Fraser Canyon War
The Fraser Canyon War (English: Fraser Canyon War , Canyon War or Fraser River War ) was an armed conflict in the course of the Fraser Canyon gold rush between gold panners and the Indians of the Nlaka'pamux tribe , which took place in the fall of 1858 in the just established colony of British Columbia took place. The aborigines faced six hastily formed irregular regiments, which were recruited from prospectors from the gold fields around Yale . Regular British troops were not involved and only reached the scene after the conflict had ended.
background
The background to the conflict was that the tens of thousands of prospectors destroyed the previous balance between the fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Indians in the region. The trigger was the rape of a young Indian woman allegedly committed by French gold panners. Some warriors sought retribution for this. The bodies of the perpetrators were beheaded in the Kanaka Bar area and thrown into the Fraser River . They drifted to near Yale, where they finally circled in a great vortex. As the warlike reputation of the Nlaka'pamux was known, the bodies floating in the river alerted the prospectors on the banks on their way downstream. Thousands then fled south to the relative safety of the Yale and Spuzzums commercial centers .
American regiments
The miners came from many different countries and most of them had already been part of the California gold rush. One of the six regiments that were quickly put together, the "Austrian Company", led by John Centras, was made up of French and German mercenaries who had fought under William Walker in Nicaragua in 1853 and then moved to the gold fields of California when the News of the Fraser gold rush in San Francisco arrived. Many Americans in the goldfields had also served under Walker.
Another regiment, the Whatcom Company, under the command of Captain Graham, consisted mostly of southerners who wanted a war of annihilation. The name of this regiment was derived from the Whatcom Trail , which crossed what is now Whatcom County .
The largest and most influential company that was formed in the chaotic situation were the "New York Pike Guards", led by Captain Snyder, who won the gathering of prospectors for a war of pacification rather than a war of annihilation. Snyder wanted a distinction to be made between the bellicose and the peaceable Indians, and that messengers should be sent into the canyon to deliver a white flag as a sign of peace to the friendly Indians.
Course of war
The groups left Yale and moved to Spuzzum , where the companies encountered 3,000 miners camped in an area near the ranchery , concerned for their safety but unable to move further south. The companies Snyders and Centras crossed the river to get to the eastern side, in one of the few places that offered a possibility of crossing. Snyder sent Graham's regiment up the west side of the river.
The New York and the Austrian Company encountered no resistance on their march north and sent messages to Camchin , the old Nlaka'pamux - "capital" at the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers (now Lytton ), in order to stretch out feelers for peace. Meanwhile, Graham and his men rioted on the west bank of the canyon and destroyed food stores and potato fields of the indigenous people, but came across only a few Indians. Most of them had withdrawn to the side valleys.
The Whatcom Company fell victim to a tragic error. This was observed by the men on the opposite bank of the river. However, the trigger was not an attack by Indians, but a rifle that misfired. Only one or two men survived the night, most of them shot each other in the dark.
The leaders of the Nlaka'pamux, the allied Secwepemc and the Okanagan had gathered in Camchin . The Nlaka'pamux war leader tried to convince the assembled warriors to wipe out the white men once and for all, but the Camchin chief Cxpentlum, also known as Spintlum or David Spintlum , advocated peace and coexistence because of his good relationships to James Douglas had.
Snyder and Centras stepped intrepid into the middle of the Nlaka'pamux war meeting, although they did not know that thousands of warriors were watching them from the surrounding rocks. As was Indian law, they were given the right to speak - they probably agreed through interpreters - and explained to the gathering that if the war continued, thousands of white people would come, claim the land and drive the indigenous people out forever. That moved them to make peace. In their notes, they suspected this was because they showed the Indians their modern rifles, since most of them, if they had firearms at all, only had muskets or carbines. In reality the decision to make peace had already been made, but it is plausible that the possibility of the whites wiping out all of the Indians helped bring the other leaders to the side of Cxpentlum.
On that day, six agreements, later known as the "Snyder Agreements", were signed, which governed living together in the canyon and working on the gold fields. However, the content of none of these contracts has even been handed down orally.
consequences
There is no documented evidence of the end of the Fraser Canyon War. Estimates of the number of whites killed range between several dozen and several hundred or even in the thousands.
After the opponents returned to Yale, James Douglas and a squad from Royal Engineers arrived . Douglas had already been provoked by the introduction of miners' bodies and the "California claims system" without his consent and outside the limits of British law. But it was even more dangerous for the stability of British rule that Snyder and Centras had signed state treaties without authority. He admonished the Americans, but they appeased him and vowed to keep the Queen's law in future.
During that visit, the prerequisites for another conflict known as McGowan's War were created because during that visit the courts of Yale and Hill's Bar (Whannel and Perrier) were occupied by Douglas, who failed to see their true nature and the implications for local politics therefore could not estimate. One of Douglas' companions was Ned McGowan , who started the argument the following winter.
literature
- McGowan's War , Donald J. Hauka, New Star Books, Vancouver 2000 ISBN 1-55420-001-6
- British Columbia Chronicle, 1847-1871: Gold & colonists , Helen and GPV Akrigg, Discovery Press, Vancouver 1977 ISBN 0-919624-03-0
- Claiming the Land , Dan Marshall, UBC Ph.D Thesis, 2002 (not published)
- Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest , Derek Hayes, Cavendish Books, Vancouver 1999 ISBN 1-55289-900-4
See also
Web links
- Fraser Canyon War ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .