Sliammon has been granted its lands by the Crown, which remains its owner.

1. Surveyed & drawn:M. Skinner, 1888–1889
2. Signed: Peter O’Reilly, Indian Reserve Commissioner
3. Includes:
4. Sliammon IR No. 1 (1930 acres)
5. Harwood Island IR No. 2 (2075 acres)
6. Paukeanum IR No. 3 (200 acres)
7. Toquana IR No. 4 (430 acres)
8. Tokenatch IR No. 5 (50 acres)
9. Kahkaykay IR No. 6 (36 acres)

The 1888 records concerning the Sliammon people reveal a colonial process that sought to redefine Indigenous land relations through administrative authority, cadastral surveying, and the imposition of a reserve system designed to confine and regulate. The Sliammon reserves were re-mapped, remeasured, and documented through a series of minutes, surveys, and official correspondence, which illustrates how the Canadian state translated a complex Indigenous land-use system into several distinct, state-authorized parcels. This transformation was not merely technical. It was a political project that reshaped Sliammon territoriality, mobility, and economic life to align with settler‑colonial priorities.

The reserve descriptions themselves demonstrate the logic of reduction at work. Each Sliammon reserve listed as Sliammon No. 1, Harwood Island, Pauk‑e‑a‑num, To‑kiv‑na, To‑ke‑natch, Kahk‑ay‑kay, and others, set through chains, posts, and surveyed lines that imposed a rigid geometry onto a landscape previously understood through kinship, seasonal movement, and resource networks. The omnion emphasis on precise boundaries, marked trees, and corner posts reveals a worldview in which land becomes legitimate only when fixed, measured, and recorded.

Even when the documents acknowledge the importance of fisheries, berry grounds, or seasonal harvesting sites, these uses were secondary to the administrative need to delimit territory. The Sliammon’s extensive marine-based economy, anchored in fishing seasonal villages, herring spawn grounds, salmon streams, and sheltered coves, was compressed into small, isolated parcels that the state deemed sufficient for “use,” but which bore little resemblance to the broader territorial system that sustained the community.

Administrative correspondence reinforces this pattern of containment. Officials repeatedly describe the Sliammon reserves as “merely fishing stations,” a phrase that reveals the colonial hierarchy of land value. Land that did not support agriculture or permanent settlement was treated as marginal, even when it was central to Sliammon subsistence and cultural practice. The state’s willingness to allocate such sites was framed not as recognition of Indigenous rights but as evidence that these parcels did not interfere with settler claims. In this logic, Sliammon land rights were acknowledged only to the extent that they did not impede the expansion of logging, milling, or agricultural interests. The administrative record reveals a system where Indigenous land use was accepted only when it aligned with—or did not hinder—settler economic development.

The decisions regarding the Sliammon reserve in 1888 relied on Gilbert Malcolm Sproat’s 1879 “paper reserves” in their entirety, marking the first effort by the Joint Indian Reserve Commission to identify lands for the Sliammon and neighboring groups.

Sproat’s 1879 allocations were never surveyed, never legally confirmed, and existed only as written descriptions of provisional sketches of what the Commission believed might satisfy Indigenous needs while minimizing conflict with settlers. For the Sliammon, these paper reserves included general indications of village sites, fishing stations, and island locations. Still, they lacked the precise boundaries, acreage, and legal authority that would later characterize O’Reilly’s 1888 decisions. The gap between Sproat’s provisional notes and the later surveyed reserves reflects a broader pattern in British Columbia. Indigenous land rights were acknowledged only abstractly in the 1870s, with the state delaying concrete action until settler expansion made formal boundaries necessary.

When O’Reilly returned to the Sliammon region in 1888, he used Sproat’s notes from 1879 as a loose guide rather than strict commitments. He departed on August 2, 1888, to conduct surveys aboard the steamer Sir Douglas James, accompanied by Mr. W. Anderson Green, the surveyor for the Commission. O’Reilly noted that the first tribe he would visit was the Sliammon, and he described their principal village on the mainland coast as being 1.5 miles east of Harwood Island.

Upon arrival, he added to his paperwork the official census, which indicated that the Sliammon population consisted of 317 individuals. They had cultivated small patches of land on Harwood Island and at some of their fisheries, and they owned 80 cattle and 10 sheep. He consulted with two chiefs and several community members, after which they reserved different parcels of land. Reserve No. 1 encompassed 1,930 acres, mostly consisting of poor-quality land, except for a few patches. He noted that the principal village contained 47 well-built houses, and at the center stood the Roman Catholic Church.

Reserve No. 9 spans 1,920 acres and provides limited pasture land but is rich in timber. Within Reserve No. 9, there is an abandoned pre-emption claim by Hugh Armstrong, identified as claim number 395.

Mr. P. O. Reilly completed the survey of the reserves and submitted them for approval on December 13, 1888. At that time, Sliammon recorded a population of 317 people, 80 cattle, and 10 sheep, with an average reserve acreage of 4,721.

In many cases, O’Reilly’s final reserves were smaller, more fragmented, and more tightly bound than Sproat’s earlier descriptions. For example, Sproat had identified Harwood Island and parts of the mainland coast as important Sliammon use areas. Still, O’Reilly’s 1888 surveys carved these into discrete parcels whose acreage was determined by administrative convenience rather than Indigenous territorial logic. The shift from Sproat’s broad, qualitative descriptions to O’Reilly’s precise, quantitative surveys marks a transition from tentative recognition to definitive spatial containment. In effect, the 1888 reserves represent the codification—and often the contraction—of Sproat’s earlier proposals, translating flexible Indigenous land use into a set of rigid, state‑controlled polygons.

The demographic and economic data outlined in the correspondence illustrate the bureaucratic approach used to govern the Sliammon people. The 1888 resurvey included population counts, livestock numbers, and acreage totals, gathered not to understand the Sliammon social organization on its own terms, but rather to evaluate the adequacy of the reserves and to determine how effectively the Crown wanted the community integrated into the colonial economy.

The Sliammon people’s ownership of cattle and sheep serves as evidence of their industriousness, illustrating the state’s preference for agricultural or pastoral work over marine-based livelihoods. This viewpoint reflects the assimilationist assumptions inherent in the reserve system, which expected Indigenous communities to adopt settler models of land use, housing, and productivity. The Crown’s formula for land allocations for these communities was assessed based on these expectations.