This is a letter from the chief of the Williams Lake Indian band, published in the Daily British Colonist on Nov. 7, 1879. It was cited by the Specific Claims Tribunal in a Feb. 28, 2014, decision that the band should receive compensation for thousands of hectares along the Fraser River.
I am an Indian chief and my people are threatened by starvation. The white men have taken all the land and all the fish. A vast country was ours. It is all gone.
The noise of the threshing machine and the wagon has frightened the deer and the beaver. We have nothing to eat. We cannot live on the air, and we must die.
My people are sick. My young men are angry. All the Indians from Canoe Creek to the headwaters of the Fraser say: “William is an old woman, he sleeps and starves in silence.”
I am old and feeble and my authority diminishes every day. I am sorely puzzled. I do not know what to say next week when the chiefs are assembled in council.
A war with the white man will end in our destruction, but death in war is not so bad as death by starvation.
The land on which my people lived for 500 years was taken by a white man; he has piles of wheat and herds of cattle. We have nothing — not an acre.
Another white man has enclosed the graves in which the ashes of our fathers rest, and we may live to see their bones turned over by his plow! Any white man can take 320 acres of our land and the Indian dare not touch an acre.
Her Majesty sent me a coat, two plows and some turnip seed. The coat will not keep away the hunger; the plows are idle and the seed is useless because we have no land.
All my people are willing to work because they know they must work like the white man or die. They work for the white men.
Mr. Bates was a good friend. He would not have a white man if he could get an Indian. My young men can plow and mow and cut corn with a cradle.
Now, what I want to say is this — THERE WILL BE TROUBLE, SURE.
The whites have taken all the salmon and all the land and my people will not starve in peace.
Good friends to the Indian say that “Her Majesty loves her Indian subjects and will do justice.” Justice is no use for a dead Indian.
They say: “Mr. Sproat is coming to give you land.” We hear he is a very good man, but he has no horse. He was at Hope last June and he has not yet arrived here.
Her Majesty ought to give him a horse and let justice come fast to the starving Indians.
Land, land, a little of our own land, that is all we ask from Her Majesty. If we had the deer and the salmon we could live by hunting and fishing. We have nothing now and here comes the cold and the snow.
Maybe the white man thinks we can live on snow. We can make fires to make people warm — that is what we can do. Wood will burn. We are not stones.
William,
Chief of the Williams Lake Indians
