Cape Mudge and the Native Influence

An excerpt from Chapter 5, Cape Mudge and the Native Influence:

....Cape Mudge and Quathiaski Cove belonged to the Salish people when the first Europeans arrived. Quathiaski comes from Qatasaken; a Salish ward meaning "a mouth with a bite of something in it." Grouse Island is the something in the bite.

In the summer of 1792, Captain Vancouver's two ships, the Discovery and the Chatham, arrived from Desolation Sound and anchored half a mile north of Cape Mudge, then moved on to the sheltered cove now known as Quathiaski. Vancouver and the ships' botanist, Archibald Menzies, went ashore at the cape and climbed the steep cliff to the Salish village called Tsqulotn. or "playing field."

That same year, Vancouver named the headland after his first lieutenant, Zachary Mudge. Lieutenant Mudge began his naval career in 1780 at the age of ten; by 1849 he had attained the rank of admiral. The island we know as Vancouver Island was originally named Quadra-Vancouver by Captains Quadra and Vancouver at their famous meeting at Nootka Sound in 1792. However, the British later eliminated the melodic Spanish names wherever possible and renamed British Columbia's largest island Vancouver, it was not until 1903 that Captain Quadra was honoured by having the second largest island on the coast named after him.

Archibald Menzies described the native settlement in his journal after his first trip ashore: "We found a considerable village consisting of about 12 Huts or houses planked over with large boards some of which were ornamented with rude paintings particularly on the fronts of the houses. They were flat roofed & of a quadrangular figure & each house contained several families to the number of about 350 inhabitants on the most moderate calculation."

He went on to describe the inhabitants: "Their hair is straight black and long but mixed with such quantity of red-ochre grease and dirt puffed over at times with down that the color is not easily distinguishable. Many of the men went entirely naked without giving the least offense to the other Sex or showing any apparent shame of their situation, they have long black beards with long hair about their private parts but none on their Breasts or Arm pits. Some had ornamented their faces by painting it with red-ochre sprinkled with glitter which helped not a little to heighten their ferocious appearance.

The women were decently covered with garments made either of the skins of wild animals or wove from wood or prepared bark of the American Arbor Vitae tree. Women and children did not appear anywise shy or timorous tho we were pretty certain our party were the first Europeans they had ever seen or had any direct intercourse with. Nor did they regard us or the Vessels with any degree of curiosity."

The Indians of Tsqulotn did not realize it, but their first encounter with Captain Vancouver and his men was the beginning of the end of their way of life. European explorers and settlers brought alcohol, sickness and guns which they distributed freely among the natives. The Indians had no tolerance for alcohol and were unable to resist European diseases such as measles and smallpox. The people who survived were placed on reserves; their land and status were taken from them and their ancient customs eroded.

Even before Europeans settled the coast, however, the Salish inhabitants of Tsqulotn were dispossessed by the fierce Lekwiltok branch of the southern Kwakiutl. In the mid-nineteenth century, already armed with guns from the traders, the Lekwiltok swept south from Johnstone Strait in their big war canoes. The clifftop village was never taken or burned by the invaders, but the Lekwiltok simply built their own village, Yaculta, on flat shoreland at the base of the cliff. Thus threatened, the people of Tsqulotn evacuated and joined the Salish villages around Comox.

The Yacultas, as the tribe was called, became a terror to the Salish as far down the coast as the Fraser River. They even tried to levy a toll an European vessels navigating Discovery Passage, which brought disciplinary visits from British gunboats. Drink and disease, as well as British guns, sapped the Yacultas' strength, and by the latter part of the nineteenth century, they had acquiesced to the jurisdiction of the Crown and life under the reserve system.

Indian reserves were administered by the federal Department of Indian Affairs, and the local Indian agent represented the government and its laws on each reserve. One agent sometimes had responsibility for a huge territory covering several reserves. Considering the great gulf between European and native cultures, the position of the indian agent was an unenviable one. He had to interpret end enforce regulations made by bureaucrats thousands of miles away, for a suspicious population whose culture he only dimly understood. It is remarkable how many of these agents gained the acceptance, and even the respect, of the Indians..........