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UBC Theses and Dissertations
Manning the Fraser Canyon gold rush Groeneveld-Meijer, Averill
Abstract
In the canyon where the Fraser River flows through the Cascade mountains, migrating salmon supported a large, dense native population. By 1850 the Hudson’s Bay Company had several forts on other parts of the Fraser River and its tributaries but found the canyon itself inaccessible. Prior to the gold rush, whites rarely ventured there. Discoveries of gold in Fraser River in 1856 drew the attention of outsiders and a rush of miners, and led eventually to permanent white settlement on mainland British Columbia. Contrary to much historiography, these were not foregone results. Instead, the gold rush was a complex process of negotiation and conflict among competing groups as they sought to profit from gold discoveries. The Hudson’s Bay Company sought to gain and retain control of the resource by incorporating it into its trade and by excluding outsiders. But miners arrived by the thousands, and the Company was forced to try to regulate miners’ access to the resource. However, as a group, miners were cohesive and self-reliant; they had little need for outside intervention. The Hudson’s Bay Company was unable to regulate them while pursuing its own ideas of profit. The British government subsequently revoked the Hudson Bay Company’s trade license, and proclaimed British Columbia a colony. In efforts to impose its own ideals of order on the gold fields, the government introduced a new colonial administration which, following a chain of command extending from London through Victoria to the Fraser, sought to organize the population in the spaces of the Fraser Canyon. Government authority was reinforced by the legal system’s flexible responses to the diverse population’s activities it deemed illegal. By studying the interactions of natives, miners, traders, administrators, and the legal system, I have attempted to untangle the ways in which white men negotiated their particular racist and masculinist ideals and sought to impose them in the spaces of the Fraser Canyon.
Item Metadata
Title |
Manning the Fraser Canyon gold rush
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1994
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Description |
In the canyon where the Fraser River flows through the Cascade mountains,
migrating salmon supported a large, dense native population. By 1850 the Hudson’s Bay
Company had several forts on other parts of the Fraser River and its tributaries but found
the canyon itself inaccessible. Prior to the gold rush, whites rarely ventured there.
Discoveries of gold in Fraser River in 1856 drew the attention of outsiders and a
rush of miners, and led eventually to permanent white settlement on mainland British
Columbia. Contrary to much historiography, these were not foregone results. Instead, the
gold rush was a complex process of negotiation and conflict among competing groups as
they sought to profit from gold discoveries. The Hudson’s Bay Company sought to gain
and retain control of the resource by incorporating it into its trade and by excluding
outsiders. But miners arrived by the thousands, and the Company was forced to try to
regulate miners’ access to the resource. However, as a group, miners were cohesive and
self-reliant; they had little need for outside intervention. The Hudson’s Bay Company was
unable to regulate them while pursuing its own ideas of profit. The British government
subsequently revoked the Hudson Bay Company’s trade license, and proclaimed British
Columbia a colony. In efforts to impose its own ideals of order on the gold fields, the
government introduced a new colonial administration which, following a chain of
command extending from London through Victoria to the Fraser, sought to organize the
population in the spaces of the Fraser Canyon. Government authority was reinforced by
the legal system’s flexible responses to the diverse population’s activities it deemed illegal.
By studying the interactions of natives, miners, traders, administrators, and the
legal system, I have attempted to untangle the ways in which white men negotiated their
particular racist and masculinist ideals and sought to impose them in the spaces of the
Fraser Canyon.
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Extent |
8550968 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-03-02
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0087488
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
1994-11
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.