Proposal to the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission for the

NLAKA’PAMUX SURVEY OF TRADITIONAL CULTURAL SITES

IN UPPER SKAGIT RIVER VALLEY, B.C.

By Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council,

December 2020.

Nlaka’pamux Survey of Traditional Cultural Sites

in Upper Skagit River Valley, B.C.

We submit below a proposal for the survey of Nlaka’pamux traditional cultural sites around the area of the Ross Lake Reservoir that lies in British Columbia and continuing for some miles north along the traditional trail corridor that leads from the Methow Trail junction at Ruby Creek up the east side of the Skagit River and into the heart of the Nlaka’pamux territory. The objective is to identify the relevant information to bring forward to the appropriate agencies in order to collaborate on the protection of these cultural sites.

An initial survey of the narrow ribbon of land around that part of the Ross Lake reservoir within Washington State by the Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council [“NNTC”] identified the Nlaka’pamux traditional trail corridor, with ten associated sites as a Traditional Cultural Property (as defined in U.S. terms), along the eastern edge of the reservoir shore. It was clear both from the NNTC ground survey and from journals and maps from the U.S/Canada Boundary Commission and others held at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia that the traditional principal trail along the east bank of the Skagit River continues north into British Columbia. That so many different types of cultural sites were identified on or close to this main trail south of the border in the space of a short survey suggests that there are likely as many north of the border along this trail.

In their preparations for the relicensing of their hydroelectric operations on the Skagit River, Seattle City Light (“SCL”) has developed many Study Plans but at this stage they include no detailed Cultural Site/Landscape Study Plans at Ross Lake, and certainly no study plans at all for areas north of the border. As the existence of a reservoir has long-term direct, indirect and cumulative effects on the lands surrounding it and therefore on surrounding Nlaka’pamux cultural sites, Nlaka’pamux Elders want to be certain that this area is included at least in a cultural survey. We understand that this work is within the mandate of the Skagit Environment Endowment Commission.

The most urgent rationale for identifying Nlaka’pamux cultural history here is to protect cultural sites from the impacts of the reservoir. Erosion of reservoir shorelines is one of the main

problems facing preservation of critical sites. Erosion on Ross Lake is widespread, with approximately 38 kilometers of shoreline “in some stage of retreat” (Riedel 1990:37). Shoreline is in a constant state of flux with the beach zone continually readjusting (Nicken 1991:58). The annual raising and lowering of lake levels, wind and wave action, cyclic freezing causes different kinds of erosion of the shoreline, from liquidity of the soil, tree and slope instability, vegetation changes to build up of woody debris.

A second strong impetus is to identify and protect the Nlaka’pamux trail and associated cultural sites along the Skagit River from the impacts of recreational use. The area is beautiful and there is a large excellent campground at the head of the reservoir: this large campground is located here because of the reservoir. The Skagit Valley Provincial Park has a number of other small campgrounds along the Skagit River. The shores of the reservoir have been promoted by both USA and the B.C. Provincial Parks services as a destination for boaters, campers and hikers and the area is becoming very popular for recreation. However an important factor to emerge from the initial NNTC survey at Ross Lake in Washington State was the unanticipated co-incidence that the Nlaka’pamux trail corridor also comprises the highest density areas used for recreation activities.

Traditional cultural landscapes and sites are challenging to manage for large land managers as the nature of their existence is inherently difficult to identify for people outside of the culture who also use the place and who don’t understand what the important characteristics are to each place. These place are obviously difficult for outsiders to protect. The intention for the Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council (“NNTC)” is that the report will be helpful in initiating co- operation and collaboration with the B.C. government in the Upper Skagit Valley.

Finally it is of general historical import and interest to identify and document an ancient trail that is part of a significant network of indigenous travel and trade routes in British Columbia.

Area of Specific Significance

This proposal covers an area of specific significance for the Nlaka’pamux – and indigenous neighbours on all sides. Here is the crossing of important indigenous trails, east/west and north/south. The 1866 map below was produced from works of the British and USA Boundary

Commissions who were marking the boundary here in 1859. (Note that the USA mappers included no trails at all, but that the British map included known trails.)

The ancient east-west trade trail corridor between the coast and the interior (now modified somewhat and known as the Skyline Trail) crosses the Skagit River here: the Nlaka’pamux trail corridor following the Skagit between the southern boundary area and the Fraser River meets that trail within this area which is often broadly referred to a “Council Bowl”1.

We’d all come through here and meet at one time or another. The Council Bowl used to be gathering place for all the people to come here – from down below and from Lytton and on the other side of this mountain is another sacred spot that is connected to here.2 An initial survey of part of the east/west trail3 here was conducted by archeologist Ian Franck on behalf of the Stolo 2000-2002, but there has been no systematic survey of the Nlaka’pamux trail or archaeological cultural sites here along their northsouth traditional trail between US neighbours in the south along the Skagit river to meet with more trails to east and north in the Nlaka’pamux territory.

1 The late Nathan Spinks, former chief of Lytton, at the SEEC Conference at Hozomeen in 2009 2 The late Clem Seymour, former Chief of Seabird Island, at the SEEC Conference at Hozomeen in 2009 3 The Skyline trail follows parts of the ancient east/west trail system at the south of what is now British Columbia.

(Excerpt) U.S. North West Boundary Survey, Map of Western Section (1866), series 66, RG 76, U.S. National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C.

The first effort to pull together the pieces of the story and articulate some of the narratives about the place was SEEC’s invitation to Washington Tribes and BC First Nations and to archaeologists, anthropologist and other interested people to gather at what Nlaka’pamux Elder (the late) Nathan Spinks remembered as “the Council Bowl”. U.S. National Parks Service Archaeologist Robert Mierendorf introduced “Hozomeen as a place where knowledge of such a rich past comes together to tell the long story of human involvement in this place, found in the place names, oral traditions and traditional activities and finally, in the earth, in the

archaeological remains and the archaeological context”. He told how “we know that for 10,000 years at least aboriginal people have been using this valley. How do we know? … Because at a site in Cascade Pass, a great distance from here, which we dated as 9,600 years old, we found Hozomeen chert pieces, some sharp as a knife. Chert doesn’t occur there naturally.”4 A number of Nlaka’pamux attended this gathering. Joseph Dunstan of Skaywaynope (opposite Lytton) talked of their long connections with the valley: “we’ve always enjoyed this area, we came here and continued further south … as stewards of the land, our ancestors walked here, they hunted here, they had gatherings here, buried people here”.

The proposed surveys are within the Nlaka’pamux territory.

The 1990/91 Nlaka’pamux Nation submissions to FERC referred to the NPS archaeological and anthropological studies of 1987 and 1988 recognizing the aboriginal occupation of the Upper Skagit River Valley by the Nlaka’pamux Nation.

The whole of the proposed survey area, at the head of the reservoir and thence following the Skagit River northeast to join with other Nlaka’pamux trails is contained within the Nlaka’pamux territory as shown on maps showing the location of the Nlaka’pamux in BC. The Map Showing the Location of the Thompson Indians5 and Neighbouring Tribes, was drawn by ethnographer James Teit, under the direction of Nlaka’pamux Elders and Chiefs, some of whom were adults at the time of the Treaties drawn up between Canada and the United States.

4 Hozomeen Gathering, Bear Image Productions, 2010

5 In the Introduction to this work, Teit wrote: “The Indians to be described in the following pages were called “Couteau” or “Knife” Indians by the employees of the Hudson Bay Company; but at the present day this name has been entirely superseded by that of the “Thompson” Indians, taken from the name of the river the neighbourhood of which they have their homes. They call their entire tribe Nlak’a’pamux. They are also so designated by all the neighboring Tribes of the Interior…” (emphasis added)

Map showing location of the Thompson Indians (Nlaka’pamux) and Neighboring Tribes, James Teit. The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 1900.

A number of other maps showing the location of the Nlaka’pamux and neighbouring tribes held by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia show the same Nlaka’pamux locations.

Nlaka’pamux (Thompson) territory below the 49th parallel. Excerpted from Teit Map (4) “Eastern Washington Approximate Boundaries Interior Salish Tribes about 1825-1855,” 1910-1913. American Philosophical Society, Franz Boas Collection of Materials for American Linguistics (Mss 497.3 B63c) Section 59. Permission required. More modern maps show the outer edges as shared boundary areas and a less flexible area wherein resources use was governed by strict protocols of kinship and agreements. Nlaka’pamux Elder Burt Seymour identified the boundary areas by the language: “you know when you near the boundary as people here are bilingual”.

Project Background

In the 1940’s/early 1950’s, Seattle City Light clear cut and flooded the Upper Skagit River Valley, i.e. within Nlaka’pamux lands, for the Ross Lake reservoir. The reservoir covers lands in British Columbia. There was no communication with or compensation to the Nlaka’pamux

people at that time, either by Washington State or the British Columbia governments. The legislation in place in the U.S.A. during the 1977 relicensing of the Ross Lake dam however, required that indigenous interests in the lands surrounding and under the reservoir be taken into account in that part of the reservoir that lay within Washington State. The Nlaka’pamux interest there was recognised by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission [“FERC”] in 1991. In 1993 Seattle City Light and the NNTC came to a Settlement Agreement whereby the NNTC would research and present an Inventory of Traditional Cultural Properties [“TCPs”] in the area under the FERC jurisdiction, the lands under the reservoir and a narrow ribbon around Ross Lake. It was to be accompanied by recommendations for mitigation measures to protect the identified TCPs. A Summary of that Report is attached herewith.6

The NNTC made it very clear that this Inventory was by no means complete.

The boundaries that were imposed on the survey here, the 49th parallel and the Area of Project Effects around Ross Lake, are not reconcilable with survey of the traditional cultural sites of a Nation who have inhabited the Upper Skagit River Valley for thousands of years.

First Nlaka’pamux Field, Elder and Community Cultural Survey at Ross Lake

“Cultural research” at Ross Lake by the U.S. National Parks Service [“NPS”] has focussed on archaeological sites in the area under the reservoir, accessible during the spring draw-down periods, with the notable exception of a chert quarry at the very edge of the reservoir. The focus of the NNTC Study was on the cultural sites within the ribbon of land surrounding the reservoir.

No one anticipated the co-incidence of the traditional indigenous travel corridor with the high- water level of the reservoir. When they started their ground survey in 2011 the NNTC cultural ground surveyors immediately located the principal Nlaka’pamux trail down the east side of the valley. It was where they expected it to be: mid-montane trails are the fastest and easiest in our terrain where the valley bottoms are often boggy or in deep snow in winter, log-strewn and difficult to traverse while the high ridges are too windy, rocky and often inaccessible for easy travel. They also had not anticipated finding the number of cultural sites that exist in this area nor the density of features within the sites.

6 Appendix 1

The principal travel/hunting/harvesting trail through a watershed is key to the whole Nlaka’pamux presence in and use of the watershed. The old trails are key to locating areas that continue to be of special significance to Nlaka’pamux. Nlaka’pamux traditional cultural sites are found in close proximity to the main trails: “We are not storks,” explained the NNTC lead field investigator Alfred Higginbottom, “we didn’t just drop into certain sites”.7 No site can exist in isolation in this remote valley. At every turn along the trail is the evidence of short-term and long-term campsites, trail marker trees, warming trees, tool manufacturing sites, hunting and harvesting processing sites, sweatlodge sites and other spiritual sites, in addition to the specific resources which had drawn Nlaka’pamux, as well as visitors from neighbouring indigenous Tribes or Nations, to this valley. Earlier U.S. National Parks Service archaeological studies described the Upper Skagit River Valley as having been intensively used in pre-contact times and the initial NNTC ground survey and community research corroborated this information.

Included within the Report was an Archival review which demonstrated the same documentation lacuna with regard to the Skagit River watershed as for other Nlaka’pamux remote watersheds. More substantial was the thorough cultural context prepared and discussed in a number of Nlaka’pamux Elder Forums and interviews held throughout the research period through the monthly nkshAytkn (Our Family, Relations, Ancestors) cultural gatherings held in different parts of the Nation each month.8 Elders and informed Nlaka’pamux had also been involved in formalizing the Nlaka’pamux Cultural Heritage Laws which had sustained the Nlaka’pamux Nation for centuries and which the Elders now feel should be carefully documented to assist the future generations. Elders’ discussions and studies around cultural practices, heritage and law were particularly relevant to the research for this project and were particularly germane in the more profound and complex context of past and present relationship with and obligation to the Nlaka’pamux temEEwuh . The significance of this Project to the Nlaka’pamux lies in the connection between the temEEwuh - that is the land and all that is in and on it, the Nwuha.beetn – that is everything that is there for us to use - and the Nlaka’pamux: it is a fundamental part of being, and of being

7 NNTC interview, January 2012: Inventory of Nlaka’pamux Traditional Cultural Properties, NNTC, 2020. 8 The NkshAytkn meetings have been cancelled through the Covid 19 pandemic

Nlaka’pamux. It involves, also to an extent that is not understood in the Western world, a specific duty to protect that relationship.

Hence the importance that this Project include both a survey of Nlaka’pamux cultural sites as well as an opportunity to explore ways to protect them. For the Nlaka’pamux Elders the significance of the spiritual and physical relationship between their land and the Nlaka’pamux must include the mutual responsibility of care.

Attached to the Report, and hereto, is the ethnography, The Nlaka’pamux in Washington State prepared by Dr. Andrea Laforet.9

The Trails Network

It’s the trails that show what we were doing, where we were going, for what reasons. The trails network will give you the whole history of the Nlaka’pamux occupation of this part of our territory. 10

The map that came out of the separate U.S. and Canadian Commissions shown above, The North West Boundary Survey, Map of Western Section (1866), does not show the “Indian trail” below the boundary. This map did not show any trails south of the border. The Canadian Commissioners on the other hand mapped in as many as they could. The trail from the border at Hozomeen to the interior of the Nlaka’pamux Nation is clearly marked. However, the topographer for the USA Boundary Commission did record his own party’s explorations in the area: in his Journals11 Henry Custer clearly described his explorations up through the Chilliwack valley, along the Klesilkwa Valley to meet with the Skagit from whence he rejoined the Commissioners at the Boundary on the Skagit. Custer had also crossed the Pickett Range south of the border to make his way down the slopes around what is now Little Beaver Creek, over the Skagit River, to join “the Indian trail” by which they returned to the Skagit boundary

9 Appendix 2. 10 NNTC Cultural surveyor Alfred Higginbottom, Interview re: survey of Skagit trail south of the border, January 2012. 11 “Report of Henry Custer, Assistant of Reconnaissances Made in 1859 Over the Routes in the Cascade Mountains in the Vicinity of the 49 th Parallel.” Typed manuscript, University of Washington, Special Collections, Northwest Collection, F891 C98 1866.

post. Custer and his party were then given instructions to explore the Skagit 12 miles north and 12 miles south – which they did, along “the Indian trail” on the east side of the River.

Custer’s notes were likely one source for the sketch by avid mountaineer and researcher Fred Beckey 12 showing the network of trails in that area:

(excerpt) Native American Trails in the Northern Cascades, in Range of Glaciers, The Exploration and Survey of the Northern Cascade Range, Fred Beckey.

While anthropologist James Teit lived at Spence’s Bridge, at the centre of the Nlaka’pamux territory, he was also instructed to broaden studies to include Nlaka’pamux neighbours and he did make several study visits with American Tribes to the south. One of Teit’s map at the American Philosophical Society in Phildelphia shows “Western States Trade routes – trading – places - plateau –Tribes” and this too shows the trail up the Skagit River – to the point where it meets the trail that leads east - now part of the Skyline trail.

12 Fred Beckey, Range of Glaciers, The Exploration and Survey of the Northern Cascade Range, 2003, Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland, Oregon.

Western States Trade routes – trading – places - plateau –Tribes: Excerpted from Teit Map (4) 1910-1913. American Philosophical Society, Franz Boas Collection of Materials for American Linguistics (Mss 497.3 B63c) Section 59. Permission required.

The intention of the NNTC proposed survey is to complete the survey of cultural sites at the head of the Ross Lake reservoir and then to follow the trail along the Skagit River for twelve miles approximately. The initial survey of the trail below the border took more time than we had allowed as we had not anticipated the density of cultural sites identified in those areas they did cover. And we hope that we have made appropriate allowance for them to complete the survey of this particular section of the trail.

There is a particular urgency in identifying the ancient Nlaka’pamux trail along the Skagit River. As became evident in the survey of Nlaka’pamux trail below the border, there is a real danger that the construction of new recreation trails can erase evidence of the ancient trail or overburden it if the new trail is close by. There are a large number of recreation trails in the area: the

provincial government lists at least seven 13: they are quite well known, and indeed wonderful recreational hiking trails. The provincial parks service acknowledges that often they might merge with ancient trails at some points but there has been no work to identify the ancient trail.

There is a concern that until it is properly surveyed by Nlaka’pamux the significance of the old trail will be overlooked. Parts of it have been and could be further disturbed or obliterated completely by nearby park activities such as erosion control of other features or park recreational trail building. This will make future field surveying more difficult. Only small parts of the old Nlaka’pamux mid-montane trail have been surveyed and recorded to date. The NNTC is particularly anxious that the ancient trail is surveyed by Nlaka’pamux to connect current missing linkages. This is the key.

It is vital that the NNTC consult with the provincial government on recreational trail maintaining tasks until the Nlaka’pamux trail has been more fully explored and documented. Identification of the trail will be invaluable in beginning the collaboration.

The Project. The Project has two components: survey of cultural sites in the area of reservoir project effects at the north of the Ross Lake reservoir, and survey of the ancient Nlaka’pamux trail and cultural sites following the Skagit River north from the boundary.  NNTC will be responsible for complete coordination of the project;  NNTC Senior Researcher will directly supervise the project to ensure timely completion, adherence to the statement of work, and maintenance of quality and will be accountable for the written report, including statements of significance and conclusions;  NNTC Research Unit will also work closely with the NNTC Natural Resources Unit to coordinate the GIS work for this project.  NNTC Lead Archaeologist will provide assistance with editing and submittal of reports.

