Summer of 1877 - Part 2

Summer of 1877, Part 2:

Telegrams in cypher

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This is the second in a three-part series about Indigenous/settler conflict over land in the summer of 1877 in the Shuswap and Okanagan valleys. Part one described Indigenous peoples’ anger over the occupation of their lands and the Indian reserve commissioners’ response. Part three will discuss the trade-off that Canada made that summer, not to press the province to negotiate with Indigenous peoples in BC to extinguish their Indian (Aboriginal) title, if the reserve commissioners could appease them by the allotment of comparatively generous Indian reserves.

This post focusses on one historical curiosity I discovered about that summer: the federal Indian reserve commissioners’ communications with Ottawa by a telegram “in cypher”. I described the circumstances that led to the telegram and laid it out in its entirety (also reproduced below) in my first post in this series. Here, I provide the full original copies of the telegram, with both the cyphered and uncyphered text, as well the cyphered telegram in reply. I have not been able to find the key - possibly called "Slater's key" - that deciphers the cypher. Can you figure it out?

July 16 telegram

As described in my first post of this series, the federal Indian reserve commissioners wrote this dispatch (for a telegram), in Kamloops, on the night of July 13, 1877:

Indian situation very
grave from Kamloops to American frontier
general dissatisfaction, outbreak possible -
Indians attempting to confederate. American
Indian representatives present at meetings.
Some British Columbian Indians reported to
have joined outbreak across the line.

We are quietly working and endeavouring
to withdraw people from confederation. Magistracy[,]
Clergy and white people full of alarm and
entreat us to communicate very prudent action
necessary to prevent immediate bloodshed.

We think after deliberation and
consultation that at least one hundred mounted
police should be secretly sent to Kamloops
via Tete Jaune Cache at once. [P]eople here
quite helpless - any action on their part might
precipitate crisis - Provincial Militia unfitted
for this service - Mounted expert police
necessary[.] [T]hey might ostensibly come to
be stationed near American frontier to
prevent International questions and thus
avoid provoking Indians. We are at present
fifty miles beyond telegraphic communication.
We [repeat?] absolute secrecy even
from newspapers indispensable. Immediate action
necessary.

They dispatched their telegram to Cache Creek, some 80 kilometres away, likely with an Indigenous man on a horse (as they did later). Cache Creek was the nearest place from which a telegram could be sent.

The telegram sent on July 16 was "in cypher," as the commissioners put it. The copy below is the original, as it was received in Ottawa and then deciphered (according to the words written in above the cyphered words):

Click on images to enlarge.

I also have a copy of both the original script for telegram that the commissioners wrote and dispatched to Cache Creek, in both the deciphered and cyphered versions. They are a little easier to work with:

As you can see,

"Indian situation very grave from Kamloops to American frontier"

becomes, in cypher,

"Inconceivably signify vaporize Goth fracas Kamloops thread almond fracture".

So, the first letters of each word are common between the cyphered and deciphered versions.

As well, "Inconceivably" seems to be used repeatedly for "Indian," and "almond" for "American," suggesting that the cypher's key may be like a cross-language dictionary, where one word always stands in for another.

Beyond that, I'm not sure that the code is "crackable". What do you think?

Secretary of State's telegram in reply
sent July 19, received July 23

The commissioners left Kamloops on July 22, deferring their reserve allotments for Tk’emlúps a second time. They went west to Savona's Ferry (present-day Savona, on the west end of Kamloops Lake) to meet with Skeetchestn.

At Savona's Ferry, the commissioners found a telegram waiting for them from the Secretary of State, R.W. Scott, no doubt sent there from Cache Creek. Because the telegram was again in cypher, the commissioners had to send an "Indian messenger" back some 45 kilometres to Kamloops, overnight, to "borrow Slater's key" from Mr. Mara, a Justice of the Peace and one of the men with whom the commissioners had met in the courthouse a few weeks earlier.

I do not have a copy of the actual telegram, only a transcription of it. First, here is the text of the telegram in cypher:

And here is the telegram, deciphered -- by Sproat and Anderson (on the left) and another version, possibly that in Scott's files:

I have heard of other Canadian federal officials communicating in cypher elsewhere in Canada in the context of "Indian affairs" in this time period. However, I do not know how widespread this practice was; how long it lasted; or, indeed, if Canada used the cypher to communicate in other contexts.

In my next post, I will discuss Canada's position with respect to Indian (Aboriginal) title, as expressed by the Minister of the Interior & Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, David Mills, in his 3 August 1877 letter. Among other things, Mills acknowledged that since the British North America Act (what we now know as the Constitution Act, 1867) placed "Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians" under Dominion control, the Dominion had “the legal right to interfere and prevent the Provincial Government from dealing with any public land the Indian title to which has not been extinguished, and they have the right, also, as such guardians, to be present at any negotiation which takes place between the Indian population and the Provincial authorities in order that Indian interests may be adequately protected.”

Sources

Joint Indian Reserve Commission, “Journal of the Proceedings of the Commission for the settlement of the Indian Reserves in the Province of British Columbia, continued from Vol. 1”, Ottawa, LAC (RG 10, vol. 1284, reel 13902), Victoria, B.C. Archives (GR-1965).

Sproat & Anderson to Minister of the Interior (13 July 1877), Ottawa, LAC (RG 10, vol. 3651, f. 8540, reel C-10114).

Scott to Sproat & Anderson (undated), Ottawa, LAC (RG 10, vol. 3651, f. 8540, reel C-10114).

Copy of telegram in cypher, Scott to Sproat & Anderson (19 July 1877, received 23 July 1877), Ottawa, LAC (RG 10, vol. 3651, f. 8540, reel C-10114).