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Description
OUR FIVE-METRE RIVERBOAT LURCHES THROUGH THE RAPIDS AS WE APPROACH THE FRASER CANYON. THE SPECTRAL OUTLINE OF LADY FRANKLIN ROCK MATERIALIZES THROUGH LAYERS OF LOW-HANGING MIST AS WE ROUND A SHARP RIVER BEND; BEYOND THIS POINT, THE COAST AND CASCADE MOUNTAINS SQUEEZE THE FRASER RIVER INTO A NARROW, SNAKING CHASM OF WHITE WATER.
"Our name for this spot is Hem' eleq," says Sonny McHalsie, a member of the Sto:lo Nation and staff cultural advisor. He motions behind us where, even in the low water of early November, the river seems to boil. "The name means 'getting swallowed in the waves,' and is a place where coastal raiders unfamiliar with the river could get trapped in the whirlpools."
The coastal raiders McHalsie speaks of were the Lekwiltok, enemies of the Sto:lo from British Columbia's central coast. They paddled war canoes up the Fraser River to steal dried salmon and slaves from seven Sto:lo villages that thrived here prior to the first European-introduced smallpox epidemic of 1782.
Dave Schaepe, an archaeologist employed by the Sto:lo Nation, directs our riverboat pilot Mike James to a landing site on the river's east side. Towering above the sloped shoreline is a wall of loosely stacked rock; some stones are more than a metre long and weigh a quarter tonne or more. The wall stands adjacent the ancient village site of Xelhalh.
"Rock structures of this kind are very rare in Sto:lo territory and the entire Gulf of Georgia cultural region," says Schaepe. "Using stone as a building material is not something Northwest Coast aboriginal peoples often did."
This is one of five interconnected fortifications that Schaepe, McHalsie, and historian Keith Thor Carlson have identified along a seven-kilometre stretch of the lower Fraser Canyon. Combining their expertise in archaeology, oral history, and ethnohistory, the three have been studying the rock walls since 1998, probing the significance of these features. They believe the walls were part of a complex, intercommunity defence system, designed to protect the Sto:lo from frequent violent raids that occurred into the mid-1800s.
"Scholarly literature on the Coast Salish suggests that there was... |
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