We arrive now, finally, at the very important subject of reserves. These Indian reserves of British Columbia are to be clearly distinguished from the Indian reservations of the United States. The latter were very large in area, were assigned to a tribe or to a number of tribes, were founded on the principle of sequestration from the whites, and were under the oversight of an agent; the reserves of British Columbia were small, were assigned to septs or families, were often contiguous to white settlements, and had no special agents. In size the reserves of British Columbia varied in all degrees from one acre to six thousand acres.[76] The total area of surveyed reserves amounted in 1871 to 28,437 acres.[77] The general principle on which reserves were assigned was that each head of a family should be given ten acres, but in practice there was considerable variation.[78] It seems strange to one accustomed to American reservations, that a reserve of six hundred square miles for a tribe of 400 members should have been regarded as entirely too extensive to be allowed.[79] The principle of assigning land in so small amounts, on what we may call a village system, may have been adopted with special reference to conditions of life among the Coast Indians or among those of the lower Fraser, for whose use (since they made their living by fishing or working for whites) a small parcel of land was sufficient but for the pastoral Indians of the interior it seemed manifestly insufficient. So long as there was plenty of range, the smallness of the reserves was not felt, but when whites acquired title to vacant lands and, at the same time, the wants of the Indians increased, the latter felt themselves unjustly treated.[80] When British Columbia entered the Confederation, the Dominion Government wanted the Indians to have eighty acres for each head of family. This the Province refused, but it did consent to grant twenty. This amount still being considered insufficient for the Interior Indians by the Dominion Superintendent of Indian Affairs for British Columbia, he requested that it be raised to forty acres (in accordance with the principle then recognized in the preemption laws of British Columbia, which allowed 160 acres west of the Cascades, but 320 east); but the request was not granted.[81]