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Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 20
by Mary K. Cullen Gold Rush: Climax and Turning Point of Fort Langley's CareerThe endurance of the commercial prominence which Fort Langley achieved as a trading and transporting point in the 1850s was predicated on many factors, but on none more fundamental than the continuance of the fur trade. As long as the vast territory of the Pacific mainland was essentially an isolated preserve of the Hudson's Bay Company with a total non-Indian population of less than 200, fur resources and the logistics of supply determined the important foci of activity. When the Fraser River gold rush rapidly altered the number and distribution of people and centres, the fur trade collapsed and the economic life of Fort Langley was profoundly changed. During the months of 1858 which brought about this change, Langley climaxed its career by becoming the starting point for the gold rush and the inauguration place of a British colony on the Pacific mainland. Discovery of gold on the Flathead River in Oregon prompted Company discussion on the impact of a major northern discovery almost three years before the famous Fraser River rush. In August 1855 Douglas predicted that "the streams north of the Columbia will be found equally rich in gold, and probably the day is not distant when the great discovery will be made."1 Then and later there was apprehension that the fur trade would suffer from the effects of these discoveries, but a more persistent concern was that the Company, by supplying the miners, might increase the value of its general returns.2 In March 1856 Douglas wrote to Simpson, "the chances of our making a profitable trade will be greater just in proportion as the expense of transport decreases, and the locality of the Gold diggings is brought nearer our Depot at Fort Langley."3 During the spring of 1856, gold was found in several parts of the Thompson River District and Yale reported small quantities of the metal in the bed of the Coquihalla River near Fort Hope.4 New discoveries made by native peoples throughout the following year provided assurance of gold being found in considerable quantities in the British interior.5 The Company post at Kamloops traded 49 ounces of gold dust from Indian diggers in August 1857.6 Both Indians and fur traders moved to monopolize the gold deposits for their own benefit, the Indians by open antipathy to foreign adventurers,7 the Company by legal and practical measures to cut off American competition for the gold trade. The Hudson's Bay Company had no legal governing authority on the Pacific mainland, but for years its board of management had skillfully acted to protect life and property and to contain crises between the native people and the whites. Douglas now attempted to protect the Company from American entrepreneurs in the same paternalistic fashion. In November he wrote the officer at Kamloops that "the Company having the exclusive right of trading with Indians on the West side of the mountains, no other person can lawfully carry on trade or erect trading establishments within the British territory and you may warn them off on any attempt to do so."8 As governor of Vancouver Island and nearest British official within thousands of miles, Douglas also issued a proclamation declaring the rights of the crown to all gold found in its natural place of deposit and forbidding gold seekers unless duly authorized by Her Majesty's colonial government.9 The practical step of preparing and operating supply routes to the mines put the Hudson's Bay Company in the best position to dominate future events. For this important task Douglas enlisted the trailblazing aptitude and depot experience of Fort Langley. Yale advised that goods might be forwarded by way of the 13-mile Douglas Portage as far as the junction of the Thompson and Fraser.10 A plan was therefore devised to have a transport corps of two officers, ten white men and several Indians to conduct a continuous supply service by this route.11 The machinery for the transport operation involved two lines of river craft: canoes for use between the Thompson and the upper end of the rapids of the Fraser River and batteaux for 130 miles from the lower end of the rapids to Langley.12 The journey through Douglas Portage was to be made on foot. Langley carpenters built the batteaux in January and the transport service commenced a month later.13 Two trips were made by the Fraser before the annual rise in the river forced the transfer of supply services to the Fort Hope road. Douglas was at Fort Langley on 15 February to dispatch the first supply party for the interior. The expedition, in clerk George Simpson's charge, took one loaded batteaux as far as old Fort Yale, transported the property overland by Douglas Portage to Spuzzum immediately above the falls, and thence went by canoe to Tecungean (now Lytton) where the Thompson met the Fraser. There the goods were received by a horse brigade from Kamloops.14 On a second inland trip in March, an enlarged Fort Langley party started building a new post at the forks, to be called Fort Dallas (in November that year its name was changed to Lytton)15 The old buildings at Fort Yale, which had been abandoned after Peers's road to Fort Hope became the brigade trail, were renewed and a stack of provisions were laid up there and at Fort Dallas for the spring trade.16
