convicted by the court and sentenced.
In the 1863 case, the girl herself was not nam ed, nor was she questioned by the court.
She was treated as an object in both worlds. Though the issue of w hether she had been
paid for w as not established, Boothroy d testi®ed that `white m en who have squaws living
w ith them generally make arrangements with the parents ¼ ’ (R . v. S q uascot acc essory [sic],
1863). European men com plied w ith a Native custom of paying for women, and were
thus com plicit in their treatment as property. There is, however, evidence of a
rudim entary level of protection for these women among some European men. In this
150
N . S chuurm an
instance, it is Boothro yd who steps in when K am ioush, a Native man, ®rst struck the girl
[sic]. There is, in this story, an intimation that Native women may have been in¯uenced
by the discourse of a m inimalist form of chivalry transported to this outreach of colonial
settlem ent.
Yet differences in levels of respect for women, between First Nations and European
m en, were far from universal. Many white settlers and miners regarded Native people as
`savages’ and entirely dispensable. O blate Father Grandidier, in a letter to the Indian
Superintendent of Canada, recited an incident in which a white man tried to violate an
Indian woman who was travelling with a child tied to her back. W hen he threw the
w om an to the ground, her baby was killed (Grandidier, 1879). According to the Father,
such incidents were not isolated. First Nations w om en w ere, in effect, navigating between
different subjugating practices of European and Native patriarchies and their attendant
violence.
Nlha7pamux and Stl’atl’im x wom en continued to leave their com m unities to live
w ith white m en during the 1870s and 1880s. Their departures are substantiated by the
O blate mission census of 1876, in which as many as 45% of N ative women were
unaccounted for, as well as by the federal governm ent census of 1881 (see earlier). In
1884, Meason, the Indian Agent for Lillooet, wrote to Indian Commissioner Powell that
`the practice of white men taking Indian wom en to live w ith them as temporary wives
is still prevalent in this part of my agency ¼ The Indians have com plained to m e about
this matter, and much desire that it should be stopped’ (Meason, 1884). By the 1890s,
how ever, British imm igration was in full swing and white settlers were not as likely to
m arry Indian wives.
As the window between patriarchies closed, Native w omen were often displaced.
W hite m en w ho had married First Nations women and parented their children began to
m arry `second’, white wives. Adele Perry, writing about imm igrant women in British
Columbia, noted that British wives frequently arrived at their hom estead to ®nd a Native
fam ily in place (Perry, 1995). W hile w hite w om en were astounded by a clear lack of
chastity on the part of their new husbands, Perry calls attention to the `devastating’
effects this usurping must have had on the First Nations wom en who were displaced.
U ltim ately the choice of patriarchies reverted to European m en.
D ecreased A gency: colonisation an d the d isruption of w o rlds
Though some First N ations women were able to navigate between worlds, choices for
oth er women contra cted. T hey were caught between the demands of the colonial order
and an indigenous realm where, though their place might have been subordinate, it was
understood. The precariousness of this order was particularly evident in the tensions
between political and missionary dem ands. An excerpt from the ®eld notes of Gilbert
M alcolm Sproat illustrates the effect of m issionary and state intervention on Native
w om en:
O ne old chief, with whom the m issionaries had been able to do nothin g for 20
years told m e that he was going to be a `Jesus Christ man’ now that his land
questions were settled, and as proof he forthw ith put away the ugliest of his
three wives and she follow ed me for 100 m iles to make repeated enquiries as
to the share of the chiefs land to w hich she was entitled. (Sproat, cited in
H arris, 1992)
C olonialism in N ineteenth- century B ritish C olum b ia
151
The chief had collapsed two com peting colonial systems of power: the Christian and
colonial adm inistrations. H e became (partly) monog am ous as a concession to the
m issionary and as a gesture of gratitude toward the Indian R eserve Com mission. His
third wife whom he `put away’ had fewer options. She follow ed Sproat for 100 miles
along the precipitous Fraser canyon into unfam iliar territory of the Sta:lo people to
discover w hat alternative place would be created for her by the state. Initially subordinated in her m arriage by her designation as the ugliest wife, she w as subordinated in the
second instance by Christian patriarchy w hich insisted on monogamy. She became, in a
sense, stateless, placeless and hom eless.
