Quamichan

Quamichan (or Kwʼamutsun) is a traditional nation of the Coast Salish people, commonly referred to by the English adaptation of Quʼwutsun ("warm place") as the Cowichan Indians, or First Nations, of the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, in the area near the city of Duncan, British Columbia and Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.

At the start of the colonial era, Quamichan was the largest and wealthiest of the eight Cowichan villages in part due to the fighting prowess of chieftains such as Tzouhalem, who once led a two-day assault on the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Victoria in 1844.

[1] The original name of this village, kwómetsen, means 'humpback' or 'hunchback' and is derived from a character in a Cowichan story, a hunchbacked cannibal-ogress-giantess who 'kept children in a basket and placed pitch over their eyes before she ate them'.

[6] Catholic priests visited them as early as 1847 and more conversions occurred after the Oblate Fathers arrived in Victoria in 1857.

In 1864, the Sisters of Saint Anne established the Cowichan Convent School in Quamichan for aboriginal girls.