Waddingtons Gold Road and the Bute Inlet Massacre 0/1864 Judith Williams Vancouver: New Star, 1996.119 Pp
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io6 BC STUDIES High Slack: Waddingtons Gold Road and the Bute Inlet Massacre 0/1864 Judith Williams Vancouver: New Star, 1996.119 pp. Illus., map. $16 paper. By KEN G. BREALEY, University of British Columbia ' I *HE ONLY SUSTAINED military This takes Williams, both literally I resistance to colonial auth- and figuratively, into the entangled JL ority west of the Rocky events and places that constituted the Mountains and north of the forty- Chilcotin War itself. Ordering the ninth parallel, the so-called ChUcotin encounter into a series of spatial War of 1864, remains as palpable a vignettes, Williams creates a kind of memory for the Tsîlhqot'in people as geographical mise en scène that evokes it is an almost incidental sidebar in the something of the performative drama annals of most BC historical writing. that, in a certain sense, the conflict This short, but engaging and attractive, actually was. She concludes with an book is a follow-up to the "High account of the surrender, trial, and Slack" exhibition and symposium, The execution of the five Tsîlhqot'in Tsîlhqot'in War 0/1864 and the 1993 chiefs, and although most of this is Cariboo-ChUcotin Justice Inquiry, held at excavated from Matthew Begbie's trial the University of British Columbia in notes and other colonial correspondence, November 1994, and is an attempt to, the voices of the Tsîlhqot'in still come as the author phrases it, "peel back the through. It is only fitting, then, that many layers of truth" that surrounded, the author punctuates the narrative by and are still being contextualized by recalling some of the eloquent, and this significant, if somewhat shadowy, curative, testimonials on the war event. delivered by contemporary Tsîlhqot'in Beginning with her own 1991 chiefs and elders at the symposium explorations of Toba and Bute Inlets, that inspired the book. Judith Williams juxtaposes her im Williams writes sensitively and pressions of the landscape with those with a minimum of academic jargon, recorded by Robert Homfray, who, in and, while I was puzzled with the 1861 on behalf of the Hudson's Bay choice of certain archival photographs Company, first probed Bute Inlet as a that, on the face of it, have nothing to possible brigade route to the Cariboo do with the subject matter of the book, goldfields. Fast forwarding back to she has about the right touch of 1991, and supported, in large part, graphic support. By tacking back and through interviews with elders of the forth between the Euro-Canadian and Klahoose Band, she then attempts to Tsîlhqot'in worlds, and between past encapsulate something of the other and present, the author successfully wise undocumented Kwakwaka'wakw' reveals some of the anxieties of the version of Homfray's journey before colonial project in British Columbia returning once again to a rather more without losing sight of the fact that nuanced recollection of her own retracing the war, far from being a mere of Alfred Waddington's ill-fated pack anecdote on the colonial stage, was the road up the Homathko River canyon. "thin edge of the wedge" of the latent Book Reviews ioj violence that has always simmered just author does properly acknowledge underneath the surface of the colonial that the asymmetries in emphasis that enterprise more generally. I still still permeate this contrapuntal story cringe, however, at the use of the term must be left for the Tsîlhqot'in to "massacre" (especially in the title) to redress themselves. Until that time, refer to Lha tse'sin's offensive against this book will stand nicely in its own Brewster's road crew, and I thought right as a welcome complement to that the map of the events of the war, Terry Glavin's Nemiah: The Unconquered which seems to be (whether Country and, perhaps most important, accidentally or deliberately is not as a desperately needed antidote to clear) a translation of Waddington's (and replacement of) Mel Rothenburger s original 1864 Sketch Map of the one-sided, and ultimately racist, Chilcotin War, would have benefitted polemic The Chilcotin War, which, as from a little more attention to the Tsîlhqot'in have noted, still stocks Tsîlhqot'in geography, some of which far too many public school book has already been mapped out by the shelves throughout the BC Interior. Tsîlhqot'in people. That said, the I recommend High Slack. Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, eds. Peterborough: Broadview, 1996. 519 pp. Illus. $29.95 paper. By ROBIN RIDINGTON, University of British Columbia EADING BEYOND WORDS is a rich these essays tend to business rather collection of twenty-one than to the arcana of postmodern essays that explore how First literary theory. They and the reader Nations experience has been rep are better off for it. resented as well as misplaced in the Following genre conventions similar texts that make up the substance of to those of First Nations discourse, conventional history and ethnography. each of these essays tells a story. What unites the essays, Brown and Together, the stories bring into focus Vibert explain in their introduction, a coherent whole that reflects a world "is that texts are not transparent."The of experience beyond the words facts they present "are socially captured in print. I found the book constructed, moulded by the social hard to put down once I had begun and cultural forces in place when the reading it, but I also took the liberty texts were created, and by the later of initially sampling essays from each contexts in which they have been of the seven headings rather than reread and reinterpreted" (pp. x-xi). A reading it from cover to cover. Frieda realistic understanding of texts about Esay Klippenstein's reading of written First Nations history thus requires an and oral accounts documenting an act of authorship on the part of the encounter between James Douglas reader — a reading beyond the words and Carrier Chief Kwah reads almost themselves. While acknowledging a like a mystery story. Frederic W. debt to postmodern discourse analysis, Gleach makes a convincing case for .