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The item is a volume titled land office blotter. Blotters were used to record detailed trading activity. Only one page has been used. The page describes two financial transactions with the Hudson's Bay Company.

The first transaction relates to 200 pound sterling received from James Cooper, Master of the Hudson's Bay Company ship Columbia, as a deposit on a land purchase in September 1849.

The next relates to the trade of 535 blankets on the 6th of May, 1850. The blankets were paid to several Indigenous groups "for purchase of their lands as per details in Register of Land Purchases", also known as the Douglas Treaties. The names, transcribed directly from the blotter, are: Tee-chamitsa, Kosampsom, Swenghung, Chilcowitch, Whyomilth, Checonein, Kakyaakan, Chewhaytsun, and Soak.

This record was likely created by James Douglas, as it appears to be written in his handwriting [see Wilson Duff, "The Fort Victoria Treaties", BC Studies No. 3 (Fall 1969): 8].

The series consists of a register of land purchases from Indigenous peoples on Southern Vancouver Island (near Fort Victoria), 1850-1852; record of agreements with Indigenous peoples at Fort Rupert, 1851, and Nanaimo, 1854. These conveyances or agreements are often referred to as the Fort Victoria treaties, Vancouver Island or Douglas treaties.

The following is a list of the signatory tribes and their present-day community names:

Saanich, Victoria, Metchosin and Sooke areas:
Teechamitsa (Songhees)
Kosampson (Esquimalt)
Whyomilth (Esquimalt)
Swengwhung (Songhees)
Chilcowitch (Songhees)
Che-ko-nein (Songhees)
Ka-ky-aakan (Scia'new/Becher Bay)
Chewhaytsum (Scia'newBecher Bay)
Soke (T'Sou-ke/Sooke)
Saanich -South (Tsawout, Tsartlip, Malahat)
Saanich -North (Pauquachin, Tseycum)

Nanaimo area:
Saalequun (Snaw-Na-Was/Nanoose, Snuneymuxw)

Port Hardy area:
Queackar (Kwiakah)
Quakiolth (Kwakiutl)

Included with these records, but not part of the HBC agreements, are two land purchase agreements made between Vancouver Island Government Agent William Banfield and two Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations in 1859 and 1860, as well as a list with the male adult population of tribes of the southwest coast of Vancouver Island compiled by Banfield.

The file contains a handwritten copy of a 14 page report written by Captain Walter Colquohoun Grant, to James Douglas, Acting Governor at Fort Victoria. The report was written by Grant in his capacity of Hudson's Bay Company surveyor.