GO rD hIll 500 Years of Indigenous resistance
would last until around 1854 when European
settlement began to increase rapidly along
with the mining and logging industries. As a
result of the early dominance of the fur trade,
which relied on Native collaboration, British
colonizers curtailed their military operations.
Nevertheless, conflicts did erupt, primarily
against British depredations. As more ships
frequented the area, clashes spread with at-
tacks on colonial vessels and the shelling of
Native villages.
Even before European settlement in BC,
the impact of the traders was disastrous. For
example, from 1835 when the first census
was taken of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation,
to 1885, there was between a 70 to 90 per-
cent reduction in population (from around
10,700 to 3,000).^33 In an all too familiar pat-
tern, the intrusion of European traders had
set into motion disease epidemics, even as
early as the 1780s and ’90s. In 1836, a small-
pox epidemic hit the northern coast, and the
fur trade was “depressed all that winter and
the following spring”.^34 Following an inva-
sion of gold hunters into the region in 1858,
one of the most devastating epidemics struck
in 1862, killing at least 20,000 Indians.^35
Meanwhile, in British North America,
the geo-military importance of the First
Nations was quickly being eroded. With
the influx of loyalists after the U.S. War for
Independence, the European population
had grown and was strategically garrisoned- Dara Culhane Speck, An Error in Judgement, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1987, pg. 72.
- Wilson Duff, “The Indian History of BC, Vol. 1: The Impact of the White Man”. An-
thropology in BC, Memoir No. 5, 1964. BC Provincial Museum, Victoria 1965 (First
Edition), pg. 42. - Ibid, pg. 42–43.
Lil’Wat nation protestor,
British Columbia