Recently, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for the 1864 hanging of six Tsilhqot’in men for leading an uprising against colonial authority in British Columbia, Canada’s most western province. Why did he apologize? And why were those men hanged?
In April of 1864, a crew had been building a road through Tsilhqot’in land to get to gold-rich Williams Creek. In a sudden dawn attack, 12 of their number were killed as they lay sleeping in their tents. The attackers were 24 Tsilhqot’in men. Led by a man named Klatsassin, they were on the brink of starvation and only months removed from a smallpox epidemic that had killed up to half of their 1,500 people.
The camp’s few survivors would report that some of the attackers had been singing and merry-making with the road crew only the night before. Subsequent attacks on a pack train and a lone settler in Tsilhqot’in territory would bring the body count to 21.
These attacks led to a months-long standoff in British Columbia. A hastily-created volunteer army – mainly Americans – were sent from the colonial capital of New Westminster to put down the rebellion in the name of the Crown. Instead they went on an extended camping trip, doing little except harming themselves with friendly fire.
The conflict came to an end only when 8 of the 24 turned themselves over to colonial authorities, believing that they would be accepted as a peace delegation and brought to negotiate with British Columbia’s Governor. Instead, 5 of the 8 were convicted and hanged as murderers.
Their status as a peace delegation from a foreign nation was ignored. The Tsilhqot’in never denied that they had killed Whites, but maintained that it was an act of war. Attacks on sleeping indigenous peoples had been used by Canadians and Americans for centuries by that point. If the Canadians could consider that fair in war so could the Tsilhqot'in. And in 2018, over 150 years later, the Canadian government acknowledged that.
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