Kitty Coleman

 Kitty Coleman Provincial Park

     Recently we spent some time in the Comox Valley area on Vancouver Island. While there, we visited both the Kitty Coleman Provincial Park and the Kitty Coleman Woodland Gardens. Although personal names appearing in place names is common in B.C. (e.g.,Vancouver), Kitty Coleman caught my eye.

      A few years ago I wrote a book and in it “Kit" Coleman is mentioned. “Kit” is the diminutive associated with Kathleen Blake Coleman who was a famous Canadian journalist and war correspondent. She is the “Kit” I found during my research and I didn’t recall her ever being referred to as “Kitty”.  Could the Kitty Coleman for whom the park is named, be simply a West Coast, laid-back reference to Kathleen “Kit" Coleman?

Kit Coleman

   The short answer is “No”.  The famous “Kit Coleman” I wrote about showed up recently on a commemorative Silver Dollar issued by the Royal Canadian Mint. (For more about that Kit Coleman and the coin see, Kathleen "Kit" Coleman.)
   Although I am reluctant to use the following word in relation to an Indigenous woman, the infamous “Kitty" Coleman shows up in the database of BC Geographical Names where this is found:
   “Kitty Coleman was an Indian woman who, 40 or 50 years ago, left her tribe to marry a white man. He was later jailed, and she lived alone on this beach selling fish and berries. The beach became known locally as Kitty Coleman's Beach, hence the park name….There are frequent references to Kitty Coleman in court documents through the 1890's and into the early 1900's; she ran a brothel (location not specified), and was frequently cited for unseemly behavior or jailed on prostitution charges. In later years, she lived near Cape Mudge.”

     I confess to being curious about “Kitty” and did a cursory search. The following article was found and it is very interesting. Since it involves Indigenous matters and “colonial” ones, which are contentious these days, I will offer no comments, other than to say that the infamous Kitty and the famous Kit both deserve more attention and research.

       THE GAZETTE, MONTREAL. TUESDAY. MAY 8, 1906, p.7

“SLAVERY AMONG INDIANS”

A Bad State of Affairs Reported in

British. Columbia.

Ottawa, May 7.--  (Special) According to a return secured by Mr. Borden, there seems to have been ample grounds for the statements which appeared In the British Columbia papers a few months ago, that Indian children were being sold into slavery in that province. The matter first came to the attention of the department through a letter from the Rev, J. B. Kindle, of Cape Mudge, B.C., who wrote to Mr. Vowell, Indian superintendent at Victoria, transmitting the complaint of an Indian named Billy Seawhit and his wife Sarah.These Indians said that Mr. South, agent of the Children's Aid Society of Vancouver, had visited the Indian village at Cape Mudge, and had taken from the Seawhits their little girl, who was known as Edith Grant. From reports it appears that she was three parts white and one part Indian. Mr. Debeck, agent for the Indian Department at Cape Mudge, when, asked for particulars of the affair, reported that the child was in the hand of a vicious Indian woman named Kitty Coleman, and that, by order of two magistrates, the child was handed over to Mr. South, to be cared for by the society

at Vancouver. Mr.Debeck says that Mr. South, is a most humane man, and

took this action after full enquiry upon the spot Then, curiously enough,

Debeck recommends the Seawhits to consult a Vancouver lawyer, with a view to compelling the Vancouver society to deliver the child up to the parents. Transmitting Mr. Debeck's report, Mr. Vowell declares that from every possible moral standpoint Mr.South took the proper course under the circumstances. He comments upon the inconsistent position of Mr. Debeck in recommending to the parents to resort to law. They did secure a hearing before two Judges to Vancouver, and after full enquiry the child was ordered to be retained by the Vancouver society. Mr. Vowell proceeds to say that girls with white skins, thick brown hair braided down their backs, and big, innocent, childish eyes, are being sold today, and have been sold for years in British Columbia to the highest bidders. He points out that many of the girls are sent into the logging camps for immoral purposes, and urges that this practice should not be allowed to continue longer. He thinks that the administration of justice department in British Columbia should take hold of the matter. 

   Agent Debeck makes a special report to the department from Alert Bay, dated October 23rd last. He says almost every Indian in that agency who Is in the potlatch is a slave dealer; fathers sell their daughters, brothers sell their sisters or cousins, and he knew of one instance where a son offered his old mother for sale as a slave. He mentions one case where a boy was taken out of the Indian school, and a young girl of 12 or  13 from the girls' school was sold to him. They lived together for a while, and then the authorities compelled both to go back to sohool again. Mr.Debeck recommends a remedy for the existing evils, first of all, the putting down of the potlach, which is really at the bottom of all the evils complained of. He says It should be done with a firm hand, not in a slipshod manner in which Justice has been administered among the Indians in the past. Secondly, he suggests a rigid enforcement of the law, especially as regards the sale of intoxicants to Indians which  is at present, he says, a disgrace to any civilised country. Third, he suggests patting a stop to the custom of buying and selling women, and,  if possible, the compelling  of the Indians to marry their women legally, and lastly, if possible, to keep out the grafters. These different communications evidently stirred up the Indian Department, as a circular letter was sent to all inspectors and agents in the western provinces, asking for information on the subject of the intermarriage between whites and Indians, a number of alliances of a temporary character, the age at which Indian children should be allowed to marry, and the extent of the custom of selling young girls into slavery.

   Again Agent Debeck is to the fore with some pretty frank advice. He says: "You may legislate for these Indians until doomsday, and they will never do any good until this curse of their whole lives, the potlatch, is completely wiped out.” Further he says "People come here in the  garb of missionaries, start a store, commence trading with the Indians, making what they can out of them, ride roughshod over the Indian Act and are then upheld by the Indian Department.  As far as the Criminal Code goes. It Is about the same. All manner of crimes ore committed among these Indians, even to murder, and it is seldom that any of them are brought to justice."

[The source is provided and should be checked. This version is a result of my cutting and pasting and may contain errors. The bolded print is not in the original and was applied by me to call attention to the 'sensational' parts.]

Place Names:

   I suppose one could ask if a place should be named for someone who exhibited "unseemly behavior", ran a brothel and is described as "vicious'. I am not one who would ask such a question and am against the scrubbing of names from maps. For a good book relating to questionable toponyms see, From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame by Mark Monmonier. For a fascinating book about names on the land, read Names on the Land by George R. Stewart.
  For a discussion of those books in MM see "Names on the Land" and the post about the author, George R. Stewart. 
  For more about name changing (and name calling) in B.C., where there are some who want to sanitize the landscape and remove names that often reveal interesting stories see, "British Columbia or Saquatchia?". 
  For my typical contrarian view about name changing, see "No More Name Changing".

  The geographical puritans are also worried about names in the Southern Hemisphere. See, for example, "The Meaning of Magellan."