The third and `ugly’ wife of the chief had lim ited agency in the changed social
structures which had unhappily affected her life. Rather than being to able to m ake
choices which resulted in greater personal freedom, she was discarded by history. The
presence of the `ugly wife’ in the historical record is a rem inder that, for a signi®cant
num ber of women, the cultural and political changes associated with the settlement of
British Columbia were catastrophic.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak describes the process by which w om en were som etimes
doubly subordinated in the restructuring of worlds:
Betw een patriarchy and im perialism, subject-constitution and object-formation,
the ®gure of the woman disappears, not into a pristine nothing ness, but into a
violent shuttling w hich is the displaced ®guration of the `third-world w om an’
caught between tradition and m odernization. (Spivak, 1988, p. 306)
Caught betw een tradition and colonialism, som e Nlha7pamux and Stl’atl’im x wom en
enjoyed access to another culture; others disappeared in the violence of cultural change.
U ltim ately the white m en who colonised British Colum bia enjoyed the greatest in¯uence
over the circum stances w hich augmented the agency of some Native women.
T h e P oliticisa tion of R a ce
The historically con tingent agency of First Nations women was reviled by N ative men
and colonial authorities alike. The latter undertook a cam paign to curtail what sm all level
of N ative w om en’s empowerment colonialism had allowed. Native wom en m arrying
w hite men posed the threat of racial im purity, `miscegenation’ and hybridity, integral
issues in colonial discourse during the nineteenth century. Social and political pow ers in
British Colum bia engaged with these issues. The ultimate purpose of such debate was,
of course, to consolidate white power in a colon ial setting. Robert Y oung describes this
period in the conte xt of global colonialism:
In the nineteenth century, the very notion of a ®xed English identity was
doubtless a product of, and reaction to, the rapid change and transform ation
of both metropolitan and colonial societies which meant that, as with nationalism, such identities needed to be con structed to counter schisms, friction and
dissent. (Young, 1994, p. 4)
Based on the logic of racial classi®cation systems, colonial administrators began to fear
that `half-breeds’ w ould be better equipped than them selves to manage the exigencies of
life in the colonies. Prote cting the concept of a ®xed British identity led to concerns about
m iscegenation. Fears developed that mixed-race children m ight pose a threat to settler
populations. These were com plicated fears, both projecting images of mixed-race persons
as potentially superior and alternatively as dangerous savages. O n one hand, D arwinian
logic suggested people of mixed race, with a com bination of local adaptive skills and
152
N . S chuurm an
w hite intelligence, might be better equipped to manage the exigencies of life in the
colonie s. On the other, they were also feared as a potential crim inal element.
Between 1873 and 1884, there as a series of attempts to create legislation forbidding
m ixed-race unions. A . C. Anderson , w ho brie¯y served as Indian Com missioner for
British Columbia, spearheaded the effort. Anderson’s ®rst petition indicated the degree
of his concern.
In my private capacity, I respectfully ask the attention of the Governm ent to
the serious question of the intercourse subsisting between certain of the settlers
in the Province, and the N ative wom en. A system of concubinage is openly
carried on , unrestrained by any law. Hence a class of half-breed children is
rapidly increasing in num bers, who, under the brand of illegitimacy, and
deprived of all incentives to self-respect, will in course of tim e becom e
dangerous mem bers of the com munity. On all grounds, both of m orality and
public expediency, the interference of the G overnm ent to regulate in some way
the nature of these unions, w hich it is impossible, were it indeed politic, to
prevent, seems to be urgently called for. (A nderson, 1873)
Concerns about racial purity w eighed on Reserve Comm issioner A . C. Anderson, who
continued for a decade to write letters to both levels of governm ent seeking a legislated
end to mixed-race progeny. His legislative attempts were not successful but did gather
support from provincial mem bers of Parliament.
The marriage of Native wom en to white men resulted in children who de®ed the strict
categories of race on which political power in British Colum bia depended. These
categories were reinforced in the legal realm where N ative `wives’ were given the
designation of `concubine [ sic ]’ (Begbie, 1873). Beginning in 1873, there w as a legal effort
to pass legislation to provide for N ative partners of white men, in the event that these
m en died intestate. Despite widespread resistance to these partnerships, they continued
and thus needed to be brought under administrative control.
