St'át'imc Historical Timeline

1754

During this summer, the first recorded encounter with Europeans was that of the Haida who allowed the crew of Spanish navigator Juan Perez to disembark upon their territory. A few years later, the Nuu-Chah-Nulth of Nootka Sound allowed British explorer James Cook to spend a number of weeks with them to trade European goods for sea otter furs while his crew made repairs to his ship.

1792

There were twenty one ships engaged in trade, most being British. The maritime trade had begun.

1807

Four new trading forts had been established only a few hundred kilometres up the Fraser River from Upper St'át'imc territory.

1808

In the spring the Northwest Company hired a young explorer named Simon Fraser to chart a course from Fort George down a river [that many Europeans then mistakenly believed was the Columbia River] to the Pacific ocean.

1808

On June 14, the Upper St'át'imc chiefs held a meeting upon Fraser's arrival at Sat'.

1812

Following Simon Fraser's journey, the Northwest Company established a new route which followed the Thompson River up to Fort Kamloops.

1821

The Hudson's Bay Company assumed control of the posts formerly owned by the North West Company.

1840s

The Hudson's Bay Company considered establishing a shipping route through St'át'imc territory from Fort Langley to their interior posts.

1842

The first missionary to visit the Úcwalmicw of the interior was Father Modeste Demers, a Roman Catholic priest. He stayed in Williams Lake during the Winter.

1845

Another Catholic missionary, Father John Nobili, travelled into the Cariboo where he stayed for two years in attempt to establish missions among the Carrier, Secwápmec and Tsilhqotin Nations.

1847

A scout sent to assess the route, warned of large St'át'imc settlements along the Fraser River and of great gatherings at Fountain where, he reported, four to five thousand Native people met each autumn.

mid 1800s

Trade relations with the Chilcotin (Psxíxnem) to the north began after the two nations reached a peace agreement.

early 1850s

Small amounts of gold had begun to be traded by Úcwalmicw traders at the Hudson's Bay forts.

1858

The Upper St'át'imc territory was invaded by thousands of miners seeking gold in Lillooet district and beyond. This invasion brought hunger and starvation to the Upper St'át'imc. Salmon runs which had failed for the year prior, failed again that year and then the next.

1858

A new colonial government was introduced on the mainland.

1858

Hundreds of Upper St'át'imc reportedly died of starvation during winter.

1859

The Upper St'át'imc appealed to Chief Justice M.B. Begbie to defend the rights of their people.

1859

The Upper St'át'imc faced another winter of starvation when the salmon runs failed again.

1860s

The Oblates had established a network of missions extending up the Fraser River from St. Mary's at Mission to St. Joseph's at William's Lake.

1860

In August, the Colonial Governor promised Upper St'át'imc leaders that their rights, as members of the British Commonwealth, would be upheld under British Law.

1861

The colonial government passed a law that claimed all of the Upper St'át'imc territory for the colony of British Columbia.

1862

Academics have traced the introduction of the smallpox epidemic to a sailor who arrived in Victoria in March.

1862

In early December, the first cases of smallpox were discovered in the Lillooet district, all carried by men who had just arrived from the Cariboo.

1863

The Upper St'át'imc were visited by the first Oblate missionary.

1863

With the completion of the Cariboo wagon road, miners and freighters began to travel up the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, by passing Cayoose Lillooet and using Ashcroft as the new staging grounds instead.

1864

Governor Douglas departed from office. By this time very little land of the Upper St'át'imc had been protected. Early reserves for the Upper St'át'imc were supposed to be laid out by the magistrate at Lillooet in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Governor Douglas had instructed his local officials, to stake out and reserve for their [Upper St'át'imc] use and benefit, all their occupied village sites and cultivated fields and as much land in the vicinity of each as they could till, or was required for their support.

1866

Úcwalmicw are prohibited from pre-empting land. Settlers are allowed to pre-empt up to 320 acres.

1867

The hotels, stores and stables at Cayoose which had been filled a few years earlier with the second largest non Native population north of San Francisco were deserted.

1870s

The people of Bridge River constructed a flume to water their farms.

1871

The Dominion government assumed the responsibilities of the Crown toward aboriginal nations. They wanted reserve size to be set at 80 acres per family. The Province, however, insisted upon 10 acres as a maximum allowance.

1871

Pasture leases are extended only to settlers who hold current pre-emption records. Some pasture leases cover tens of thousands of acres.