Project Objective:

13 Skagit River Trail (further north than proposed NNTC survey), Chittenden Meadow Self-Guiding Interpretive Trail, Skyline II Trail, Centennial Trail, Nepopekum Creek Trail, Silverdaisy Trail, and Galene Lakes Trail

1. Implement field identification and mapping of traditional cultural sites in the area of project effect in the area of Ross Lake Reservoir that lies within British Columbia. 2. Survey Nlaka’pamux trail between the Canada/USA border to twelve miles north and fix the positions of and junctions with the ancient trade route that is known as the Skyline trail. 3. Work with Nlaka’pamux Elders and enable their visiting the identified sites to monitor the current conditions and effects of the reservoir and recreation operations on the sites, and complete the data gathering and cultural work for each site. 4. Collate all data into a working database so as to be able to respond to ongoing requests for information regarding Nlaka’pamux cultural sites and landscape within this area. 5. Collate all data into formats that will be helpful in negotiations that we hope will go forward from this survey: 1. to SCL for protection and mitigative measures for sites within the Area of Project Effect around Ross Lake 2. to B.C. Government agencies for protection of sites along the identified trail corridor

Confidentiality Two Reports will be delivered to SEEC: one will include maps and descriptions of identified cultural sites and this would be governed by a Confidentiality Agreement. A second report, without site descriptions and maps, would be a Public Report.

Methodology

The NNTC had developed effective interview/mapping methodology to document Nlaka’pamux occupation of and use of the mountain watersheds in the Nation over the past three decades. Cultural surveyor ground-truthing the maps made from the interviews with those who grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts had always haunted or harvested there corroborated the evidence of the Nlaka’pamux witnesses. However, the Upper Skagit River Valley bottom was logged out, the Ross Lake dam was constructed and the valley flooded

more than seventy five years earlier. No living Nlaka’pamux has visited the area before the valley was so radically transformed.

The paucity of detailed information from oral history14 and published works specific to the Upper Skagit River Valley is not surprising. However this lacuna does not square with the NNTC experience that the information is on the ground. This is where we find detailed evidence of Nlaka’pamux activities and travels associated with Nlaka’pamux occupation in the territory generally and in the more remote watersheds specifically. It was anticipated that the slopes surrounding Ross Lake in the Upper Skagit River Valley would be no different – evidence that was not drowned by the reservoir would be on ground: and in fact this was borne out by the initial surveys.

We propose that a crew of four experienced Nlaka’pamux cultural surveyors will spend a minimum of three weeks on the ground15 to complete the survey:

A typical ground reconnaissance and subsequent recording would include one member of the crew walking ahead and preliminarily identifying features found and relaying the findings to the other crew members. The other crew members would then flag, GPS, photograph and document the feature in the field books. If no features were found during the ground reconnaissance, the crews would still mark a GPS point and take a photograph every 100-200 meters along the traverse route.

On return from the field survey the field notes and photographs are to be entered into the management data-base designed specifically for this project by the NNTC Natural Resources Unit. The data from the field surveys is to be digitally mapped.

Identification of Nlaka’pamux Cultural Sites

On return from their field camps the crew will debrief. They will also be interviewed using the questionnaire devised in 2011 by social geographer, the late Dr. Ken Brealy, that was designed to tease out the geographic, botanical, geologic, environmental and cultural clues that determine the

14 The formal survey of the Boundary at the time of the Fraser River Gold Rush brought fundamental changes to the economy and life style of the Nlaka’pamux. Constrained to tiny areas of land along the principal fishing Rivers in Canada, traditional summer and winter travel to the Skagit for specific resources were considerably reduced: travel was discreet but it did not cease. 15 We have been in touch with BC provincial parks personnel who have given permission that the crew can stay at their base camp at Hozomeen.

field crew’s research and findings. This questionnaire was specifically designed for the identification of cultural sites:

This questionnaire is directed at the members of the field survey crews, and is designed to solicit clarification, explanation and elaboration on both the results of the survey itself, but also further reflections and discussion surrounding the summary report of the survey work as discussed.

… it is important that informal discussions and reflections be followed up with a more ordered set of questions for purposes of supporting what amounts to a traditional use study ….

The investigators’ field reports and photographs will then be printed out and the Project team, including field investigators, will hold meetings with different Elders to discuss their findings. Here too it might be useful to refer to the questionnaires drawn up by Dr. Brealey for the Elders for the initial survey, but many will be familiar with the subject.

At this point we anticipate discussions on whether and how different findings are important. This is the stage at which Elders and leadership can identify what are the cultural sites that they want protected, and can articulate how such sites might be protected in collaboration with the B.C. Government.

Elder Site Visits

At any point Nlaka’pamux Elders will be able to ask to visit sites. This is a particularly significant aspect of the work as the Elders have been very clear of the relationship work that has to be understood and carried on, the dialogue with the temEEwu refreshed.

Contacts have been made at a very basic level in that we have received permission from BC Parks to use their cabins at their Hozomeen campground as a base for the proposed spring survey.

Qualifications

This indeed is a project that can only be carried out by Nlaka’pamux who have been brought up on the land: the Nlaka’pamux footprint is very light on the ground and can be easily overlooked or damaged by non-Nlaka’pamux in the field. The only people who can speak to their

relationship with the temEEwu - are the Nlaka’pamux who have grown up strong in their cultural understanding of this relationship.

The field crew for the Nlaka’pamux will be Nlaka’pamux who have spent years in the field, who have practiced culture-based harvest of the resources that we expect to find in the Skagit Watershed and who are strongly identified Nlaka’pamux. The data managers and elder recorders have been working over the last two or three decades with the identifying markers of Nlaka’pamux. They each have their RISC (Resource Inventory Standards Committee) certificates for recording traditional cultural evidence or findings to a high standard. This is a Corporate Land Use Inventory Classification System for British Columbia in combination with a Data Management Standard. This is a professional standard that aims to eliminate speculation from the record and to hold back positive identifications until or unless they are confirmed by further findings or other evidence.

Elders and informed Nlaka’pamux have been involved in formalizing the Nlaka’pamux Cultural Heritage Laws which had sustained the Nlaka’pamux Nation for centuries and which the Elders now feel should be carefully documented to assist the future generations. Elders’ discussions and studies around cultural practices, heritage and law have been particularly relevant to the research for this project and particularly germane in the more profound and complex context of past and present relationship with and obligation to the Nlaka’pamux temEEwuh (the land – and all that is on it and in it).

Staff from NNTC Research and Natural Resources developed and maintain a data-base of recorded sites, mapping, field records and photographs of the ground surveyors. They have developed the ground survey methodology, they hire and train cultural surveyors. The lead archaeologist will review and edit the final report. The Research Unit has managed other such projects, from developing the initial methodology, hiring professional expertise, carrying out and recording interviews, ensuring communications between all parties and the leadership, and writing the final Report.

The NNTC is qualified to complete the ground survey and cultural research to identify and so protect Nlaka’pamux cultural sites at along the Skagit.

Project Tasks Breakdown.

Task 1 Field Survey Mapping

3 weeks 4 people, spring of 2021 Task 2 Project Administration and Interim Report

We expect this project to last one field season with the final report to be submitted by September 2021.

The Project Director and NNTC Research Unit staff will work with NNTC Natural Resources Unit to create the report.

Task 3 Archival Research and Mapping

We will be building on our extensive archival research and mapping component from our last study.

Task 4 Elder Interviews

The Elder interviews and site visits were the foundation of the successes of the last project and we plan to carry out both more site visits and interviews for this project.

Task 5 Final Report.

The Final report will be in three parts:

 Part One will provide the information from this process. It will provide a context for the project and background information and methods for the project and can have general distribution.  The second part will present the results, the textual and graphic representations of the cultural properties/landscape in the APE and will not have general distribution. Copies of this confidential report will also be kept at NNTC in addition to all the field notes and maps and the transcriptions of the interviews with the Elders.

 The third part will continue with Recommendations for Mitigation Measures for the protection the Nlaka’pamux cultural sites.

Our goal with the final report is that it can be a tool to help the B.C. Government and Seattle City Light determine if their activities are having or will have an effect on the NNTC cultural properties/landscape and where necessary begin consultation on protective measures. We hope that this report will provide a road map for consultation with the NNTC.

8 BUDGET: NNTC Staff and Elder component for this project is: NNTC Research Unit: Project Co-ordinator and Report writing: 2 Interview Recorders – 1 group debrief, 4 ground surveyor interviews, 4 Elder interviews Interview Transcriptions: 1 group debrief and 8 interviews. NNTC Natural Resources Unit: 4 Cultural Surveyors for 3 weeks on the ground (10 hours per day) six half days for debriefing, interviews and work with Elders; GIS technician for all data entry, records and photographs and mapping; plus printing of maps and photographs for interviews Nlaka’pamux Elders: 4 Elders to visit sites for 10 hours each 4 Elder interviews – half day each Meetings with NNTC Leadership: 3 meetings - to present proposal, for interim report and present final Reports. Editing of final report: Lead Archaeologist for NNTC. The total budget for this project is $50,680.00

Budget Breakdown:

Task Provider and task description Estimated Rate per Total Hours hour NNTC Research Unit: Project Co‐ordinator: Administration 40 75.00 3,000.00 Report Writing 100 75.00 7,500.00 2 x Interview Recorders: 9 interviews 36 25.00 900.00 Interview transcriber: 9 interviews 80 25.00 2,000.00 Sub‐total 13,400.00

NNTC Natural Resources Unit: Lead Cultural Surveyor: ground survey 166 35.00 5,810 and interviews 3 x Cultural Surveyors: ground surveys and interviews 498 32.50 16,185.00 GIS technician 80 35.00 3,600.00 Lead Archeologist for NNTC: editing of report 8 100.00 1,000.00 Sub‐total 26,595.00 Nlaka’pamux Elders: 4 Elders to visit sites 40 35.00 1,400.00 4 Elder interviews 16 35.00 560.00 NNTC Leadership 2 Meetings with 5 Chiefs 10 50.00 500.00 Sub‐total 2,460.00 Labour Sub‐total 42,445.00 Field and Travel Expenses: Vehicle: Lytton‐Hozomeen x 3 for survey crew (330k @54c.) 534.60 Vehicle: Lytton‐Hozomeen x 2 for Elders 356.40 Camps supplies for crew: camp gas, batteries, First Aid, contingencies etc. 250.00 Recording materials 250.00 Camp food supplies/meals @ 750.00 per week x 3 2,250.00 Per Diem for Elders @$87.50 per day x 4 350.00 Sub‐total 3,991.00 NNTC Administration: 10% of Labour 4,244.00 Total Budget $50,680.00

Presented by NNTC Research Unit, 4 December 2020, Contact: Pauline Douglas, Researcher (604) 253-9427 on behalf of the Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council,

Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council Box 430 1632 St. George’s Road Lytton BC V0K 1Z0 Tel: 250 445 2711

Appendix 1: Executive Summary of

NLAKA’PAMUX NATION INVENTORY OF TRADITIONAL CULTURAL PROPERTIES IN UPPER SKAGIT RIVER VALLEY WITHIN FERC PROJECT AREA #553-000, WASHINGTON STATE, USA , AND RECOMMENDED MITIGATION MEASURES TO PROTECT NLAKA’PAMUX CULTURAL PROPERTIES

NLAKA’PAMUX NATION TRIBAL COUNCIL, FEBRUARY 2020.

Nlaka’pamux Nation Inventory of Traditional Cultural Properties in the Upper Skagit River Valley within FERC Project Area # 553-000, Washington State, USA, and Mitigation Measures to protect Nlaka’pamux Cultural Properties.

Nlaha’kapmux Elders (the late) Susannah Phillips, (the late) Maggie Hance and Amy Charlie prepare to visit sites selected as potential Nlaka’pamux cultural properties in the Steh- tatl/Upper Skagit River Valley. (NNTC, September 2012)

Executive Summary

The Nlaka’pamux interest in the lands beneath and surrounding the Ross Lake hydroelectric dam built by Seattle City Light [“SCL”] in Washington State was recognised by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission [“FERC”] of the United States in June 1991. In its motion to intervene in the Ross Lake relicensing application, the Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council [“NNTC”] asserted that Seattle did not undertake a serious survey of cultural and historic sites until the Commission staff requested the City to do so, in October 1988, and that the preliminary studies conducted to date had revealed evidence of previously unknown historic sites within the traditional territory of the Nlaka’pamux. As a result, NNTC argued, this was an appropriate time

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under the National Historic Preservation Act and implementing regulations for Seattle to consult with interested tribes and for the Nlaka’pamux to seek intervention. Notice to Intervene was granted in 1991. Seattle City Light agreed to fund the research to create an inventory of Nlaka’pamux Traditional Cultural Properties [“TCPs”] within the area of FERC jurisdiction at the Ross Lake dam in the Upper Skagit River Valley. This was to include a report on the project effects on these areas, with Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council [NNTC] recommendations and cost estimates for mitigation measures for unavoidable adverse project effects. The 2010 Administrative Memorandum of Agreement between the SCL and NNTC reviewed the goals and Scope of Work involved.

The goals of this Project have been achieved:

 Identification of component sites of a potential TCP: one feature and ten critical sites, documented within a solid cultural framework, have been selected by Nlaka’pamux Elders and leadership;

 historic and field research is collated in a Project-designated data-base;

 schedule of potential project effects on each feature and site is laid out;

 recommendations, schedules, and projected costs for mitigation measures are included;

 mechanisms required for mitigation discussions on the part of the NNTC are in place: the Nlaka’pamux Cultural Heritage policy guides the conversation, and personnel with expertise and experience in this area are on NNTC staff or associated Councils and Boards;

 a respectful working relationship between all parties involved in the research - the SCL, NPS and NNTC - was established.

The deliverables due under the 2010 Administrative Memorandum of Agreement are attached:

 Public Report: NNTC Inventory of Nlaka’pamux Traditional Cultural Properties within FERC Project Area # 553, Washington State, with bibliography and appendices.

 Confidential Report: NNTC Inventory of Nlaka’pamux Traditional Cultural Properties within FERC Project Area # 553, Washington State, with plans, bibliography and appendices.

 Public Report: The Nlaka’pamux in Washington State, ethnography by Dr. A. Laforet, 2014.

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 Public Report: Status of TCP Investigations for Nlaka’pamux Nation in the Ross Lake Project Areas, by Kelly R. Bush, Equinox Research and Consulting International Inc. [ERCI], 2014.

Additional survey work is required to identify (and protect) other traditional Nlaka’pamux properties. The process of registering the proposed Nlaka’pamux Traditional Cultural Property documented in this Report is itself a long one. Presenting the required deliverables at this stage does not signify that the NNTC investigation here is concluded.

Part 1: Inventory of Nlaka’pamux Cultural Properties

A traditional cultural property [is] a place … that is eligible for inclusion in the National Register because of its association with cultural practices or beliefs of a living community that (a) are rooted in that community’s history, and (b) are important in maintaining the continuing cultural identity of the community (Parker and King 1998).

The concept of a traditional cultural property (“TCP”) was developed for the National Register of Historic Places 16 and published as National Register Bulletin # 38, (King and Parker 1990) subsequently entitled Guidelines for the Evaluation and Documentation of Traditional Cultural Properties.

Research to identify Nlaka’pamux Cultural Properties

Archaeological research over the past two decades in the Upper Skagit River Valley surrounding Ross Lake reservoir has created an expanding database of hundreds of archaeological sites which was helpful in informing a general indigenous use of the valley over the last 10,000 years at least. The research was led by the senior archaeologist at the North Cascades National Park, Robert Mierendorf, who was generous in forwarding all information to the Nlaka’pamux once the Nlaka’pamux interest in the area was established in 1991.

Archival research into the Upper Skagit River Valley, now the location of the Ross Lake reservoir, confirmed the same paucity of historical information as exists for other Nlaka’pamux watersheds. The topography of the Nlaka’pamux Nation, with its deep canyons and ravines, fast waters, steep, rocky and densely forested mountains makes for difficult travel. Few non-native traders and adventures ventured here before the Fraser River Gold Rush in 1858 and the Canadian/USA Boundary

16 The National Register of Historic Places (the “Register” or NRHP) which consists of sites, structures, and objects “significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture” (emphasis added) was established under the National Historic Preservation Act [the “NHPA”] of 1966. Section 101(d) in the 1992 amendment to the Act states specifically that properties of “traditional religious and cultural importance to Indian tribes … may be determined eligible for inclusion on the National Register”.

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Commission surveys of 1859, and those adventurers wrote more of the mosquitoes and dangers of their travel than of the indigenous populations.

However the U.S. Boundary Commission did produce two maps drawn by “Indians” of the Skagit River drainage and the mountain ranges at and south of the newly established boundary line and showed indigenous place names. Subsequent to the submission of the NNTC Draft Report in 2014, the “Report of Henry Custer, Assistant of Reconnaissances made in 1859 over the routes in the Cascade Mountains in the vicinity of the 49th parallel was located. This was a particularly useful find as Custer’s report corroborated the findings of the NNTC ground crew. The map that came out of the Survey, U.S. North West Boundary Survey, Map of Western Section (1866), also showed the indigenous place names. The names of the mountains and creeks mentioned in these documents can be deconstructed linguistically to demonstrate that these are Nlha.kapmhhchEEn (Nlaka’pamux language) place names.

That this was recognized as Nlaka’pamux territory was confirmed by the maps of anthropologist James Teit who had arrived in the Nlaka’pamux territory in the late 1880’s. He worked with Nlaka’pamux who were already adults at the time of the Gold Rush and Boundary Commission, to sketch out the extent of the Nlaka’pamux Nation. Their plans and sketches included within the Nation that part of the Upper Skagit River Valley now in Washington State that is the focus of this study.

Events following 1858 largely constrained the Nlaka’pamux to the tiny “Indian Reserves” along the Fraser, Thompson and Nicola Rivers, and severely eroded an economy that had depended on strategic travel to different resources at different times of the year.

While Nlaka’pamux travel to the Upper Skagit River Valley was reduced, it certainly did not cease. Archival photographs and oral history confirm that Nlaka’pamux continued to travel to the Upper Skagit Valley through 1858 to the 1940’s for the rich traditional resources there, but specific destinations, resource locations and trails were not documented. Nlaka’pamux continue to come to this valley for traditional harvests and events, but they come to a landscape that is radically different.

Cultural Framework developed by Nlaka’pamux Elders

Nlaka’pamux Elders had been informed and involved in the research for this Project from the start through the monthly nkshAytkn (Our Family, Relations, Ancestors) cultural gatherings held in different parts of the Nation each month. Elders and informed Nlaka’pamux had also been involved in formalising the Nlaka’pamux Cultural Heritage Laws which had sustained the Nlaka’pamux Nation for centuries and which the Elders now feel should be carefully documented to assist the future generations. Elders’ discussions and studies around cultural practices, heritage and law were particularly relevant to the research for this project and were particularly germane in the more profound and complex context of past and present relationship with and obligation to the

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Nlaka’pamux Nwuha.beetn, crucial deliberations in the defining of a TCP in this instance.

