Chilcotin War?
I had NO idea what this was before I read through the website that we were assigned to check out, and who knew that this was such a huge part of Canadian history! The biggest question from this assignment was how do we look at this… as war, or murder?
“The blood of the fourteen men spilled into the Homathco River before dawn on the morning of April 29th, 1864 was only the beginning. By the end of May, 19 road-builders, packers and a farmer would be dead. It was the deadliest attack by Aboriginal people on immigrants in western Canada, before or since. Within six weeks an army of over 100 men were in the field to hunt down the killers.” [1]
From my groups finding we determined that this started off as self defence and later escalated to war. We did not think that the Tsilhqot’in people killed just to kill; we think they felt threatened and used violence as a defence mechanism– almost like a warning. Immigrants were taking over land that did not belong to them; they may not have realized it, but the Tsilhqot’in people certainly did. We can link these actions to a lack of communication; the immigrants were oblivious to their intrusion and the Tsilhqot’in acted in an unethical way. The fact the Canadians did not retaliate right away shows how this was not a war right away because they waited for the court decision. But could also be countered with the thought that Canadians were the ones who started this war– not by violence but by possessing land that was not theirs. Maybe Aboriginal tribes were tired of being sent off their land? Do we not see the same situation with the Beothuk’s…? Maybe Tsilhqot’in people were afraid the same thing would happen if they did not act.
[1] We Do Not Know His Name, 2004, http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/klatsassin/home/acknowledgements/indexen.html#copy
