Evidence on the Adequacy of First Nations Consultation - BC Hydro ...

DRAFT REPORT: Rights and Title Interests in the Columbia Valley Transmission Project Area
fishing and berrying these people went up the Columbia on trapping &
hunting expeditions or returned to Shuswap Lake. 325
But the question remains: Did these traditional hunting grounds take them to the Columbia
Lakes? A few bits of additional evidence are contained in Teit’s notes. In his 1908-1920
collection of notes he describes the Kinbasket as having:
settled permanently at the head of the Columbia within about four miles
of the Windermere band of Kunenai. They had previously been a good
deal in contact with the Assinaboine (Stony) with whom they were goods
friends. 326
Teit’s inference is that the Shuswap Lake hunters had been in the north—in the Canoe River, Big
Bend and Jasper areas—but that their contact with the Ktunaxa living upstream on the Columbia
River was something new. Their move south put them into contact with people who were not
part of their regular network. This would be in accord with the oral history as given by Mrs
Dehart. Still, Teit did remark in his 1909 publication that the Shuswap’s settlement at
Windermere did not alter their former hunting grounds in any significant way:
Neither did the settlement of the Kinbaskets on the Upper Columbia
really mark any change or extension of the tribal boundaries, as that
region was hunted over more or less by Shuswap parties as far back as
tradition goes. 327
What Teit means by “more or less” is certainly open to interpretation. Once the Kinbasket Band
established themselves at Windermere, their hunting grounds, according to Teit, extended along
“both sides of the Columbia, north to beyond Golden.” 328 In the mid-1860s, according to the
Columbia River Exploring Expedition, Kinbasket and his band were nearly always encamped
about the headwaters of the Columbia, 329 and, importantly, had not begun the cultivation of
potatoes or other crops. 330
325 James Teit (1908-1920). Salish ethnographic materials. American Philosophical Society
Library, Philadelphia. Boas Collection 372, Roll 16, S .7 (copy held by the B.C. Archives, Victoria.
Add. Mss. 1425, Microfilm A-247). Teit’s comments notwithstanding, several reliable Hudson’s Bay
Company sources from 1822-1830 reported that Sinixt (Lakes Okanagan-Colville) territory extended
as far north as the Big Bend/Boat Encampment area (see Bouchard and Kennedy 2005, page 67).
326 Teit 1908-1920.
327 Teit 1909, page 462.
328
Teit 1909, page 455.
329 James Turnbull (1865), In, British Columbia (1866-6). Columbia River Exploration, 1865-6: Reports
and Journals Relating to the Government Exploration of the Country Lying Between the Shuswap and Okanagan
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