The significance of this Project to the Nlaka’pamux lies in the connection between the Nwuha.beetn -that is the land and all that is in and on it - and the Nlaka’pamux: it is a fundamental part of being, and of being Nlaka’pamux. It involves, also to an extent that is not understood in the Western world, a specific duty to protect that relationship.

Hence the importance that the Project include both an Inventory of Nlaka’pamux cultural properties as well as an opportunity to explore ways to protect them. For the Nlaka’pamux Elders, King and Parker’s definition of a “traditional cultural property” includes a recognition of the significance of the spiritual and physical relationship between their land and the Nlaka’pamux, and of the mutual responsibility of care. They were thus particularly careful to lead the cultural research to support the eligibility of the Nlaka’pamux Traditional Cultural Property described in this Inventory.

Ground survey by Nlaka’pamux Cultural Surveyors

The NNTC has developed an effective research and mapping/interview methodology to document Nlaka’pamux presence in and use of the mountain watersheds in the Nation over the past three decades. Ethnographies have been prepared for mountain watershed areas that remain well used at specific times of the year for specific purposes by people who have always practiced this, and had learned their practices from their parents, uncles and aunts, and their grandparents. There is little archival documentation of those areas but there is considerable oral history for a solid ethnography and detailed Land Use maps in each.

However the Ross Lake dam was constructed and the valley was flooded more than seventy years ago. The regular methodology developed by the NNTC was not appropriate for a landscape that had been so fundamentally transformed so long ago. The Project interview/mapping methodology referred to in the early SCL/Nlaka’pamux Nation Agreements had to be revised.

Historical, cultural and ethnographic research was therefore carried out contemporaneously with a ground survey of the area by Nlaka’pamux surveyors who have long-term experience and expertise in this work in other Nlaka’pamux watersheds. The NNTC was confident that the evidence of traditional cultural properties within the Project Area would be recorded on the land. This has been the NNTC experience from the Nlaka’pamux Use and Occupancy Mapping and Interviews: the maps and oral histories are corroborated by the evidence on the ground. The NNTC proposed therefore that research on the ground by experienced cultural surveyors would result in careful, properly documented evidence of Nlaka’pamux cultural properties in the Project Area to a standard and detail that would meet the requirements of this Study.

A crew of four Nlaka’pamux experienced ground cultural investigators spent four weeks in the field in September/October 2011 and returned to the Upper Skagit River Valley in the spring of 2012, during the reservoir draw-down.

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They had not anticipated the quantity and extent of their preliminary findings.

They were also not prepared to experience the power of relationship with the Upper Skagit River Valley that they are familiar with in their home watersheds.

Documentation for the Inventory of Nlaka’pamux Cultural Properties

On their return from the reservoir, the information, documentation and photographs from the field research were transferred to a data-base specifically designed for this Project. After debriefing sessions with the Project team, the field surveyors were interviewed individually, using a questionnaire designed to tease out the geographic, botanical, geologic, environmental and cultural clues that determined their research and findings.

A follow-up, detailed culturally-based questionnaire was designed for Elders selected for their experience, expertise and knowledge in different fields in order to confirm or further explore the findings of the field team. The interviews were recorded and transcribed.

Plans, photographs and reports were presented to the Elders and the NNTC leadership for selection of the Nlaka’pamux feature and sites to be visited by them. Elders were finally able to visit these sites in September 2012. Earlier research and discussions had exposed a wider perspective on the research to be carried out here, but the Elders were also initially unprepared for the immediacy and power of the communications and experiences of their first site visits: time collapsed and exposed the unbroken Nlaka’pamux relationship with Steh-tatl, the Upper Skagit Valley.

Their experiences drew the Elders, the cultural investigators and the Project itself out of a simple forensic study and set them down firmly in the present day.

The final selection of the Nlaka’pamux Traditional Cultural Property as presented in this Report was confirmed on their return. The recognition of the principal Nlaka’pamux wuhahl (trail) was determined as key to understanding the Nlaka’pamux presence in the area: the wuhahl connects the Nlaka’pamux cultural sites, identified and unidentified. “We are not storks,” explained lead investigator Higginbottom, “we didn’t just drop into certain sites”. No site can exist in isolation in this remote valley. Ten Nlaka’pamux cultural sites associated with and inseparably connected to the nwushEEtn were selected as demonstrating a wide range of activities of historical, cultural and spiritual relevance.

The methodology described above has resulted in an informed report. The descriptions hereunder of the selected Nlaka’pamux sites and features, added their significance within the context of Nlaka’pamux cultural and spiritual values and heritage, lay the groundwork for the Inventory required under the terms of the SCL/Nlaka’pamux Settlement Agreement. We note where possible project effects might be an issue or where it was clear that further detailed research is required.

The Proposed Nlaka’pamux Traditional Cultural Property

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The proposed TCP is thus defined as the principal Nlaka’pamux nwuha.shEEtn (trail) with ten associated sites that are contributing component elements. It is their inalienable interconnectedness that determines their cultural integrity, while their value to the economy and culture of our ancestors and to the Nlaka’pamux of today, together with our own current obligations to the Nwuha.beetn, determine their cultural significance.

The proposed Nlaka’pamux TCP meets the eligibility requirements of the National Register of Historic Places, demonstrated by applying the different Criteria required as laid out in National Register Bulletin 15 (in Section 5 below). NNTC recognises that registration as a TCP is a lengthy and complex process, and additional field work and research is required to accomplish this goal. The NNTC will pursue the goal of registering the Nlaka’pamux Cultural Property described in detail below in the Report.

Part 2: Ross Lake Dam Project Effects on Nlaka’pamux TCPs and Recommended Mitigation Measures

Project Effects

Three major effects of the Seattle City Light (SCL) operations of the Ross Lake Dam for power generation impact Nlaka’pamux interests.

1. While the logging and flooding of the Upper Skagit River Valley might not come within the purview of this Project, the impact of the loss of the valley floor (a continuing Skagit Project operation) continues as a deep psychological and cultural shock, for it is the valley in its whole that is integral to what is significant, the fundamental connection between the Nlaka’pamux and the Valley.

Reservoir action, the annual draw-down and refilling of the lake, however does pose a current concern as buried sites are further eroded in the process.

2. Second are the cumulative indirect effects of all the agreements, regulations and SCL funding streams for activities in the Area of Potential Effect [the “APE”]. Activities that result from the construction of Ross Lake dam have the potential to cause the most immediate impact on Nlaka’pamux cultural properties identified to date in the APE. National Parks Service [“NPS”] construction and maintenance of the lakeside recreation facilities may pose the greatest proximal threat. While the NPS would certainly have expanded the earlier timber industry roads and established more trails and recreational facilities in the Park if there were no reservoir here, there would likely not be as many and they would not have been located at nor so concentrated within a narrow and specific area, i.e. the shores of a newly created lake, in fact the APE. It was the construction of the dam with its very attractive water recreational potential that gave a specific form and shape to the NPS present use of the valley.

3. The physical changes to the surface morphology of the basin by processes such as increased erosion by wave and wind action are less immediately obvious.

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The more specific project effects on identified Nlaka’pamux cultural sites and features selected for protection under this Project are itemised in this Report.

The NNTC strongly recommends that the survey of the area, determined by the principal Nlaka’pamux trail at mid-montane level, should be continued, as we are also concerned about the vulnerability of Nlaka’pamux cultural sites outside of the APE. Visual or auditory impacts to sites outside of the FERC boundary could occur from SCL and NPS works inside the APE.

The NNTC is concerned about the more likely and wider-ranging impacts from NPS activities at sites or features that might not be recognised by untrained eyes: trail segments outside the APE or associated trail marker trees, for example. NNTC is also concerned about the potential impact at spiritual sites associated with the trail.

Mitigation Measures. The Settlement Agreement of 1993 provided in addition an opportunity to lay out “potential mitigation measures in and near the Project area” (3.2). The Settlement Agreement (Section 3.3.3) confirms the City will implement actions proposed as determined in further negotiations. Most of these project effects - effects that are the result of the locating, building and maintenance of the federally-licenced hydroelectric dam here - are the result of activities managed by another federal agency, the NPS, but there is no formal agreement between the NPS and Nlaka’pamux Nation with regard to protection of Nlaka’pamux cultural heritage sites. While “within its power to do so, the City shall ensure that the NPS includes Nlaka’pamux in Project related archaeological studies and mitigation planning” (3.3.1 Settlement Agreement) the Nlaka’pamux must rely on U.S.A. legislation currently in place17. However, unless there is active collaboration and cooperation in place between the three active parties in this area (SCL, NPS and NNTC) to research and advise of cultural sites and locations - and corresponding research and information-sharing of potentially harmful activities - the NNTC is concerned that any legislative protection might be an afterthought, too late to prevent any damage.

The fact that the area along the shoreline co-incides with the location of a traditional cultural property may not have been foreseen during SCL construction does not cancel out the fact that it is here. It presents a challenge in co-operation among all holders and users of the area. Under these unforeseen circumstances, co-operation and confidentiality protocols or Agreements with the relevant department of the U.S. Government need to be set in place as soon as possible to ensure that the following Mitigation recommendations (which were required under the Settlement Agreement) can have any meaningful substance.

17 National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 which covers Bulletins 15 and 38, and Native American Free Exercise of Religion Act of 1993

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NNTC Mitigation Recommendations: 1. Comprehensive cultural ground survey

Preliminary findings in this report demonstrate that the continuation of the comprehensive cultural survey should be contemporaneous with mitigation considerations. Immediate mitigation negotiations should take into consideration the fact that much research still needs to be done as neither the NNTC nor the SCL anticipated the amount of ground research this Project would entail. The NNTC strongly recommends that the first task in protecting Nlaka’pamux traditional cultural properties is a comprehensive study by the Nlaka’pamux to locate and define the old trail system, with flexibility to examine areas outside of the FERC boundary. The significance of any Nlaka’pamux traditional cultural property in a remote mountain environment can be better understood and appreciated in a culturally appropriate context. 2 Early consultation with NNTC on Planning Schedules

It is the NNTC experience in similar situations within the territory that much time and money is saved by the proponents if the NNTC is advised at the earliest planning stages of any proposed project or even programmatic activities. The NNTC proposes that it be advised of scheduled planning meetings.  The NNTC is ready to identify specific sites of concern and to discuss with appropriate agency, either SCL or NPS, what activities occur at those sites and determine ways to complete activities with eliminated or reduced impact.

 Relevant historical and ground research has been collated and is stored in a data-base system designed for this Project on an on-going and long-term basis.

 The NNTC has guiding cultural heritage principles in place and this qualifies the NNTC as an efficient consultant.

 The NNTC has a mitigation management team with leadership, elders and technicians qualified to negotiate/help resolve mitigation measures where TCP impacts cannot be avoided.

 If NPS and SCL are unable to allow for mitigation measures to protect Nlaka’pamux cultural properties until they are formally recognised as TCPs, SCL should fund the eligibility process of the sites described herein.

3. Nlaka’pamux Monitor on Site

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The most urgent Nlaka’pamux recommendation is that an Nlaka’pamux Monitor be on site in Upper Skagit River Valley for any new developments by SCL, and SCL has expressed agreement for such presence. While the current NPS emphasis is on archaeological research in compliance with NHPA and other federal laws to protect cultural resources in areas developed for NPS activities, the NNTC propose an Nlaka’pamux presence during the process to ensure that the research is understood in a larger cultural context, both for protection and education but also for the purposes of further documenting of the Nlaka’pamux Cultural Property for registration. There are many additional benefits for both the SCL and NPS. An Nlaka’pamux monitor  could serve as cultural consultant to archaeologists or botanists, and other specialists called in for any reason; also to Park Rangers, habitat restoration workers, trail and campsite maintenance crews, etc.

 provide cultural training to SCL and NPS workers on site or to visiting specialists,

 access the data collected for this Study, and future studies, in addition to the data deemed Confidential,

 provide certainty about the programmatic, project or mitigation work at a site,

 identify other culturally important sites and add to the general information about the area,

 prevent or minimise unanticipated disturbance of cultural sites,

 foresee how scheduled works might impact sites.

This would be of benefit to all Parties and the NNTC suggests a sharing of costs to make this possible. 4. Continued Co-operation between all Parties on site.

The initial cooperation between the NNTC, the SCL and NPS in carrying out the preliminary Inventory of Nlaka’pamux Traditional Cultural Properties in the Area of Project Effect augured well for the future. This is a project that relies for its success on the continuing contribution of the expertise and experience of each organisation. Legislated Accountability As both FERC and NPS are federal entities the NNTC has requested the Secretary, Dept. of Interior to put the relevant US federal departments on notice that there are mapped and described Traditional Cultural Properties on land that they are responsible for. While the NPS would not knowingly (since they will have the maps and descriptions of these

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Historic Properties) disturb or destroy Traditional Cultural Properties, NNTC does have concerns that their actions, or in some cases inactions, may be disturbing or destroying Traditional Cultural Properties because of their archaeologically-biased perspective as opposed to an Nlaka`pamux cultural one. NNTC is therefore requesting consultation on such actions as part of the NPS responsibilities to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. For the Nlaka’pamux Nation this early work has begun the healing from the radical severance from and the physical transformation of the Upper Skagit River Valley and brings with it an optimism for the restored understanding of our historical and cultural relationship with this valley. It is our hope that sharing this information with others who love this beautiful valley may lead to a shared responsibility for a respectful and caring stewardship of a place that has nurtured the Nlaka’pamux for millennia.

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Appendix 2.

Rudy Kehler

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The Nlaka’pamux in Washington State18

Andrea Laforet19

January 6, 2014

Updated March 30, 2020

Introduction:

The substantial portion of the original Nlaka’pamux (nɬeʔképmx) homeland that lies to the south of the headwaters of the Skagit River was inadvertently placed within the jurisdiction of the United States by the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which established the 49th parallel as the boundary between British and American interests. This was followed in 1855 by the Treaty of Point Elliott in which the signatory Native American groups agreed to “cede, relinquish, and convey to the United States all their right, title, and interest in and to the lands and country occupied by them” including land,

Commencing at a point on the eastern side of Admiralty Inlet, known as Point Pully, about midway between Commencement and Elliott Bays; thence eastwardly, running along the north line of lands heretofore ceded to the United States by the Nisqually, Puyallup, and other Indians, to the summit of the Cascade range of mountains; thence northwardly, following the summit of said range to the 49th parallel of north latitude; thence west, along said parallel to the middle of the Gulf of Georgia20... in exchange for certain reserved lands, rights to fish, hunt, and gather on unclaimed land, and services to be provided from a defined sum of money to be administered by the United States Government. Only Native American groups with permanent residences in Washington Territory were signatory to this treaty; the Nlaka’pamux were not among them, nor were they or other Canadian Aboriginal groups included in the U.S. Indian Claims Commission inaugurated by the Indian Claims Commission Act of 194621. The Nlaka’pamux have nonetheless continued to consider the land, waters and resources in this region as a part of their historic homeland22.

18 This paper is a component of a project to document Nlaka’pamux traditional cultural properties within the Skagit Hydroelectric Project area and to develop mitigation plans for impact on these traditional properties. Funding for this work was provided by the City of Seattle Light Department under the U.S.A. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Settlement Agreement between the City of Seattle Light Department and the Nlaka’pamux Nation, Skagit River Hydroelectric Project FERC No. 553, signed March, 1992. Prepared by Andrea Laforet Consulting Inc. for the Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council, January 2014 and updated March 2020. 19 In writing this paper I have benefitted from the substantial knowledge of several Nlaka’pamux people, including Annie York, Nathan Spinks, Elsie Charlie, Marion Dixon, Annie Acar, Paul Oppenheim, Gordon Antoine, John Haugen and Robert Pasco. I am also indebted to Irene Bjerky, who brought the baptismal record for Angele Youla to light, Steven M. Egesdal for helpful discussion of the etymology of “Hozomeen” and Nancy Turner, for discussion of the larger issues related to controlled burning of mountain harvest areas. The staff of NNTC, including Pauline Douglas, Tawnya Collins, Serena Hunsbedt and Jeannie Charlie, smoothed the path in many ways. 20 Treaty of Point Elliott. www.historyLink.org. The Treaty of Point Elliott was proclaimed in April, 1859. 21 Daniel Boxberger. An Ethnographic Overview and Assessment of North Cascades National Park Service Complex. (Seattle, WA: U.S. National Park Service, North Cascades National Park Service Complex, 1996), 24. 22 Access to this area by peoples neighbouring the Nlaka’pamux has been noted and discussed by Teit (1930), Duff (1953), Smith (1988), and Boxberger (1996), among others.

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In the Canadian sector of Nlaka’pamux traditional territory the intersection of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers at the present‐day site of Lytton, and the junction of the Thompson and Nicola Rivers at the present‐ day site of Spences Bridge have created four river valleys, i.e. the steep, forested Fraser canyon, the drier, somewhat more open mountains of the Fraser River valley above Lytton, the even drier Thompson River valley and the lightly forested Nicola River valley. In Washington State the Skagit River and the upper reaches of the Nooksack River were flanked in 1846 by high forested mountains. Prior to the arrival of Europeans the diversity of resources offered by these valleys and the mountains and plateaus adjacent to them was pivotal to the Nlaka’pamux economy. The upper Fraser River valley, the Thompson River valley, and the Nicola valley and the Fraser Canyon differ from one another in climate and, to some extent, in flora and fauna. The Fraser canyon and the Skagit region, on the other hand, have many features of climate, topography, and faunal and plant resources in common.

The only comprehensive ethnography of the Nlaka’pamux is The Thompson Indians of British Columbia23, written by James Teit and published in 1900 as a volume of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. Teit recorded 66 named winter villages in Nlaka’pamux territory. Winter villages were located on the flat land along or above the river bank near the fishing stations of the families who lived there. Each household was an extended family, consisting of a man, his wife or wives24, their children, the man’s parents and often his brothers or male cousins who were in the same relationship to him as brothers born to his own parents. A village could consist of several related households. Village locations in the Fraser Canyon, where flat land with close and reliable access to creeks was relatively scarce, were fixed and permanent. There was more choice and flexibility for changing new winter village sites in the Thompson and Nicola River valleys, but each of the valleys had a series of named villages with associated families who lived there from one generation to another, and moved to equally well known and established resource areas in the mountains and plateau areas in other seasons of the year. Groups of hunters wintered in the Skagit region, moving there in late fall and staying for up to seven months.

