Coldwater Indian Band: Preliminary Ethnographic and Historic Overview and Traditional Use Study

Hearing Order OH-001-2014 Trans Mountain Pipeline ULC Application for the Trans Mountain Expansion Project Coldwater Indian Band: Preliminary Ethnographic and Historic Overview and Traditional Use Study Submitted to Coldwater Indian Band 26 May 2015 Prepared by Inglis Consulting Coldwater Indian Band: Preliminary Ethnographic and Historic Overview and Traditional Use Study Executive Summary The Coldwater Indian Band commissioned this Report, Preliminary Ethnographic and Historic Overview and Traditional Use Study, for submission to the National Energy Board pursuant to Hearing Order OH-001-2014 as part of their response to the proposed Trans Mountain Expansion Project. This Report is preliminary and should not be considered as definitive nor as representing all the information on the occupation and traditional uses of the Nicola Valley region, including the tributary valleys, by the Coldwater Indian Band or their ancestors. Further research would undoubtedly uncover more information, and further analysis would lead to enhanced interpretations. The following conclusions and opinions relating to Coldwater Nlaka’pamux history, use and occupation of the Nicola Valley region and Nlaka’pamux territory are made from the research to date: The Coldwater are identified in the anthropological literature and in the Indian Affairs records as a division of the Nicola branch of the Nlka’pamux (Thompson). The territory of the Nicola Thompson is centred on the Nicola Valley and the surrounding tributary valleys. The earliest known inhabitants of the eastern end of Nicola Valley and the upper Similkameen River were a group identified by anthropologists as the Nicola Athapaskans. There is some evidence that they may be descended from Chilcotins who settled in the area prior to contact with whites. The Nlaka’pamux called these original inhabitants the Stu’wix or Stuwixamux. The area of historic Stuwixamux territory is depicted by Teit as running south from the upper Nicola River and including the Coldwater River. First contact in the region of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers confluence was in 1808 by Simon Fraser of the North West Company. Traders with this Company were the first to interact and name the Nlaka’pamux. The name they used was Kootomin which is likely a variation of the name of the Nlaka’pamux village, Nkamtici’n, at the confluence of the Thompson and Nicola Rivers. This village is depicted on an 1814 (updated 1826) map by David Thompson. The name initially started as the name of the tribe at this village but became generalized to represent all the Nlaka’pamux. Kootoomin is the only tribe depicted on published British maps in the region of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers confluence throughout the Colonial period. The name Kootoomin is rendered Coutamine (with spelling variations) by the Hudson’s Bay Company. HBC traders named the Nicola River the Coutamine River. On an 1827 HBC map, the upper Nicola River region was depicted as being within the territory of the Similkameen, a term the HBC traders used for the Nicola Athapascan. However, in the accompanying census, one of the three Similkameen sub-groups was 26 May 2015 i Coldwater Indian Band: Preliminary Ethnographic and Historic Overview and Traditional Use Study enumerated with the Coutamine suggesting that at least part of the Similkameen were considered Coutamine at this time. In 1835, “Little Knives” Indians were depicted along the Nicola River on another HBC map. Couteau or Knife was a term used for the Thompson by the HBC. The Nicola Nlaka’pamux hunted in the area of Stûwi’x and intermarried with the Nicola Athapascan (Stûwi’нamuq). By the early 1800s, many of the Nicola Athapascan spoke the Nlaka’pamux language and most aspects of their culture were identified as Nlaka’pamux. The elderly Nicola Nlaka’pamux people anthropologists talked to in the late nineteenth century had ¼ Stûwi’нamuq ancestry. These people had little knowledge of the Nicola Athapascan language, and stories they had learned from their grandparents were identified as Nlaka’pamux. This was not a physical displacement or extinction of the Nicola Athapascan, rather a process of intermarriage and settlement, resulting in their cultural and linguistic integration into the Nlaka’pamux. During this process, two branches of the Nicola Athapascan came to be identified: the Nicola branch (the Stûwi’нamuq proper), which came together with the Nlaka’pamux, and the Similkameen branch, which has integrated with the Okanagan. By the early nineteenth century, the Nicola Athapaskans were essentially indistinguishable from the Nlaka’pamux in terms of language, personal and place names, and traditional stories. