There are many, many things at have brought us to where we are, - broken promises, discrimination, legislation.

Just take the Saanich Peninsula, the Saanich Peninsula was the homeland of the Saanich People for who knows how long. When James Douglas moved himself and his people into Victoria Harbour he moved right in with the Songhees people, the LEQENEN. He made that the headquarters of the Hudson Bay Company. Then after some time they began to claim the land, they began to exploit the land.

One of the things they were doing was logging this beautiful land of timber in the Cadboro Bay area. This timber was tall and slim going straight up, no limbs till almost way up to the top, maybe sixty, seventy, eighty, one hundred feet up. A beautiful stand of timber in great demand for ships' masts.

This is why they were there. Of course you know all shipping those days was by sail. This is why masts were in such demand. They were taking them away by the shipload for the purpose of using them for masts.

I don't know how long they had been cutting this timber when our people became aware of it. Actually it wasn't in our territory, it was Songhees territory but the Songhees weren't doing anything about it.

Our people got together and they said "What are we going to do about these people falling those beautiful trees? Are we just going to sit here and just let them do it?" So they talked back and forth and said, "No, we can't just let it go, we have to say something." So they decided to do something about it.

At that time they always had fighting men, warriors ready to go out any time. It was still part of the way of life, because we had to be on guard for the northern raiders. We had an army ready all the time. They loaded up four big canoes with warriors, with their fighting equipment and battle dress, painted faces and they paddled around the peninsula and right to where those people were working. When they reached the place they went in and stood offshore and lined up side by side. There was somebody walking around there, close to the beach and they hailed him to come down.

This man came down and they said, "Tell your boss to take his men and his tools and go back to Victoria and cut no more trees." This man took a look at these four canoes facing the beach, warriors, ready to fight, battle dress on and faces painted for war. He quickly hurried back up into the woods and told his boss to come down. When he took a look and saw what they were faced with, he told his men to gather up their tools and they went back to Victoria.

There was another incident besides that, that already made things not exactly in a state of peace. An Indian boy crossing Douglas' property had been shot and killed. Douglas' property was in the area of Mount Douglas. He had a farm there, and this boy was crossing through. For what reason they shot the boy, I don't know.

We weren't in a state of war, but almost. After these loggers left Cadboro Bay and went back to Victoria, our people just turned around and came home. That's the way things stood when they got the message, or invitation to come into Victoria. Douglas invited all the head people into Victoria. When they got there all these piles of blankets plus other goods were on the ground. They told them these bundles of blankets were for them plus about $200 but it was in pounds and shillings. They saw these bundles of blankets and goods and they were asked to put X's on this paper. They asked each head man to put an X on this paper. Our people didn't know what the X's were for. Actually they didn't call them X's they called them crosses. So they talked back and forth from one to the other and wondered why they were being asked to put these crosses on these papers. One after another, they were asked to put crosses on the paper and they didn't know what the paper said. What I imagined from looking at the document was that they must have gone to each man and asked them their name and then they transcribed it in a very poor fashion and then asked them to make an X.

One man spoke up after they discussed it, and said, "I think James Douglas wants to keep the peace," because they were after all almost in a state of war, a boy had been shot. We stopped them from cutting timber and sent them back to Victoria and told them to cut no more timber. "I think these are peace offerings. I think Douglas means to keep the peace. I think these are the sign of the cross." He made the sign of the cross. The missionaries must have already been around by then, because they knew about the "sign of the cross". This means Douglas is sincere.

They thought it was just a sign of sincerity and honesty. This is the sign of their God. It was the highest order of honesty. It wasn't much later they found out actually they were signing their land away by putting those crosses out there. They didn't know what it said on that paper.

I think if you take a look at the document yourself, you will find out, you can judge for yourself. Look at the X's yourself you'll see they're all alike, probably written by the same hand. They actually didn't know those were their names and many of those names are not even accurate. They are not even known to Saanich People. Our people were hardly able to talk English at that time and who could understand our language?
Traditions

Sources:

Digitized with permission from:
-Saltwater People as told by Dave Elliot Sr., pg. 45-50