Press and Propaganda

Changing Attitudes

By the end of May, when the police, backed up by a British gunboat, had sent most Natives out of Victoria, a Colonist article finally seems to appreciate the result of this forced departure. It may have protected the colonists, but it wrought havoc on the Natives. Those who were forced to leave the city carried the disease with them, infecting many more people.

27 May 1862, p. 3.

The Small Pox.--Yesterday the Rev. Mr. Garrett, with Mr. Smith, of the Police, visited Ogden Point, near the mouth of the harbor, and found that out of seventy Indians there encamped thirty were down with the small pox in its most virulent form! The ravages committed by this dreadful disease among the native tribes in this vicinity is frightful, and we have no doubt that if the mortuary statistics could be obtained that it would be ascertained that at the least one-third of all the Northern Indians who were until lately encamped on the Reserve or resided with townspeople as servants have already died under its influence! At the present rate of mortality, a Northern Indian will be an object of curiosity in two years from now.