Colonial Despatches

Mount Tzouhalem, which appears as Tsohailem Hill on this 1857 map by Pemberton, was named after a Cowichan war chief who allegedly organized a raid on Fort Victoria in 1844.1

The HBC had demanded that Tzouhalem pay for the slaughter of a number of the company’s cows that grazed openly over First Nation land. When Tzouhalem refused, the HBC banned him from Fort Victoria, which resulted in Tzouhalem’s raid.2 However, Finlayson easily repelled the attack, and dissuaded any further violence with a display from the fort’s cannons, which compelled Tzouhalem to finally compensate for the cows he had killed.3

Mount Tzouhalem, located east of Duncan, is so named because Tzouhalem, banished from his tribe for his constant pursuit of the wives of fellow tribesmen, lived for a period in a cave on the mountain.4 In 1854, Tzouhalem was killed on Kuper Island during an attempt to increase his number of wives to fifteen.5

• 1. Andrew Scott, The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Placenames (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2009), 409.
• 2. Ibid.
• 3. Ibid.
• 4. Ibid.
• 5. Ibid.