ABSTRACT
Law sits at the intersection of time, language, and colonialism, but legal scholarship has only recently turned attention to this intersection. As reports of legal encounters, these documents exemplify how state law relies on and produces temporalities. The shortness of time available before the commissioners, the urgency to set out reserves before land is occupied by Whites, and the delays of bureaucratic time were all rooted in the settlers' legal processes. Settlers wanted the imperial government, not the province, to purchase lands from the Indians. Settlers remained "ahead" of Indigenous people because "the white man knows and has been taught more". Settlement had never been a principal objective of either Crown or Company; indeed, it was not until gold was discovered in 1857 that the British Crown saw fit to establish direct rule over the Colony of Vancouver Island and the mainland Colony of British Columbia.