The symbolic centre of Nlaka’pamux country is near the junction of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers near Lytton, at the site where Nƛ’ík’smtem, the son of Coyote, one of the supernatural beings central to Nlaka’pamux historic cosmology, came down to earth25 after a sojourn in the upper world. In 1846 the village farthest downriver on the Fraser River was Spuzzum, several miles upriver from the historic boundary with the Tait at Sawmill Creek. The village farthest upriver on the Thompson River was SLaz, near the historic boundary with the Secwepemc (Shuswap). The immediate neighbours of the Nlaka’pamux were the Secwepemc (Shuswap) to the north and east, Stuwix (Nicola Valley Athapaskan) and Okanagan, to the west, Stl’atl’imx (Upper Lillooet) to the west and north, Lil’wat (Lower Lillooet) to the west and south, the Halkomelem‐speaking Tait and Sto:lo along the Fraser River to the west, and, farther south, the Nooksack and Upper Skagit to the west, and directly to the south, the Klickitat.

23 James Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 169‐174. The Nlaka’pamux (nɬeʔképmx) have been identified in the historic and scholarly record by other non‐Aboriginal names, including “Couteau,” which had fallen into disuse by the late 1800s, and “Thompson.” 24 The Nlaka’pamux of this era practised sororal polygyny, in which a man might take two or more wives. These were often sisters or first cousins, who, in the Nlaka’pamux kinship system, were equivalent to sisters. 25 See “NLi′ksEntEm” in James Teit, Traditions of the Thompson River Indians, Memoir of the American Folk‐Lore Society VI, 1898, 25.

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Fig. 1 “Map Showing Location of the Thompson Indians and Neighbouring Tribes, In James Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 166.

Language

The language of the Nlaka’pamux, Nlaka’pamuxcin (nɬeʔkepmxcín), is classified by linguists as belonging to the Salishan language family26. Nlaka’pamuxcin is a distinct language, with a complex grammar, and an extensive vocabulary. In 1846 it was spoken throughout Nlaka’pamux country, with some regional variations in vocabulary, pronunciation and idiom. Nlaka’pamuxcin was spoken as a second language at the borders of Nlaka’pamux territory where bilingualism was common, particularly among families who were intermarried with families of neighbouring territories. Nlaka’pamuxcin is related in history,

26 See Laurence C. Thompson and M. Terry Thompson, The Thompson Language (Missoula, MT: University of Montana, 1992) and Laurence C. Thompson and M. Terry Thompson, Thompson River Salish Dictionary. (Missoula, University of Montana Occasional Papers in Linguistics No. 12, 1996)

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grammar and vocabulary to Stl’atl’imx, Secwepemc, and Okanagan, and more distantly related to Halkomelem, Nooksack, and Lushootseed. Nlaka’pamuxcin is entirely different in structure, grammar and lexicon from the Athapaskan language spoken by the Stuwix of the upper Nicola Valley and Similkameen.

Population

There are virtually no comprehensive population estimates for the Nlaka’pamux for the period prior to 1846. While stationed at Kamloops in 1846 Hudson’s Bay Company Chief Trader Archibald McDonald attempted to take an informal population estimate from “Coutamine” visitors to the Fort, i.e. visitors from the vicinity of the confluence of the Thompson and Nicola Rivers. In a report to the Governor and Council of the Hudson’s Bay Company in February1830, McDonald, then at Fort Langley, estimated the male population, either adult males or household heads, of five major Nlaka’pamux villages between Spuzzum and the village he designated as “Whee y kum” [i.e. Teit’s “Koiaum” in the vicinity of Boston Bar] at 75027. It is not entirely certain what proportion of the total population even of this limited region of Nlaka’pamux territory, these figures represent. Extrapolating from McDonald’s estimates, Cole Harris has suggested a population at that time of 7500 in the limited area of the Fraser Canyon between a point just south of Boston Bar and Yale28, a stretch of territory that, at that time, would have included several Halkomelem‐speaking villages. However, Wayne Suttles has cautioned against the full acceptance of McDonald’s figures, particularly for the Upper Halkomelem living immediately downriver from the Nlaka’pamux boundary, citing smaller estimates for the entire population provided less than ten years later by James Murray Yale29.

Even at this early date the Nlaka’pamux population had likely been affected by introduced disease. Simon Fraser saw evidence of smallpox in Nlaka’pamux villages in the Fraser canyon in 180830, evidence that may be consistent with a coastal small pox epidemic posited by Cole Harris in the early 1780s31. The Nlaka’pamux may have suffered in a measles epidemic which swept in 1848 through the interior of British Columbia along the established Hudson’s Bay Company brigade route from the Columbia River to Kamloops32. Through the mid‐to‐late 1800s a series of epidemics further reduced the population. James

27 “McDonald’s Report to the Governor and Council 25 February 1830.” In The Fort Langley Journals 1827‐30, ed. Morag McLachlan, Appendix C. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), 219‐20. 28 Cole Harris. “The Fraser Canyon Encountered.” In The Resettlement of British Columbia. Essays on Colonialism and Geographical Change. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997). 107. 29 Wayne Suttles. “The Ethnographic Significance of the Journals” In McLachlan, The Fort Langley Journals 1827‐ 1830, fn 5 258. Suttles cites James Murray Yale, “Census of Indian population [from Fort Langley] crossing over to Vancouver’s Island and coasting at about latitude 50’ from there returning southward along the mainland and up Frasers River to Simpsons Falls.” January 1, 1839. HBCA B.223/2/1:30‐53.

30 W. Kaye Lamb, ed., The Letters and Journals of Simon Fraser 1806‐1808. (Toronto: Macmillan, 1960), 94.

31 Harris, “Voices of Smallpox around the Strait of Georgia,” In The Resettlement of British Columbia, 18.

32 Robert Galois, “Measles, 1847‐1850: The First Modern Epidemic in British Columbia,” B.C. Studies 109 (spring 1996), 34.

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Teit estimated that in the smallpox epidemic of 1862 at least one‐fourth to one‐third of the Nlaka’pamux died, in spite of the light impact of the epidemic in Fraser canyon localities where some people were vaccinated. Writing in the late 1890s, Teit estimated that at the time of contact, roughly forty years before, the Nlaka’pamux population had been approximately 5000. Estimates made in the mid‐1870s33 placed the Nlaka’pamux population at that time in the vicinity of 2000 people.

The population was continuing to decline in Teit’s day, because of measles, tuberculosis, influenza and other introduced diseases. Harris has noted,

The decline noted in 1878 reflected, in proportions not yet known, the measles epidemic of 1848, tuberculosis, venereal diseases, a variety of unidentified and probably introduced diseases, and the effects of alcohol and warfare. Infant and child mortality rates were exceedingly high...cumulatively the effects were probably worse than those of any smallpox epidemic. The Indian reserve commission34 was travelling through an ongoing demographic disaster35. This decline was reversing itself by the mid‐1900s, when Aboriginal populations in British Columbia as a whole began to rebound36. By that time the Nlaka’pamux had lost access to significant portions of their original homeland as well as to the resources that had been the mainstay of the economy prior to the arrival of Europeans.

The Nlaka’pamux Economy

The Nlaka’pamux economy of the era prior to European settlement was based on mobility, co‐operation among household members, and intensive application of effort in specific areas at the season of their greatest productivity. It depended on knowledge of and access to the multiple ecological zones positioned at different elevations from the river foreshore to the highest points. The work was co‐ ordinated according to a complex timetable beginning in the early spring and extending to the late fall, a timetable set by the life cycle of game animals, the ripening of plants, and the runs of spring, sockeye and coho salmon, and steelhead. The economic year began in the late fall, with winter hunting in mountain areas, including the Skagit watershed. Winter was also a time when tools, clothing, basketry and cordage could be made for use in the coming year. While winter village sites included work areas, there were, as well, work areas at different places in the mountains utilized at appropriate times of the year for harvesting cedar planks, bark and roots from living trees, drying pelts, drying berries, and making stone hide scrapers and projectile points.

In early spring Nlaka’pamux families gathered the shoots of young plants such as thimbleberry and wild rhubarb. In late spring they gathered the roots of avalanche lily, nodding wild onion, rice root, spring‐ beauty root and bitter‐root and the fruit of prickly pear cactus. From early summer, when the thimbleberries, wild strawberries and then Saskatoon berries appeared, to late fall, when huckleberries

33 Israel Wood Powell, “Notes Documenting Interrogating of Various Tribes” ( National Archives of Canada. R.G. 88, vol. 494; Canada, and “Summer Census of Indian Tribes No. 2, 1877-1878.” RG88, vol. 494.) 34 A reference to the Indian Joint Reserve Commission (IJRC) funded by the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia in the late 1870s. 35 Harris, “The Fraser Canyon Encountered,” 120. 36 John Douglas Belshaw, Becoming British Columbia, A Population History, (Vancouver: UBC Press 2009), 31.

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were ripe in the mountains, they gathered and dried wild fruit as each species ripened. Year after year, family groups returned to the areas where these foods could be gathered in quantity.

The rivers, river banks and associated resources constituted one axis of the economy, while the upland areas and their associated resources constituted the other. The salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon fisheries comprised the riverine sector; systematic hunting and the harvesting of wild vegetables and fruit, medicinal plants and the materials required for basketry, cordage, house construction, clothing, and tools and weapons of all kinds comprised the mountain and upland sector. The operational units were groups of family members, with women of one or more extended families working together to gather and preserve vegetables and fruit, and men of one or more extended families hunting together. During the salmon runs the male members of families associated with a particular fishing site caught the fish, while the women of the same families butchered them and arranged them on drying racks.

With the exception of deer fences, salmon‐fishing stations and eagle eyries, which were owned by individuals37, Nlaka’pamux had access in common to the resources in all parts of Nlaka’pamux territory for hunting and gathering edible roots, berries and materials for cordage, tools and other items. The people in each local area hunted and gathered food most frequently within that area, but travel to hunt or gather food in other areas of Nlaka’pamux territory was also common38. Members of neighbouring societies who were related to Nlaka’pamux families could access mountain and upland areas with permission. Teit noted,

The hunting‐territory seems to have been considered the common property of the whole tribe. Among the Spences Bridge and Nicola bands any member of the Shuswap or Okanagon tribes who was related to them by blood was allowed full access to their hunting‐ grounds, the same as one of themselves... However, for members of neighbouring societies the kinship connections were pivotal to access. Teit continued,

If, however, a person who was not related to a Thompson Indian were caught hunting, trapping, or gathering bark or roots, within the recognized limit of the tribal territory, he was liable to forfeit his life39. When travelling to upland areas for the purpose of gathering or hunting, the Nlaka’pamux went to specific, known places to harvest particular resources at the time of year in which they could be expected to be available40. Both hunting and harvesting occurred in a cultural landscape accessed by trails and defined by place names. Trails existed at both high and low elevations and were open to all. Horses were introduced in the late eighteenth century41 and where possible trails were negotiated by horse as well as on foot.

37 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 293‐4.

38 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 293. 39 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 293. 40 See, for example, Andrea Laforet and Annie York, Spuzzum: Fraser Canyon Histories 1808‐1939 (Vancouver : UBC Press, 1998), 66‐69 on the use of resources on Broadback Mountain. Nlaka’pamux living along the Thompson River also travelled to specific upland areas in that region to harvest resources according to a specific seasonal timetable. 41 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 257.

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There were named places along trails which served as markers for location, distance and use. An example from the southern part of Nlaka’pamux territory serves as an illustration. The trail from Spuzzum to Nk’mém’peʔ, a primary place for gathering and drying wild vegetables and berries place on ɬq’íkn’, known in English as Broadback Mountain, had named rest stops along the way, i.e. Nmícaʔqtn, C’ul’ʔéʔpeʔ, Scuweʔw’úʔxw, and Q’iʔmín’tn. Q’iʔmín’tn was also a temporary camp site. Resource areas were Nk’əxk’éxmn, Sʕwiʕwyáqs, Kwǝl’kwl’eẃt and the top of the ridge area bounded by Nk’mémpeʔ and Stqwáw’s. Women stayed here for weeks each year to gather and dry berries and edible roots. Racks for drying berries remained through the year. Cedar roots for the basketry that provided everything from water buckets to food dishes to cradles to storage containers were available at Kwǝl’kwl’eẃt. Kwǝl’kwl’eẃt was also a particular historic site, as the place where people had died in a famine long ago. Nk’mém’peʔ was a principal site for gathering vegetables, including q’wəq’wíle (hog fennel or wild carrot), sk’ém’ec (dog‐tooth lily root), múleʔ (chocolate lily or rice root), tətúwn’ (springbeauty), qwlewe (nodding wild onion). xílxǝl (cinquefoil) was dug nearby. Elderberries and currants were also gathered here. The trail which led from the Lytton area to Botáni valley also had names designating rest stops, camping sites and harvest areas42.

To extend trails over rivers or along sheer cliff faces people in the Fraser Canyon, particularly, built suspension bridges. Simon Fraser noted this in 1808:

We had to pass where no human being should venture. Yet in those places there is a regular footpath impressed, or rather indented, by frequent travelling upon the very rocks. And besides this, steps which are formed like a ladder, or the shrouds of a ship, by poles hanging to one another and crossed at certain distances with twigs and withes, suspended from the top to the foot of precipices, and fastened at both ends to stones and trees, furnished a safe and convenient passage to the Natives – but we, who had not the advantages of their experience, were often in imminent danger, when obliged to follow their example43. Trail extensions and bridges were made out of rope, honeysuckle or other tough, flexible, vines, with a waterproof binding of cherry bark, taken from a young branch in a long spiral. Annie York noted,

They heat the cherry wood tree young and cut the bark off like a ribbon. They cut it in long strips, and they heat it, and then the honeysuckle, they get that and they twisted it and they got the rope, the Indian rope mixed with it, and they twisted it. And they make a suspension bridge in several places – it’s just hang on a cliff, a swing bridge. ...And they make it like that, even long before the whites came, they make these just like a cable, twisted, and they used to have one here at Spuzzum Creek, long one, but it’s not wide, just wide enough for you to walk on it44. Present‐day Nlaka’pamux living on the Thompson River have commented on the use of trail markers in forested areas, e.g. blazes, young trees with trunks or large limbs bent to indicate the direction of the

42 Nathan Spinks, personal communication. 43W. Kaye Lamb, ed., The Letters and Journals of Simon Fraser 1806‐1808, 96.

44 Andrea Laforet, interview with Annie York, September 13, 1973.

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continuation of a trail, or ‘candelabra’ trees, i.e. trees having several large branches reaching up around a common centre45.

While the local area was very important to the Nlaka’pamux sense of community and place, the cross‐ country trails linked the Nlaka’pamux with one another and with their neighbours on all sides. The quickest way to travel was across country. From SLaz, the northernmost village on the Thompson River, trails led west to Hat Creek and the Pavilion region, and southwest to the mountains, High Mountain and T’ǝm’siékm, between the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, and eventually to the Fraser river villages, and south by east to Nq’áwmn, at the present site of Gladwin, on the Thompson River, and the Nicola Valley. Other trails led from Pukáist and other villages on the east bank of the Thompson River villages to the resource areas of Highland Valley, northeast of Pukáist, and the Nicola Valley. From Nq’áwmn a trail led east to the village of Sxíx̣ nx (Shackan) or Fourteen‐Mile in ̣ the Nicola Valley. Another trail led over the mountains between the Nicola Valley villages and the Fraser Canyon villages near Anderson Creek, Boston Bar, and Boothroyd. Paul Oppenheim46, who was living in the Nlaka’pamux community of Coldwater near the Nicola Valley, recalled travelling over it with his family. “We go as far as ɬp’éw’s [where] the water runs both ways. It’s a summit.” Here and at mǝlxítekw47, called in English, “Indian Meadows,” Nlaka’pamux people picked huckleberries and Saskatoon berries, gathered cedar roots for coiled baskets, hunted and dried meat. This area was also a junction point. From here travellers could continue west to the Fraser Canyon, or turn south to Tulameen48. Sxiyptǝ̣ ́tn49 was a trail that led through the Cascade Mountains to and from the village of Pethluskwu (péɬuskwu) upriver from Spuzzum50.

The Nlaka’pamux were not the only people in this region to create, maintain and use trails at various elevations. In 1847 Alexander Caulfield Anderson, attempting to find a suitable fur brigade route from the lower Fraser River to Kamloops through the Cascades, was helped to locate existing trails by both a Nlaka’pamux hunter who encountered his party by chance and by Blackeye, a Similkameen chief51. Working with Sto:lo elders and staff, David Schaepe published a preliminary account of Sto:lo trails in the Chilliwack forest area and Sto:lo traditional territory in 199952. Through analysis of maps from the

45 Michael Klassen, “Identification Guidelines for Trail Marker Trees (TMTs) and other Shaped Standing Trees (SSTs) in the B.C. Interior” (presentation to Archaeology Forum, November 3, 2010).

46 Interview with Paul Oppenheim, September 2, 1987. NNTC Archives. 47 Cf Thompson River Salish Dictionary, p. 194, ʔemeɬtkw, “when you get over being tired.” 48 Interview with Gordon Antoine. July 14, 1987. NNTC Archives. 49 See Thompson River Salish Dictionary, 425, xiyptxən, “take shortcut walking through mountains, esp. followị ng gullies or passes.” 50 Laforet and York, Spuzzum,. 257. 51 Nancy Marguerite Anderson, The Pathfinder. A.C. Anderson’s Journeys in the West. (Victoria: Heritage House Publishing Company, 2011), 115 and 117. 52 David Schaepe, Tracking the Ancestors A Pilot Inventory of Aboriginal Trails Within Sto:lo Traditional Territory and the Chilliwack Forest District. (Sto:lo Nation for Ministry of Forests Chilliwack District, 1999).

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1850s Daniel Boxberger has concluded that Aboriginal groups had extensive knowledge of the North Cascades region prior to European settlement53.

Fig. 2 Historic Trails of the North Cascades. Hope Mountain Centre 2009. Reproduced with permission.

The map, “Historic Trails of the North Cascades,” shows multiple trails through the area between the Fraser River at Fort Hope and the Similkameen River. Several of these are associated with dates following the arrival of European entrepreneurs, but virtually all of them are likely based on Aboriginal trails.

They include a trail following the Tulameen River and another leading to and from Boston Bar in the Fraser Canyon. At least some trails through the Cascades became accessible to the horses that were introduced into Nlaka’pamux country circa 1800. Teit wrote,

53 Daniel Boxberger, “Native American Knowledge of the North Cascades in the 1850’s.” (poster presentation at the Northwest Environmental History Symposium, Pullman, Washington, August 1‐4, 1996). Cited in Schaepe, Tracking the Ancestors...”. 7.

