Colonial Despatches

As we mark up the documents, automated indexes are emerging from the markup. We are currently identifying and annotating four main groups of items mentioned in the correspondence: people, places, Indigenous peoples and groups, and vessels. For each person, place or vessel we mark up, we create a brief descriptive entry in the database, and this becomes accessible by clicking on the name of the person, place or vessel in the document itself. From the description, you can also call up links to every mention of that item in the collection (at least, every mention which has so far been marked up). We don't yet have specific details about the First Nations groups, but you can use the index to find them in the documents. You can browse alphabetical lists of all the items from here:

You can also Browse the documents by date, or Search the collection. You may also be interested in our map gallery, a collection of over 200 maps of the B.C. area dating from the period of the correspondence.