Sanetch Indians

Sanetch Indians

A sub-tribe of the Songish Indians (q.v.). They speak a dialect of the Cowichan language of Salishan linguistic stock, and occupy several small reserves about Saanich Peninsula at the south-west point of Vancouver Island, B.C. They were estimated at 600 in 1858, but are reduced now to bout 250. In primitive customs and beliefs they resemble the Songish. The work of Christianization was begun among them in 1843 by Father John B. Bolduc and completed by the Oblate Fathers. The whole tribe is now entirely civilized and Catholic, engaged in farming, fishing, and various other paid employments, and are described by their agent as "industrious and law-abiding, fairly temperate, and moral".

MORICE, Hist. Catholic Church in Western Canada (Toronto, 1910); Dept. of Ind. Affairs (Canada), annual reports (Ottawa); WILSON, Tribes of Forty-ninth Parallel in Trans. Ethnol. Soc. London, new series, IV (London, 1866).

JAMES MOONEY