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In July and August, when the route was open, Similkameen and Okanagon sometimes crossed the Cascade Mountains and visited the people of Hope on Lower Fraser River. After horses became common this trade became important and was followed annually. Large packs of dried fish and oil, and in later days even salted salmon, were transported over this trail54. As the mountains could receive substantial snowfall as early as October55, horse transport was likely limited to the summer.

In Nlaka’pamuxcin the word, tmíxw, connotes not only the physical land, but all that is in it and on it. Tmíxw is of profound significance in Nlaka’pamux thought. A particularly significant quality of the land is xaʔx̣ áʔ. The word, x̣ aʔx̣ áʔ, is used in several senses, ẉ ith the meaning and force shifting slightly according to the context in which it is used. X̣aʔxáʔ is an unchanging impersonal supernatural quality of ̣ certain parts of the land. It is also a quality inherent in certain animals, e.g. wolf and grizzly bear, and it is, as well, a quality which human beings could achieve through intensive training. Places in Nlaka’pamux territory that were known to have supernatural power were nx̣aʔx̣aʔúym’xw. A lake or pool in a stream that was xaʔx̣ áʔ was nx̣ aʔx̣ áʔtḳ wu, “water having supernatural power.” It was necessary to know how to recognize lakes and other features of the land that were xaʔx̣ áʔ, for it was dangerous to ̣ approach them. An untrained, and therefore unprotected, person who drank from, or bathed in, a lake that was xaʔx̣ ̣áʔ could become núkwukw, unsettled in his mind to the point of being mentally ill, and could only be cured by a sǝxwnéʔm or shaman. Some protection could come through training for the kind of strength and power which came from a relationship with a particular supernatural being. Most Nlaka’pamux underwent training of this kind at puberty, and some continued to train in adulthood. It was through this extended training that human beings could, themselves, become xaʔx̣ áʔ. Places having ̣ the quality, x̣aʔxáʔ, represent a fusion between natural and supernatural for whị ch there is no single word in English. In Nlaka’pamux thought, however, natural and supernatural are two, inseparable, aspects of every phenomenon.

In Nlaka’pamux thought all phenomena have life. The word for “people,” séytknmx, is applied both to human beings and to non‐human beings. To human beings with traditional training non‐human beings appeared in two forms, i.e. the physical form apparent in the waking world, and a human‐like form which was visible to human beings only during direct encounters which generally took place within a dream, sʔíkwlxw, usually experienced when the human person was in isolated circumstances away from places where people lived. Mountains were primary sites for hunting and harvesting plant foods and materials, as well as sites of supernatural power56. Remote, lonely places at high elevation provided habitat for mountain goats and grizzly bears, powerful animals that were, themselves, xaʔx̣ ̣áʔ, but they

54 James Teit, “The Okanagon,” in Salishan Tribes of the Western Plateaus, ed. Franz Boas (Washington:Smithsonian Institution, 1930). 254.

55 H. Spencer Palmer to Colonel R.C. Moody, November 23, 1859 in “Copy of Despatch from Governor Douglas, C.B. to his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, January 9, 1860.” British Columbia Archives. In 1859 Palmer, a member of the Royal Engineers, travelled from Fort Hope to Fort Colville via the Tulameen and Similkameen valleys. “Before closing my description of this mountain I may mention that the snow, which in winter falls to a depth of from 25 to 30 feet on its summit, renders the route impracticable for at least seven months of the year, and dangerous before the 1st of June or after the 1st of October. Mr. McLean of the Hudson Bay Company, who crossed in 1857 or 1858, on the 16th of October had a very disastrous trip, and lost 60 or 70 horses in the snow.” 56 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 345.

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also included locations that were xaʔx̣ áʔ, places where Nlaka’pamux weṇ t to train both at puberty and often in adulthood.

The deliberate seeking of an encounter with such a supernatural being was part of the education and coming‐of‐age of every Nlaka’pamux boy and many of the girls. Isolation from other people, fasting, physical exercise and prayer, were part of the training. Ritual cleanliness, i.e. isolation, fasting, abstention from sexual intercourse, was essential. Not everyone was successful, but those who were generally came away from the experience with a special ability in some activity, e.g. hunting, curing, warfare, or gambling, conferred on the person by the supernatural being during the encounter through the medium of a particular song, or snéʔm. Snéʔm is a specialized word for song. Following the encounter and the transfer of the song, it was said that the supernatural being had become the person’s snéʔm, and although the details of these experiences were not usually discussed, the identity of a person’s snéʔm could often be deduced from the fur which he used for his headband or other signs which he sewed on his clothing. Every phenomenon was a kind of living being and had the potential to become a snéʔm.

The person who had an encounter with a snéʔm in a sʔíkwlxw was asleep. The non‐human being initiated the encounter. The human being could hear (and some encounters were entirely auditory, with no visual component) but could not speak. The non‐human being could speak to the person. The form taken by the snéʔm might have no resemblance to the form it had in the waking world. The snéʔm bestowed a gift in the form of a distinctive ability, e.g. for hunting, and also often bestowed a song. The snéʔm taught the person the song, and faded away, and the person awoke, still singing. The person was able to take the song and the knowledge of the implications of the encounter, into waking life. Although an encounter with a sneʔm was often sought through intensive training, it could happen unexpectedly, particularly to someone who was in isolated circumstances. Nor was this experience confined to pubescent children; one could encounter a snéʔm at any age57.

The gift of the snéʔm increased the recipient’s ability to function in activities essential to social and economic life. Shamanic ability, strength as a warrior, and the ability to be an excellent hunter, were all prestigious. Hunting was more prestigious than fishing. This hierarchical ordering was based on the different qualities of the non‐human beings who became snǝnéʔm58. Water, mountain tops, grizzly bear and wolf were especially strong. Among the animals hunted in the Skagit region, wolves, goats, grizzly bear, and deer were xaʔx̣ ̣áʔ. Hunting was thus part of a relationship between a human being and beings that were both more knowledgeable and more powerful.

The Skagit Valley

The presence of Nlaka’pamux in the Skagit valley is supported by information from various sources. In June, 1846, Alexander Caulfield Anderson, travelling through the mountains east of Hope in search of a suitable brigade trail from Kamloops to Fort Langley for the Hudson’s Bay Company, met “an Indian

57 In his “Notes on Songs of the Thompson Indians of British Columbia,” (Canadian Museum of History, n.d), James Teit presented 26 summaries of snéɁm encounters, 15 of them first‐person accounts provided by 8 people, 5 men and 3 women. Analysis of the events presented indicates that the experiences could vary considerably in minor details, but the dream, the apprehension of being in the presence of the supernatural, and a change in the subsequent condition of the human being were constant factors. 58 Plural form of snéʔm. In Nlaka’pamuxcin plurals are generally formed by doubling the first syllable of the word.

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from the Forks of Thompson’s River” who was hunting beaver near the junction of the Skagit and Sumallo Rivers and was able to guide Anderson’s party to the summit of the mountain pass59. Anderson found that the route recommended by the Nlaka’pamux hunter was a “well marked trail60.” Teit wrote, “[h]unting‐parties who visited the most southern part of [Lower Thompson] hunting‐ grounds were sometimes absent for seven months, returning only when the snow began to melt in the mountains61. The Skagit Valley was closest geographically to the Fraser Canyon; however, Nlaka’pamux hunting territory extended far beyond the riverine locations of the winter villages. Teit noted that the Nlaka’pamux hunted thirty to forty miles on either side of the Thompson River62, and in a comparison of Shuswap and Thompson territories circa 1750, he noted that the Shuswap lived near Kamloops Lake, on south Thompson River, and on Salmon Arm, and that [the] “Thompson hunted south and west of this region, as far as the upper and middle Similkameen, and beyond to the south63.” In a series of maps provided to Boas, Teit included one that delineated Nlaka’pamux territory south of the international boundary.

59 A.C. Anderson, “Journal of an Expedition under the command of Alex. C. Anderson of the Hudson’s Bay Company, undertaken with the view of ascertaining the practicability of a communication with the interior, for the import of annual Supplies,” cited in J.C. Goodfellow, “Fur and Gold in Similkameen,” (The British Columbia Historical Quarterly, 2, 1938, 74). Note: Goodfellow incorrectly cites 1847 as the date of this expedition. 60 Anderson, The Pathfinder, 115. 61 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 39. 62 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 170. 63 Teit. “The Okanagon,” 213.

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Figure 3. Nlaka’pamux (Thompson) territory below the 49th parallel. Excerpted from Teit Map (4) “Eastern Washington Approximate Boundaries Interior Salish Tribes about 1825‐1855,” 1910‐1913. American Philosophical Society, Franz Boas Collection of Materials for American Linguistics (Mss 497.3 B63c) Section 59. Permission required. Collins wrote,

The Thompson, who lived in the interior of British Columbia on the Thompson River, a tributary of the Fraser, and on the Nicola River came overland into Skagit territory. They made portage between a tributary of the Fraser River [the Tulameen River?] and one of the northern headwaters of the Skagit River. They came in the winter on snowshoes and sometimes stayed through the summer to hunt and fish64.

She added, “The northern headwaters of the Skagit River were in British Columbia, not far from the Fraser River and its junction with the Thompson. The Thompson came south along the river, travelling on land65.” She also commented, “The Thompson travelling on snowshoes into the region in recent

64 June McCormick Collins, Valley of the Spirits. The Upper Skagit Indians of Western Washington. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 14‐15. 65 Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 18.

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times and the Skagit practice of using snowshoes and crossing the Cascade divide on the snow suggests long familiarity with mountain travel66.”

An area of forested mountains with a significant river valley through which the Skagit flowed, this region was an extension of the resource‐rich mountain‐meadow‐lake country that formed the eastern portion of Nlaka’pamux country south of the Thompson River and east of the Fraser River. Similar in topography, climate, flora and fauna to the Fraser canyon, it also offered certain resources not locally available to Nlaka’pamux living in the Thompson River area. In the headwaters of the Skagit River the coastal ecosystem meets the interior ecosystem, with a correspondingly rich diversity of plants and animals. The area is the westernmost point for Ponderosa pine, and the easternmost extent of Broadleaved maple; consequently both were available to Nlaka’pamux. Similarly, the region is the westernmost point for yellow cedar, but is also home to Western Red Cedar. Salal was found in the northern part of the region, with Saskatoon berries plentiful in drier areas. The cottonwoods characteristic of the lower Fraser canyon are also found here. The Skagit Region was part of the range of animals and plants familiar to the Nlaka’pamux of the Fraser canyon.

The ecosystem of the Skagit headwaters supported a substantial range of the food and medicinal plants gathered by the Nlaka’pamux, but the faunal resources were also significant. The region is and was home to blacktail deer, whitetail deer, elk, black bear, grizzly bear, mountain goat, beaver, marmot, rabbit and game birds, all animals customarily hunted by Nlaka’pamux. The Fraser Canyon was home to the sector of the Nlaka’pamux population with an established tradition of weaving mountain goat wool. The abundant deer population supported by the Skagit river valley would also have been a draw. Deer meat, roasted, boiled or dried, was a major component of the Nlaka’pamux diet, and was also used to make nkéxw, a staple Nlaka’pamux dish. Deer hides were essential for clothing in pre‐trader days, and were also a significant commodity in trade to neighbouring societies. Deer bone awls were a significant tool in the manufacture of coiled baskets. Dried goat meat, blankets, goat skins, dressed elk and deer skins, as well as deer, elk and goat fat, were traded historically by the Nlaka’pamux of the Fraser Canyon to Coast people67.

Hunting often involved the co‐operation of several men and a detailed knowledge of the habits of deer and their habitat in the area in which hunting took place. Deer were shot at salt licks, while swimming across rivers, and when driven by a large party of hunters, assisted by hunting dogs, into a valley or gulch. While the bow and arrow was important in deer hunting, technologies such as deer nets and deer fences, i.e. fence‐like structures approximately 4.5 feet high and up to half a mile or more long, made of poles, with narrow openings at intervals set with snares to catch deer going through were used, at least in the Thompson River area. Deer fences were placed in narrow valleys or mountain passes used by deer to travel from one mountain to another. Teit observed that the Lower Thompson did not use deer fences often, preferring nooses placed on deer trails to catch the deer by the head or antlers.

He noted,

Some Indians, especially single men, while hunting on the mountains, endured much hardship and exposure. Some of them would start out with cold weather in the winter‐time, taking with them neither food nor other clothing than that which they wore. They lived entirely on what they shot,

66 Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 66. 67 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 259.

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and used the raw deerskins for blankets. They made rough kettles of spruce‐bark or deer’s paunches68 In deep snow in the mountains, hunters wearing snowshoes also ran down deer and elk. In deep snow with a thick crust dogs could also run deer down69. Bear and mountain goat were hunted with bow and arrow, and bear were also captured in dead‐falls70.

The two animals prominent in the ethnographic references for the Skagit region are mountain goat and bear. Amoss cites the mountain goats found on the slopes of Mount Baker, harvested not only for meat but also for the wool that was used to weave blankets and robes, as an important Nooksack resource. Goats were also highly valued by the Nlaka’pamux, not only for their meat and horns, but also for their wool, which was spun with dog hair and woven into blankets and robes by Nlaka’pamux women of the Fraser canyon. Collins confirmed that the Skagit and Nlaka’pamux shared ritual practices associated with hunting bears.

The bear appears to have a special place in Upper Skagit folklore, a common motif being his appearance in human guise...The people living far upriver gave a special treatment to the bear, cutting off the head, braiding the flesh and placing the head in the woods, presumably to ensure the continued supply of bear. The Upper Skagit reported that the Thompson alone of their neighbours engaged in similar practices71.

Later in her monograph Collins wrote, “The Upper Skagit had a first fruits ceremony for the first bear taken in the spring. Most did not remove the head of the bear and treat it in a ceremonial way. The Thompson who visited their area did this, braiding the flesh and putting the head on a pole in the woods 72.” Teit recorded two Nlaka’pamux songs sung for bears at the time they were killed. Of one of them, Teit wrote,

This kind of song is called .nkwai.kEn or nkwekEn and the words used in it .nkwaikEntEn or .nkwei.katEn. It is a kind of mourning song sung by all present when a bear (of any kind) is killed. These songs were also occasionally sung to deer and other animals when killed. The slayer of the bear led in the singing of the song and if any others were present they had to join in the song. The song was sung shortly after the bear had been killed and also sometimes later whilst skinning him and cutting him up. The singer (slayer of the animal) always put words in the song addressing the bear (and often his kind as well) praising him for his generosity in pitying the hunter and allowing himself to be killed, excusing himself (the hunter) for having killed his friend (the bear) and asking that he (the hunter) will have continued success in hunting, and have good luck in every way, become possessed of much goods and wealth. Anything else he may desire is also mentioned. The song is very ancient and is supposed to have originated in very remote times by the bear speaking to a man and telling him to sing this kind of song when he killed a bear and thus he would obtain good luck73.

68 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,. 246. 69 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 248. 70 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 249. 71 Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 54. 72Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 150. 73 Teit, “Notes on Songs of the Indians of British Columbia,” Song No. 45, VI M 79.

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Teit noted that the second song, “said to be as old as bear hunting,” was also sung at the death of a bear, and occasionally other animals. “Besides showing respect and gratitude to the bear (and bear kind) by singing the song the hunters expected to obtain good luck in hunting and become wealthy74.”

Chert from ancient quarries on and in the vicinity of Hozomeen Mountain and other types of tool stone were also significant resources that drew Nlaka’pamux to this region. An archaeological investigation of a chert quarry on Desolation Peak by Robert Mierendorf found that “the quarry had been used at least sporadically for the last 7600 radiocarbon years, a time that spans much of the postglacial history of the valley,” with the dated radiocarbon samples suggesting that the most intense use of the site had been made between 5000 and 3500 years BP75. This was one of several quarries noted by Mierendorf, and he also noted the likelihood of others in the area.

Hozomeen chert was valued, particularly by the Nlaka’pamux of the lower Fraser canyon, for projectile points and blades for utensils such as scrapers and burins used in tanning hides. Teit wrote, “Arrow‐ heads were made of glassy basalt, which was obtained at a certain place north of Thompson River. The Lower Thompson found stone for their arrow‐heads near the headwaters of Skagit River. Many were made out of large chipped heads which are found in great numbers in the valleys. The Indians believe that the latter were made by the Raven76.” In 1895, Teit included ten stone projectile points or pre-forms for projectile points and sent them as part of the collection he made for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In the American Museum of Natural History catalogue these are listed simply as “stone spear head.” However, in his handwritten list of items purchased and amounts paid for this collection, included in the American Museum of Natural History record for Accession 1895-32, he has the line item, “1895 Jan.10 By J.A. Teit for (Raven) arrow heads (No. 18) 00.00.” Accession record

1895-32 includes Teit’s own handwritten catalogue of the items collected, cross-referenced with the catalogue numbers assigned by the museum. This handwritten catalogue is stamped

“Registrar’s Office rec’d June 22, 1895 Ans’d.” Against Teit’s No. 18 and the AMNH numbers

16-1004-16-1013 is Teit’s entry:

74 Teit. “Notes on Songs of the Indians of British Columbia,” Song No. 89, VI M 123. 75 Robert R. Mierendorf, Chert Procurement in the Upper Skagit River Valley of the Northern Cascades Range, Ross Lake National Recreation Area. (Seattle, WA: North Cascades National Park Service Complex, U.S. Department of Interior, 1993.) Technical Report NPS/PNRNOCA/CRTR‐ 93‐001, p. 45, 46. 76 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 241.

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Some arrow and spear heads, ten in number (perhaps the largest is a stone knife). The Indians call all these of whatever shape and size “skimaist77” (meaning cut or flaked stone) and claim that from time immemorial they had found them in considerable numbers in certain parts of the country and always in the shape of spear or arrow heads. They also say that these “skimaist” [to] or “tataza” were never made by them or their ancestors, but were made by the raven (concerning which they have a legend). The Indians used to look for “skimaist,” take them home, cut them up and shape them to suit themselves, sometimes making from four to six arrow heads out of these arrow stone. The Indians say they made their own arrow heads very small and sharp, and would never think of shooting such clumsy arrow heads as “skimaist.” They say that these arrow stone very much resemble the arrow heads in use amongst the Eyut tribe both for size and clumsiness. – the bag in which these arrow stones are enclosed is a regular bag for holding “skonkun” or gambling sticks.

