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HISTORY
Unfortunately, there is no
written history prior to white man's arrival. First Nation's people have
an oral history but not a written one. Stories were owned by the
storyteller the same way today's writers own a script. Native stories
passed on verbally were filled with conjecture and mixed with the spirit
world. Dates were inaccurate and blended with special happenings in the
past. Due to lack of foresight, white historians seldom listened or wrote
down many of the First Nations stories. When the whites intentionally
destroyed the First Nations culture many of the stories were lost. Today,
we only have smattering of information about what went on prior to white
man's arrival.
Alexander McKenzie was the first white man to discover the Fraser
River. He did so by coming from the north near Fort St John in 1793. With
a group of voyageurs he paddled up the Peace River and through the only
gap in the Rocky Mountains from Alaska to Mexico. He continued southward
up the Parsnip River, over the height of land, and down to the Fraser
River. There he established a camp near what is now Prince George.
McKenzie was looking for a river route to the rich, fur trading areas on
the coast. Somehow, Alexander missed the large Nechako River entering the
Fraser from the west. Had he done so he would have surely followed that
route to the coast. Instead, with a few native guides and the same weary
voyageurs he paddled down the Fraser to what is now Quesnel. He
established contact with some Carrier Nation natives that informed him the
Fraser River was impassable farther downstream. They suggested he follow
their trade route to the coast through what is now known as the Blackwater
or Westroad River. Frustrated by the Fraser's continued southward
direction, and information of bad water ahead, McKenzie left the Fraser
and embarked on his famous journey to the coast near Bella Coola. After an
arduous trip back through the wilderness, and across Canada once more,
McKenzie returned to his home in Scotland.
A dozen years later
Simon Fraser re-traced Alexander McKenzie's trip through the Peace Portal
Rapids and established a camp at Rocky Mountain Portage, and another at
McLeod Lake. There, he left his lieutenant James McDougall in charge.
While Simon returned for supplies, McDougall did some exploring on his
own. He traveled down to the Fraser River and discovered its tributary,
the Nechako River, which McKenzie had missed. McDougall then followed the
Nechako up to Stuart Lake, Fraser Lake, Francois Lake and into what is now
known as the Lake Country.
When Simon returned he discovered
several other omissions in McKenzie's diary, and abandoned it in 1806 as a
source of reference. Like McKenzie, Simon thought the Fraser River was the
northern portion of the Columbia. With McDougall, Simon explored the Lake
Country the following year and they established another fur trading fort
at Fraser Lake. When word came that Lewis and Clark were heading an
expedition towards the coast from the south, Simon was determined to
follow what he thought was the Columbia River to its mouth and claim it
for England. He received his supplies in the fall of 1807 and headed down
the Fraser on May 22, 1808.
Despite warnings by the native tribes, Fraser was determined to follow
the river to the coast. Had he know what lay in store for him, or that the
river wasn't the Columbia, it is unlikely that he would have continued.
The first large tributary he encountered he named the Quesnel after his
second lieutenant, just as he had named Stuart Lake after another of his
lieutenants, and McLeod Lake after his friend Norman McLeod.
During their paddle south down the river, native horsemen were
continually seen following the canoes along the shoreline. He was summoned
ashore at one point and Fraser had a meeting with the Atnaugh nation. He
was warned of unfriendly tribes and very bad water farther downstream, but
he pressed on. The river canyon continued to narrow and the rapids grew in
intensity. Many times the canoes almost swamped and portages were
continuous. Eventually the canoes had to be abandoned and stored for their
return trip. The Voyageurs continued on foot until they finally came to
the mouth of another large tributary and a large native village at what is
now the town of Lytton. The natives called their village Camchin and
Fraser called their tribe Hacamaugh. Fraser named the tributary "the
Thompson" after David Thompson, a partner in the NorthWest Company. Fraser
thought Thompson was exploring the same system farther upstream, when in
actual fact David Thompson was in the Rocky Mountain trench following the
real Columbia River. Ironically, Thompson never did see the river named
after him.
