At the peak of his career, James Douglas, fur trader and colonial governor, was knighted by Queen Victoria. Considering that both James and his wife, Amelia, were of mixed-race origins (Scottish and West Indian, and Irish-French and Cree, respectively), their success was remarkable. In this engaging story of courage and companionship, Victoria author John Adams provides the first in-depth look at the lives of the first family of Victoria and offers glimpses of Douglas as a private man, husband and father.
Moving households is usually not an easy or pleasant task for most people, especially after many years in the same place. The Hudson’s Bay Company ordered James Douglas to transfer the company’s headquarters and main depot for the Columbia Department from Fort Vancouver (the site of present-day Vancouver, Washington) to Fort Victoria beginning in May 1849, a task that required him to relocate along with it.
This was not a happy step for the Douglas family, at least if measured in terms of immediate prestige for James or living conditions for Amelia and the children. The fort on the Columbia River was the centre of trade for the entire Pacific coast between California and Alaska; it was a large and important establishment in terms of population, production and administration. Fort Vancouver had been a pleasant home, but Fort Victoria was a remote outpost that lacked most European amenities, at least at the time the Douglases moved there.
Leaving Fort Vancouver was difficult for Amelia for another very special reason. As she was preparing to depart, the memories of many deaths — those of five infant children — and the thought of leaving the place where they were buried must have been on her mind. Her plight was worsened because the fear of death stalked the Douglas family even on the eve of their departure.
An outbreak of typhus had swept through Fort Vancouver in the spring of 1849 and the Douglases’ three-month-old baby, Rebecca, had contracted the often-fatal disease before the move, creating even more worry for Amelia, who was forced to devote extra attention to the sick child. Family lore recounts that Amelia cradled Rebecca in her arms during the entire trip northward to their new home.
At the Cowlitz Portage, passengers and goods were transferred to horses and wagons. Along the way they stopped at the farm of an American settler and Douglas acquired a bull, which joined the straggling procession. This motley cavalcade hove into sight at Fort Nisqually (near modern-day Tacoma) on May 25, and the post’s journal noted the details.
Douglas and his three eldest daughters, Cecilia, Jane and Agnes, were well in the lead on horseback, followed in the course of the afternoon by five wagons bearing what Douglas facetiously called “the booty” and the family’s private effects. Amelia and the youngest children, five-year-old Alice and baby Rebecca, occupied the last wagon.
Over the next six days, the Douglases rested at Fort Nisqually with their friends, William and Jane Tolmie, while preparations were made for them to continue on the last part of their trek. During this time the bull Douglas had bought escaped and “probably returned towards his former favourites,” but James and Amelia were not so fortunate.
On June 1, the chief factor and his family boarded the Cadboro and slipped along Puget Sound with the tide in the afternoon. Their ship was a schooner, reliant on the wind, so travel was slow and, in spite of a few windy days, it was not until June 6 that they finally reached their new home. Amelia had never before seen salt water, and for her and the children this had been their first sea voyage.
What consoling words would James Douglas have been able to say to Amelia as they anchored off Fort Victoria and were rowed to shore? The fort was minuscule in comparison to the one they had left. When they passed through the palisades they saw the chief factor’s house facing the main gates, but it lacked the elegance and charm of their home at Fort Vancouver.
The fort’s population was small and, most critically for Amelia, there was no woman of equal status to greet her and share the trials and tribulations of the arduous journey. For the first time in her life she was without the support and guidance of her mother or another experienced, sympathetic woman.
Other newcomers to Fort Victoria were also shocked at what they found at Fort Victoria. A few months before the Douglases arrived, the Reverend Robert Staines and his wife, Emma, had come from England, since Staines was to be the Anglican chaplain and schoolteacher.
On entering the fort, they were aghast that planks had to be laid in the deep mud to give them a safe footing. Chief Trader Roderick Finlayson wrote that they “looked around wonderingly at the bare walls of the buildings & expressed deep surprise, stating that the Co. in England had told them this & that and had promised such & such.” Their complaints about inadequate lodgings and other problems would soon be directed to Douglas.
The Douglases arrived at Fort Victoria during a period of considerable apprehension about raids from a party of Quamichans led by the dreaded Chief Tzouhalem, whose village was at the mouth of the Cowichan River, about a day’s canoe trip north of the fort. Tensions persisted for several months, making excursions into the countryside around Fort Victoria a problem until Tzouhalem was murdered.
Just as worrisome during the summer of 1849 were the grass and forest fires that engulfed much of the land around the fort, and at one time threatened the establishment itself. If life at the Douglases’ new home was not placid, at least it was varied.
Douglas was not happy with what he saw upon arrival at the new company headquarters. Although he had personally selected the site seven years before, he realized now that it had severe shortcomings. Drinking water was terribly scarce near the fort, especially in dry summer weather; the soil, such as it was, was thin and rocky; and the only waterpower for grinding grain and sawing lumber was at Millstream, an unreliable source because it dried up in summer.
Such drawbacks had not really mattered as long as Fort Vancouver, Fort Nisqually and Cowlitz Farm had continued to produce food and materials for the Columbia Department, but now those links were to be severed, and it was too late to do anything about it.
Fort Victoria also experienced labour strife around the time of Douglas’s arrival. Some of it was due to the California gold rush, which lured away a number of hard-working and poorly paid HBC employees on Vancouver Island. The gold rush also caused a tremendous increase in the number of foreign ships arriving at Fort Victoria for provisions and, in some instances, to sell liquor to company servants.
Another problem was the coal miners who had arrived at Fort Victoria from Britain aboard the Harpooner only a few days before the Douglases. In what was the colony’s first strike, “the hired servants who came by the Harpooner discontinued work … alleging as a reason that they had not fresh beef for dinner,” noted the fort’s journal in July 1849. A few weeks later, nine men from the SS Beaver and the Mary Dare stole a canoe and deserted, heading for Fort Nisqually. On April 15, 1850, some of the new recruits from England refused to work for part of the day “because it was raining.”
The antics of men who struck work because they did not have fresh beef or did not like working in the rain must have enraged Douglas, leading him to question his own future in a colony populated by such complainers.
Old Square-Toes and His Lady, TouchWood Editions ©2011 John Adams
