smallpox. In addition, there were diseases unknown to the Indians, and therefore all the more deadly, such as flu, venereal disease, and tuberculosis. Protective measures by some missionaries and physicians, as in 1853 and 1862, helped only sporadically. Thus, numerous Salish survived around Victoria and in Puget Sound, but this time the North was helplessly exposed to the disaster. Nevertheless, the mission stations also benefited from these disasters, for the loss of cultural knowledge through the death of shamanss and medicine men, elders and healers, plus the belief that their own powers were too weak, caused many Salish to convert to Christianity. The first missionary was Modeste Demers, a Catholic missionary who reached Fort Langley in 1841. With St. Mary's, an Oblate Mission was established on the Fraser in 1861. Bishop Paul Durieu even succeeded in virtually imposing a God-state among the Sechelts, whose numbers, however, had collapsed from about 5,000 to 200. In 1859, the Methodists in Hope joined them. But the southern Salish tribes in Washington were also decimated by epidemics, and some tribes disappeared forever, such as the Snokomish. Catholics and Methodists were missionizing as early as 1840 and 1850, respectively, but initially with little success. It was not until after the "Indian Warss" that missionary successes were achieved. The competition between the denominations led to new internal borders among the Salish. The respective community leaders not only watched over the lifestyles of their youngsters - for which they reinterpreted the watchman system of the Indians and turned it into an instrument of control and punishment - but also disliked the occurrence of mixed-denomination marriages. This further weakened the kinship-based communication system of the Coast Salish, as the denominations, and thus the tribes, kept more to themselves. Reserve policy and the Trutch system British Columbia's Indian policy has always been more ruthless than that of the government in Ottawa. This is partly due to the immigration of gold miners from California, who, with their complete lack of sense of injustice, drove even friendly tribes into rebellion, as in the Fraser Canyon War - after all, it ended almost bloodlessly on the part of the Indians. If Ottawa had still considered 160 acres''' Land per family considered appropriate, the provincial government would grant only 25. In 1875 an Indian Reserve Commission was appointed to settle the land question. The principle was to make a deal with each individual