Showing 5 results

Archival description
Fort Victoria fonds
Print preview View:

3 results with digital objects Show results with digital objects

Form of Accounts book

Series consists of a Form of Accounts book. An administrative manual, this volume contains a circular (dated 30 March 1867) from Roderick Finlayson, Chief Factor at Fort Victoria, to the officer in charge of the Shuswap District. This circular outlines the rules for conducting business and gives examples of 48 forms to be used in administering that business.

Fort Victoria fonds

  • PR-1683
  • Fonds
  • 1844-1860, 1877-1895

The fonds consists of correspondence, account books, a land office blotter, letterbooks, and fur tariffs of Fort Victoria and the Victoria Land Office of the Hudson's Bay Company. Fonds include a register of land purchased from Indians near Fort Victoria and a record of agreements with Indians at Fort Rupert, Nanaimo, Barkley Sound and Port Alberni.

Hudson's Bay Company. Fort Victoria

Land office blotter

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].

Register of land purchases from Indians

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.