Fraser Canyon War

Combatants

The war was fought between six hastily formed irregular regiments from the Yale goldfields and the Nlakaʼpamux people of the upper Fraser Canyon. The militias were mostly American, with some German and French mercenaries who, like some Americans, had fought in Nicaragua. Allied warriors from the Secwepemc, Nicola, Okanagan, and other tribes joined the Nlakaʼpamux side but did not fight. British troops only arrived after the fighting ended.

Canyon War

The war began after a young Nlaka'pamux woman was raped by American miners near Kanaka Bar. In retaliation, the Nlaka'pamux killed several miners, decapitated the bodies, and dumped them into the river; the bodies were later found circling in a large eddy near Yale, the main commercial centre of the rush. This alarmed the thousands of miners lining the riverbanks between Yale and Kanaka Bar.

Tensions had been rising for months due to increasing conflict between indigenous people and encroaching miners. Conflict broke out when a group of goldseekers sparred with a party of Indians that had previously killed several white men and dumped them into a pool similarly. Because of the Nlaka'pamux reputation, the riverbanks north of Yale emptied as miners fled south to Spuzzum and Yale.

Miners held meetings; most had been in the California Gold Rush but were a diverse lot. Of the six regiments organized, one, the Austrian Company captained by John Centras, comprised French and German irregulars who had served in William Walker's filibustering campaign in Nicaragua in 1853 and later moved to California. Another, the Whatcom Company under Captain Graham, was mostly southerners bent on extermination; its name referenced the Whatcom Trail, used in defiance of British colonial edicts, implying annexationist sentiments.

Aftermath

No formal figures of the dead exist, and much hyperbole has been made by both sides. Estimates of white dead range from several dozen to several hundred or thousands; some say native casualties were extreme. After the war parties returned to Yale, Governor Douglas and a contingent of Royal Engineers arrived to take control of a situation that could have led to a war of extermination and annexation. Douglas was mortified that miners' committees and the California system of claims had been implemented without his authority.

He was further mortified that Snyder and Centras had made treaties with the natives, which was under British law the Crown's jurisdiction. He admonished the Americans, who were conciliatory and swore to abide by the Queen's laws. During this visit, the stage was set for McGowan's War, as Douglas appointed justices for Yale and Hill's Bar without knowing their real characters. Ned McGowan, known as the notorious or the ubiquitous, accompanied the Governor on his steamboat journey to Yale.