10 Finally to the Sea

He got underway about 11 a.m. and just before noon, his journal says, he landed at a village of 400 people.

"Here we saw a man from the sea, which they said was so near that we should see it tomorrow. The Indians at this place seem dirty and have an unpleasant smell," he wrote, "they were surprised at seeing men different from Indians and extremely disagreeable to us through their curiosity and attention." Why the unusual note about the odor? Were these people engaged in some kind of specialized food processing - extracting oolichan oil or sockeye oil? There was a huge processing site for oolichan at a village called Swilth, located in a side channel at the mouth of Jones Creek below Hope.

Once again, his guides from the morning had returned up-river and so he spent several hours dickering for canoes so he could continue downstream. By 2 p.m. he had them and ran about 14 kilometres with a strong current to "where the river expands into a lake."

Here, Fraser got the first visible evidence that he was close to the ocean - at a spot where a large river flowed in from the south and there was a distinctive round mountain. He saw seals.

Most likely this was shallow Sumas Lake, long since drained for agricultural use. But in Fraser's time it covered about 14,000 hectares just south of Chilliwack and flooded to 18,000 hectares during the spring freshet. There was a major outlet to the Fraser where the Sumas and Chilliwack rivers, now channeled by the Vedder Canal, joined at the foot of Sumas Mountain. Sumas Lake was valuable as a source of sturgeon and some villages were built on stilts.

Having continued paddling until sunset, hungry, tired and with their provisions exhausted, the expedition camped on the north bank in a stand of immense cedars. Fraser remarked on the size of the trees "five fathoms in circumference" [about nine metres]. He also complained, for the first time, about dense clouds of mosquitoes, so the bugs must have made it an unpleasant night.

On the morning of July 1 at 8 a.m., the explorers were once again handed-off by their guides to the next village, a community of about 200 where Fraser took note that the cedar plank houses were contained in one immense structure whose front was greater in length than a present football field. At first, Fraser wrote, he was struck by the fair complexions of the villagers until he realized that they were using white paint to alter their features. Or perhaps it was dust from the processing of dog hair blankets, since clay was a component in the weaving process. The name of a village site at Seabird Island, for example, means "lumpy clay."

"They evinced no kind of surprise or curiosity at seeing us," Fraser observed, "nor were they afraid of our arms, so that they must have been in the habit of seeing white people." Trading vessels had certainly been off the coast in previous years but whether they were in proximity to the Fraser River or ventured much into the Strait of Georgia in sufficient numbers for local people to become accustomed to their presence seems less likely.

In any event, hands were shaken all round and presents were exchanged. Fraser received what he called a "coat of mail," presumably thick tanned leather used for protection against arrows but which he prized for making moccasins. His Nlaka'pamux guide and interpreter, identified only as Little Fellow, received prized white shells.

"I gave the Chief in return a calico gown, for which he was thankful and proud," Fraser wrote.

The visitors, non-native and native alike, were then invited to dine with the chief and served fish, berries and dried oysters in large troughs while a dance was performed.

 "In this room the posts or pillars are nearly three feet in diameter at the base, and diminish gradually to the top. In one of these posts is an oval opening answering the purpose of a door, thro' which to crawl in and out. Above, on the outside, are carved a human figure large as life, and there are other figures in imitation of beasts and birds," he marveled.

The feast, the presents, the dance ceremony and the size of the big house and its decorations, the ornate entry through a house post all indicate that the chief must have been powerful and wealthy, although he's never named. Who the chief was and the location remain an intriguing puzzle for history buffs because it was here, at what's been dubbed "the mystery village," that Fraser's later troubles with the Musqueam likely began.

The Sto:lo Coast Salish Historical Atlas places the village at Matsqui based on some oral traditions and what Sto:lo know of paddling times and distances below Yale, according to editor Keith Thor Carlson, whose editorial advisors include archaeologist Dave Schaepe and Sto:lo elder Albert "Sonny" McHalsie.

Nic Doe's paper in B.C. Historical News argues that Matsqui must be excluded because it lies too far outside the range of Stuart's meridian altitude observation which placed him at 49 degrees, 10.9 minutes north latitude, plus or minus 2.4 kilometres to allow for the imprecision of his 18th century instruments. Doe lists a dozen possibilities but argues that the most likely is a long-abandoned village site at what was formerly Port Hammond which now lies under the Interfor cedar mill in what's now Maple Ridge.

Barbara Rogers, who has been researching the minutiae of Simon Fraser for nearly 20 years and wrote the article on Fraser for The Greater Vancouver Book, also leans to the Port Hammond site.

Denys Nelson, who published a history of Fort Langley in 1927  thought it was at Coquitlam River. Others argue for sites near Pitt River or Barnston Island. Still others say we'll likely never get beyond best guesswork.

