Date(s) -Thursday, April 25, 2024
7:15 pm - 9:00 pm
Location: James Bay New Horizons
Categories
Thursday, April 25, 2024 Victoria Historical Society presents Cordova Bay Archeology with Brian Thom. This talk takes place at the James Bay New Horizons Center, 234 Menzies Street, Victoria BC V8V 2G7. The Center is open at 7:15 pm for conversation and refreshments. The talk follows shortly after 7:30 pm.
In early February of 1852, Governor Douglas arranged the South Saanich treaty covering an area of the Saanich peninsula between PKOLS (Mt Douglas) and Cowichan Head – essentially the treaty of Cordova Bay. This treaty, made with W̱EȾÁM¸ELTW̱ (Whutsaymullet as it was written then) and numerous other families who attended, was nearly identical to the other Vancouver Island treaties, promising to set aside the village sites and enclosed fields as well guarantees around hunting and fishing rights. While families were living in at least two longhouses in the village known as ȾEL¸IȽĆE (as it is written in SENĆOŦEN) / c̓əl̓íɫč (as it is written in lək̓ʷəŋən) in Cordova Bay in the 1850s, the lands that housed and sustained the community were never reserved, and indeed came to be privately owned in the decades that followed.
Today, the archaeological footprints of the original people of ȾEL ̧IȽĆE / c̓əl̓íɫč are found throughout Cordova Bay, but very few have been well documented. In the summer of 2023, the University of Victoria’s Anthropology Department partnered with Tsawout First Nation to undertake archaeological mapping and excavations on all the Cordova Bay waterfront properties held by the District of Saanich, and in intertidal area. This talk will share something what this archaeological work revealed, alongside oral histories and other records of the Cordova Bay area.