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Nicola Nlaka’pamux were often referred as Noweesticum’s tribe (various spellings). The Nicola Nlaka’pamux had thirteen villages along the Nicola River. The valley behind each village would have been part of the resource areas used by each village. Coldwater is identified as one of the Nicola Nlaka’pamux villages. In the Colonial period, the Nicola Valley was the territory of the Nicola Nlaka’pamux. The Nicola Nlaka’pamux were described as two tribes which are named after their Chiefs, Chillihetza (various spellings) with territory on the east end of Nicola Lake and Nowistican (various spellings) with territory at the west end of the lake. In 1868, a reserve was established for the Nowistican tribe on the Nicola River at Shulus, nine miles from the western end of Nicola Lake. In 1859, Mayne met Chief Nowistican at Nicola Lake and described him as Chief of the Skowtous tribe, likely his rendering of Shulus. Mayne depicts the territory of the Skowtous tribe at the western end of Nicola Lake on his map of exploration. Shulus and two other villages along the Nicola River occupied by the Nowistican tribe are described as the three of the old settlements of the original “possessors” of the Nicola Valley. In the mid-nineteenth century, Nlaka’pamux people from the Fraser River were paying the Nicola Nlaka’pamux to graze their livestock in the Nicola Valley, a practise that Indian Commissioner Reserve Sproat opposed in 1878. Sproat initially allotted reserves in the Coldwater River valley to the Nicola Nlaka’pamux “Coldwater Indians” who had been displaced by settlers from their village at the 26 May 2015 ii Coldwater Indian Band: Preliminary Ethnographic and Historic Overview and Traditional Use Study confluence of the Coldwater and Nicola Rivers. However, he also needed grazing land in the Nicola Valley for other Nlaka’pamux tribes, and his final minute stated that the reserve was allotted to the Lower Nicola and “mixed Indians.” In the 1890s, Indian Agent Joseph MacKay distinguished between the original Coldwater people and the Boston Bar newcomers in his description of the Coldwater Band. Although the official reserve schedules followed Sproat’s final minute in stating that the Coldwater reserves were held by mixed Indians from several other Nlaka’pamux groups, in practice Indian Affairs officials treated the residents of these reserves as a distinct band by at least 1885. They referred to this band as the “Quinshattan Band” or the Coldwater Band. This is the case with respect to the Indian Affairs Annual Reports (except for the Schedules of Reserves) and the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs for the Province of British Columbia (1913-1916). The Indian Affairs Branch did not formally recognize the existence of the Coldwater Indian Band until 1956. Information obtained in interviews of twelve Coldwater Nlaka’pamux Knowledge Holders and Resource Users in 2015 identified 175 traditional use sites and areas that detail the continued importance of the Coldwater Valley and other areas of Nlaka’pamux territory for harvest of resources for materials, food, medicine and cultural purposes. Although urbanization, ranching, forestry and other industrial activities, and road infrastructure have impacted many areas, people still return to the harvest areas, if intact, where they went as children with their grandparents and parents. Many areas, however, have been obliterated or opened to access to others by industrial activities forcing people to find alternate areas for harvesting. Coldwater families still rely heavily on food gathered from the land including deer, elk and moose, numerous berries and plant foods, medicines and materials, and fish including trout and salmon. Salmon, once a plentiful resource, are now much diminished in numbers in the Coldwater River and people now travel to the Fraser River to harvest or trade to get it. Foods are eaten fresh as harvested over the seasons and preserved for later use. These traditional foods are also traded and served at cultural events including the sun dance held at two sites on Coldwater Reserve No.1. Materials are also harvested for building sweat lodges, the sun dance ring, for use at funerals and for other traditional items including drums and cradle boards. Traditions of using the land for spiritual purposes are still maintained. Streams and rivers are used for cleansing and ritual bathing. Cradle boards are hung in special areas after single use. Spirit beings in lakes and at waterfalls and in other areas are honoured. Traditional use sites and areas are part of the cultural fabric of being a member of the Coldwater Indian Band. For Coldwater members, being out in the territory connects the present to the past and to generations of ancestors. These activities are part of their identity, an expression of being a Coldwater Indian Band member. They are what bind families together. Their territory, not just selected areas, is part of their lives, in every 26 May 2015 iii Coldwater Indian Band: Preliminary Ethnographic and Historic Overview and Traditional Use Study sense. Most of the interviews could be characterized in large part as a life lived on the territory. 26 May 2015 iv Coldwater Indian Band: Preliminary Ethnographic and Historic Overview and Traditional Use Study Credits Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the Coldwater Indian Band and Council for the opportunity to work on this project with the community.

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