First Nations in the Columbia River Valley

The native people living along the section of the Columbia River Valley that flows from north to south were part of the Plateau culture - salmon fishing, plant gathering, deer hunters - the Secwepemc (Shuswap) and the Lakes Nation spoke the Interior Salish language, similar to southern coast Nations. The Ktunaxa (Kutenia or Kootenay) Nation, whose language was different, settled in the areas near the Columbia headwaters. Both shared in the salmon bounty, living along the Columbia River system, harvesting the waters by netting, harpooning and using weirs (fish traps). The Shuswap and Lake people settled into small villages in the winter months, living in pit houses - round meter-deep excavations covered with logs and earth. In the summer they travelled their river-flats and forest territory, a land of fishing and hunting, living in portable reed-mat structures, painting red ochre pictographs (portraits of human and animal figures) on the rocky landscapes. The Ktunaxa lived in the southwest mountains, forests and grasslands, and were known to follow mountain passes to buffalo hunt on the prairie plains. Contact with Europeans started through the trade of furs for tools between the Interior and coastal natives who first encountered the explorers in the late 1770's. As the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company made their way into the British Columbian interior, they established trading posts, working with the Plateau people, while ultimately opening up the territory to settlement that would change the lives of the native people forever. First Nations people were not permitted to vote in British Columbian elections until 1949.

Exploring the Western Wilderness
The kings, merchants and bankers of England and France in the early 18th century eagerly wanted a quicker, safer route to the Pacific Ocean via the new world. Throughout the 1700's, both France and England, and their mercantile supporters, financed several expeditions, establishing trading posts, marking maps and laying out the routes that settlers were to follow during the 1800's. Though no direct waterway was ever found, Britain won the race. By the early 1800s, England governed a growing dominion, enjoyed expanded trade, explored the wild west and accumulated vast natural resource revenues. During the 1700s, France competed boldly, supporting the 1776 American Revolution in one of many military skirmishes with the British, including defeat on the Canadian Plains of Abraham in 1759 and across their competing domains in the Napoleonic Wars of 1803 - 1814. (The United States purchased Louisiana from France in 1803.) While Britain and America made their peace, if at times uneasily, in the years of nation-building following the War of 1812, France was otherwise engaged by internal instability, wars, politics and an expanded presence across Europe, Africa and Asia.

Historic People, Places
Robert Gray - an experienced skipper known to have traded fur from the Chinook Nation to China, explored the Columbia River at its Pacific Ocean mouth in 1792, naming it after his ship, the Columbia Rediviva, and establishing the United States' claim to the region that would later be called the Oregon Territory. In 1805, American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark reached the Columbia River by overland trekking; they found the British North West Company explorer David Thompson settled there.

David Thompson - a 14-year-old school boy in London, England when he signed on, in 1784, as an apprentice inland surveyor for the Hudson's Bay Company's wilderness fur trade empire at Fort Churchill on the west coast of Hudson Bay. In 1797, he changed employers to work for the upstart HBC rival, the North West Company of Montreal. His job was to establish trade with natives, build and map company posts and to find the Mississippi River source, which he did. In 1807, he crossed the Howse Pass, exploring the Columbia's source and other rivers; in 1810, because of difficulty with native Canadians, he crossed again into the Columbia area by the Athabasca pass. During this journey, he travelled the length of the Columbia River, mapping and establishing trade as he went. His maps of the region were unrivalled for at least a century. In Saskatchewan, at Ile à la Crosse, he married Charlotte Small, a teenaged Cree-Scots girl; they had 13 children. After moving his family around during his many journeys, they retired to Glengarry in Upper Canada, where he worked to define the U.S./Canada boundary after the War of 1812, then they moved to Lower Canada to live with his daughter's family, where he wrote newspaper articles and a narrative of his travels, published in 1916. Thompson died at 87 and was buried on Mont Royal, but monuments remembering him are located at Bonner's Ferry, Idaho; Lake Windermere, British Columbia; Terrebonne, Quebec; in the Montreal Protestant Cemetery. The name Thompson graces numerous streets and hotels in British Columbia.

