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Paul Kane, FALLS at COLVILLE,  1847_edited_edited_edited_edited_edited.jpg

SHONITKWU   ON UPPER   COLUMBIA

FALLS AT COLVILLE  by Paul Kane, 1847, courtesy of Royal Ontario Museum  (ROM), Toronto, Ontario, CANADA

   The 9,000 year old Interior Salish seasonal fishery culture at Shonitkwu ["roaring or noisy waters"] was impacted between 1811-1871 by Canadian-English-American commercial trading and Euro-Chinese-American mineral interests which came to be amongst the geography of the Upper Columbia River's tributary watershed.  Other then some anthropological and millennially carbon-dated archaeological findings from the 1970s, this native fishing culture lacks an indigenous written historic record before this timeframe.  The anthropological-historic research bases for this blog site consequently relies on Can-Am-Anglo history records, journals, letters, books, maps and art of this 60-year timeframe.   

 

The below elements are historically key to this timeframe's chronology and are utilized to structure this blog site.  Each element contributed to the relatively sudden transformation of the culture and its on-going future of these nomadic indigenous natives.  What had been for millennia a revered and sustainable cultural dependence on seasonal fish migrations became less and less able to continue to do so as quantities of migrating fish diminished seasonally and a century later, downriver hydroelectric dams began being constructed: 

  • FISH 

  • METIS 

  • FUR  

  • G0D

  • BOUNDARY 

  • G*LD 

  • FORT 

  • SETTLEMENT

  • RETAILERs

  • RESERVATION

  • DAMs

 

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CONTACT

Thank you for your interest in Colvile.  If you have a question or seek further historic information, please send an e-mail of inquiry to: 

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