  "To say whether a particular population occupied a particular site at a particular time - I don't think it's possible to retrieve that information," said Valerie Patenaude, curator of the Maple Ridge Museum and an archaeologist who excavated a major site on the Pitt River in the 1990s.

It extended more than a kilometre and yielded more than 50,000 artifacts and was abruptly abandoned more than 200 years ago - archaeological evidence of mass cremations suggests a catastrophic epidemic, probably smallpox - yet neither the adjacent Katzie nor Coquitlam peoples claimed descent from whoever lived there, she told me.

"It's a strong possibility that the site was used by people from south Vancouver Island who just never came back after the catastrophe," Patenaude said. "I would say it's impossible to precisely locate the actual place [of the chief's mystery village where Fraser took the canoe]. That's because of the enormous disruptions to the demography."

Perhaps Fraser's expedition itself, making first European contact with previously isolated populations, was one of the unwitting agents of such change.

In his book The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence, Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774-1874, Robert Boyd includes a story collected from Joe Splockton at Tsawwassen half a century ago that possibly links the events of Fraser's journey and his perception as a supernatural being to later events.

It tells of two Tsawwassen men who journeyed far up the Fraser River where they met a giant named Stalacom, clearly an analog for the Halkomelem word stl'láleqem which refers to a being with supernatural powers.

The giant rode back down the river in their canoe but when people became frightened and shot at him he fled back up the river and was never seen again - but after he was gone, everywhere he had passed, all the people died.

Wherever the mystery village was, Fraser found himself stranded there. He was unable to procure canoes "for any consideration," he wrote, until the chief agreed to loan his big canoe the next day and to accompany them on their journey downriver to the sea.

But on the morning of July 2, he found the chief had changed his mind about lending his big canoe, which must have been a large vessel to accommodate 24 voyageurs and assorted guides and companions.

Desperate, Fraser took matters into his own hands - literally.

"I applied to the Chief in consequence of his promise of yesterday for his canoe, but he paid no attention to my request. I, therefore, took the canoe and had it carried to the water side. The Chief got it carried back. We again laid hold of it. He still resisted, and made us understand that he was the greatest of his nation and equal in power to the sun. However as we could not go without we persisted and at last gained our point. The chief and several of the tribe accompanied us."

Who was this powerful chief? According to journalist and historian Bruce Alistair McKelvie, born in 1889 and at one time editor of the Victoria Daily Colonist, his name was Whattlekainum, although it is variously spelled Whottlekaimun, Whotleakenum, Whittlakainum and Whittlekainum in other accounts.

McKelvie, writing in "Fort Langley, Outpost of Empire," quotes an informant identified as "old Staquisit" who was present for the events of July 2, 1808, and Nelson wrote that his information came from "Staquoisit, a Kiwantlen friend of Jason Allard." Allard's father, Ovid Allard, was born in 1817 and died at the old fort in 1874.

A Kwantlen chief named Whotleakenum was mentioned in the early journals from Fort Langley as having met James McMillan's survey party for the fort in 1824 and was described then as "a good Natured old man," so it seems plausible that he was chief in 1808, just 16 years earlier.

An entry in George Barnston's journal from Fort Langley for Aug. 28, 1827, says Whittlakainum  was at his residence on the Quoitle River.

Where was that? An earlier entry by Barnston for July 24th, 1827, tells us: "We were opposite the Quoitle or Pitt's River about 5 p.m."

And thus, on July 2, about 11 a.m., Fraser, accompanied by the chief who may have been Whittlekainum arrived at another village.

Both McKelvie and Nelson identify this village as Kikait, a summer fishing site for the Kwantlen who inhabited Skaiametl, a village near Sapperton Landing in New Westminster. Kikait, according to Nelson, who quotes "Gabriel," presumably Chief Alfred Gabriel who was born at Fort Langley in 1893 or perhaps his father, as saying his grandfather was present when Fraser visited Kikait in 1808.

Kikait, spelled Qiqá:yt in the Sto:lo Atlas, was on the Surrey side near the Patullo Bridge, although once again there are conflicting accounts as to precise location. One says the village was where saloonkeeper Ebenezer Brown built a hotel at the foot of Old Yale Road in 1861, another says it was at a site later occupied by the Liverpool Cannery, which Dianne Newell, writing in Tangled Webs of History: Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific Coast Fisheries, locates directly across the river from Sapperton.

In any event, at Kikait, Fraser was warned not to go any farther downstream.

"The Indians advised us not to advance any further, as the natives of the coast or Islanders were at war with them, being very malicious, and will destroy us," he wrote. But he was not going to be deterred so close to his destination so he prepared to embark again, only to be physically prevented from leaving.