Throughout these preparations the Company monitored the extent of possible gold deposits. Since the Indian population had commenced mining on the Thompson in July, there had been a total gold yield of 1,000 ounces. Allowing for the disproportion in the number and skill of the mining population in the two countries, the return was relatively small compared to the California mines which during the same initial eight-month period yielded 150,000 ounces.17 The conclusion seemed obvious: these statistics would not attract the white miner, but when news spread that 800 ounces of gold had been sent from Victoria to the San Francisco mint in February,18 the rush to Fraser River was on. The great influx of adventurers started in April when the American steamer Commodore arrived in Victoria with 455 passengers from San Franciso. There were double that number in May, more than 7,000 in June, 7,000 in July and at least 8,000 more who made their way overland. By August when the fever began to subside, the registered departures from San Francisco had totalled almost 30,000. Frequently, ships carried more than the officially accepted number. The Sierra Nevada, which landed 1,900 people in Victoria on 1 July, had sailed from San Francisco the previous month with a "maximum" of 900 passengers.19 Since the first focus of mining activity was at the junction of the Thompson and Fraser rivers, whether would-be prospectors came overland or by boat from Victoria, Fort Langley was for all the last point before the gold district. As such the fort became the administrative and policing centre of British and Company interests. On 8 May 1858 Douglas issued a proclamation asserting the exclusive trading rights of the Hudson's Bay Company, forbidding British and foreign trade on the mainland and requiring all river craft of any sort to purchase a licence from the Company and a sufferance from the proper customs officer at Victoria.20 To enforce these regulations Douglas persuaded the naval authorities to station the gunboat Satellite at the mouth of the Fraser and to anchor her launch and gig off Langley. Two revenue officers at Langley seized contraband goods and took unlicensed canoes into custody.21 In addition to its policing responsibilities, Langley had already assumed charge of the forwarding business to the mines and now became itself a major retail outlet. The Fort Langley saleshop was doing a brisk business in May and had received 336 ounces of gold dust and about $5,000 cash since the beginning of March.22 Articles in demand were blankets and woollen clothing, tinware such as pots and frying pans, various mining tools including pans and pickaxes, and provisions, principally flour, bacon, beans and molasses. Food was scarce but the Company tried to keep it inexpensive. Flour sold at nine dollars per 100-pound sack and sugar at 16 cents a pound. In anticipation of greater scarcity of food in the winter of 1858-59, the Company directed its traders to secure as many dried salmon as possible.23 To the average miner, American in extraction and used to the undisciplined free enterprise of California mining towns, dealing at the Hudson's Bay Company fort store was an unusual experience. The editor of the Alta California recorded in detail his observations of the regimentation of business at Langley saleshop. At six o'clock in the morning the massive bolts and bars are unlocked from the entrances to the stockade which surrounds the buildings of the Hudson's Bay Company .... At a later hour in the morning the door of the sales-room is opened, in the loft next to the northeastward of the chief trader's residence, and the business of the day begins. The door is scarcely opened when the small space allotted to customers inside the building is filed with people, and from that moment trade is unceasing, and a continuous stream of coin flows into the till of the Company until noon, when a bell rings and business ceases at once. Everybody leaves the store-house, the doors are closed, and all hands go to dinner. At the end of an hour business is resumed again, and the same dull and monotonous routine is gone through with until six p.m. when again trade is brought to a dead halt, the crowd disperses, and the business portion of the day is ended. The conduct of business was not only routine, but also quaint and out of fashion. Amused, the writer continued, Inside this trading warehouse there is a look of venerable antiquity that it would be difficult to match in any other portion of the world today. The scales used for weighing out the wet goods are the old style balances, with ponderous upright and beam, and capacious trays for the reception of merchandise, suspended from the one end, and one for the weights from the other. Everything else about the establishment is in keeping with this, and business is transacted exactly as it used to be in the quaint old towns of the thriving Knickerbockers and early tradespeople of staid New England. A bottle of whiskey, or "Hudson's Bay lightning," as it is not inappropriately called, when sold to a purchaser, is first carefully corked, then a string tied around the neck, and a loop formed so that it may be conveniently suspended from the finger, then a piece of paper is carefully wrapped around it, and the customer receives possession of his property ... it is to such customs that Young America applies the expressive title of "old fogyism."24
