No. 4

1. I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatch
No 20, of the 13th of November last.

2. I trust I may be permitted to make a few explanatory
observations, in reference to the remarks in 
your Despatch on the
subject of the expedition to Cowegin, with the view of more clearly
showing, than was done in my report of the expedition, that the measure
of sending an armed Force against the Cowegin Indians was only resorted
to, on the failure of all other means of bringing the criminal to
justice, and vindicating the authority of the Law.

3. I may add without fear of contradiction that never was a signal
example more urgently demanded for the maintenance of our prestige with
the Indian Tribes than on that occasion. Elated with the recent
successes of the Oregon Tribes over the United 
States Troops, the natives of this Colony were also becoming insolent and restive, and
there exist the clearest proofs derived from the confession of his own
friends, to show that the Native who shot Williams, felt assured of
escaping with impunity. He, in fact told his friends that they had
nothing to fear from the enmity of the whites, as they would not venture
to attack a powerful tribe, occupying a country strong in its natural
defences, and so distant from the coast.

4. His friends were disposed to entertain the same opinion. Our
demands for the surrender of the criminal were answered by a rush to
arms, and a tumultuous assemblage of the Tribe in warlike array. From
thence arose the necessity of employing an armed force to support the
requisitions of the Law, and the danger to be guarded against, in our
efforts to apprehend the criminal, was a collision with the whole Tribe.
To avert that calamity, if possible, I had recourse, essentially, to the
same principles of action, as in the case of the successful expeditions
against the Cowegin and Nanaimo Tribes, reported in my Despatch of the
21st of January 1853, to Secretary Sir John S. Packington
[Pakington], that is, by striving to impress on the minds of the
Natives, that the terrors of the law would be let loose on the guilty
only, and not 
on the Tribe at large, provided they took no part in
resisting the Queens authority nor in protecting the criminal from
justice.

5. And further I took the field in person with the expeditionary
force, directed all their movements, and adopted every other precaution,
dictated by experience, to avert disaster and ensure success.

6. The disastrous warfare with the Natives of New Zealand, and
more recently in the British Settlements on the coast of Africa, where
the apprehension of a criminal led to much expense and the loss of many
valuable lives; and in our own neighbourhood the conflicts with the
Natives in American Oregon, and the fruitless 
expedition of Her
Majesty's Ships "Daedalus" and "Daphne" undertaken by my Predecessor
Governor Blanshard against the native Tribes of Vancouvers Island,
evince the difficulties and dangers of that service.

7. I may further assure Her Majestys Government that I was not
influenced by the love of military display in assuming the great
responsibility involved in directing the Cowegin Expedition; but solely
by a profound sense of public duty, and a conviction, founded on
experience, that it is only by resorting to prompt and decisive measures
of punishment, in all cases of aggression, that life and property can be
protected and the Native Tribes of this Colony 
kept in a proper state of
subordination.

8. I have further much satisfaction in reporting that the result
of the expedition has produced a most salutary effect on the minds of
the Natives.