CHAPTER
1
Shuffling along the narrow trail, the prospector shifted his heavy pack to a more comfortable position. Up ahead, he knew from talking to like-minded men, lay the border between the Oregon Territory and the newly named colony of British Columbia. He knew, too, what to expect when he arrived at the border, but he had no intention of letting it happen to him. “By God, and by my rights as an American,” he growled to himself, “I’m not paying any duties on my gear. They can whistle for their money. I’ll wait till dark and slip across the border when they’re sleeping. I’ll be miles away before the customs man even wakes up.”
The story is apocryphal, but it represents many a man who headed north for the various gold rushes in British Columbia from 1858 on. One of the first things Governor James Douglas did after assuming the post of governor of the mainland colony was to set customs duties on anything imported into the region. How else, he and other colonial officials asked, could the colony afford to build roads and keep the law? As one official wrote to the colonial secretary in London, expenses such as these could be paid by “a small ad valorem duty on British imports, with an increase upon foreign imports, &,” suggesting a policy that would always be popular with governments, “a considerable augmentation on ardent spirits in proportion to their proof. No revenue could be raised sufficient for present purposes, by any other means so readily . . . and at so small an expense to the mother country.”
With the first customs duties came the first smugglers. Though Victoria was a free port for a few years from 1860 on, no such benefits accrued to New Westminster and other mainland points, and gold rushers who came by land preferred to evade duties whenever they could. In his 1887 history of British Columbia, Hubert Howe Bancroft reported the result:
Smuggling was practised largely from the first appearance of the gold fever. Particularly along the United States border it was found impossible, where all was hurry and helter-skelter, and goods were carried on men’s backs as well as by horses and canoes, to prevent large quantities of merchandise from passing the line untaxed. So great became this contraband traffic that a serious commercial depression which prevailed at New Westminster in the winter of 1860–1 was charged directly to it.
In 1859, two American soldiers escaped pursuing Natives by scuttling north across the border in the country east of present-day Osoyoos, where they chanced upon gold in the Kettle River. Soon, some 5,000 prospectors were streaming north, and not one of them was paying duty on the goods and supplies he carried. James Douglas added a second customs officer to the area, “for restraining the illicit importation of goods into British Columbia,” but it was to no avail. “It is, however, impossible, I conceive,” wrote Douglas, “altogether to prevent smuggling at places situated so immediately on the frontier as Rock Creek.” As a Portland newspaper noted in December 1860, in a report from Rock Creek:
The British officials here are having a lively time at present, in attempting to prevent goods being smuggled into British territory. The boundary line is only three miles from here and two trains are just outside awaiting a favorable opportunity to run their goods in and avoid paying the ten per cent duty on dry goods and groceries and $1.50 a gallon on liquors. Another dodge is to take all the goods across the line upon the same horse, thereby saving $1.50 on each horse, that being the duty on every animal taken into British territory.
The bust of the Rock Creek boom seems to have slowed things down, however, as did the stationing of yet another customs officer on the border. But stories abound of the smuggling of everything in the region, from gold to donkeys, horses and flour.
Prospectors weren’t the only ones to object to the duties. Merchants who tried to make their living honestly were faced with smuggled goods that sold much more cheaply. “We have to pay duty for importing live cattle, and potatoes are also taxed,” complained one such merchant, reported in the Victoria British Colonist on July 4, 1859. “A heavy duty is paid on spirits, which is quite right if smuggling is to be prevented, but as I know that 900 gallons were smuggled in last week, what chance has the honest merchant?”
Smuggling went both ways. A heavy tax was imposed on gold taken out of the colony; many miners used whatever stratagems they could to evade it. In the 1860s, the prospectors at Wild Horse Creek in the East Kootenays—and their friends—were inventive. According to local tales, the female proprietor of the Roosville store, who packed goods north across the border to the British Columbia mining camps, was happy to help out a man in need. On her way south, she would smuggle nuggets across the border for a fee, presumably hiding them somewhere in her clothes. Rock Creek miners were said to move south with their gold on moonless nights, when they could be more certain of evading the authorities.