In April the Company concluded the loft saleshop was too small and inconvenient for a large-scale business and decided to relocate the retail operation on the ground floor of the residence to the left of the Big House. The new shop, fitted up during May, was divided into a store area and a baling room for packing servants' orders and other purposes.25 But the salesroom was never used,26 probably because the extension of navigation to Forts Hope and Yale diverted much of the expected business from Langley. Hudson's Bay Company vessels (principally the Otter), which by law provided the only steamship accommodation on the Fraser, were too heavy to ascend the river beyond Fort Langley. To reduce the expense of batteaux transport the Company contemplated buying a small river steamer of 100 tons to ply between Fort Langley and the rapids on the Fraser River.27 The purchase was not made, however, before the need was met through an other avenue. In June the Hudson's Bay Company agreed to license steamers to run between Victoria and the rapids on certain conditions, among them the carriage of only Company goods and the payment of two-dollar fee to the Company for every passenger.28 On Sunday 7 June the American steamer Surprise made the first steam trip to Fort Hope and a month later the stern-wheeler Umatilla reached Yale.29 Although Fort Langley now shared a greater amount of business with the up-river posts, for two months it continued to be the hub of commercial activity on the Fraser. During June and July the influx of adventurers reached its peak with 1,732 persons arriving in a single day in July.30 Not all of these could afford passage on the river steamers and they paddled their own craft to the Fraser, calling first at Fort Langley. Visiting the site in July, Douglas reported sales averaging $1,500 a day.31 A small tent village was growing outside the palisade and one enterprising individual opened a log cabin called the "Miner's Home," offering fare that "would have done no discredit to a first-class restaurant."32 The arrival of the brigade train on 30 June was a festive occasion for both Company men and miners at Langley. A Prince Edward Island prospector, who attended the welcoming ball for the annual visitors, wrote his impressions of the event for the people back home. I ... was not a little surprised at seeing the company composed of so heterogeneous a kind. There were the English, Scotch, French and Kanackas present, and their offspring, and all so thoroughly mixed with the native Indian blood, that it would take a well versed Zoologist to decide what class of people they were, and what relations they had to each other; though that will cause you but little surprise, when you are informed that almost all the Co.'s wives are the native Squaws, their children, which are called half breeds, as a general thing, being quite fair, docile and intelligent. The Ball was conducted with the best possible decorum. The music was sweet, from the violin, and the dancing was performed in the most gracefull manner, by the Indians and the half breeds, who took a very prominent part on that occasion.33 Gold fever created a state of intense excitement among the men of the brigade contingent that summer. Many of them had no doubt personally talked with miners at Lytton, Fort Hope and Langley. They were not disposed to continue in the service at £20 a year for middlemen and £25 a year for "Boates" while others made as much in one week digging gold. Only after ardent persuasion by Douglas did they agree to be rehired at an advance of £10 each on their former rate of pay.34 On 18 July the brigades from Thompson River and New Caledonia left Fort Langley for the last time. The opening of steam transportation 80 miles beyond Fort Langley had created a new head of navigation and meant that henceforth the depot for the Company brigades would be Fort Hope.35 Inevitably the gold rush caused greater disruption and change in the fur trade. The sudden influx of thousands of foreigners into a large unorganized territory immediately raised problems of law, order and nationality. In his efforts to preserve discipline over the mining community, Douglas made little distinction between Company and British interests. Payment of suffrances and the observance of other Company rules might also be interpreted as a recognition of the authority of the crown from which the Company received its rights. Revenue officials and officers of the warship Satellite equally enforced British customs laws and the Company monopoly. Douglas, governor of Vancouver Island and chief manager of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Pacific Coast, personally epitomized the identity of crown and company,36 but it was an identity that could never endure. Douglas early realized that government by proclamation was an inadequate means of permanently administering a new population. Implicit in his resolve to secure maximum benefit for the Company from the rush was a fatalistic attitude toward the survival of the fur trade. Company experience in Oregon had proved the incompatibility of the fur trade and large-scale immigration. By June Douglas was convinced that the growth in the number of squatters throughout the Fraser valley was "impossible to arrest" and he therefore recommended the immediate opening of the country for settlement with due compensation to the Hudson's Bay Company for relinquishing its licence.37 The imperial government discussed the problem of governing the mainland during the summer of 1858. There was strong approval of Douglas's effort to maintain public order and the rights of the crown but condemnation of his liberal interpretation of Company rights. In a dispatch dated 16 July 1858, Colonial Secretary E.B. Lytton reminded Douglas that "the Company is entitled under its existing license, to the exclusive trade with the Indians and possesses no other right or privilege whatever." He pointed out that it was therefore contrary to law and consequently disallowed to exclude importation of goods or to prevent any persons from trading with any inhabitants except the Indians — still more to require a licence from the Company for persons landing in the territory.38 At the same time Douglas was authorized to take such measures consistent with the rights of British subjects.39 Her Majesty's government decided to establish a mainland colony and proposed that Douglas be appointed governor on condition that he sever all connections with the Company.40