Alexander Henry (The Younger) - North West Company fur trader from 1791 - 1814, explorer and diarist, became company partner in 1801, was a co-leader of explorers seeking the North West Passage and to rival the Americans in the fur trade. He drowned on the Columbia but left a journal on fur trade and Western native life.

Kootenae House, Invermere, BC - North West Company post in 1807 - 1812. In 1806, Jaco Finlay worked for the North West Company. He blazed the Howse Pass trail from the Saskatchewan to the Columbia River. David Thompson followed that route in 1807 and established Kootenae House below Windermere Lake as a base for exploring the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers. He started numerous posts along the Columbia watershed.

David Douglas - 1799 - 1834, was a botanist that identified the Douglas Fir and over 200 North American plant species, sending plants to Europe during three trips to Canada that included travels from the Columbia River to Hudson Bay in 1827, and on the Okanagan and Fraser Rivers in 1833, resulting in 50 plant species and one genus bearing this famous plant collector's name. He died in 1834 while exploring Hawaii. Douglas describes the Columbia emerging from the mountains to drop 60 feet over 2 miles, then down huge cliffs - between its confluence with the Okanogan and Priest Rapids, the Columbia runs through a 1000 to 3000 foot high gorge of black columnar basalt.

British Columbia Completes Canada
When the Columbia River was opened up through exploration, more goods could be imported and exported more quickly and inexpensively. The Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Vancouver near Portland, Oregon at the Columbia's mouth. After the Oregon Trail opened up the far west to settlers, they voted to be governed after the American system. Thus began the U.S.-Canada boundary dispute, during which the U.S. presidential campaign slogan was "54/40 or fight." By 1846, under the Treaty of Washington, the border was established at the 49th parallel; the British moved their HBC post to the north coast, establishing Fort Victoria. By 1854, the population of Victoria counted only 250 white people. In 1858, responding to American competition for gold and commerce, the British Government strengthened its Canadian position by creating the colony of British Columbia, under Governor James Douglas (a leader of the Hudson's Bay Company and Vancouver Island governor). In 1866, Vancouver Island was combined with the colony, and in 1871, British Columbia entered into confederation. Despite strong ties to American social and economic life, B.C. delegates made the confederation decision - after Ottawa promised to build the railroad that would bind the nation. Canada became a Dominion, from sea to sea.

Native Consequences of the Treaty of Washington - When the 49th parallel became the official boundary between British and American lands, it disrupted established patterns of trade, as British concerns moved north. The United States created a "reserve" at Fort Colville, and many bands, including the Lakes and Kootenay, made that their permanent home, after facing 20 years of settler anger and local warring.

Revelstoke: A Memorial to a Financier
Revelstoke was first known as 'The Eddy', after a Columbia River swirl located there, then renamed Farwell, after the townsite surveyor, A.S. Farwell, in 1880. Farwell incensed the Canadian Pacific Railway by trying to sell land that he owned (purchased just for such speculation) to them at inflated prices. The Railway relocated its route, and surveyed a different townsite, naming it after Lord Revelstoke, of Baring Brothers, the British bankers that bought $15,000,000 of the Canadian Pacific Railway's first bond issue, saving the transcontinental venture from potential ruin.

William Adolph Baillie-Grohman
Entrepreneur/Canal Builder - In 1889 Baillie-Grohman attempted to divert Kootenay River waters into the Columbia River system; a 1.5 km earth berm separated the two systems, both having headwaters in the Columbia Lake area. He wanted to create a north-south transportation route and develop agriculture in the rich soil deposits that would be uncovered. The Canadian Pacific Railway and settlers in the areas that would be affected by flooding in the Golden area pressured him to reduce his aspirations to a canal and lock system. Though his transportation scheme did not work out, Baillie-Grohman was instrumental in establishing the town of Canal Flats as owner of its first store, post office and steam sawmill.