1876

A single piece of legislation called the Indian Act brought together a series of laws made by the Canadian Government during the late nineteenth century that were designed to regulate the land and affairs of Úcwalmicw in Canada. The laws were applied to Úcwalmicw in British Columbia for the first time in the 1880s.

1880s -1890s

Other Upper St'át'imc communities built extensive irrigation structures for farming purposes.

1880

The province had grounded the work of the Reserve Commission by refusing to recognize the authority of the head commissioner, Gilbert Sproat, to allot certain reserves and water rights.

1881

By this time, members of Pavilion band owned 140 horses, Fountain had 270, Lillooet had 133 and Bridge River had 114. Horses were used for practical purposes; but like today, they also signified the status and wealth of their owners.

1881

The Commission renewed its work and the original commissioners were removed. The brother in law of Joseph Trutch, Peter O'Reilly, was appointed their sole replacement.

1881

By this time, churches had been built in most Upper St'át'imc communities: Cácl'ep, Ts'k'wáylacw, Nxwísten, T'ít'q'et, Sék'wel'was, Slha7ús, Tsal'álh, Nqayt and Nk'wátkwa.

1883

Chief Tsil.húsalst and several members of the Fountain band purchased 160 acres from rancher Joseph Italian. (Lot 37)

1883 -1884

During this winter an Indian Agent first visited Upper St'át'imc communities. Over the next few decades, the Agent, who was based north of Upper St'át'imc territory and whose duties involved travelling throughout the Cariboo usually only visited once a year.

1899

Beginning this year, some of the children who lived near the town of Lillooet were allowed to attend the public school there.

1903

The Provincial Fisheries Department constructed a hatchery on the east end of Seton Lake, placing a weir across the mouth of Portage Creek to catch salmon as they returned to Seton Lake to spawn.

1904

Chief Louis of the Secwápmec Nation and Chief Chillihitza of the Okanagan Nation travelled together to England to present their grievances to King Edward VII.

1905

A hunting permit system, introduced by the provincial government, restricted the ability of Upper St'át'imc men to provide adequate deer meat to feed their families.

1906

A second delegation of chiefs, this time representing both the interior and the Coastal Nations, again travelled to England to present their request for a treaty.

1906

The people of Cácl'ep [Fountain] petitioned the government to protect their lands that had not been reserved by O'Reilly.

1907

The Tswán'am'c and Secwápmec nations hired a lawyer to counsel them in their case, while various petitions were organized among the nations of the interior and the coast.

1908

The Lillooet public school closes down.

1908

The Upper St'át'imc sent their grievances to Ottawa in trust of Chief Basile of the Bonaparte Band, a Secwápmec leader who had travelled in the delegation to England in 1906.

1908

Úcwalmicw are prohibited from purchasing land.

1910

Upper St'át'imc Chiefs and Secwápmec Chiefs in the vicinity of the Fraser River met with special Commissioner John McDougall at Pavilion, Fountain and Bonaparte.

1910

The federal government under Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier began to take steps to allow the question of aboriginal title.

1910

Increased settlement and restrictive laws were beginning to limit St'át'imc movement through the land.

1911

All the people of the St'át'imc nation affirmed their united commitment to the treaty rights movement through a declaration.

1912

The Pacific Great Eastern Railway announced that it would be building its line through the town of Lillooet.

1912

The Indian Agent at Lytton observed: In the first place it costs them [the parents] about $10.00 to get them to a school at Mission, then they have to give them a complete new outfit of clothes, blankets, etc. and besides this every little while they have to send down $10.00 for each child. Now a man [i.e., a family] that has two or three children claims that he cannot possible (sic) afford to send them under those conditions.

1912

Laurier's Liberal government was replaced by Robert Borden's Conservatives.

1913

Construction of the railway began without Upper St'át'imc consent.

1913

The Pacific Great Eastern Railway was built through the middle of Lot 37.

1913

The influx of settlers which followed the railway pushed Upper St'át'imc off land that they used for farming, livestock grazing and hunting.

1913

A major land slide caused by railway construction in the Fraser Canyon near Hell's Gate blocked the passage of salmon on their annual migration to spawn up river.

1914

Upper St'át'imc salmon trade began to be restricted by the government.

