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

DRAFT REPORT: Rights and Title Interests in the Columbia Valley Transmission Project Area
Earlier Aboriginal Presence in the Columbia Valley
During his 1981 review of fur trade records, David Chance compiled some additional
information relating to Aboriginal occupation of the Columbia Valley that questions the length
of the Ktunaxa people’s occupation of country west of the Rocky Mountains. This is relevant to
an examination of the Aboriginal use of the Columbia Valley. It is the position of the Shuswap
Indian Band, as set out in their 2008 TUS, that the Ktunaxa are relative newcomers and that the
area has been occupied for thousands of years by “Interior Salish ancestors of the Secwépemc
Nation.” 72
The issue of an eastern origin for the Ktunaxa focuses on the location of one particular band.
Citing fur trader Alexander Henry’s comments from February and May 1811, David Chance
reports Henry’s statement on the extinct Tunaxa division of the Kutenai:
...the Kutenai were pushed over the Rockies by tribes to their east and
that they in turn displaced the ‘Snare’ Indians who had inhabited
mountains where they eked out a miserable existence. In 1825, Alexander
Ross met a Kutenai who told him, ‘My father...was a Kootenay chief; but
in consequence of wars with the Blackfeet, who often visited his lands,
he and a part of his people emigrated to this country about 30 years
ago.’ 73
Chance also noted comments by Ross Cox, reflecting on the period 1813-1817, who stated: “The
Cootanais are the remnant of a once powerful tribe, who like the Flatheads, were perpetually
engaged in war with the Blackfeet for the right of hunting on the buffalo grounds.” 74
Chance concluded, albeit tentatively, that:
If we follow these leads...we arrive at a compelling possibility, namely
that the bulk of the eastern Kutenai [Upper Kootenai] were recent
immigrants to the Kootenay Valley. 75
A review of subsequent archaeological research that elucidates this view can be found in
72 Shuswap Indian Band 2008, pp. 2, 11.
73 Chance 1981, page 8.
74 Ross Cox (1831). Adventures on the Columbia River, Including the Narrative of a Residence of Six
Years on the Western Side of the Rocky Mountains, among Various Indian Tribes Hitherto Unknown, Together with
a Journal Across the American Continent. Two Volumes. Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley: London. Vol. 2,
page 153 ( cited in Chance 1981, pp. 8-9).
75 Chance 1981, page 9.
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