This bag, also assigned by Teit the number, 18, was made for Teit by Antko, his wife78, and is listed with the other items purchased.

Six of these items are included in the American Museum of Natural History’s online database.

Fig. 4 a) AMNH 16‐ 1007

77 “aist”. cf Thompson River Salish Dictionary, 1276, eyst, “stone.” ̓ 78 (Susannah Lucy) Antko (1867, approximately, to 1899) was from the vicinity of Spences Bridge. Lucy Antko and James Teit married on September 12, 1892. (B.C. Vital Events Record 1892‐09‐1695556).

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Fig. 4 b) AMNH 16‐1008.

Fig. 4 c) AMNH 16‐ 1009

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Fig. 4 d) AMNH 16‐1010

Fig. 4 e)AMNH 16‐1012

Fig. 4 f) AMNH 16‐1013

Figs 4 a) – f) “Raven arrowheads”. Collected by James Teit for the American Museum of Natural History, 1895. Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History. A journalistic reference in a mid‐nineteenth century American magazine has become a solitary, but significant, resource for scholars endeavouring to understand the place of Mount Baker in the social geography of Aboriginal societies of this region. In 1869 Edward T. Coleman published an account of his ascent of Mount Baker in Harpers New Monthly Magazine. On the way, his two Nooksack guides left the party briefly to verify their route.

The Indians soon came back in great wrath, occasioned by the discovery of a piece of wood cut by an axe. This trace of man in such a desolate and uninhabitable country deeply interested me, but

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had a violent effect on my savage companions. They explained that the Thompson River Indians had evidently been poaching on their hunting‐ground. They were all the more exasperated as the same had been done two years ago, when one was killed by the hunter who had joined us at the forks. No lord in England guards his preserve more jealously; no Highland laird could be more irate against deer‐stalking than was this same Indian. Looking at the peculiarly silent and harmless‐looking hunter, we could never have attributed to him such a violent deed79. It is not entirely clear what was assumed to have been poached, although Amoss has suggested mountain goats80, nor is it absolutely certain that the guide was correct in his assumption. Nonetheless, the incident strongly suggests that in the mid‐to‐late 1860’s there was an ongoing dispute at this time between the Nooksack and Nlaka’pamux over entitlement.

In Nooksack Place Names Richardson and Galloway provide two names for Mount Baker, the Nooksack name, Kweq’Smánit81 and Kwelshán, “the high open slopes of Mount Baker,” as well as the Skagit name, Teqwúbe782. They suggest that the Halkomelem name, kwǝlxʸɛˑlxw, as well as the name in the Lummi dialect of Northern Straits Salish, kwǝlšɛn, are cognates of the Nooksack name. The Nlaka’pamux name for Mount Baker, kwǝlxelǝxw, also appears to be a cognate of Kwelsha´n.

79 Edward T. Coleman, “Mountaineering on the Pacific,” (Harpers New Monthly Magazine 39, 1869), 803‐4. 80 Pamela Amoss, Coast Salish Spirit Dancing: The Survival of an Ancestral Religion, (University of Washington Press, 1978) 6. 81 Allan Richardson and Brent Galloway, Nooksack Place Names Geography, Culture and Language. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 150. 82 Richardson and Galloway, Nooksack Place Names, 151.

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Fig. 5 Excerpt of Thiusoloc’s map. Reproduced in A Sto:lo Coast Salish Historical Atlas, p. 12583. Reproduction of original and permission required from U.S. National Archives.

The map of the Skagit region drawn by Thiusoloc84 in 1859 for Henry Custer, who worked on the survey of the international boundary suggests that it was incorporated into the system of geographic naming of

83 U.S. National Archives and Records Service. RG 76. Records of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations. Series 69, PI-170, Entry 215. Folder No. 3. Map 27. Size: 21.3" X 19.5". Date: 1859. Original and permission pending.

84 Keith Thor Carlson et al, A Sto:lo Coast Salish Historical Atlas, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, University of Washington Press and Sto:lo Heritage Trust, 2001), plate 42 pp. 124, 125.

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several Aboriginal societies, including the Nlaka’pamux. Names that can be recognized as Nlaka’pamux85 include “spes‐paas,” “swampy place,” [spés, “pond;” spǝspés, “ponds”]; “swoi‐aist” [sʕwíy: “burned”; “aist”, i.e. éyst ” meaning “stone,”]; pap‐lashe‐ko” [péɬusk̓ wu: “lake”, pépɬuskwu: “little lake”]; and “Hozomeen,”[“xẉ ǝz”: sharp86, “mín” is a relational suffix conveying the idea of “means” as in the means to do something]. Another peak is labelled “Skwome—han” or “Skwome‐ kan” [sqwǝ́m: “mountain”, with the suffix “qín,” i.e. “head” or “ridge” when applied to topographic features. The name, “Nohokomeen,” which does not appear on Thiusoloc’s map, but is in contemporary use, e.g. “Nohokomeen glacier,” and “Nohokomeen Falls,” is phonologically resonant with Nlaka’pamuxcin. The name contains elements, such as the nominalising prefix, “n,” the morpheme, “qwúʔ,” i.e. “water,” and the relational suffix, “mín,” which all figure in Nlaka’pamuxcin.

The Nlaka’pamux system of geography included the naming of mountain peaks, as did the Halkomelem87 and Nooksack systems, and Mount Baker and “Hoz‐o‐meen” and “Skwome‐han” or “Skwome‐ kan” and “Kwai‐tee‐kan” notated on Thiusoloc’s map can be seen as extensions of a mountain system that, among the Nlaka’pamux, included Skíkiʔkiʔx, Yoʕ’́ wáʔq, C’ǝmc’ə́meʔ, Sxẉ iƛ’éc’, Yuyuwénɬp, T’áx,̣ Slaxáʔc, ̣ ɬq’íkn’ and C’ǝtǝxáy᾽, near Spuzzum. ̣

Although Richardson and Galloway suggest that Thiusoloc, himself, was Thompson, it may be more likely that he was of dual heritage. The name, “Thiusoloc,” appears to be of Halkomelem origin, and Thiusoloc was both a high‐ranking resident of a Halkomelem‐speaking village. Duff noted that Sto:lo high‐ranking families sought marriage partners of equal rank and that historically marriages were arranged with families in Spuzzum. Marriages also occurred between Nlaka’pamux hunters and women in villages near Chilliwack, and in this instance, the Nlaka’pamux spouses tended to remain in the villages of their wives88. It is very possible that Thiusoloc was related to Nlaka’pamux of the Fraser Canyon. The Canadian census for 1901 recorded Thomson Uslick as a resident of a Fraser Valley reserve89. His age was given as 67, suggesting that he was born in 1834 and in his mid‐twenties during the boundary survey. Annie York, who was born in 1904, remembered a cousin of her grandmother, originally from Spuzzum, who had married a member of the Uslick family at Chilliwack90. In recalling his trip in 1872 to the Thompson and Nicola Rivers the missionary, Thomas Crosby, wrote, “I took with me, as interpreter, a young man, a native of the Thompson, who had lived on the Chilliwack since he was a boy, and hence spoke the An‐ko‐me‐num91 language as well as his native tongue92.” There are many other late

85 I am indebted to John Haugen for his help in confirming the identification and translation of Nlakapamux place names on this map. 86 Steven M. Egesdal, personal communication. 87 Keith Thor Carlson, “Mountains That See and Need to be Seen: Aboriginal Perspective on the Degraded Visibility Associated with Air Pollution in the British Columbia Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley,” A Traditional Knowledge Study Prepared for Environment Canada, May 2009. 88 Wilson Duff, The Upper Stalo Indians of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia, (Victoria: British Columbia Provincial Museum Department of Education, 1953), 95. 89 Canada Census, 1901. 90 Andrea Laforet interview with Annie York, July 25, 1975. 91 i.e. the language spoken by the Sto:lo of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia. 92 Thomas Crosby, Among the An‐ko‐me‐nums or Flathead Tribes of Indians of the Pacific Coast, (Toronto: William Briggs, 1907), 195.

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nineteenth and early twentieth century connections between Spuzzum families and families in the Upper Fraser Valley, particularly following the establishment in 1879 of the joint reserve at Seabird Island. The Nlaka’pamuxcin place names Thiusoloc provided to Henry Custer may be the names he learned from Nlaka’pamux relatives.

An indirect suggestion that the area was used as a source of food plants is provided by Henry Custer, who wrote, “Fires are very frequent during sum[m]er season in these Mountain forests and are often ignited purposely by some of the Indian[s] hunting in these Mountain regions, to clear the woods from brush & make travel easier93.” While clearing trails may have been among the purposes of burning, the Nlaka’pamux used controlled burning in other regions to renew the growth in grounds used year after year for picking berries or gathering root vegetables94. Custer’s note about deliberately set fires suggests that the mountains of the Skagit were used for gathering berries and root vegetables spring through summer, as were the mountains near Spuzzum95. At Sʕwiʕwyáqs and Nk’mém᾽peʔ the Nlaka’pamux carried out controlled burning to increase the quantity and quality of the wild vegetables, assessing the weather and setting fires when rain could be expected in two days96.

Relations with the Upper Skagit

On all sides of their territory, the Nlaka’pamux had borders with neighbouring societies, such as the Stl’atl’imc, Tait, Stuwix, and Okanagan, who spoke different languages, and had different cultural perspectives but some cultural practices in common with the Nlaka’pamux. At each of these boundaries, there was some intermarriage, with the attendant visiting, exchange, the privileges and obligations shared by relatives, including permitted access to resources. There was also occasional armed conflict. The Nlaka’pamux/Upper Skagit boundary differed from the others in that the winter villages of the two societies were on different river systems and distant from each other. Nonetheless, in the years immediately prior to colonization Nlaka’pamux and Upper Skagit cultural practices were similar in regard to the harvesting and use of mountain foods, hunting methods and technologies, and basketry technologies.

Upper Skagit people interviewed by Collins in the early 1940s recalled substantial conflict. In their cultural memory, this was a relationship characterized by cross‐border skirmishes and, on the part of the Upper Skagit, the fear of Nlaka’pamux attacks. Collins wrote

93 Custer, Henry, “Report of Henry Custer, Assistant of Reconnaissances Made in 1859 Over the Routes in the Cascade Mountains in the Vicinity of theth Parallel,” Typed manuscript, Pacific Northwest Regional Office, National Park Service, Seattle. 1866, p. 20. Cited in Robert R. Mierendorf, Chert Procurement in the Upper Skagit River Valley of the Northern Cascades Range, Ross Lake National Recreation Area, 12. 94 Nancy Turner, personal communication. 95 Laforet and York, Spuzzum Fraser Canyon Histories 1808‐1939, 66 ; for a discussion of controlled burning see also Dana Lepofsky and Ken Lertzman. “Documenting ancient plant management in the northwest of North America.” Botany 86, (2008), 129‐145. 96 Laforet and York. Spuzzum Fraser Canyon Histories 1808‐1939, 68.

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The Upper Skagit had association with nearby peoples representing three major cultural groupings: those living on the coast, the islands, the river flowing east into salt water like the Skagit River itself; those to the west in the Plateau; and the Thompson, to the north. The Thompson are placed in terms of culture groupings with the Plateau but the Upper Skagit regarded them as apart from other interior peoples97.

Collins continued,

They were usually regarded as enemies and there are accounts of skirmishes with them. They killed Upper Skagit adults whom they found in the woods, decapitating the men and leaving their skulls so as to shock their relatives. Women, and occasionally men, they killed by thrusting a sharpened pole into their bodies and then seating them on the ground in what looked from a distance like a living pose. They kidnapped babies whom they took for slaves98. At least some of these encounters were triggered by the same kind of concern for the maintenance of boundaries and resources. Collins wrote,

[Upper Skagit v]illages owned the rights to food‐getting sites within their territory, such as fishing sites, berry patches and meadows. Village rights tapered off as one moved from the houses along the river toward the ridges which separated the Skagit people from the Nooksack, the Stillaguamish and the Plateau peoples. Nevertheless, Upper Skagit did not expect to find unrelated Nooksack, Stillaguamish, Thompson, Methow or Okanogan on their sides of the divides. Persons who wished to hunt and fish in the locale of neighbouring villages were expected to visit their relatives there first to announce their presence, their intentions, and to be given tacit permission. This was never withheld. Part of the objection to the Thompson incursions into Skagit territory was that they did not behave in these accepted routines99.

According to Collins the Upper Skagit were a relatively peaceful people, capable of deciding in council to retaliate against a Nlaka’pamux raid but not generally initiating combat100. In spite of the ferocious reputation of the Nlaka’pamux and the vividness with which their attacks were remembered Collins characterized their attacks as “sporadic101.” Nevertheless, even in the 1940s when Collins was conducting her field work she perceived that “[s]ome Upper Skagit still fear the Thompson and feel bitterness for children captured by them.”

Coleman’s brief account suggests that in the mid‐1800s relations between Nlaka’pamux and neighbouring peoples of this region could involve armed conflict. The lack of contextual data in Collins’ monograph and the general absence of other data make it difficult to interpret the place of the events that generated these memories in the overall history of Nlaka’pamux relations with the Upper Skagit. It is possible that at a particular point the Nlaka’pamux cultivated the reputation of fierce and fearsome warriors in order to test previously established boundaries or to protect hunting grounds for their own

97 Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 9. 98Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 14‐15. 99 Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 80‐81. 100 Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 112. 101 Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 115.

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use. During the time before European settlement Nlaka’pamux conducted warfare largely for the purposes of revenge, adventure and plunder102. It was a matter of raid and reprisal conducted against neighbouring peoples who had similar concepts. War expeditions were conducted according to strict protocols, led by a specially chosen leader and assisted by a shaman. Teit sketches a pattern for the Nlaka’pamux as a whole that has the Nlaka’pamux of the lower Fraser Canyon less inclined to wage war than the Nlaka’pamux of the upper Fraser Canyon and the vicinity of Lytton and the Thompson River. However, this was not a hard and fast rule and even the Lower Thompson had slaves until the mid‐ 1800s. Neither war nor peace was a permanent condition, but warfare was not the only political strategy for determining or maintaining relations with other groups. Intermarriage was also standard.

In keeping with the latter principle, relations between the Nlaka’pamux and Upper Skagit were confirmed through marriage. Collins wrote “There were a few marriages between the Upper Skagit and Thompson in historic times, after a truce had been reached with one of the Thompson hunting bands.” The lingering memory of previous relationships with the Nlaka’pamux did not appear to Collins to “affect their attitude to the few Upper Skagit who were partly of Thompson descent, or to prevent friendly relations today between members of the two groups103.”

The International Boundary

The severing of the Skagit region from the rest of Nlaka’pamux country was an inadvertent consequence of the Treaty of Oregon. There was no consultation with the Nlaka’pamux or any other Aboriginal group. Until the late 1850’s there was no marked border, although the process of surveying and marking the boundary involved Aboriginal map‐makers and guides and could hardly have gone unnoticed.

The sense of loss the Nlaka’pamux of the lower Fraser Canyon experienced is recorded in a song104 for Mount Baker, said to have been composed by Kesnen, a singer who lived in Spuzzum in the mid‐1800’s. c̕e xeʔ tk snéʔm ʔe xeʔ tk sʔiƛ̓m xwuy kn ʔiƛ̓ ̓m tətəʔ [k] sc̕ətmús kt ʔe k syémit uʔé tk sqwəm ́ nq̓wiyénk us ʔiɬ c̕éʔkw us tk c̕eʔkw qin e c̕eʔkw qín us təteʔ xwúy ɬaq̓ ̓wut ɬʔe k syémit kt uʔe tk sqwəm ́ təteʔ xwúyceʔ [k] smen̓ ̓xms e skwúkwpiʔkt heléw̓ nxwelix n ɬe sxeʔqins snxwuyt̓ ̕us [s]x ẉ ixẉ iƛ̓éc̕ nəx̣wnoxẉ nkmenks ʔiɬzéƛ̓t us qwyeyiʔɬ

102 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 267 103 Collins, Valley of the Spirits, 14‐15. 104 Laforet and York, Spuzzum: Fraser Canyon Histories, 59‐60.

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ʔe skwúkwpiʔ cúkw e xéʔe ʔe smén̓xms nc̕aʔqwuʔéctns cúkw xéʔe e sxáʔc nc̣ ̕aʔqwuʔéctns, néw̓ etm e sxác ̣ ʔe pátns e sq̓wətéyqw xwlúkw us néw̓ etm, ʔescíqw , ʔespíq, ʔestqwəzq́ wəzt ʔiɬ nkwəkwúsn̓.

This is the song. This is the song. I'm going to sing. We won't face again to that mountain to pray. When it's sunny, then it begins to shine, that mountain top that glitters. We won't bow to pray toward that mountain. Our chief won't smoke his pipe again. The eagle flies at its top. In spring the mountain goats run on its slopes. Then the baby goats are born. But the chief is finished smoking his pipe there. Finished is the smoke rising from his pipe, the wind blowing the smoke. The flag across the line flutters The red, the white, the blue and the stars.

The degree to which this was, at first, a symbolic loss rather than a practical loss is uncertain. However, over time the existence of the international boundary came to be at least a symbolic impediment to travel, economic activity and trade for Aboriginal people whose territories and social and political connections covered a wide area of the plateau. It reinforced other factors at work which were subtly changing the place of the Skagit watershed in the place of Nlaka’pamux economy in the late 1800s.

Mierendorf notes105,

An intriguing and somewhat mystifying fact is the apparent disappearance of Native populations from the upper Skagit Valley in the last century. Few Indian people were seen in the northern Cascade Range, none in the upper Skagit River Valley, at the time of the first explorations by non‐ Indians. Some of the first such explorers were the Hudson’s Bay Company trappers, who are known

105 Mierendorf, Chert Procurement in the Upper Skagit River Valley of the Northern Cascades Range, Ross Lake National Recreation Area, 10.

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to have used trails established by Indian people, but who left no record of their travels through the valley. However, at the time of his 1859 travels through the valley, Henry Custer observed evidence of Native people’s presence, noting that “We found an Indian trail leading through the Klesilkwa valley, faint though as all these trails are, & observed subsequently its continuance through the entire length of the Skagit valley explored by us.” (Custer 1866: 22). He also observed, in valleys adjacent to the Skagit, two abandoned bush structures built by Indian people. Custer’s observations here agree with those of George Gibbs, who noted that many Native American trails throughout the northern Cascades appeared to have “fallen into disuse”, and he attributed this to “the diminution of the tribes and the diversion of trade to the posts” (Gibbs 1877: 169). Whatever the reasons, the accumulating archaeological evidence suggests that Native populations at time in the prehistoric past made much more use of the valley than the historical record might suggest.

