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

Perhaps the greatest of these impacts happened on the eastern portions of traditional Ktunaxa
territory. The eastward situation of Plains tribes, especially the Blackfoot, gave them the first
opportunities to trade with the westward moving agents of the Hudson’s Bay and North West
Companies who themselves were eager to improve the efficiency of fur collection by introducing
arms to Indian hunters. Sporting the new rifles, driven by the competition for buffalo access and
protective of their new status as middlemen, the Blackfoot Indians and their allies soon obtained the
upper hand over the traditional weapons of the Ktunaxa and Flathead Salish further west.
As a result of this military imbalance, most historians and ethnographers [e.g., Turney-High] agree
that the portion of the Ktunaxa living on or near the Plains were forced to withdraw into the Rockies
and further west to join their linguistic brethren in what approximates their post-contact territory.
This notion was first advanced by David Thompson and Alexander Henry, the latter stating: 19
Along the Clearwater, and near the foot of the mountains are still to be seen the remains of some of the
dwellings of the Kootenays, built of wood, straw, and pine branches. The same are observed along
Riviére de la Jolie Prairie and Ram river. This gives us every reason to suppose that nation formerly
dwelt along the foot of these mountains and even as far down as our present establishment, near which
the remains of some of their lodges are still to be seen. About the time the Kootenays were in
possession of this part of the country, the Snare Indians dwelt on the Kootenay or Columbia. But the
former, being driven into the mountains by the different tribes who lived E. of them, with whom they
were perpetually at war, in their turn waged war upon their harmless neighbours on the W., the Snare
Indians, and soon drove them off the land the Kootenays now inhabit. This is on the upper part of the
Columbia, and on Ram [sic] river, a little S. of it, now called McGillivray’s river, but formerly termed
by the natives Flat Bow river, from a tribe of Indians who then inhabited the lower part of it….The
Snare Indians, it seems, retired northward to an uninhabited part of the Rocky mountains, where they
continue to wander, a most wretched and defenceless people, who never war upon any of their
neighbours.
Fellow fur trader Ross Cox also wrote of the initial impact of the gun on Ktunaxa-Blackfoot range
wars: 20 The Cootonais are the remnant of a once brave and powerful tribe, who, like the Flat-heads, were
perpetually engaged in war with the Black-feet for the right of hunting on the buffalo grounds.
Previous to our arrival among them they entertained the most dreadful hatred against white men, to
whom they attributed all their misfortunes, owing to the assistance which their enemies received from
the North-west Company’s people to the eastward of the mountains.
Like Thompson and Henry, some modern authorities appear to hold that this was a general westward
movement, with a few believing that the Ktunaxa are relative newcomers [since the 1700s] to their
current treaty claim area. On the strength of some key informants, Turney-High, the most prominent
of the Ktunaxa ethnographers, believed that the ultimate origins of the Ktunaxa were “not only an
eastern provenance…but even a trans-Rocky mountain one”, although he evidently felt that this was
far earlier than the 1700s. 21 The B.C. Department of Education guide book for B.C. schools,
developed in conjunction with B.C. Archives in the early 1950s, attempted to synthesize oral tradition
and documentary sources into the following:
19 From Coues, E., pp. 703-706.
20 Cox, R., Adventures on the Columbia, pg. 233.
21 Harry Turney-High, Ethnography of the Kutenai, p. 10. Note that on the same page his acknowledgment of a “strong
tradition” of the Ktunaxa that this westward movement was at “a very ancient time”. Also, he accepts “Tobacco Plains,
or the Big Village” as “the ancient Kutenai ‘capital’ ” [p. 16].
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