Proposed legislation to protect the concubine was ostensibly a benevolent gesture
tow ard N ative wives of white settlers. It did, however, reinforce the racial oth erness of
Indian w om en. Jurisdictional disputes over which level of government should legislate for
Indians resulted, but eventually the federal M inister of Justice, D oriou, passed legislation
allowing the British Colum bia governm ent to pass a bill in the courts w hich provided for
the `concubine and her issue’ when their male partner died intestate (Bernard & D oriou,
1874).
By constru cting those men who deigned to `produce issue’ with Indian w om en as a
lower class, the provin cial governm ent was able furth er to neutralise anxiety associated
w ith mixed races. Judge M atthew Begbie gave a description of these m en in the
pream ble to his ®rst sketch of the bill designed to protect their concubines.
There is in this Prov ince a large class of very useful, hardw orking but not
highly educated or re®ned set of m en who form as it were the run of the
settlers. They generally preempt land far up the country, and em ploy them selves in ¯ockraising or other agricultural pursuits: sometimes in m ining in
isolated localities, or packingÐ sometim es in a com bination of these ¼ but
generally having a log house which they consider their hom e, and generally an
Indian concubine [ sic ] whom they consider and treat in all respects as the wife
of a man in similar circles of life wod [ sic ] be considered & treated by him in
G reat Britain. There is very often issue of the concubinage. These men being
enterprising, frugal & industrious & their concubines being in m any respects
C olonialism in N ineteenth- century B ritish C olum b ia
153
`help’ more `m eet’ for them than w om en of European descent or education
w od be, live in a rude com fort, and often amass property of considerable
valueÐ from a few hundreds of dollars to $10,000 & upwards¼ . The concubines ¼ consider themselves to be and are according to the Native custom s,
lawful wives, generally. (Begbie, 1873)
Begbie’s description of this `class’ of men set them apart from the aspiring middle-class
British immigrants who ruled the province. These men were also established as a geographical
other. They lived in `isolated localities’ which were `far up the country’, remote from the
developing urban power centres of Victoria and Vancouver. By ensuring that both sides of
this interracial combination were othered, any racial threat was diminished.
The partnerships between w hite men and N ative w om en largely disappear from the
archival purview after the mid-1870s, though the issue resurfaced brie¯y in 1884. There
is a dem ographic explanation for dwindling bureaucratic interest in whether or not white
m en should have sexual intercourse with N ative women. It is linked to the m ass British
imm igration to the province w hich began in the 1880s. W hereas previously the male to
female ratio had been signi®cantly skewed, w ith white males considerably outnumbering
females, a demographic balance was slowly being achieved. The im plications of this were
®rst evident in urban areas, but gradually even white settlers in remote rural areas were
publicly discouraged from taking Native wom en as partners. W hite men no longer
needed to marry Native wom en.
In 1884, M eason, the Indian Agent for Lillooet, w rote to I. W . Powell, the Indian
Com missioner for British Columbia:
O f those who are living with Indian women since the Pioneer days and who
have raised families by themÐ I say nothing but it seems to me advisable
thatÐ with the present state of civilization in the country , and the abundance
of white and educated half-breed womenÐ such a practice should be put a stop
to in future. (Meason, 1884)
W hether these men should be allowed to make that choice and what rights should be legally
enshrined vis- Áa- vis their `concubines and their issue’ soon became a moot point. As the threat
of miscegenation faded, the residual issue was what to do with white men who had already
married Native women. Meason suggested to Powell that the situation could be recti®ed by
having the men marry the Indian women. In this way, `form’ would be maintained and the
law could maintain its familiar jurisdiction over marriage. The stigma of having chosen a
Native woman partner was, however, now pervasive. Meason wrote:
M any men have assured me that they w ould willingly m arry the Indian wom en
w ith whom they are living, and have fam ilies but that they dislike the publicity
w hich would be necessary were the ceremony perform ed by the Priest or the
G overnm ent A gent of the D istrict (Meason, 1884)
V ivid fears of m iscegenation resurfaced in Pow ell’s letter to the Superintendent G eneral
of Indian Affairs in which he expressed concern with M eason’s proposal that white men
be m arried to Native w om en by the Indian agents:
In m any instances, of which I am cognizant, Indian women who have been
concubines w ith white men have subsequently been deserted and with their
illegitimate issue com pelled to return to and become a burden upon the tribe.