The Act creating the colony of British Columbia was passed by the British Parliament on 2 August 1858.41 Douglas was appointed governor on 2 September42 and by an instrument of the same date the exclusive trading privileges of the Hudson's Bay Company were abrogated.43 A detachment of 150 Royal Engineers under the command of Colonel Richard Moody was immediately dispatched to the coast to survey land for public sale, lay out the capital, construct roads and assist in the various duties of colony building.44 The first two parties, commanded by Captains Parsons and Grant, arrived in Victoria on 29 October and 8 November respectively.45 Following the arrival of incumbent chief justice Matthew Baillie Begbie on 15 November,46 a ceremony took place for the administration of oaths and the formal proclamation of the new colony. The official inauguration of the colony of British Columbia took place at Fort Langley on Friday, 19 November 1858. Although steady rain throughout the day threatened to mar the event, the ceremony was conducted with becoming solemnity inside the Big House. An account of the proceeding appeared in the Victoria Gazette of 25 November. His Excellency, accompanied by ... a guard of honor commended by Capt. Grant disembarked on the wet, loamy bank under the Fort, and the procession proceeded up the steep bank which leads to the palisade. Arrived there, a salute of 18 guns commenced pealing from the Beaver, awakening all the echoes of the opposite mountains. In another moment the flag of Britain was floating, or, to speak the truth, dripping over the principal entrance. Owing to the unpropitious state of the weather, the meeting which was intended to have been held in the open air was convened in the large room at the principal building. About 100 persons were present. The ceremonies were commenced by His Excellency addressing Mr. Begbie, and delivering to him Her Majesty's commission as Judge in the Colony of British Columbia. Mr. Begbie then took the oath of allegiance, and the usual oaths on taking office, and then, addressing His Excellency, took up Her Majesty's Commission appointing the Governor, and proceeded to read it at length. Mr. Begbie then administered to Governor Douglas the usual oaths of office, viz.: allegiance, abjuration, etc. His Excellency being then duly appointed and sworn in, proceeded to issue the Proclamation of the same date, (19th instant) viz.: one proclaiming the Act; a second, indemnifying all the officers of the Government from any irregularities which may have been committed in the interval before the proclamation of the Act; and a third proclaiming English Law to be the Law of the Colony. The reading of these was preceded by His Excellency's Proclamation of the 3d inst., setting forth the Revocation by Her Majesty of all the exclusive privileges of the Hudson Bay Company. The proceedings then terminated. On leaving the Fort, which His Excellency did not finally do until today [20 November] another salute of 17 guns was fired from the battlements, with even a grander effect than the salute of the previous day.47 As the echoes of the 17-gun salute faded into the mountains, the impact of the new order was beginning to show in a slowdown of activities at the fort. Langley, head of transportation and forwarding centre for the interior, was now superseded by Forts Hope and Yale on the Fraser and by Port Douglas, the terminus of the navigable portion of the busy new Harrison-Lillooet route.48 A.G. Dallas, who replaced Douglas as head of the Company's board of management for the West Coast, announced in March 1859 that goods would henceforth be shipped direct to Forts Hope and Yale.49 As a result, most of the work associated with being brigade depot was abandoned at Langley, specifically boat building, packing, loading and transportation of interior outfits, fur baling and shipping, and the lodging, provisioning and equipping of the brigade contingent. Fewer travellers called at the fort and business at the saleshop became exceedingly dull.50 Early in 1859 speculation increased that the site of the original Fort Langley built by McMillan in 1827 would become the capital of the new colony. A townsite had been laid out and a public auction of lots held in Victoria on 25 November 1858 reserved "the best situated lots ... for the special purposes of government."51 But the favourable combination of shipping, farm and fishery facilities which had made the south side of the Fraser so vital to the fur trade was not the criterion used for the final selection of the new capital. Imperial military strategy ruled out Langley as too vulnerable in the event of an American attack.52 In February 1859 Colonel Moody designated a site on the north bank of the river as official port of entry and capital of British Columbia.53 This decision encouraged the development of New Westminster54 as the principal commercial town on the mainland in preference to Fort Langley, the traditional commercial centre on the Fraser.
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