7 Powerful Winds

Old trail remains

Significant sections of the old trail by which Fraser was led from Leon Creek to Lillooet are intact and can still be hiked. To find it, cross the Bridge River north of Lillooet and then take the West Pavilion Road. According to the Lillooet Naturalist Society, hikers intending to cover the whole trail should expect some rough going, take plenty of water and allow for about half a day's travel to cover the route both ways with a little extra time to savour some of the spectacular views of the river and its canyons.

The trail is ancient, possibly  one of the oldest human-made transportation features in British Columbia. At Keatly Creek, for example, about midway between Leon Creek and Lillooet, Simon Fraser University archaeologist Brian Hayden spent a decade excavating one village which extended more than a kilometre along the Fraser River and featured some of the largest pit house depressions found in western Canada.

The complex was inhabited in three phases reaching back 7,000 years. Its pit houses had been occupied for 4,000 years before the Shang dynasty arose in China, which should give pause to those who assume our history began with the Gold Rush, or even with Fraser's founding of New Caledonia.  Yet, after 6,000 years of occupation, the Keatly Creek site was abruptly abandoned about 1,100 years ago - one more mystery to be unraveled.

Approaching what's now Lillooet, Fraser's party camped at Bridge River, a stunningly beautiful place where people still gather at the rapids each summer to dipnet salmon and hang them on the racks, the rich, red flesh of wind-dried sockeye a vivid splash of colour on the drab desert browns.

The next morning he most probably crossed on the ingenious St'at'imc suspension bridge that was still there when two American miners tore it down, put up their own and began charging their fellow prospectors a 25-cent toll in 1858.

From Bridge River, Fraser continued to the forks of the Seton River and observed "the metropolis of the Askettih Nation," a well-fortified site on the east side of the river just across from Lillooet's present townsite.

The St'at'imc helpfully mapped the next section of the river for him. It was difficult and dangerous, they said, and they depicted another large river to the east running parallel to the Fraser River. This can only have been the Columbia and their knowledge of it serves to indicate how widely the Indians that later settlers considered "primitive" traveled and traded.

For example, although he was the first European to arrive at Lillooet, European trade goods had preceded him and he saw a new copper tea kettle and a large gun which he guessed was of Russian make.

Lucky find

At Lillooet, Fraser bartered a file and a kettle for 30 dried salmon and a canoe. The next day he obtained a second canoe for medicines he provided a sick man. The canoes must have seemed a godsend. The heaviest packs could travel by water while the rest of the party continued, still on foot but now traveling light.

Fraser's Secwepemc guides handed Fraser off to the St'at'imc chief, then slipped away home. The new guide agreed to lead the expedition to the next nation, whom Fraser called the Hacamaugh. These were the Thompson Indians of anthropological literature. They call themselves the Nlaka'pamux.

Once again I turned to Nick Doe's translation of John Stuart's meridian observation into contemporary navigational values and then used my handheld GPS to find the spot where it was taken. Fraser, the device confirmed, was in the vicinity of Texas Creek and traveling on the west bank of the river.

For me, Texas Creek and its spectacular canyon had a special interest. Daniel Boersma, a prospector at Lillooet, told me about a strange feature he'd found there while looking for jade boulders and provided directions.

"I was following a trail along an old bench on the north side of the creek," he said. "I found a large kikwillie [pit house] hole and while I was looking at it, I saw something unusual in the bush. Just above the river, I found a large stone fire circle.

"It's very, very old but it's not Indian, it looks European. I think it's too big for something left by miners [in 1858]. It's a size more appropriate to a brigade-sized group of 20 men or so [Fraser's party numbered 24 or more]. And here's the interesting thing, one of the stones has been pushed out of place by a tree that grew under it. From the size of that tree, it's probably 150 to 200 years old."

Unfortunately, as dirty weather became a deluge, with the creeks boiling and the muddy roads too slippery for my rental car to risk, I had to leave the  search for the fire circle for another day. However, Boersma's tale reminded me that there are plenty of mysteries surrounding Fraser's exploits, some of them creating conundrums even for the explorer. For example, what was the "sword of tremendous size made of sheet iron" he said was carried by one of the people he met near Texas Creek?

On June 16, another first encounter occurred as the two canoes proceeded downriver while Fraser and the rest of his party followed on land. A party of horsemen rode up. They were Nlaka'pamux. With them were two riders from another tribe. Fraser called them Suihonie and they were probably Shoshone, whose home territory was in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah. A Shoshone woman, Sacajawea, had been the guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition to the mouth of the Columbia in 1805.

"All were exceedingly well dressed in leather, and were on horseback," Fraser wrote. "They have a great quantity of shells and blue beads, and we saw a broken silver broach such as the Sauteus [a tribe from east of the Rockies] wear, among them. They were kind to us, and assisted us at the carrying place with their horses."

The description makes for poignant reading considering that the western Shoshone would be massacred in Utah by an American militia in 1862.

"The chief invited us to his quarters; his son, by his orders, served us upon a handsome mat, and regaled us with salmon and roots. Our men had some also, and they procured, besides, several Dogs which is always a favourite dish with the Canadian voyageurs," Fraser wrote of the Nlaka'pamux.

Not far from the site of the dog feast, I encountered Lloyd Stock, who lives on the banks of the Fraser close to where Stuart recorded his meridian observation. Stock took me out into his back yard, but not just to admire his prolific tomato plants.

He pointed to geological evidence of an immense landslide that had crossed the Fraser at Texas Creek about 1,100 years ago, in all likelihood damming the river - an impoundment, in scholarly language - and preventing the salmon from getting further up stream. Famine would certainly have followed.

There, written in the earth itself, Stock said, was a likely answer to the mystery of that abandoned village at Keatly Creek, just downstream from where I'd begun this leg of my journey in Simon Fraser's footsteps.

But like the explorer, I was impatient to get moving, so I said goodbye to Stock, his wife Gladys and her wonderful garden and pushed on past the Stein River to where Fraser arrived at a village of about 400 people.

"Some of them appear very old; they live among mountains, and enjoy pure air, seem cleanly inclined, and make use of wholesome food," Fraser wrote. "We had every reason to be thankful for our reception at this place; the Indians shewed us every possible attention and supplied our wants as much as they could. We had salmon, berries, oil and roots in abundance, and our men had six dogs. Our tent was pitched near the camp and we enjoyed peace and security during our stay."

The expedition had now reached present day Lytton or Camchin, as the Nlaka'pamux call the confluence of the Fraser River and its largest tributary, the Thompson - a river named by Fraser for his friend and colleague David Thompson, who was exploring its headwaters far to the east.

But if Fraser felt he could relax a bit with his new Nlaka'pamux friends on his journey to the sea, ahead lay the most difficult stretch of all - Hell's Gate and the Black Canyon.

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