Invariably, the children of such parentage grow up to be the m ost disreputable
characters. (Powell, 1884)
154
N . S chuurm an
T he last recorded reference to the topic is in a letter from Law rence V ankoughnet, the
D eputy Superintendent G eneral of Indian A ffairs. H e enclosed both M eason’s and
Pow ell’s letters and suggested that legislation be tabled proh ibiting w hite m en from
having N ative `con cubines’ but allow ing them to m arry Ind ian w om en. The letter
tactfully added that Indian agents should be granted the autho rity to perform m ixed
m arria ges so that w hite m en could be spared `stigm a’ of m ore public church cerem on ies (V ankoughnet, 188 4). It w as a sym bol that the era during w hich N ative w om en
could travel betw een cu ltures had ended. The fanatic political rh etoric abou t racial
purity of tw o decades earlier w as rep laced by a delicately w orded bureaucratic
suggestion abou t how to m itigate the m istakes m ade by early settlers w ho m arried
N ative w om en before w hiteness and Britishness w ere ®rm ly enscon ced as the hallm arks
of B ritish Colum bia.
Political efforts to legislate against m ixed-race m arriages and half-breeds were not
successful. They did, however, act as a means of disseminating a puritanical ideology of
racial purity and of a ®xed racial hierarchy along w hich Native women could never
travel to meet white men. These debates transported the beliefs of a group of m iddleclass white politicians who governed the province from the realm of the ideological to the
hegemonic. The problem , aroun d which the debate pivoted, dissipated as working-class
settlers ceased marrying Native wom en, choosing instead white British im migrant
w om en.
C o nclu sio n: deco nstructing the in¯uence o f ra cist d iscou rses
N ative societies in British Colum bia experienced catastrophic cultural change in the
latter half of the nineteenth century. First Nations struggled to adapt to a grotesquely
com pressed colon ialism marked by population decreases, im position of European law,
and pressure from Indian agents to adapt to a sedentary lifestyle. Changes w hich had
occurred over 300 years in eastern Canada were collapsed into 50 years in British
Columbia. Som e First Nations wom en sought sanctuary from the collapse of traditional
societies by living with European settlers.
A nu m ber of circu m stances con trib uted to their decisions. N lha7p am ux and
S tl’atl’im x w om en had seen their fam ilies and kinship groups decim ated by disease. A
con venient m yth of N ative extinction pervaded both N ative and w hite society.
W hite society, in the popular m ytho logy and in a very m aterial sense, appeared
m ore ro bust. T he historical fact of the m en’s arrival and presum ed interest in
N ative w ives w as a necessary com ponent of their choice. W hat rem ains is a series
of archival references w hich record a period during w hich native w om en m oved
outside of on e cultura l location to claim an altern ative identity, still as w ives under a
system of patriarch y, but in a different cultural m atrix com plicated by relations of
colo nialism.
That Native wom en had launched themselves into alternative orbits of society and
power w as bitterly con tested by N ative men and white politicians alike. Panic about
racial purity and `half-breeds’ pervaded the political and bureaucratic debate about
liaisons between indigenous wom en and white settlers. The debate dissipated as the
problem was solved by new circumstances of im migration and cumulative ideological
rants against mixed-race marriages. As British imm igration increased, settlers chose
British wives while their Native partners became expendable. Presumably Native women,
usurped by white wives, returned to their com munities of origin, their opportunity to
C olonialism in N ineteenth- century B ritish C olum b ia
155
choose patriarchies curtailed by the uneven hand of colonial settlement and a relentless
emphasis on racial purity which m arked debates about m iscegenation during the latter
half of the nineteenth century. The power to regulate social and cultural relations lay,
ultimately, with those who controlled the dom inant discourses and serves as a reminder
that `agency is always and only a political prerogative’ (Butler, 1992, p. 13). By the late
nineteenth century in British Columbia, political prerogative was ®rmly entrenched as
the dom ain of male European settlers.
To end, how ever, on this note does little to unsettle the power of colonial discourse.
