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

DRAFT REPORT: Rights and Title Interests in the Columbia Valley Transmission Project Area
There is no indication in the historical record that these pithouses were occupied at time of direct
contact with non-Aboriginal traders in the early 19 th century. The historical records reviewed in
this report indicate that the area was almost devoid of human habitation at the time of contact,
likely a result of the devastating effects of smallpox in the early 1780s.
One historical source indicates that a group known to the early fur traders as the “Snare” people
may have occupied parts of the Columbia region in earlier times, but had moved north by the
time of contact. When trader David Thompson arrived on the Columbia River and travelled
south through the Columbia Lakes, he encountered only Free Hunters comprised largely of
Iroquois, Cree and other eastern tribes who came west with the fur trade. 200 The traders’ inquiries
about the region’s Aboriginal people did not reveal a Shuswap presence or their use of the
Columbia Lakes, at least in the first several decades of the 19 th century. The traders expected to
find Ktunaxa on the west side of the mountains, and eventually they did. Nevertheless, by at least
1845, there is evidence of both Shuswap and Ktunaxa in the Columbia Lakes region.
The issue of an earlier people remains a topic in need of further investigation. But to the data
discussed in this report should be added the following note of James Teit, found among his
“Notes to Maps” compiled 1910-1913. The context is his discussion of the Ktunaxa bands:
Another band [Michel Prairie people] was located in the Crows Nest Pass
and the main hunting grounds of the Upper Kutenai extended up the
Kootenay and Elk Rivers. For a considerable time back still another band
has been located much further north at Windermere [Columbia Lakes
Band] on the head of the Columbia but from information I obtained last
year it seems all this northern part of the Kutenai territory was only
hunting grounds long ago and the ancestors of all the Indians of this band
were originally from bands in the south. According to some there were
people up here in mythological times but they died out and by some they
were not considered real Indians or Kutenai. 201
200 See also Richard Somerset Mackie (1997). Trading Beyond the Mountains: the British Fur Traser on
the Pacific 1793-1843. University of B ritish Columbia Press: Vancouver. Mackie comments on the multi-ethnic
diversity of the fur trade and cites, at page 33, Alexander Ross’s observation that one of the Snake River parties
consisted of forty-one men from east, and twelve men from west of the Rockies: ” ‘two Americans, seventeen
Canadians, five half-breeds from the east side of the mountains, twelve Iroquois, two Abinakee Indians from Lower
Canada, two natives from Lake Nipisingue, one Sauteaux from Lake Huron, two Crees from Athabasca, one
Chinook, two Spokanes, two Kouttanais, three Flatheads, two Callispellums, one Palloochey, and one Snake
slave!’.”
201 Teit 1910-1913.
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