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

DRAFT REPORT: Rights and Title Interests in the Columbia Valley Transmission Project Area
Ktunaxa territory shown on all these maps is discussed by Allan Smith in his review of Kutenai
boundaries. 267
4.1.1 Upper Kutenai/Ktunaxa Territory as Delineated in the Ethnographic and
Historical Literature
One of the earliest statements about the extent of Kutenai territory was provided by John Work
of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He indicated in an 1830 report 268 on the “Colvile District” 269 that
the country of the Aboriginal group he identified as the “Kootanies” “lies on the Kootany river
from near its discharge to its sources, and on the head of the Columbia river.” Work did not
provide a map of this territory.
What is likely the first map delineating Upper Kutenai/Ktunaxa territory with some accuracy is
the one that was prepared by geologist and ethnographer George Dawson together with medical
doctor and ethnographer W. Fraser Tolmie. This map, published in 1884, delineates Upper
Kutenai territory—identified by Dawson as “Kootenuha or Upper Kootanie”—beginning in the
north from a line starting around Mt. Hooker in the Rocky Mountains and extending southwards
down the southeastern side of the Wood River to the Columbia River where it crosses the
Columbia in the vicinity of Boat Encampment. From here, this boundary line extends south
along the summit of the Rockies, in the east, and in the west along the summit of the mountains
which extend north and south along the eastern side of the Arrow Lakes. Elsewhere in this
publication Dawson notes that the “Upper Kootenuha Tribe” inhabit the country “about the headwaters
of the Kootanie and Columbia Rivers.” Dawson also points out that “a colony of Shuswap
or Shewwhapmuh [Secwepemc]” had, in 1883, been in existence for “many years…near the
265 Verne Ray (1936). Native Villages and Groupings of the Columbia Basin. The Pacific Northwest
Quarterly 27. Pp. 99-152; Verne Ray (1939). Cultural Relations in the Plateau of Northwestern America.
Publications of the Frederick Hodge Anniversary Publication Fund, Vol. 3. Southwestern Museum: Los Angeles.
266 Harry H. Turney-High (1941). Ethnography of the Kutenai. American Anthropological Association
Memoirs No. 56. Menasha, Wisconsin.
267 Allan H. Smith (1984). Kutenai Indian Subsistence and Settlement Patterns, Northwest Montana. United
States Army Corps of Engineers, Technical Report Series. (Project Report No. 2, Vol. 2, of the Center for Northwest
Anthropology, Washington State University). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, North Pacific Division: Seattle. Pp. 6-
24.
268 John Work (1830). Some information relative to Colvile District, April 1830. Hudson’s Bay Company
Archives, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg. B.45/e/3/1-14.
269 The “Colvile District,” named after the HBC’s fur trade center established in 1825 at Kettle Falls on the
Columbia River (about 40 Km south of what later became the Canadian border), comprised the entire Columbia
River watershed above today’s Grand Coulee Dam, including the Big Bend region of the Columbia.
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