Interpretation of this circumstance is complicated by a lack of archival data and, apart from the references in Collins’ monograph, recorded oral history, an absence that has the effect of making a single axe cut on Mount Baker a pivotal point in the interpretation of political relations between the Nlaka’pamux and Nooksack. In a later publication106 Mierendorf notes

the loss of most traditional oral literature and traditional practices relating to the use of the high country that followed the population decimation after the introduction of European diseases in the contact period. As a result, traditional subsistence activities ceased and mountain‐oriented bands became displaced by early settlement and mining activities... The cumulative effect of all these factors has been the tacit denial that indigenous people had any real presence in the mountainous interior of the Northwest Coast culture area, this in spite of the fact that such landscapes cover the majority of the land area in northern Washington and British Columbia. The reduction in Aboriginal populations living in the Canadian plateau brought about by the successive epidemics that began in the late 1700s, is certainly a factor in the reduction of use of the Skagit area. Another critical factor was the arrival of the European fur trade, which created a dialectic in Aboriginal cultures between stone and steel, and a derivative, but highly important, dialectic between the bow and arrow and the gun. As guns, particularly rifles, became plentiful, stone projectile points diminished in importance. As steel knives, adzes and chisels became readily available, tool stone, generally, became obsolete.

The demography of Nlaka’pamux country as a whole saw the population concentrated during the winter months in villages along the Fraser, Thompson and Nicola Rivers. The winter sojourns of hunters in the Skagit region that might last up to seven months afforded an opportunity to take intensive advantage of resources in that region between the last salmon runs on the Fraser River and the summer harvest of plant foods, salmon and trout. The Nlaka’pamux use of this territory was expressed through regular sojourns by groups of people who were focused on resource harvest. Their visits were not necessarily restricted to winter. The place of the resources afforded by this region in Nlaka’pamux economy becomes clearer when pre‐epidemic levels of the Nlaka’pamux population are considered.

106 Robert R. Mierendorf, The Archaeology of Little Beaver Watershed, North Cascades National Park Service Complex, Whatcom County, Washington, (Sedro Woolley, WA, December 2004), 8.

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Correspondingly the post‐smallpox drop in population from the levels suggested by Harris and Teit may have encouraged the use of sporadic warfare as a means of maintaining the Skagit River area for Nlaka’pamux use. As Grier has noted in relation to Coast Salish populations107,

Defence of territory....typically requires a significant level of population. The particulars of Coast Salish warfare in precontact times are only now becoming a topic of systematic study, yet it is clear that a major drop in population would pose problems for the maintenance of territories that had evolved over time. The organization of defence itself...may have been undermined significantly. Defence of core territories and resources would become a key factor, particularly through the summer months, when under normal circumstances, only a minimal population may have been left at winter village sites. In a depopulated situation, it may have been difficult to maintain a presence in all areas of one’s territory year‐round.

The core activities of the Nlaka’pamux pre‐contact economy, i.e. hunting, fishing, and gathering, remained significant through the 1800s and 1900s and continue to be important today. However, the place of the products of those activities in the economy of particular Nlaka’pamux households began to change with the arrival of the fur trade. In 1808 Simon Fraser noted a copper kettle and a gun, possibly of Russian manufacture, among the Stl’atl’imc [Askitteh] of the Fraser River above Nlaka’pamux country, and among the Nlaka’pamux noted other trade items, including copper kettles and a strip of blanket108. Forts were built on the Thompson River at Kamloops in 1812109 and on the Fraser River at Fort Langley in 1827110. Both sites were outside Nlaka’pamux country, although some Nlaka’pamux traded at Kamloops. By and large, however, Nlaka’pamux country was considered by Hudson’s Bay Company traders to be an undeveloped hinterland, even at the time Archibald McDonald travelled down the Thompson River to the junction with the Fraser River in 1826. In his journal of that trip McDonald records,

About 40 Beaver Skins were got in the vicinity of them that came from below to meet us at the Dalles [possibly Nq’awmn, on the Thompson River between Spences Bridge and Lytton]: for a Blanket of blue stroud or one of 2 ½ pts they at once gave 6 Beaver & 5 for each of two traps I had & which the Indian from below eagerly sought. Giving the goods at this rate, which I conceive no sacrifice made; those, with ammunition and tobacco were the favourite articles111. The demand for ammunition suggests that some people in this region, at least, had guns. Whether or not individual Nlaka’pamux people had guns was certainly not solely up to the traders. Nlaka’pamux and their neighbours were intermarried at every border; there was a significant trade network through which commodities moved up and down the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, and people both travelled to visit

107 Colin Grier, “Consuming the Recent for Constructing the Ancient,“ in Bruce G. Miller, ed., Be of Good Mind: Essays on the Coast Salish, (Vancouver: UBC Press), 293. 108 Lamb, The Letters and Journals of Simon Fraser, 83, 86. 109 The initial fort, built by the Pacific Fur Company, was taken over by the Northwest Company the following year. Following its merger with the Northwest Company in 1821 the Hudson’s Bay Company assumed control of the fur trade at Kamloops. 110The Northwest Company and Hudson’s Bay Company merged in 1821 and continued to operate as the Hudson’s Bay Company. 111 Cole, Jean Murray, This Blessed Wilderness. Archibald McDonald’s Letters from British Columbia, 1822‐44, (Vancouver: UBC Press 2001), 45.

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relatives and met at social gatherings at places such as the junction of the Thompson and Nicola Rivers. Both goods and ideas moved within Nlaka’pamux country and across borders. Nonetheless it is uncertain whether guns became fully available to the Nlaka’pamux prior to the gold rush.

In the late 1890’s Teit recorded,

The first guns used by the Thompson Indians were flintlock muskets, which were soon adopted in warfare and in hunting. Some of the old men still use them, but repeating‐rifles of the latest Winchester and Colt modes are now generally used. They used wooden powder‐horns decorated with feathers, and suspended from the right shoulder by a buckskin strap (fig. 226). The powder‐ horn was worn under the left arm, while the ammunition pouch hung on the right‐hand side112.

Fig. 6. AMNH 16_1344 powder horn. Reproduced Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History. Also reproduced in James Teit The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, fig. 226. Permission required.

The Northwest Trade Gun, “by far the most common firearm in the Canadian Northwest, the Rocky Mountains and the Missouri fur trade113,” was a muzzle‐loading gun requiring powder and shot. The

112 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 244. 113 Bill Stewart, “Some Observations Concerning Northwest Trade Guns.” Edmonton House Brigade. www.edmontonhousebrigade.com.

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standard of trade on the Columbia River in 1824‐5 set the cost of a gun at 18‐20 beaver skins, with flints costing an additional beaver. “Fine” half‐stocked guns cost 30 beaver skins, with gun powder at an additional 3 beaver per pound114. Maintaining an adequate supply of ammunition and replacing a lost or malfunctioning gun may initially have been more difficult and more costly than maintaining a supply of bows and arrows. Rifles, pistols, flints, shot, and powder were all part of the inventory of goods traded at Fort George in 1824115; yet in that year George Simpson refers to the use of bows and arrows in Chinook warfare on the Columbia River. In 1829 the Cowichan were armed and visited Fort Langley, established two years previously, to acquire ammunition for their conflict with the Lekwiltok. They were successful in trading skins for three hundred rounds, in spite of the fact that up to that moment it had been the policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Langley not to supply ammunition to Aboriginal people116. Among the Coast Salish living to the south, firearms became freely available only much later. For example, a census taken in 1838 showed that the highest incidence of gun ownership in Puget Sound societies was 10 percent117 and Collins also implied that the Upper Skagit, who were using bows and arrows, were at a disadvantage in warfare with the northern groups who used guns118. Teit refers to an account of a conflict between Okanagon and white miners in which some, but not all, the Okanagon fighters had guns119.

The extension of the gold rush from Oregon and Washington into British Columbia in 1857 was precipitated by news of Nlaka’pamux of the Thompson River mining gold near Nq’awmn for trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company at Kamloops120. The gold rush on the Fraser and Thompson Rivers definitively changed the landscape of trade. A trading post established in 1848 at Yale, just downriver from the Tait/Nlaka’pamux boundary, and open only intermittently during the following ten years, quickly became a store catering to all customers in 1858. Commerce was brought directly into Nlaka’pamux country121. Commercial enterprises in Yale, Boston Bar, Lytton, Cook’s Ferry, Kamloops and other newly developed towns, served by a transportation network of steamers, and roads, supplanted the Hudson Bay Company trading post model. Work for wages was established as part of the Nlaka’pamux economy. It is very likely that the Nlaka’pamux had full access to guns by the 1860s.

The demand for tool stone may have been declining since metal tools and guns became trading commodities, but the establishment of full commercial trade in the late 1850s may have definitively ended the economic utility of tool stone, including Hozomeen chert. As guns became plentiful, projectile points became obsolete. By the 1890s flintlock muskets had been incorporated into the Nlaka’pamux system of trade with established values, e.g. “For 6 sticks dried salmon 1 second‐hand flintlock gun or 1 two‐year old horse.” One nearly new flintlock gun could be traded for 2 large dressed

114 F. Merk, Fur Trade and Empire : George Simpson’s Journal...(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968), 173 115 F. Merk, Fur Trade and Empire, 173. 116 Journal of Archibald McDonald, in Morag Maclachlan ed., The Fort Langley Journals, 1827‐30. Cited in Angelbeck, “Conceptions of Coast Salish Warfare” in Miller, ed., Be of Good Mind, 271. 117 Cited in Angelbeck, “Conceptions of Coast Salish Warfare,” 269. 118 Angelbeck, “Conceptions of Coast Salish Warfare,” 270. 119 James Teit. “The Okanagon,”, 270. 120 T.A. Rickard, “Indian Participation in the Gold Rush,” British Columbia Historical Quarterly, (2, 1938),. 9. 121 The Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts at Kamloops and Yale were both outside Nlaka’pamux political boundaries.

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elk skins, and “1 old musket” could be traded for a canoe, but stone blades and points are not on the list at all122. The Hudson’s Bay Company discontinued the flintlock in the 1880s123.

The Nlaka’pamux of the 1890’s remembered the chert quarry, and the journeys to obtain chert, but by that time chert, and tool stone, generally, had relatively little significance in the Nlaka’pamux economy. Teit collected some bows and arrows for the American Museum of Natural History in the 1890’s, but arrowheads were not prominent in his collection. In the half century following the gold rush guns had become a part of Nlaka’pamux culture. During the early years of the twentieth century he recorded a song from ʕʷypél̕st, born circa 1848, who had the trigger of a gun as a snéʔm124.

Settlement by Europeans and the establishment of merchandising by both European and Chinese entrepreneurs quickly followed the gold rush which took place in the Fraser canyon in 1858. Cloth and clothing made of cloth became even more readily available than it had been in the days when the Hudson’s Bay Company store was the only outlet for European trade goods. While shirts, dresses, leggings and moccasins made of buckskin were still known and used125, the standard dress for Nlaka’pamux people shifted to cloth shirts and trousers for men, and cloth dresses and shawls for women. The tanning of deer hides was not entirely obsolete, but fewer hides were required either for local consumption or trade126.

During the period between 1858 and the end of World War II the Nlaka’pamux were under pressure to alter virtually every aspect of their way of life. The proscription of the work and services of Nlaka’pamux shamans by the Church of England missionaries who established a mission centred at Lytton in the 1860’s made it both difficult and much less common for younger shamans to train in the remote areas of the mountains. Teit mentions one candidate who began her training on the Thompson River but did not continue. Opportunities to use the remote spaces in the mountains south of the international boundary also declined. The introduction of residential schools and the separation of residential school students from their families through eleven months of the year made puberty training, which also took place in remote mountain areas, virtually impossible. There were exceptions, and some adolescents underwent traditional training well into the twentieth century, but accounts are few. Attendance at residential schools also meant that children were not available to accompany their parents and grandparents on hunting or gathering expeditions. As it was standard practice for Nlaka’pamux grandparents to have a significant, if not the primary, role in the education of grandchildren children who were away at residential school missed instruction in Nlaka’pamux knowledge and practices. Many Nlaka’pamux students finished residential school and returned home to find that their grandparents had passed away.

Hunting and gathering continued but they were constantly challenged by the existence of individual land tenure and logging. Intertibal warfare was discontinued as the colonial government settled in after the establishment of the Crown Colony of British Columbia in 1858. This may be the historical context for

122 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 261. 123 S. James Gooding, Trade Guns of the Hudson’s Bay Company 1670‐1970, 63. 124 Teit. “Notes on Songs of the Indians of British Columbia,” Song 16, VI M 44. 125 See Leslie Tepper, Earth Line and Morning Star NLaka’pamux Clothing Traditions, (Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994). 126 James Teit to Franz Boas, 6 December, 1894. American Museum of Natural History Accession File 1895‐32.

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the inauguration of intermarriage and peaceful relations between the Nlaka’pamux and Upper Skagit mentioned by Collins.

By the 1890s hunting, fishing and gathering had been augmented in the Nlaka’pamux economy by ranching, farming, and the raising of both gardens and chickens. Families had incorporated gold mining into household economies as a seasonal activity, basketry had become a commodity marketable and marketed outside the home, both men and women had earned wages transporting goods on foot along the early highways. Men had worked on railroad construction and subsequently worked in railroad maintenance; women engaged in paid domestic work for non‐Aboriginal families. The annual economic calendar still incorporated fishing and preserving fish, hunting and drying meat and harvesting wild vegetables and berries but the rhythm of work had changed, as had the division of labour within families. Where women had once focused exclusively on cutting fish to dry during the salmon runs, some women both fished and preserved fish while men were out working on the railroad127. Entire families moved to pick hops in the Fraser Valley or in Secwepemc (Shuswap) country.

The use of mountain goat wool for weaving blankets and robes also declined. Some women in the Fraser canyon, such as Susan Paul, the wife of James Paul Xíxneʔ, chief at Spuzzum in the early twentieth century, were known to be weavers, and chiefs from the coast were photographed wearing mountain goat wool robes in the early 1900s, but production had fallen off by this time. The twining technique was preserved in rugs woven of rags, but the Salish weaving in wool did not reappear until Oliver Wells worked with Mary Peters of Seabird Island, a Fraser Valley reserve created in 1879 for both Nlaka’pamux and Coast Salish families, and Adeline Lorenzetto, a Sto:lo person living in the upper Fraser valley to revive both the twining and twill techniques in the 1960s128. Mary Peters’ family was originally from the Nlaka’pamux village of Pethluskwu (péɬuskwu, “lake”). As with other aspects of Nlaka’pamux economic change, the decline of weaving in mountain goat wool is attributable to a combination of factors. The Skagit Resource Inventory notes, “after 1897 with the establishment of the U.S. National Forests, the Upper Skagit lost their traditional hunting rights in this region129.” Although the Nlaka’pamux were never recognized as having hunting rights in the area, this may have been an additional impediment.

Nonetheless, some Nlaka’pamux continued to hunt in the Skagit Valley well into the twentieth century. The Skagit Resource Inventory includes the following excerpt from the reminiscences of J.W. Wilkinson, reprinted from The Vancouver Daily Province, 8 February 1931, concerning the Whitworth Ranch:

George Gordon was the first owner of the property, and he left it to James Wardle, the postmaster and storekeeper at Hope, who later sold to Mr. Whitworth. Gordon was found dead over the unlighted stove at the ranch one spring by an Indian trapper named Yola, from Spuzzum. And the cat was dead, too, from starvation, which goes to show that cats don't always eat dead men, as some say. Gordon was the finest skin‐mounter around here. W.L. Flood and Bill Starrett snowshoed in and buried him at the ranch.

127Julia Frank, Kanaka Bar, personal communication, 1987. 128 Oliver Wells, Salish Weaving Primitive and Modern As Practised by the Salish Indians of South West British Columbia, (Sardis, B.C, : Oliver Wells, 1969). 129 Skagit Resource Inventory, unpaginated.

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Youla [Yola; Yol᾽eʔ], whose English name was Paul, had his home in the group of Nlaka’pamux villages in the Fraser Canyon that stretched upriver from Spuzzum. In 1878130 he was living with his wife and daughter in what the census taker described as “Middle village – north of [old Alexandra Bridge and Chapman Bar and Rombrots131.” This may refer to the village of Tíkwǝlus, which was located approximately at the north end of the old Alexandra Bridge. At that time he was listed as having seven horses and six hens, suggesting that he was relatively prosperous. Appearing in the list immediately following Youla are “kis.kis.poh.kun,” a single man, and Sa.lah.kun, a man and his wife. In the 1881 census “Yowalah,” his wife, “Noantlah,” and their three year old daughter, “Quosatko” are living in a household headed by Rowposhelst and including “Chelaakan” and his wife,” Silkomat.”

Annie York, who was born in 1904, lived at Spuzzum from time to time in childhood, and then from 1932 until her death in 1991, remembered Youla clearly. She noted that his mother, Qáɬye, was from the village of Sq’wǝx̣áq, upriver from Spuzzum132.

Fig. 7 Paul Youla. Annie York and Arthur Uquhart album.

Youla had a brother, Kǝskespépxn, who lived near Spuzzum and eventually moved to Coldwater, a ̣ Nlaka’pamux reserve established near Merritt. Youla also had a sister, Séʔye [Sha’ya], who lived in

130 Census of Indian Tribes, summer 1877, 1878. National Archives of Canada RG88 vol. 494 131 Roman Catholic baptism records record the Rombrot family as living at 16 Mile House, located 16 miles above Fort Yale, or approximately 4 miles upriver from Spuzzum. 132Sylvia Albright. “List of Recorded Cemeteries in Nlaka’pamux Nation Territories.” September 4, 1992, citing a personal communication from Annie York, 1987. NNTC Archives.

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Spuzzum and Yale all her life, another sister who married Ah Ching, a Chinese resident of Spuzzum, and a half‐sister, Sneyíʔ133. His father was Sǝsǝláxṇ 134, possibly the “Sa.lah.kun” of the 1878 census.

Annie York noted that Youla had another Nlaka’pamux name. In the baptism records for his children it is noted as “Noelhaskret.” He and Nu’anthle135 had a son, Felix, baptized July 11, 1883, and at least three daughters, Paulina, later known as Pauline, baptized July 25, 1884, Christina, baptized July 28, 1884, and Angèle, baptized February 7, 1888.

