Camas Harvest
© 2005 Gordon Friesen. See more here.

The First Nations of the Northwest Coast are most often associated with the salmon fishery and shellfish gathering, but at James Bay the Songhees people, who called this area home, took part in what can only be described as agricultural activity.

In the late spring to early summer families would camp on the shores of James Bay, near the place where St. Ann’s Academy is today. The place was known as Whosaykum, or ‘muddy place,’ because the low tide would expose great muddy banks that were ideal for the harvesting of clams and mussels.

Camas Plant. They can still be found
throughout James Bay in the spring.
© 2005 Gordon Friesen. See more here.

But that’s not the only reason they came here. They also came because much of the land we now call James Bay was covered in a wide open field, which in spring would fill up with a pretty blue flower known as camas. It has an edible bulb, much like an onion, but with a taste similar to sweet chestnuts.

The land was divided into hereditary plots where each family would cultivate and harvest camas. They would select and replant the strongest plants with the largest bulbs and remove the poisonous white camas in favour of the edible blue camas. This work was probably conducted by the women and children while the men were engaged in other activities such as hunting and fishing.

The camas harvests were productive enough to provide an abundant food source for the families who grew them, with a surplus to trade with neighbouring peoples such as the Nuu-chah-nulth of the West Coast of Vancouver Island.

Camas bulb in the ground
© 2005 Gordon Friesen.
See more here.

As part of their agricultural practices these Songhees families regularly burned the camas fields to clear away shrubs and brush while renewing the soil. This practice maintained the beautiful grassy meadows interrupted by small stands of stately oaks that Douglas encountered when he arrived to inspect the site for Fort Victoria in the summer of 1842. It was an ideal landscape in the eyes of a 19th century British explorer and trader causing him to remark “The place itself appears a perfect ‘Eden’ in the midst of the dreary wilderness of the North...one might be pardoned for supposing it had dropped from the clouds into its present position.” (Glazebrook, ed. The Hargrave Correspondence, p. 420). Though Douglas assumed it was a natural park, it was in fact the result of countless generations of toil by the ancestors of the Songhees Nation.

We may regret that this ‘Eden’ has been removed from their care, and so much of it paved over and filled with the bustle and noise of modern urban life, but at least we can remember and be thankful for their hardwork. For without it, it is unlikely there would have been the inspiration to create and maintain Beacon Hill Park these past 125 years.

Further Reading:
Songhees Nation website, www.songheesnation.com/html/history
Janis Ringuette, Beacon Hill Park History, 1842 - 2007, www.islandnet.com/beaconhillpark
Camas Chronicles
Janis Ringuette, “Camas Country” http://www.islandnet.com/beaconhillpark/articles/120_camas_country.htm
Grant Kedie, Songhees Pictorial: A History of the Songhees People as Seen by Outsiders 1790 - 1920. Victoria: RBCM, 2003.

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