Good Bye to the Northerners

The British Colonist, June 12, 1862

Yesterday morning Mr. Police Magistrate Pemberton, with Superintendent Smith and an effective force of policemen, repaired to Cadboro Bay and supervised the embarkation for their homes of about three hundred Northern Indians. Twenty-six canoes in all, containing about three hundred native men, women and children, departed about 10 o'clock. One of the gunboats remained within hailing distance of the camp, in order to render assistance to the police should any obstreperous conduct on the part of the Indians occur. The poor creatures protested feelingly against the justice of the proceeding, but manifested no desire to resist the stern mandate of the law. Edensah, chief of the Hydahs, reported only one sick man in the tribe. Twenty of the canoes were nearly filled with Hydahs, five with Queen Charlotte Islanders, and one with Stickeens. The gunboat, at the urgent request of the chief, will accompany and protect the Indians until they have passed Nanaimo — the Indians of which place have many old scores to wipe out in consequence of outrages received at the hands of the Northern braves in years gone by, when the latter were the terror of this coast, and used to sweep like fiery besoms from Sitka to Columbia River, destroying everything before them. It is even asserted that many years ago they penetrated British Columbia by the Fraser River as far north as Yale, destroying every rancheria on the banks of that stream below Hope and killing, without respect to age or sex, every native encountered. It is a well established fact that the Bute Inlet and Semiahmoo tribes were almost exterminated, and that the Indians resident on the Nass, Stickeen, Bella Coola and other rivers, in the interior of British Columbia, have for centuries been bullied and controlled by their more hardy and warlike brethren from the North. How have the mighty fallen! Four short years ago, numbering their braves by thousands, they were the scourge and terror of the coast; today, broken-spirited and effeminate, with scarce a corporal's guard of warriors remaining alive, they are proceeding northward, bearing with them the seeds of a loathsome disease that will take root and bring both a plentiful crop of ruin and destruction to the friends who have remained at home. At the present rate of mortality, not many months can elapse 'ere the Northern Indians of this coast will exist only in story.