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The creation
of reserves in British Columbia was a very significant event for the Splats'in people.
Today, the City of Enderby lays directly west (across the Shuswap River) from the reserve.
The city limits also mark one part of the northern boundary of the reserve.
The reserve in the Enderby area was established in 1871 by Judge O'Reilly with John Trutch as the survey engineer. The original reserve was only 200 acres. In A.L. Fortune's testimony before the McKeena Commission, October 2, 1913, he stated that initially he "...granted to the Indians out of my first staking of the land as a fishing ground and united with the river..." an area of about 32 acres. It was also surveyed by John Trutch at the same time he surveyed the 200 acres.
Mr. Fortune went onto report to the commission that: "Sometime afterwards Indian troubles in Washington and Oregon created considerable excitement and anxiety on the American side and the disquiet among the Indians spread to this side, and the Indians of this side thought it was an opportune time to make an effort to get justice from the Government and they thought that they should apply, and they did apply to the Government for larger reserves. The few whites that were in the country at that time were mostly on good terms with the Indians, but we did not know what would happen and it was considered advisable to enlarge the Reserves -- Accordingly the Dominion Government sent a Commission up through the country and they gave the Indians all the land or reserves they wanted." The year was 1877.
The new reserves of 1877 prompted Messrs Lumby and Bennett, the owners of the large ranch that stretched between Enderby and Armstrong (and later known as the Stepney Ranch), to protest the boundaries. They wondered why land that they had improved would be included in the reserve and they bargained that they would be willing to exchange the improved parcel "...lying along the old Indian Reserve..." with another.
The Spallumcheen Reserve No. 1 (Salmon River) had 3853 acres and the Spallumcheen Reserve No. 2 (Enderby) had 5625 acres.
Both reserves were in the Railway Belt and both required new surveys since, as a memorandum from W. King, Chief Astronomer Topographical Survey Branch, pointed out on 8 May 1891: "The difficulty with Indian Reserves in British Columbia is that the plans and descriptions furnished are not sufficient to enable us to locate them even approximately in many cases. It is thus impossible to tell a surveyor, in his instructions, where an Indian Reserve should be found, and he has to depend on the chance of seeing the line. These lines are so poorly marked that surveyors pass them without noticing them; at least, this has been the case in many places already. In seven or eight years more the difficulty will be much increased."
It was extraordinarily important that the federal government know where the reserves were in the Railway Belt so that the non-reserve lands could be opened up to white settlement. The Spallumcheen Band reserves were not finally approved by the federal government until the fall of 1909.
Bob Cowan
Enderby Museum 1999
For a Bilbiography please contact the Enderby Museum