First photograph of an aboriginal trench embankment site, taken in 1901 by Dr. Charles F. Newcombe. The Spurnhead site is on the point east of the Yacht Club in Cadboro Bay. In 1857, Vancouver Island s first settler, Walter Grant, observed the defensive site above Taylor Beach in Metchosin.
Nobody knows who made it.
On asking the Indians about its origin they all say it was made by the old people who inhabited the country before them and they know nothing more about it. Members of the Natural History Society in 1907, removing a boulder from a burial cairn above a defensive site. Laws protected recent aboriginal graveyards but were ignored when it came to ancient graves. RBCM PN 5963-B Natural History Society members James Deans, Oregon Hastings and Charles Newcombe talked about defensive sites in their lectures and provided information to visiting archaeologists. In 1871, a Victoria Colonist interview with James Deans mentioned the defensive trenches at Finlayson and Clover Points.