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

DRAFT REPORT: Rights and Title Interests in the Columbia Valley Transmission Project Area
encampment of Kootenay Indians, who were engaged curing salmon, which are caught in great
abundance here….” 178
Indian Commissioner Peter O’Reilly, after meeting with the Kinbasket Band in August 1884,
confirmed the date of mid-1840s for the migration of the Band. Writing to the Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs, O’Reilly stated that he had visited “a band of Indians, offshoots of the
Shuswap tribe near Kamloops, who, under the leadership of a chief named Kinbasket some forty
years ago [c. 1844] migrated from Shuswap, and settled in the Columbia Valley.” 179 Importantly,
O’Reilly noted that these people had maintained their Shuswap language and identity, despite
being intermarried in the 1880s with the Kutenai. O’Reilly set aside a 2,700 acre Indian Reserve
for the Shuswap Band, descendants of Kinbasket, just north from the northern end of “Lower
Columbia Lake” [Columbia Lake] and on the east side of the Columbia River. 180
The date of the Kinbasket migration varies from source to source. The 1910 edition of the
Handbook of North American Indians stated that it was about 60 years prior to the volume’s
publication, i.e., c. 1850, when Kinbasket settled among the Kutenai. 181 This is also the date (c.
1850) that former HBC man and Indian Agent J.W. Mackay provided to George Dawson. 182
Moberly’s estimate of c. 1846 should be given weight, inasmuch as he actually met with Chief
Kinbasket in September 1866 and obtained this information directly from him. In 1884, George
Dawson stated that the “colony of Shuswap …in the midst of the Kootanie country…was
178 Walter Moberly (1866), In, British Columbia 1869, p. 17.
179 Letter of 17 December 1884 from Indian Reserve Commissioner Peter O’Reilly to the Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs, Ottawa [re: Indian Reserve set aside for the “Shuswap Indians, Kinbasket’s Band” in
August 1884]. Federal Collection, Indian Reserve Commission Minutes of Decision, Correspondence and Sketches,
Volume 10. Copy held by the Indian Lands Registry, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. BC Regional Office,
Vancouver. Page 11; the Provincial set of these same materials is found in: Provincial Minutes of Decision etc.
O’Reilly to the Chief Commissioner of Lands & Works, Victoria. 19 November 1884. BC Archives, Victoria. GR
2982, Box 3, Item 3041/84.
180 Letter of 17 December 1884 from Indian Reserve Commissioner Peter O’Reilly to the Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs, Ottawa [re: Indian Reserve set aside for the “Shuswap Indians, Kinbasket’s Band” in
August 1884]. Federal Collection, Indian Reserve Commission Minutes of Decision, Correspondence and Sketches,
Volume 10. Copy held by the Indian Lands Registry, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. BC Regional Office,
Vancouver. Pp. 11-20 [including sketch of IR at page 19]; the Provincial set of these same materials is found in:
Provincial Minutes of Decision etc. O’Reilly to the Chief Commissioner of Lands & Works, Victoria. 19 November
1884. BC Archives, Victoria. GR 2982, Box 3, Item 3041/84.
181 Frederick W. Hodge, editor (1910). Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Part 2. Bureau of
American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution: Washington D.C. Page 561.
182 Concerning these Kinbasket Shuswap people, Dawson (1892, page 5) wrote: “According to notes
supplied by Mr. J.W. Mackay, this band emigrated thither about forty years ago [c. 1850], from the North
Thompson; following a route which reaches the Columbia near the mouth of Canoe River.”
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