Fig. 8 Pauline Youla as a young woman. Annie York and Arthur Urquhart album.

Felix’s spouse came from Boston Bar, further up the Fraser canyon, and Christina married Jesse James, a Nlaka’pamux, at North Bend. The third daughter, whom Annie York knew as Q’wǝcátkwu, with the English name,“Shell,” possibly a diminutive of “Angèle136”, likely married George Pettis137, a Nlaka’pamux man living at Seabird Island Reserve in the Fraser Valley. Q’wǝcátkwu is a direct analogue of “Quosatko,” recorded in the 1881 census for Youla’s daughter. Pauline (Seqwmétkwu) married Frank Oscar Carlson in

133 Interview with Annie York, July 1975. 134 Laforet and York. Spuzzum Fraser Canyon Histories 1808‐1939, 70. 135 Annie York remembered her English name as “Ann;” the inscription on the grave marker in the Spuzzum Cemetery is “Elizabeth Youle 1838‐1910.” Cited in Sylvia Albright, “List of Recorded Cemeteries in Nlaka’pamux Nation Territories.” 136 Early Roman Catholic missionaries in the Fraser Canyon were French‐speaking and would have pronounced “Angèle” with a soft ‘g’ that is somewhat outside the phonology of Nlaka’pamuxcin. 137 Annie York remembered his English name as Louis, but Louis may have been a brother. The names, Angèle and Shell, do not appear in the government records associated with this family. The 1901 census records “George Pettis,” listed as married but without listing his wife or children. The 1911 census (for George “Patties”) lists his wife as Sarah, with an additional name that appears to be qetyelhamot (the writing is very tiny and difficult to decipher), with five children, Mary (18), Joseph (17), James (15) and Francis (4), and indicates Spuzzum as the place of origin for the entire family. Mary, later Mary Charles, was the daughter of George Pettis’ first wife, who was also from Spuzzum, and a relative of Annie York’s step‐grandfather, Paul Joseph York. Annie York, who knew Mary Pettis Charles well, affirmed that Mary’s mother died, leaving her as an only child. Sarah was 26 in 1911, younger than George, whose age is listed as 42. This suggests she was born about 1886, and this was later reinforced by her death record. Sarah Pettis died 7 January 1950, aged 64, at Seabird Island Reserve. (British Columbia Archives, Vital Events Records: Registration number 1950‐09‐095145). In 1911 she was too young to have been the mother of Joseph or James, and also too young to have been Youla’s daughter, “Quosatko,” who was alive in 1881. W.W.I records for new recruits, James Pettis and Joseph Pettis, confirm their father as George Pettis. James Pettis is noted as the grandson of Youla in an article by Fred Goodchild cited below. Q’wǝcátkwu may have been George Pettis’ second wife, and Sarah Pettis may have been his third.

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1919138, and later lived in Lynn Valley in North Vancouver. Through his children and half‐sister, Paul Youla thus had connections in both the Fraser Valley and Fraser Canyon.

Youla died January 28, 1942 at the reported age of 99139. A newspaper article written by Fred H. Goodchild for the Vancouver Daily Province in March,1942, estimated his age at death at 112 and said he had witnessed the China Bar massacre, which occurred in the Fraser Canyon in 1958, at the age of twenty‐ nine140. While this is not impossible, it may also be an expression of the way in which certain signal events can come to define a person’s life in the understanding of those around him, particularly those who are much younger. During and after his lifetime Youla was remembered as having witnessed the conflict between Nlaka’pamux of the Fraser Canyon and the miners who had come into the Fraser Canyon in 1858 and pre‐empted the river bars and fishing sites in order to pan for gold. Another Nlaka’pamux resident of Spuzzum, Chewelnah [Cəwélneʔ], or “Spuzzum Bob,” was also remembered as having witnessed these events. Chewelnah, who, enumerated as “Tchoo.wel.na,” was living in 1878 at Spuzzum with his wife and one daughter141, was said to have been thirteen years old at the time142. Youla was almost certainly older. If, as his death record suggests, he was born in 1842, he would have been sixteen years old, old enough to be finished with his puberty observances and finished with childhood. Youla and Chewelnah, both witnesses to the Fraser Canyon conflict, have exactly the same family profile in the 1878 census, and this also suggests that they were at least roughly contemporaries.

The village in which Youla and his wife and daughter lived in 1878, together with the two villages at Spuzzum Creek, had an enumerated population of just under 350 people, although the census taker noted that the population of the Spuzzum villages, alone, had been 400 a short time before.

Spuzzum, Shwimp, Tíḱ wǝlus, and Péɬuskwu were part of a group of villages that stretched upriver along the Fraser from Spuzzum Creek. Both the families and the villages had overlapping connections with one another, forged through arranged marriages and kinship obligations. Youla was said to be related to Pahallok, also known as Pélek, a chief at Spuzzum in the mid‐1800’s143. Youla’s immediate circle included Charles Chapman (Cǝchauten) and his wife, Anastasia, and their parents and children, William Andrew and his family, William John and his wife, Cǝ́ntkwu, Andrew James (qwúpseʔ) and his wife, Xintke, as well as James Paul Xíxneʔ, who became chief at Spuzzum, his brother‐in‐law, Paul Joseph York and others of the generation born between 1840 and 1860.

138 British Columbia Archives, Vital Events: Pauline Youla and Frank Oscar Carlson, married at Vancouver 23 June 1919. Registration number 1919‐09‐200424. 139 B.C. Archives and Records Service, death record. “Paul Yola, 1942 1 28, Seabird Island, age 99, Reg # 1942‐09‐ 026083.” Youla’s daughter and son‐in‐law lived at Seabird Island. Youla’s grave marker in the cemetery at Spuzzum I.R. 1 has the dates 1831‐1941. 140 Fred H. Goodchild, “Centenarian Recalled China Bar Massacre at Yale in 1858.” Newspaper article dated March 7, 1942. (Fred Henry Goodchild was later an editorial writer for the Vancouver Province. In 1951 he published a book entitled, British Columbia, its History, People and Industry. (London: Allan and Unwin) Youla had just died at the “authenticated” age of 112. Andrea Laforet, interview with Theophil and Annie Acar, Yale, B.C. March 20, 1995. 141Census of Indian Tribes summer 1877, 1878. National Archives of Canada RG 88, vol. 494. 142 Andrea Laforet. Interview with Theophil (Phil) and Annie Acar at Yale, 1995. 143 See Laforet and York, Spuzzum Fraser Canyon Histories 1808‐1939, 44 and passim. An Okanagon informant working with James Teit identified “Palak” as the chief at Spuzzum, and “leading chief of the Lower Thompson” circa 1850 (James Teit, “The Okanagan,” 270). In contrast, Anderson (2011:113) identifies him as a Sto:lo chief.

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People from Spuzzum, Tikwǝlus, Peɬuskwu, Sq᾽wǝxaq and other nearby Fraser Canyon villages routinely ̣ hunted on the mountains on both sides of the river. On the east side, the mountains behind Tikwǝlus formed a continuous hunting, gathering and trout‐fishing area from the Fraser River to the Similkameen and south into through the Skagit Valley.

The diversification of the Nlaka’pamux economy that followed the onset of European settlement did not eliminate hunting – it continued to be a significant factor in the economy of particular households, and for certain men like Youla, it was a specialist pursuit. He often hunted at Nx̣ǝtx̣ǝtqéɬc’iʔ, a ridge east of Anderson Mountain near Spuzzum, and might stay up on Anderson Mountain all winter, hunting and drying meat for his family’s use, and coming out in the spring. His range included of the mountains around Spuzzum and extended into the upper Fraser and Skagit Valleys. In autumn, Spuzzum people, generally, hunted mountain goats on Sxẉ iƛ’éc’ and C’ǝmc’əmeʔ near Spuzzum, as well aś in the Skagit Valley. Annie York recalled that Youla, hunted mountain goats on Mount Baker with her brother and Paul Joseph York 144.

The photograph reproduced below, published in The Hope Standard in April, 1972, was provided to the paper by August Milliken, a resident of Yale village at the entrance to Fraser Canyon. Milliken, a local historian who had a strong interest in the history of the Aboriginal people of the Fraser Canyon, has identified the people in the photograph as “one of the numerous groups who went to the Skagit Valley every late summer, the women to pick and dry berries, the men to hunt bear for skins and bear grease.”

144 As Paul Joseph York was not born until the 1860’s this would have been at least a generation after the conflict noted by Coleman.

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Fig. 9 Hudson’s Bay Company Store at Yale. Reproduced from The Hope Standard, published April 19, 1972. Courtesy of The Hope Standard. Original in Vancouver Archives, OutP836. In the late twentieth century Elsie Charlie, a granddaughter of Charles and Anastasia Chapman, identified several of the people on the porch of the store as members of her family. Anastasia Chapman145, then a young woman, is sitting on the steps (at right), with her daughter, Lan (Annie) as an infant. Charles Chapman is standing by the porch pillar (at left). His mother, who also lived with them, is seated below him, with the horse’s nose obscuring the face of the child sitting beside her.

Fig. 9 a Anastasia Chapman and Lan. Excerpt from Fig. 9.

145 Anastasia Chapman died in 1930 at the Spuzzum Indian Reserve at the estimated age of 80 years. B.C. Archives Vital Events Records 1930‐09‐014265.

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Fig. 9 b Charles Chapman. Excerpt from Fig. 9.

Fig. 9 c Mother of Charles Chapman. Excerpt from Fig. 9.

Although the newspaper caption says “1880” the date originally recorded for the photograph is 1883146. Lan, whose English name was Annie, married Patrick Charlie, of Yale, and they raised their family at Péɬuskwu. Elsie Charlie was their daughter. Marion Dixon, whose mother was their older daughter, Lena Johnny, recalls that when she was a small child her grandparents went to hunt bear in the Skagit, just as Lan’s parents had done. Lan used the bear grease to treat her arthritis, and dried and pounded another part of the bear as a medication for open sores147.

Prior to the arrival of commercial fur traders, snaring, trapping and hunting animals for furs was an integral component of hunting, with the pelts either used for household purposes or traded to other Aboriginal people. With the development of individual trap lines in the late 1800s it became a somewhat separate enterprise, and Annie York noted that knowledge of the trails through the Cascades tended to merge with knowledge of trap lines. Elsie Charlie recalled that Charles Chapman was a trapper, and that he and Anastasia would walk to Hope and swim the horses across the river to go across the mountains to the Similkameen to trap. In the fall they would stay until the first snow. They used moccasins and would each need three or four pairs a trip148. The Chapman’s were not alone in deriving a part of their livelihood from trapping. Annie York noted that whole families sometimes spent the winter trapping up in the mountains. Jimmy Andrew and Paul Youla, had trap lines on Anderson Mountain, and Paul Joseph York had a trap line across the river, near Tikwalus. Andrew James and his wife, Xíntke (called “Tinkeʔ”) also derived a part of their livelihood from the mountains. Minnie Peters, the daughter of Charles and Anastasia Chapman’s

146 City of Vancouver Archives, Out P836. Donated by Mrs. Grace M. Green in 1957 from the collection of W.A. Dashwood‐Jones. William Arthur Dashwood‐Jones was born in England in 1858 and emigrated to Canada at the age of 18. In 1886 he married into the Clemes family of Spences Bridge. Beginning in 1908 he served as a deputy provincial assessor. He lived in New Westminster, near Vancouver (http://historyof bc.com, vol. 3 p. 8). 147 John Haugen and Bev Phillips, Interview with Marian Dixon, February 15, 2011. NNTC Archives. Bear grease, which remains runny when preserved, was used by the Nlaka’pamux in several ways. Robert Pasco has affirmed that on the Thompson River it was used as a lubricant for equipment well into the twentieth century (Robert Pasco, personal communication). 148 Laforet and York, Spuzzum Fraser Canyon Histories 1808‐1939,.80.

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son, John Chapman and his wife, Matilda, stayed with her grandparents during part of her early childhood. She recalled,

And old Charlie Chapman used to sit there. Whittle these sticks for that net, you know, the shape of the [mesh]. And he used to have it hanging there. And when I see him put on his moccasins we know he’s going up the mountain. He sit there and sing a song and Yéyeʔ149 says, “He’s going to go.” Charles Chapman went to the mountains to trap, but also to get gold. Mrs. Peters continued,

He took just so much down and trade for food. But he won’t touch the rest. Any time he wanted it he went up the mountain and get it. You just see him put on his moccasins and tie his moccasins and Yéyeʔ used to fix him this food for him to go up. And he used to go up for two or three days and come down and Yéyeʔ used to tell me that he’s got some gold, he’s going to trade it for some food – we need some sugar and flour and dried food. Access to both the Similkameen and the Skagit Valley was across country. Goodchild’s obituary for Youla provided a synoptic account of a his pattern of travel, but it may more accurately convey the degree to which he saw this interior mountain landscape as relatively unified and traversable.

He would go into Hope to get cartridges, fish hooks, a few matches and hard tack one day and be on the trail before dawn the next day. He often went over to Coldwater on the Nicola, where his brother David lived, continue on down the trail to Tulameen, and from there over to Princeton where he would visit the old‐timers, swing back west over the Skyline trail, rest and fish awhile at Lightning lakes, then drop down into the Skagit Valley. He was accustomed to stay one sleep at Gordon’s place until he went there one winter’s day and found George Gordon dead in his bed and his cattle dead in their stalls. This place is now known as the Whitworth Ranch. The next day Youla would strike west up the Kleskilkwa, across Silver Creek summit, over the old boundary trail, across the south end of Chilliwack Lake and out at the foot of Mount Baker. He would put in a day at Sumas, then over to Mission City to visit Father Chirouse, and from there take the train back home150.

Goodchild’s source for the article was Joseph Herbert (“Bert”) Richmond, who came to Canada from England in 1904151, settled at Ruby Creek, near Hope, worked for a time as postmaster at Spuzzum and subsequently was postmaster at Hope. He married and raised a family in the area. Richmond knew Youla’s family before World War I – he had helped Youla’s young grandson, James, who was very ill in 1912, travel from his home in the Fraser Valley to Spuzzum so that Youla could treat him with Nlaka’pamux medicine, and he had served with James Pettis in a British Columbia fighting unit in France in 1916. In September, 1919 Richmond travelled into the Skagit with Youla.

149 “Grandma,” a reference to Anastasia. 150 Fred H Goodchild, “Centenarian Indian Recalled China Bar Massacre at Yale in 1858,” Vancouver Daily Province, (March 7, 1942). 151 Canada Census, 1911.

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Richmond recounted for Goodchild two stories of bear hunting:

Round the campfire that September night he told Bert Richmond of a “mix‐up” he once had with a she‐bear and her cubs on Hosameen mountain, which is down the Skagit near the border. The bear had both forepaws on Youla’s shoulders and just when the Indian thought it was the end of him and eagle swooped down and flew off with one of the cubs. The bear left Youla to watch the squealing cub and gave Youla time [to] go into action with his 45‐90. He carried the claw marks to the grave with him. The second narrative, which may or may not have taken place in the Skagit Valley, shows Youla’s command, not only of hunting technique, but also of the Nlaka’pamux approach to bears.

Bert Richmond was with Youla once when they sighted a bear in a berry patch. He stripped naked, crept upwind of the bear [words missing from copy of article] stood up and addressed the bear in an ordinary tone of voice. Generally [sic] the bear stood up too and was then quickly despatched.

By the time Youla was an elderly man the resources required by the Nlaka’pamux economy had undergone significant redefinition. In the same way that chert and other tool stone was no longer required for arrowheads, yew wood was not required to make bows, vine maple withes were not required in the construction of winter dwellings, nettle fibre and Apocynum cannabinum fibre cordage was replaced by commercial cord. Those that were still required, such as cedar roots, needed in substantial numbers for basketry, became increasingly difficult to obtain as logging was established. The logging that took place in the Skagit watershed area may have considerably reduced or eliminated this resource. By 1937, five years before Youla’s death, Ross Lake had extended into Canada and in 1941 Seattle City Light received approval from the International Joint Commission for further flooding152.

Work in Washington State remained a part of the economy and social life of many Nlaka’pamux households, but it was different work. Nlaka’pamux families travelled across the border to work in the hop yards, strawberry fields and orchards. Nlaka’pamux cowboys competed in rodeos in Sedro Woolley. Some Nlaka’pamux men worked on the construction of the dams, and also as loggers. As the Coast Salish and other groups have done153, the Nlaka’pamux have maintained family connections across the border and travel back and forth between Washington State and British Columbia for family and community events.

Conclusion

As Mierendorf and others have noted, the Cascade Mountain regions and other upland regions within the homelands of Interior Salish peoples were long considered by archaeologists and ethnologists to have been subject to less intense utilization than, for example, coastal areas where resources were more visibly abundant. That view has changed considerably in the light of recent research. Mierendorf’s survey of the Desolation Peak chert quarry suggests the relatively intense utilization of that resource for a period of approximately 1500 years in an overall time span of nearly 8000 years. During that period climatic

152 Skagit Resource Inventory, unpaginated. 153 In“The ‘Really‐Real’ Border and the Divided Salish Community,” B.C. Studies 112 (Winter 1996‐97), 64, Bruce Miller has described the border “as an arbitrary but potent fact of life that divides the peoples and communities commonly referred to as Salish.”

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conditions have changed and changed again, but it is apparent that during the centuries prior to 1846 the Skagit Valley offered abundant resources integral to an established Nlaka’pamux economy, and was fully accessible to a people who did not consider mountains to be a barrier to travel.

The utilization of the valley and the surrounding mountains was significantly affected by the demographic, economic and cultural changes that attended the establishment of colonial settlements and governments on both sides of the border. By 1946, a century after the ratification of the Oregon Treaty, the Skagit Valley, itself, had been definitively altered. The Skagit River shoreline was under Ross Lake for much of the year. As a road was constructed into the valley on the Canadian side, the land was opened to substantial logging.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century the Skagit region was publicly redefined according to a cultural template that saw it as “wilderness.” In 1978 the United States passed the North Cascades Act, creating the North Cascades National Parks Service Complex, embracing 684,000 acres of “wild land154.” On the Canadian side of the border the Skagit Valley Provincial Park protects approximately 70,000 acres155. It remains nevertheless a landscape that resonates with those Nlaka’pamux who visit the region today, and to those who are schooled in the recognition of past use, it is replete with signs that suggest a long history.

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155 27,964 hectares, or 69,071.08 acres.

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