"Islanders" probably referred to the warlike Cowichans who were powerful enough to hold village sites in the delta - one of them south of Lulu Island - and often raided up the river. It's not clear whether the perceived threat from "natives of the coast" meant the Musqueam, who lived at the river mouth, or to the people the Sto:lo referred to as coastal raiders. War parties from the Haida, Tsimshian and Kwakwaka'wakw frequently ventured up the river in search of slaves and booty, much like the Vikings of European history.

Fraser pushed on regardless, using the big canoe he'd "borrowed" after some insistence, although the chief declined. The fur trader's loyal Nlaka'pamux interpreter, Little Fellow, also demurred, "saying that he was also afraid of the people at the sea."

The explorer picked up one local guide from a following canoe, who steered him into the North Arm and later up the winding, shallow creek to the Musqueam village. Was he leading Fraser away from the fierce Cowichans or into an intended ambush? We'll never know, although the journal says that "convinced of his unfriendly disposition, we turned him out and made him and the others, who were closing in upon us, understand, that if they did not keep their distance we would fire upon them."

 The size of the chief's canoe proved a blessing because it was apparently too large for the smaller canoes to approach and capsize it, which would likely have occurred if Fraser and his party had been using several smaller vessels.

In the end, he saw the ocean for perhaps 90 minutes then was forced to retreat back up the river, never to return to the West Coast.

Fraser had to retrace his difficult passage and get word of his disappointing discovery back to the North West Company headquarters in Montreal, almost 5,000 kilometres to the east, but my own journey was ending at the sea's edge in a new city that looks to Asia for its economic future.

Up in the Fraser Canyon, I'd learned how the auburn-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned traveler had been mistaken by native peoples for the return of a transformer, one of the supernatural beings from the beginning of time who changed the world and its contents into the one they knew.

Looking around at the modified landscape, the glittering towers, the freeway bridges, the tank farms, the log booms strung like a bizarre necklace of raw wood along the river banks, the gambling casino, the container yards, the vinyl, brick and stucco subdivisions where cedar longhouses once stood, I realized that the prophets of the Secwepemc and the Nlaka'pamux had been right - the coming of Simon Fraser was indeed the coming of a transformer.

"It's a bittersweet thing for me," my Chilcotin guide Doug Green on the upper Fraser had said, musing on the formidable skills and tenacity of Fraser's expedition shooting wild rapids that were a challenge for his jet boat.

"I have to admire those men but, of course, their arrival marked the beginning of the end for us and everything we knew."

And so it was, although, as with everything in the complex tapestries that human lives weave for both good and ill, endings and beginnings are always tangled up with one another. Some of the things that ended, deserved to end: slavery; the institutionalized abduction and traffic in women; murderous eye-for-an-eye blood feuds that went on for generations. Some of the things that began, no one would forfeit for a golden age that never was. Today we boast of hospitals and health care; public education and great universities; democratic institutions that uphold human rights and a civil society that now strives, however imperfectly, to right the injustices of the past.

Whatever Fraser was in the world of the imagination, in the physical world of thundering white water, towering mountains, brutal winters and burning sun, starvation and thirst, he proved a remarkable force of courage, leadership, initiative and dedication.

He had just led his expedition  800 kilometres over terrain that would challenge the abilities of the best-trained military special forces unit today. For most of us, his accomplishments would simply be impossible. He completed his mission from present day Prince George to present day Vancouver and back in 71 days. He talked his men out of a near-disastrous mutiny when things appeared most bleak and brought every man for whom he was responsible home safely, negotiated the support of powerful Indian nations and, despite circumstances fraught with threats of violence, killed not one enemy.

Yet there's no doubt, either, that his story is also a bittersweet milestone in a narrative of transformation and transition. The permanent network of forts Fraser established west of the Rocky Mountains forever altered the economy and thus the lives of  the nations he had visited. The trade routes he explored down the river that bears his name launched the permanent state of commercial enterprise that would shape British Columbia. They became the transportation and staging infrastructure that made the Gold Rush of 1858 possible and from that infusion of sudden wealth came a new settler society.

Eventually, the fur trade which had eclipsed the hunting and gathering economies it encountered was surpassed in importance by the mining, fishing and forestry industries. These, in turn, were surpassed by the information age and the knowledge-based industries upon which it relies. Today the Lower Mainland is home to almost a dozen universities, colleges and technical schools. One of the universities bears Fraser's name, although his astounding exploits remain little known or understood by most British Columbians.

And yet, just like the giant Stalacom in the Tsawwassen story, as much as he was a harbinger of all that's good about the present, Simon Fraser was also a transformer, the herald for a future that would descend like a whirlwind to disrupt, destroy and dispossess the nations that once greeted him with such awe and trepidation.

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