Songhees Pictorial: A History of the Songhees People as Seen by Outsiders, 1790-1912

Songhees Pictorial: A History of the Songhees People as Seen by Outsiders, 1790-1912 Grant Keddie Victoria: Royal BC Museum, 2003. 176 pp. Illus. $39.95 paper.

THIS IS A WONDERFUL addition to the history of Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia and Canada. It is unusual because it takes images as the starting point and valuable because the people upon whom it focuses are among the least known in the written history of the region, despite being the most observed. It is also a great example of popular history: an appealing coffee table book that is original, scholarly, and authoritative.

The Songhees (also known as the Lekwungen) were the first Aboriginal group in western Canada to experience urbanization: the town of Victoria, and then the city, enveloped them within two decades of the first arrival of Europeans. Their reserve was in constant view of the city and in the direct sightline of the colonial and provincial legislative buildings. Moreover, Songhees people were frequently in the city: working, buying goods, and selling fish, game, or art work. Among the Songhees, as well as other Aboriginal visitors to their reserve, Victorians found the stereotype of the lazy, mercurial, drunken, immoral Indian. This became the story of the Songhees among the settler population, and since many of the capital's politicians, residents, and visitors had never encountered other views of Aboriginal peoples, these images ended up, in many respects, defining the province's "Indians."

Ironically, anthropologists largely ignored the Songhees because they were too much like Europeans in dress, religion, work, and social (including drinking) habits, and because they intermarried extensively with other racial/ethnic groups. As a stereotype they...