Long ago, the land that has become known as James Bay was part of the territory of the Songhees people. Before the arrivial of European settlers the Songhees were not a concrete political entity, the name refers to a group of autonomous but interconnected family groups who spoke the same dialect of the Salish language family, known as Lekwungen, and who had hereditary ties to the land that has since become the municipalities of Langford, Colwood, Esquimalt, Oak Bay, and Victoria, as well as a good part of the San Juan Islands.

To see evidence of the Songhees’s ancient occupation of this land simply go for a walk on the South East side of Beacon Hill. You will be sure to notice several great piles of boulders sitting amongst the dense grasses and underbrush. These are the remains of a whole slew of native burial cairns that once covered most of the seaward side of Beacon Hill.

Aboriginal burial cairns on Beacon Hill.
© 2005 Gordon Friesen. See more here.

Very little is known about the origins of these burial cairns. One theory suggests that they were built in the late eighteenth century to bury victims of the smallpox epidemic. Another suggests they were built over a long period started up to 1,500 years ago and continuing, perhaps right up until the arrival of European settlers in the 1840s.

Because of the great effort involved in building the cairns it is likely that those buried in the cairns were of high status in their community. Each body was placed in a shallow grave, covered in dirt and small stones, and then boulders were piled up around and on top of the body. The graves stretched from one to ten metres on a side and were up to 2 metres tall. Some of the boulders weighed over a ton and had to be transported from another location.

The European settlers in Victoria did not understand or respect the significance of the graves and the cairns became victims of curiosity and vandalism. When Douglas arrived to set up a Hudson Bay Company trading post in 1843 there were at least 23 burial cairns on the hill. In 1858 the largest of the graves at the top of the hill was excavated and the body, covered in a cedar bark mat, was removed. Many of the boulders from the other cairns were moved, or taken from the hillside before the beginning of the twentieth century.

Boulders from native burial cairns on Beacon Hill,
Photo by Joel Legassie.

In 1986 a Parks crew, unaware of their significance, moved some of the boulders so they could mow the grass. Though the boulders were eventually replaced under the supervision of Royal BC Museum Anthropolgist Grant Keddie, their current position is only an approximation of their original placement. These are the cairns that you can easily find just a short distance from the flagpole on top of Beacon Hill. But if you are adventurous there are others lying hidden in the thick undergrowth of the hillside.

These cairns are not unique to the Beacon Hill Park area. There are actually thousands of sites that had, or still have, burial cairns, all across the Capital Region. In fact the Beacon Hill site is typical in that the cairns are built on a hillside overlooking the water and a defensive village site. In this case the site of the defensive village was Finlayson Point, where archeologists have found a shell midden dating back about 1,000 years, as well as evidence of a defensive trench and houses built on the point.

Aboriginal village and defensive site on Finlayson Point
(904 A.D. to 1689 A.D)
© 2005 Gordon Friesen. See more here.

The burial cairns and archeological evidence show that compared with the mere 165 years the descendants of European immigrants have called this land home, the Songhees’ association with this area is much longer and deeper. In my next post I’m going to explore one of the ways that the Songhees used the land, while leaving a legacy that lives with us even today.

Further Reading:
This post draws heavily on the work of Janis Ringuette in her extensively researched History of Beacon Hill Park. For more detailed information on this subject visit: www.islandnet.com/beaconhillpark/articles/119_cairns.htm

Also see:
Camas Historical Group, Camas Chronicles of James Bay. Victoria, BC, 1978.

Grant Keddie. Songhees Pictorial: A History of the Songhees People as Seen by Outsiders (1790-1912). Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003.

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