No. 49

I have to acknowledge the receipt of your [VI] despatch of the
9th of February No. 4 transmitting copies of communications which
have passed between you and the House of Assembly of Vancouver's Island
between the 23d August and the 5th February last.

I am glad to perceive that you have directed the attention of the
House to that interesting and important subject the relations of Her
Majesty's Government and of the Colony to the Indian race. Proofs are
unhappily still too frequent of the neglect which Indians experience
when the White man obtains possession of their Country and their claims
to consideration are forgotten at the moment when equity most demands
that the hand of the protector should be extended to help them. In the
case of the Indians of Vancouvers Island and British Columbia Her
Majesty's Government earnestly wish that when the advancing requirements
of Colonization press upon Lands occupied by Members of that race
measures of liberality and justice may be adopted for compensating them
for the surrender of the territory which they have been taught to regard
as their own. Especially I would enjoin upon you, and all in authority
in both Colonies, the importance of establishing Schools of an
industrial as well as an educational character for the Indians, whereby
they may acquire the arts of civilized life which will enable them to
support themselves, and not degenerate into the mere recipients of
eleemosynary relief. It is to be hoped that by such and other means,
which your experience will enable you to devise, the Indians may in
these, the most recent of the British Settlements, be treated in a
manner worthy the beneficent rule of Our Gracious Sovereign.