Story of the Squamish People: Story from 1800 to 1900

By Kultsia and T'Uy'T Tanat

The occurrence of the ice age left BC, Canada approximately 20,000 centuries ago. Scientific research estimates that the earth’s orbit and carbon dioxide helped end the ice age. The rising of carbon dioxide helped raise ocean levels which raised sea levels. All of these actions helped end the ice age. As the glaciers melted, plant life resurged; animals began the migration north, sea life emerged. People followed life forms north; they began to search for the lands they had heard of in legends and stories passed down by the ancestors. In the migration north in search of food; freedom to live life in peace and harmony and live in a mild climate, Squamish ancestors continued their search over several generations. Some people settled in North West area of the United States. Young people developed a wanderlust, and a large group continued north.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jan 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781490799070

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Copyright 2020 Kultsia.

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ISBN: 978-1-4907-9908-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9907-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019921221

Trafford rev. 01/18/2020

STORY OF THE

SQUAMISH PEOPLE

Story from 1800 to 1900

June 11, 2019

KULTSIA

Contents

Acknowledgement

FOREWORD

Volume 2: The Squamish People of the Coast Salish

Small pox – first sign of foreigners

Results

The Squamish people

The Feast

Khahtsalanogh

Early 1800s

The fur trade era

Squamish women: the untold story

Fur trading post

Volume 3: Squamish Nation History

Fort Langley

1840 the whaling industry sets up in Vancouver.

Fraser River gold rush

James Douglas

Christianity era starts

Forestry and longshoring

Chief Snatt

Industrial era

Formation of Canada

Settlement at Ustlahn

Fishing resource

Indian residential school era

Capilano Joe

Louis Miranda

Andrew Paull

Chief Dan George

Acknowledgement

Researched and written by Barbara Wyss. This book is dedicated to indigenous women of the Squamish Nation. They are the first women of this land and have been forgotten. Amongst those women I would like to acknowledge are Mary See-em-ia Eihu-Nahinu and Aunty Effie, also known as Ethel Cecilia Seger, nee Nahanee. Effie was my major link to my personal knowledge of the stories and facts about Kanaka Ranch, another publication I researched and wrote, is based on. They inspired me to continue digging into and researching more about our pre-contact roots and stories.

I thank my family for their invaluable help in finishing this book. Edited by my children: Yvonne, Cease, Warren, and many others. I especially would like to acknowledge Kelly Kethler for her invaluable help in typing and clerical assistance. The stories in this book have been collected from many sources, both written and verbal. The Squamish people have been interviewed by historians, anthropologists, archeologists, scientists, storytellers and people generally interested in recording historical information.

FOREWORD

This incredible book that is layered with stories written from a truly heartfelt storytelling perspective. Kultsia - Barbara Wyss has combined true facts that she researched through her community colleagues and family’s stories and blended those facts into characters she developed over several years of imagining and through dreaming them into existence. Kultsia chose this form of writing in order to animate the time periods and to bring the ambience of that time into a more realistic format. She spent years attempting to locate names of various people and was frustrated with a lack of names of people whose lives she imagined. The decision to create characters helped her to share stories of the immense timeline from post Ice-Age to our current timeline.

Through these characters, the readers are going to feel a sense of visiting that era of pre-colonial times through to the point of contact with European explorers and settlers. She has written a series of stories that will bring more clarity to both indigenous as well as settlers views and assumptions, about what our way of life was prior to contact and how quickly everything changed for indigenous peoples here in our lands and waters.

These stories bring many realizations to how much of our natural resources existed at that point of contact, and how within a short timeframe everything changed, and not all for the better. There were elements that helped indigenous peoples, but there were far too many losses in our natural world that birthed and nurtured us for centuries.

There are the stories of Matriarchs and Warriors, as well as children and young folks, and the Elders of our community. This story comes from Kultsia, through her matriarchs, her aunties and grandmothers, her father, uncles and cousins, as well as respected leaders and knowledge keepers of the