The list of goods smuggled in the early days of British Columbia was a long one, and it was far from a one-way street. According to the Colonist, American ladies on the San Juan Islands yearned after the superior quality of the British-made ladies’ wear available in Victoria. The editorialist opined:
It is only natural that such establishments as we have here—for instance, the London House, the Victoria House, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s great emporium and the Messrs’ Wilson and Gray’s establishments—will draw more or less custom from neighbouring communities.
The splendid array of rich and fashionable French and English goods at prices which are in such astounding contrast with those on the other side must be quite irresistible to the ladies of Puget Sound.
American customs officials were so annoyed at such smuggling that they decided to put a stop to it. They hired a female customs inspector to travel the boats that plied between Washington ports and Victoria. It was claimed that almost all the passengers on the boats had previously been female, but after the inspector went to work, said the Colonist reporter, there were almost no women aboard. “Our contemporary [in Washington State] does not hesitate to attribute this change to the presence of the Argus-eyed ‘female inspector of customs,’ intimating that quite an extensive smuggling trade was carried on by the fair sex.” But, suggested the paper, perhaps it was simply not the right time of year for smuggling.
On the mainland, smoking opium was smuggled south to Chinese miners at work on the diggings on the Columbia River near Colville. The Portland Oregonian was aghast. “This lucrative trade is encouraged by the absence of any force in the section of country where the trails from British Columbia cross the boundary. There are also circumstances which give rise to the belief that illicit traffic between British Columbia and other parts of the upper country is carried on; the articles being jewelry, laces and the like.”
Then, as now, the variety of smuggled goods was considerable. One report tells of a sailor who tried to smuggle cloth off a British Navy ship for sale in Victoria. Another reveals that in 1861, 124 pieces of ribbon were smuggled into San Francisco from a ship that had begun its journey in Victoria. No further detail is given, except to note that the purported owner of the ribbon did not appear in court to reclaim his prize.
Much of the smuggling involved traffic between Victoria and the San Juan Islands. And why not, asked the residents of those islands? As evidenced by their belligerence in what became the Pig War, the islands’ early settlers were highly independent and resistant to government authority. As far as they were concerned, smuggling was neither a crime nor a sin, but simply good business. “Smuggling is a species of law-breaking over which the Ten Commandments have no jurisdiction,” is an oft-repeated piece of wisdom attributed to island residents.
The thrifty islanders kept a close watch on prices in their islands and in British territory. From the 1860s through the 1890s, sheep’s wool was 20 cents a pound cheaper on the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island than it was in the American territories. Add in the duty on wool imports, however, and the price difference was tiny. But why add in that duty, asked the islanders, when wool was wool, and its origin impossible to identify? Very little wool actually passed through American customs houses, yet the amount that left the San Juans vastly exceeded the amount that the island flocks of sheep could produce. Wool smuggling persisted, and it was not until 1905 that authorities found an answer to the practice.
The smuggling of liquor south during Prohibition is well known, but it comes from a long tradition. In 1866, a great foofaraw erupted in Victoria and points south over the purported involvement of a ship’s crew and captain in smuggling liquor south aboard the ship Sir James Douglas. The ship’s captain testified that a Mr. Lyons had asked him in Victoria if he would help him out by taking liquor across to the United States. Not a chance, the captain claimed he had replied; the only way he knew of to take liquor south on the Douglas was by clearing customs.
Based on the infamous “information received,” American officials descended on the ship when it arrived in Bellingham Bay. With the full co-operation of the captain and at least some of the crew, they searched the ship. Nothing was found. It must be somewhere, said the US Customs men. They searched again, more carefully, and discovered liquor in the forecastle. Evidence linked Lyons to the cache. He was charged and quickly tried, but found not guilty for want of sufficient evidence. The captain was exonerated.