sent to Victoria. After facilities of the key port proved inadequate, the British government charged Douglas to build a hospital at Esquimalt harbour, as well as improve Royal Navy supply capacity. This base proved to be important and successful when in 1865 the headquarters of the North Pacific Squadron were moved to Vancouver Island. In 1859, Douglas also found his colony embroiled in a dispute with Washington Territory over sovereignty in the San Juan Islands. The protracted, twelve-year standoff came to be known as the Pig War. Douglas pressed Britain to exert sovereignty over all islands in the archipelago dividing the Strait of Georgia from Puget Sound. Named for the largest island of the group, the San Juan Islands are immediately adjacent to Victoria and so were of great strategic interest and worry. While opposing troops remained garrisoned on San Juan Island, the dispute was eventually settled by arbitration in favour of the United States. Douglas's largest problem in the mid- and late 1850s concerned relations with the majority First Nations peoples. These numbered around 30,000 local Songhee, Cowichan, Nanaimo, Nuu-chah-nulth, including raiding Haida from Haida Gwaii and the Euclataws Kwakiutl of northern Georgia Strait and the Sechelt, Squamish, and Sto:lo peoples of the Lower Mainland. In contrast, Europeans in the Colony numbered under 1000. Meanwhile, in neighboring Oregon and Washington Territory the Cayuse and Yakima Wars and other conflicts between Americans and indigenous peoples were raging. His relations with First Nations peoples were mixed. On the one hand, Douglas' wife was Cree, he had established many close business and personal relationships with indigenous peoples as a fur trader, and he sought to conclude treaties (the Douglas Treaties) with First Nations on southern Vancouver Island. On the other hand, Douglas supplied Washington Territory's Governor Isaac Stevens with arms and other supplies to assist the US government in its conflict with Native American tribes. The treaties that he concluded were later criticized as having provided woefully inadequate compensation to First Nations in return for their cession of large swaths of territory (in most cases, a few blankets or a few shillings). The treaties, concluded between 1850 and 1854, acquired 14 parcels of land for the Crown from the native peoples, totaling . The treaty-making was halted after the Colony ran out of money to pursue its expansion policy. The administration also founded public elementary schools, worked to control alcohol in the