In 1876, the west coast north of Burrard Inlet was defined by movement and uncertainty rather than names. The Department of Indian Affairs referred to the area as the coast or as home to untamed people on unsettled lands. Instead of taking responsibility, the Crown and the Province communicated only through travel and observation.

By late 1876, Malcolm Sproat, a Dominion Joint Indian Reserve Commissioner, was engaged in a dispute with Israel Powell, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for British Columbia, regarding the establishment of reserves on the west coast of the mainland. On March 29, 1877, he wrote several letters concerning a ‘Plan of Work’ to set up reserves for coastal First Nations.

The plan involved hiring the vessel ‘Lenora’ and, before the winter months, travelling to the coastal nations. They visited areas such as Burrard, Squamish, and Sechelt but ultimately crossed over to Comox instead of stopping at Sliammon (Tla’amin).

During the planning of this expedition, Mr. Anderson and Mr. McKinley wrote a letter to the Provincial Government on April 27, 1877, requesting that lands be set aside as reserves, including Harwood, Savery, and Cortez Islands in the Gulf of Georgia.

In response to both Mr. Anderson, Mr. McKinley and Malcolm Sproat’s belief that Indian Reserves are not being established fast enough, he drew and hand colored Indian Reserves on Captain Richards’ map of 1865.

Generic Work | Hand-coloured British Hydrographic Maps showing Indian Reserves – Strait of Georgia, Sheet 2, North East Point of Texada Island to Johnstone Strait including Toba, Bute, and Loughborough Inlets | ID: b5426527-ed94-4b01-a389-33c1b28bd9d8 | Hyku

In 1877, Malcolm Sproat participated in the establishment and review of Indigenous reserves in British Columbia as part of his administrative responsibilities within the evolving reserve commission framework. The archival record shows that when Mr. Sproat personally visited communities, his reports consistently contain first-person travel language, descriptions of meetings with Indigenous leaders, and detailed observations of land, settlement patterns, and local conditions. These elements provide a reliable documentary marker of attendance and were widely present in all other accounts of reserve settings.

The records relating to the Sliammon (ƛəʔamɛn) reserve differ materially from those patterns. No diary entry, travel notation, report, or correspondence places Mr. Malcolm Sproat at Sliammon (Tla’amin) at the time the reserve was described. The reserve description itself relies on generalized cartographic language, referencing shoreline position and inland extent in a rough fashion rather than on-site observation or ground demarcation.

There is no record of meetings with Sliammon (Tla’amin) people, no survey instructions issued by Mr. Sproat, and no contemporaneous account of consent or boundary setting. This absence is reinforced by later Dominion correspondence criticizing Mr. Sproat’s reserve work for failure to visit certain villages such as Sliammon (Tla’amin) personally. Taken together, the documentary silence and subsequent official criticism strongly indicate that the Sliammon (Tla’amin) reserve was established administratively, not through a physical visit by Mr. Sproat.

It was not uncommon to establish what were known as “paper reserves.” However, these were typically accompanied by a request to send a surveyor to define real boundaries and to consult with the First Nations regarding lands they believed they were entitled to, including gravesites and fishing grounds. In the case of a “paper reserve” that lacked follow-up requests, there is no documentation explaining why Malcolm Sproat initiated this action, nor were there any conversations with the Sliammon  (Tla’amin Nation) of the time about which land they occupied seasonally or where their main village actually was. However, correspondence indicates that he was concerned about timber rights and land claims being managed without considering the First Nation’s interests. Specifically, in the Tla’amin lands, the timber license granted to Mr. Rithet in 1874 raised concerns for both the Nation and Malcolm Sproat.

What the year 1876 moving into 1877 illustrates is not ethical restraint, but rather the bureaucratic incompleteness of the colonial administration. While the machinery of colonial governance was operational, documents from that time show that the British Columbia Government was still in its infancy and not fully functional.

It was evident that the government had not yet established the symbolic acts that would later solidify into maps and textbooks.

During 1876, colonial areas were referred to by their First Nations’ names, and this naming convention had not yet changed. By the end of 1877, however, all of this was about to change.