1914

The Chief of T'ít'q'et (Lillooet IR 1.), James Ngitásq'et, told the government commission: We have been expecting you for some time. It has been quite a while since we were talking to you about our Treaty and we are very glad that you have come over to see us here. All the other Indian Chiefs are here to see [you] about the Treaty. We have been asking for a long time that our rights be settled and that is the main thing that we want to settle and all the other things come behind. Our friends the whites they have been taking our lands away from us and there is nothing left to us and everything that we use they stop us from using it. We think we have a right to claim our rights in this country because we owned the country before the whites came to this country.

1914

Chief Peter of the Seton Lake band spoke to the Royal Commission: The whites, they corral the fish down at the end of the lake the hatchery people I mean they don't allow the sockeye to come up. When the salmon comes up to the weirs, they pound their heads up to their eyes and they die. The salmon are not increasing at all. Now when there was no hatchery the salmon used to run up here on these lakes and spawn in their spawning grounds and every year they used to be so thick that if you threw a stone across the lake, the rock would not go down; and then I guess God made it that way for the fish to run up on all the lakes and creeks. Down there at the hatchery I know where the eggs were not ready to come out from the mother and when they tried to raise the little eggs the little fish also died. Since they built the hatchery we have noticed that the fish are getting scarcer and scarcer.

1914

Until now, the Upper St'át'imc freely traded salmon to white settlers and merchants in exchange for store bought items such as flour, tea, salt, sugar and tobacco.

1915

Chief Thomas Adolph wrote to the Department of Indian Affairs: "Lot 37, Reserve 3 is very valuable as agricultural land. The [Railway] cut it practically in two pieces and consequently destroys a large portion of said Lot 37. A large part of said Lot is lost to us by construction of the [Rail Road]. We think it is only just that we should be paid for the land taken the [railway company] as it seems to us that our Agent Mr. Graham is taking very little interest in our welfare in this matter."

1916

When the P.G.E. railway's right of way and station went through, it destroyed the best cultivated lands on the Cayoose Creek reserve [No.1]. Not able to trust the Indian Agent to help him, Chief Jean Baptiste hired lawyers instead to force the government to obtain proper compensation for his people. The issue was also brought to the direct attention of senior government officials through an Indian Rights Association delegation that visited Ottawa.

1917

The Lawyer for Cayoose Creek Band wrote: "It is a poor reserve at the best of times and from what I saw yesterday the Railway Company more or less entirely destroyed it including their roads in and out."

1917

Chief Jean Baptiste wrote to the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs: One fact remains incontrovertible: we have been robbed of our land and have not received recompense. We get no assistance from [Indian Agent] Mr. Graham; what help can you give us. My people all feel that they have a grievance and are sore that no effort is being made by the department to assist them. Surely something can be done to help us out.

1920s

The Department of Indian Affairs had yet failed to deter Úcwalmicw leaders in their determination to find justice.

mid 1920s

The Department of Indian Affairs required all Upper St'át'imc Chiefs to make a signed declaration of obedience to the Indian Agent and the laws he represented.

1922

DIA converted Lot 37 into a reserve, "subject to the terms of the Indian Act". In previous years, band members had requested the government to purchase the land and convert it into reserve. Yet, when the conversion eventually took place, the owners of lot 37 were not consulted, nor were they paid for the land in question.

1923

Adoption and implementation of the Ditchburn Clark Agreement..

1927

The government passed a law, section 141 of the Indian Act, that banned Úcwalmicw from raising funds for the purpose of pursuing land claims. The law was not to be repealed until 1951.

1929

In a petition, the Upper St'át'imc of Seton Lake told the Superintendent of Indian Affairs why they wanted a boarding school built in their territory.

1930s

Without a legal avenue to pursue their case, the Upper St'át'imc turned to the economic challenges which their communities began to face.

1950s

The authoritarian influence of the Department of Indian Affairs increased.

1960

The Úcwalmicw were allowed to vote in Canadian elections.

1969

The federal government proposed a renewed effort at assimilating the Úcwalmicw; the Upper St'át'imc leaders were at the forefront in protesting this attack on their rights.

mid 1970s

The Indian Agency system was abolished and Tribal Councils were formed as Úcwalmicw began to regain the right and powers to run their own affairs.

1980

The original colonial system was nearly abandoned and the movement to regain self government was gathering momentum.

1982

The Canadian constitution was amended to protect "existing aboriginal rights."

1991

Aboriginal title was finally recognized by the Government.