It asserts the dominance of this discourse while failing to question its legitimacy. So I
w ould like to con clude by using this material to unsettle the history of colonial power,
to protest in a minor way against the narratives w hich have m arked settler society. I have
emphasised the power of discourse to recon stitute cultural opportun ities, to inscribe the
realm of the possible. If colonial discourse is effective in constituting the social, then there
is a trem endous responsibility associated with discussions of its dissemination. D espite the
establishm ent of a seemingly hegemonic colon ial rhetoric which stressed the urgency of
m aintaining racial purity, it was signi®cantly and incontrovertibly disrupted by marriages
between Indian wom en and European settlers. R ather than allowing colonial discourses
to invoke closure and to authorise the locations of Native w om en in British Columbia,
there is a political need to work oppositionally with those discourses that contrib uted to
N ative w om en’s agency. In an effort to avert what Spivak has called the com plicity
between W estern intellectual production and W estern interests (Spivak, 1988, p. 271), I
w ish to recast forays by First Nations women into European settler society in British
Columbia and colonial North A merica generally.
Indian wom en w ho m arried white m en disturbed the com position of colonial society,
m aterially and ideologically, in three ways. First, through their marriages and subsequent
children, the rhetoric of racial purity was prevented from achieving hegemonic status; it
w as relegated for perpetuity to the ideological realm where it required constant
buttressing. Efforts at the provincial and federal levels of government both to prevent and
codify `concubinage’ and `half-breed issue’ were political articulations designed to nudge
`racial purity’, alon g w ith the dangers of m iscegenation, into a hegemonic realm from
w hich they would not be interrog ated. Extant and continued liaisons between European
m en and Native women as w ell as the materiality of a generation of mixed-race children
disrupted these articulations of eugenic principles. They pushed racialised ideals incontrovertibly out of the hegem on ic realm. M ixed-race marriages and offspring were
constant rem inders of the viability of hybridity.
E ugenic ordering w as destabilised by m ixed-race unions in a secon d w ay. M ixedrace offspring were a vehicle for the insertion of Indian people into the fabric of w hite
society, one in w hich the subject w as `alm ost the sam e but not quite’ or `alm ost the
sam e but not w hite’ (Bhabha, 19 94, p. 89). H om i Bhabha coined these irreverent
rh ym es to characterise `m im icry’, a subversion of colon ialism. Based on a Lacanian
con struct in w hich the subject effects an (ob viou s) social cam ou¯age, m im icry is a
m eans of destabilising colon ial rule precisely by m eeting the requirem ents of its
discourse. B y entering into m on ogam ous relationships w ith w hite m en, N ative w om en
w ere ful®lling the entreaties of m issionaries to end polygam y as well as taking literally
the universal colo nial rh etoric of equality. M im icry exposes colo nial am b ivalenc e , w hich
B habha loo sely establishes as the slippage betw een the ostensible m essage of colon ial
discourse and its clearly lim ited application to the colon ial subject. A m bivalence, in the
B ritish Colum bia exam ple, is revealed along the seam s of legal differentiation betw een
w hites and Indians.
156
N . S chuurm an
But mim icry is both `resemblance and menace’ (Bhabha, 1994; p. 86) and for the
coloniser, it represents a `grotesquely displaced image of him self’ (Young, 1990, p. 147).
Faced with the em bodim ent of proselytised E uropean and Christian ideals in the
m arriages of Native w om en and white m en, politicians reacted by pursuing legal and
discursive deterrents. Despite their success in slowing m ixed-race liaisons (aided by
imm igration), the lim its of colonial rhetoric, as applied to Indians, had been uncovered.
M im icry of European social relations throu gh intermarriage and the introduction of
m ixed-race children was on e of a number of interventions which revealed the ambivalence or dissonance inherent in colonial discourses.
M ixed-race marriages were disruptive in a third, if oblique manner. Records of their
occurrence permit a retelling of what has been a masculinist history from a fem inist and
strategic angle. M arriages aÁ la facË on de pay s allow, a century later, a strategic reconstruction of political and cultural agency in modes which account for historical circum stance
(Bhabha, 1994, p. 57). The cultural protagonist can be shifted away from the European
m ale to a more diverse population. A space is opened which permits, not just the
substitution of hero(in)es but a more nuanced reading of the multiple tensions and
alliances which produce our past. Though this article, like all narratives, is partial, it
inserts nineteenth-century First Nations women in British Columbia into a history from
w hich they have largely been excluded. A mple space for further disruption of both
colonial discourse and its historical accounts remains.
A ckno w led gem ents
I would like to thank Cole Harris, Jennifer H yndman, Gerry Pratt and Lynn Stewart as
w ell as three anon ymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions and com m ents on
earlier drafts of this article.
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