Morton discovered hundreds of red cedar boxes lashed to the upper boughs of trees and one had evidently fallen and broken to reveal a jumble of bones and a tassel of black hair.

He changed his mind when Chief Capilano pointed out that the island was "dead ground" and was a scene of a bloody battle between rival tribes in which some two hundred warriors were killed.

[4] This small islet again became the site of conflict when Theodore Ludgate leased the island from the federal government in 1899, to the chagrin of the mayor and other civic officials who assumed that it was included in the original Stanley Park land grant.

The island is connected to the mainland of Stanley Park at low tide, as well as via a short timber-structure bridge.

The former mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan, "envisioned it as the home for a ferry shuttle from downtown, a maritime museum and a building to celebrate the island's aboriginal heritage."