Fraser acquired more canoes from the
Hacamaugh nation and continued downstream with native guides. The route
became tortuous in the extreme. The local natives had built a net-like
lattice work of vine ropes, poles and ladders along the cliffs. The packs
and canoes had to be dragged vertically up these precarious structures.
Death awaited every misplaced step. Simon was astounded how the Indians
climbed like spiders up the walls and cliffs. Without the native's help it
is unlikely the voyageurs would have survived the ordeal. It was now near
the end of June and at the peak of spring run-off. The river continued to
grow in fury. Due to the exhausting trip, Fraser's notes in his diary were
a little sparse, but he wrote about never having experienced anything like
those incredible hardships.
Eventually, the voyageurs passed the
worst of the canyon and they came to Spuzzum where Fraser discovered the
intricately carved native burial tombs. At Hope the river turned abruptly
to the West and Fraser began to realize he was on a completely different
river system than the Columbia. His native guides from the interior
refused to continue with him for fear of the hostile Musqueam tribes on
the coast. When they paddled into the Gulf of Georgia, Simon was
disappointed that he couldn't see the Pacific Ocean. He knew he was in
salt water, but didn't have the supplies to continue. The hostile natives
on shore made any landing dangerous and they continued to fire arrows at
the explorers. The natives were only kept at bay by the occasional musket
fire as a warning. Fraser confirmed his location as the 49 degrees
latitude, which was well north of the Columbia's 46-degree latitude. The
decision was made to return. Several voyageurs threatened to desert, but
Simon convinced them to stay for the safety of all. On July 6, 1808 the
group returned up the Fraser canyon and was safely back at Fort George on
August 5th. It was an astounding expedition that is a tribute to the
tenacity of the voyageurs and their leader.
Although it was
Alexander McKenzie and Simon Fraser who discovered the Fraser River, it
was James Douglas who had the foresight to develop and build the province
around it. As an assistant to the Hudson's Bay Company factor, John
McLoughlin, Douglas built Fort Victoria in 1843 on the southern tip of
Vancouver Island. Acting just in time to prevent the Americans from
claiming British Columbia, the British hold on the west coast was a
precarious one. The forty-ninth parallel was just barely established as
the international boundary. Despite being south of the 49th, Victoria
remained British. In 1856, gold was discovered in the Fraser River, which
caused miners and fortune seekers to flood into the new territory. By the
spring of 1859 Victoria was being over-run by a rough bunch of foreigners.
James Douglas had been made governor of Vancouver Island, but not the
mainland. That didn't stop him from imposing an illegal levy in the form
of a license on all foreigners entering British Columbia. Steamboats were
built to move the gold seekers up to Yale. Douglas tried to maintain some
sort of law and order and overstepped his authority on the mainland. He
brought in Matthew Baillie Begbie, the famous "Hanging Judge", to carry
out his wishes. The flamboyant Begbie was the ideal man for the job and he
ruled with an iron hand. Unlike the wild cowtowns and lawless mining towns
of the United States, the gold rush in British Columbia was a relatively
mild one.
As the surface gold was cleaned out the
miners moved farther up the river and every tributary was panned and
sluiced. To by-pass the violent Fraser River canyon, many miners traveled
up the Harrison to Lillooet Lake, Anderson Lake and Seton Lake where they
paddled through a gap in the mountains and returned to the Fraser at what
is now the town of Lillooet. Steam driven paddle wheel freight boats
competed with each other for business on this system.
James Douglas
had the vision of building a road up the Fraser Canyon and through the
Thompson River valley to the gold deposits in Barkerville. Again, Douglas
exceeded his authority and started the immense project in the winter of
1861/62. By borrowing from a local bank, he raised the funds to pay the
labourers. It was a mind-boggling construction project for a territory of
only 20,000 people. And, most of those only transients. Joseph Truch,
later to become British Columbia's lieutenant governor, engineered the
first bridge crossing of the Fraser at what is now the Alexandra Bridge.
The same crossing point maintained today. The suspension bridge was built
from steel cables built on the spot by cleverly weaving wire bales brought
up by mule team. The job was so well done that no cable ever snapped and
the bridge could hold a four-horse team and a three-ton load. James
Douglas had his road and territory was on its way to becoming a
province. |
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