Hwulmuhw land tenure was not a matter of exclusive title by individuals to separate pieces of land, but was based on the ownership of resources by individual hw’nuchalewum. Land was not viewed as a commodity, but was valued for the resources it provided to feed, house, clothe, and equip an individual and his extended family. Access and management of clam beds, seal rocks, fishing sites, camas and wild clover patches, and other resources formed the basis of a family’s wealth. The exploitation and redistribution of these resources was the foundation of the basis of the Hwulmuhw economy.
The boundaries of family-owned lands and resources were well-known. As Robert Akerman explains:
Lots of people say that the Indians didn’t own the land because it wasn’t surveyed. But they had it surveyed by landmarks, rivers, creeks, mountains and rocks—That sort of thing. 33
Although there were hunting and gathering areas within the vicinity of the winter villages which were accessible to all, access to privately-owned resources was restricted and the penalty for unauthorized trespassing, at least in the first half of the nineteenth century, was harsh. An early account of Hul’qumi’num First Nations property rights comes from the son of a noble Quamichan woman and an Englishman named John Humphreys who settled in the Cowichan River delta possibly as early as 1856. According to his information “as told by the Indians themselves”:
Every family had its own hunting and fishing grounds, and the tract of land which each one claimed was in proportion to the size of the family, if it was a large family it had a large tract of land, and vice versa. Sometimes one family had to its credit many miles of land, for its hunting and fishing purposes. If one Indian found another man poaching on his land he immediately shot and killed him as it was within the law to do so. There were very few laws but what there were, were strictly kept, as the punishment for breaking them was very strict. Also every man could get nearly all the game he wanted on his own property and consequently did not have to trespass on his neighbour’s land. 34
Recognition of family ownership was important, but access to family-owned resources was not denied those who followed protocol. When permission was asked of the owners to access a resource, it was rarely refused. Consider the resources owned by a “high class” Clemclemalits family at Hwaaqwum (Burgoyne Bay) on Salt Spring Island:
They owned the property and they used to stay there. The Indians didn’t just use the land occasionally—they owned it. If others wanted to fish or hunt in that area they’d have to get permission. 35
The land was the source of economic well-being and deeply venerated for its spiritual values. The landscape preserved the teachings of Heel’s in strange rock formations, contained the bones of the ancestors, and was the abode of stlutle’luqum (dangerous little beings). 36 Wealth and success in life depended on supernatural power bestowed by stlutle’luqum, but it was only accessible to those who trained hard and maintained strict standards of conduct. This power enabled men and women to excel in their particular talents. Salt Spring Island, the largest of the Gulf Islands, harboured many sacred sites on its mountains and lakes where youths sought supernatural power.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Hwulmuhw prophets foresaw the impending change which would upset forever the established economic cycles and social order—contact with the expanding Christian trading empires of Europe and America:
A Shaman dreamed that a great canoe came to his village, moving without paddles. A man with a black face, black with hair and with white skin underneath, smiled and called the old man friend. The stranger gave the old man a little box, painted in bright colours, then departed in his great canoe.
The old man tried to open the box, but could not discover how the lid was fastened down. Suddenly the box flew open and out roared a great wind that dried up the springs and creeks. The fish left the waters of the sea and rivers and the deer ran to the other side of the mountains.
The great wind dried the old man’s throat, so that he thirsted for whiskey, a drink he had never tasted. The warriors fell to quarrelling with one another and none would listen to wise advice.
Finally, out of the little box came the spotted sickness, and the shaman knew that the white man’s gift was—death. 37
Long before the Hwunitum settled on the Gulf of Georgia, their presence had a deadly impact on the aboriginal people in the form of smallpox, which reached the area about 1782 overland from the Columbia River region to the south. 38 The plague was spent by the time it reached the northern reaches of the Georgia Strait but, in its wake, Hwulmuhw population centres were decimated. Untouched Kwakwaka’wakw populations to the north took advantage of the situation and launched devastating raids into the territories of their disabled southern neighbours in search of slaves and wealth. 39 The end of the plague coincided with the rise of the maritime fur trade, the main centre of which was the Nuuchahnulth territories on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Although only indirectly involved with the European and American traders at first, the Kwakwaka’wakw procured European/American trade goods, and particularly muskets, which further augmented their military superiority over their southern opponents, causing great social unrest in the region.
The establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Langley on the Fraser River in 1827 gave Hwulmuhw increased access to European trade goods and muskets and restored the balance of power between Hwulmuhw and Kwakwaka’wakw fighting forces. Muskets allowed Hwulmuhw warriors to match their opponents’ fighting abilities and allowed pre-emptive raids into Kwakwaka’wakw homelands which, over time, checked their southward advance. 40
The increase in musket-dominated warfare created innovations in Hwulmuhw tactics. Hwulmuhw warriors quickly learned the advantages of volley firing, whereby men fired their muskets in unison at a single target. Smoothbore muskets, by themselves heavy and slow to load, were almost less effective in combat than bows and arrows, but fired en masse their effect was devastating, especially when fired upon an unsuspecting foe from a concealed position. This tactic, the surprise volley, became a trademark of Hwulmuhw warfare and was responsible for several important victories over the Kwakwaka’wakw. 41
The introduction of firearms also caused modifications in defense works, such as the construction of earthwork trenches in combination with loopholed blockhouses. Built of stout squared timbers, loopholed for muskets and cannon, the blockhouse allowed warriors to mass their firepower from a protected strategic strong point against an exposed, unprotected enemy. In the Saanich village of Tsouwat, each household built a blockhouse with plank walls “outside its own house. It had doors with locks and loopholes. It was about twenty feet high in front but lower in back, about the height of a man’s reach.” 42 These early blockhouses seem to have been simply smaller versions of the shed-roofed plank house. Possibly the most elaborate fortifications built by Hwulmuhw were those erected by the Cowichan warrior, Tsosieten, at Taitka on the Cowichan River delta. Taitka was “surrounded by pickets and bastions out of which there poked three large cannon.” 43
The continuous fighting between Kwakwaka’wakw and Hul’qumi’num First Nations gave rise among the latter to a number of famous warrior si’em, including Hulkalatkstun of Penelakut, Tsosieten of Taitka, Lohar of Comiaken and Tzouhalem of Khinepsen. Born of a Quamichan man and a Comiaken woman, Tzouhalem, under the guidance of his grandmother, trained to be a warrior. His “old granny … taught him how to bathe himself every day, rubbing his skin with hemlock boughs, and to run in the woods and away back in the hills where the spirits would come and talk to him.” 44 Tzouhalem met a cannibal spirit that told him: “When you fight and when you kill people, I shall be with you,” whereupon Tzouhalem “went back to his cave home and sang his mystery song … which signified that he had been given human flesh to eat. When he danced he flourished his gun and knife.” 45
Tzouhalem’s seemingly invincible fighting ability and unruly behaviour led to his being asked to leave the village of Quamichan, which he did, establishing