Squamish people
The Squamish people are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Archaeological evidence shows they have lived in the area for more than a thousand years. In 2012, the Squamish Nation had 3,893 band members.
Their language is the Squamish language or Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim, considered a part of the Coast Salish languages, and is categorized as nearly extinct with just 10 fluent speakers as of 2010.
The traditional territory is within present-day southwestern British Columbia, Canada, and covers Point Grey as the southern border. From there, it extends northward to Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast, up the Howe Sound. The northern part includes the Squamish, Cheakamus, Elaho and Mamquam rivers. Up the Cheakamus River it includes land past Whistler, British Columbia. The southern and eastern part of their territory includes Indian Arm, along Burrard Inlet, through False Creek then English Bay and Point Grey. Today the Squamish people live mostly in seven communities, located in West Vancouver, North Vancouver, and within and nearby to the District of Squamish.
The Squamish people's history, culture, societal customs, and other knowledge were historically transmitted by oral tradition from generation to generation without a writing system. Today oral tradition continues to be a fundamental aspect of their traditional culture. This continued until European contact and diseases in 1791, which caused drastic changes to the people and culture. Charles Hill-Tout became the first European to document Squamish oral history in the early 1900s. Later, many anthropologists and linguists came to work with Squamish informants and elders to document Squamish culture and history. Although first recorded contact with Europeans happened with George Vancouver and José María Narváez in 1791–1792, disease had devastated much of the population before in the 1770s. For decades following, more diseases, including influenza, reduced the population significantly. Along with the influx of new foreigners, usurpation of their ancestral lands, and later policies of assimilation by the Canadian government, caused a significant shift in their culture, way of life, and society.
History
Oral tradition
transmits history, literature, law and other knowledges verbally across generations, without a writing system, and forms the basis for most of the Squamish people's history. The passing on of this history is regarded as the "duty of responsible elders". Those who possessed a great deal of knowledge were regarded as aristocrats. Like other Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the Squamish have stories of the "Transformer" brothers who went around the world transforming things and people. Other stories transmitted through generations are of ancestral characters doing things or involved in events. Oral tradition and history, including new events, continues to be passed on in this form to this day.Squamish oral history traces back to "founding fathers" of their people. An aged informant of the Squamish people named Mel̓ḵw's, said to be over 100 years old, was interviewed by Charles Hill-Tout in 1886. He recited oral history on the origins of the world, and talked about how "water was everywhere". But the tops of the mountains came out of the sea and land was formed. The first man to appear was named "X̱i7lánexw". He was given a wife, an adze, and a salmon trap. X̱i7lánexw and his wife populated the land and the Squamish descend from these ancestors. Dominic Charlie told a similar story in 1965 about the origins of his people.
Their oral history talks about the Great Flood also. In a story said to happen at Chʼiyáḵmesh, in the Squamish Valley, a man who survived the flood was walking down the river, feeling depressed about the loss of his people from the flood. Then the Thunderbird helped him and gave him food. He continued down the river, with his food gathered by the Thunderbird, when the Thunderbird told him where to stay, and that he would give him a wife. That is where the people of Chʼiyáḵmesh came from. In another story of the first ancestors, two men first appeared at and Sch’enḵ and Chekw’élhp, located at what is now known as Gibsons, British Columbia. The first man to appear here was Tseḵanchtn, then the second man appeared named Sx̱eláltn. The people repopulated the land with large families and many Squamish people claim descent from these ancestors.
Disease epidemics
During the 1770s, smallpox eradicated at least 30% of the Indigenous population on the Northwest coast of North America, including many Squamish. This disease was one of the most deadly to hit the region over the next 80 to 100 years. During the 80-year period from the 1770 to 1850, smallpox, measles, influenza, and other diseases killed many villages and communities. Surviving oral histories describe the 1770s epidemic. An "aged informant" of the Squamish, in the 1890s, related the history of a catastrophic illness to ethnographer Charles Hill-Tout. Since it is now known that smallpox is only carried by humans it is unclear whether the connection with the salmon was merely a coincidence, or if perhaps the illness described was not in fact smallpox. Regardless, Hill-Tout wrote:“ dreadful misfortune befell them. … One salmon season the fish were found to be covered with running sores and blotches, which rendered them unfit for food. As the people depended very largely upon these salmon for their winter’s food supply, they were obliged to catch and cure them as best they could, and store them away for food. They put off eating them till no other food was available, and then began a terrible time of sickness and distress. A dreadful skin disease, loathsome to look upon, broke out upon all alike. None were spared. Men, women, and children sickened, took the disease and died in agony by hundreds, so that when the spring arrived and fresh food was procurable, there was scarcely a person left of all their numbers to get it. Camp after camp, village after village, was left desolate. The remains of which, said the old man, in answer by my queries on this, are found today in the old camp sites or midden-heaps over which the forest has been growing for so many generations. Little by little the remnant left by the disease grew into a nation again, and when the first white men sailed up the Squamish in their big boats, the tribe was strong and numerous again”The epidemic of the 1770s was the first and the most devastating, with more to follow. During the next few decades, other damaging outbreaks would attack this area: a smallpox epidemic in 1800–01, influenza in 1836–37, measles in 1847–48, and smallpox again in the 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic.
European colonization and the Indian reserves
In 1792, the Squamish people had their first recorded contact with Europeans when British Captain George Vancouver and Spanish Captain Jose Maria Narvaez sailed into Burrard Inlet. European expansion during the fur trade boom, gold rush, along with the subsequent colonization policies by the Canadian government, ushered in a new way of life for the Squamish. In a few years, they had quickly fallen to a small minority, due to more disease, displacement from their land, and the rising European and Asian populations.In the early 19th century, Fort Langley was the Hudson's Bay Company's first major trading post. During this time, trade went on between the Squamish and Fort Langley. In 1858–59 the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush brought in more foreign settlers to the territory, but major settlement did not begin until after the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, bringing more foreigners from eastern Canada. During construction of the railway, the treaty process by the Canadian government attempted to settle land issues across the Prairies.
The Squamish were the subject of intensive missionary efforts and the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia described the Squamish as "almost entirely Catholic".
In 1876 the Indian Act was passed and the Joint Indian Reserve Commission, cordoned off plots of land or Indian reserves, designating Native communities to specific areas. These reserves were managed and controlled by Indian agents from the Department of Northern and Indian Affairs. At the time, numerous reserves were plotted out from already-existing village sites, and then chiefs were assigned to preside over each reserve.
Around the same time, some reserve lands were sold away from their respective families and chiefs, both illegally and legally. One instance of this was the case of Kitsilano Indian Reserve, the location of which was Sen̓áḵw. Portions of this reserve were expropriated, both in 1886 and 1902. Families were forced into leaving, and promised payment for the "sale". The families who lived in the village were placed on a barge and sent out to sea, with the intent for them to move up to the Squamish River area. It was not until 1923 that the reserve chiefs amalgamated into becoming the singular Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw to manage all their reserves.
In 1906, a delegation of chiefs from British Columbia traveled to London to seek an audience with King Edward VII regarding the land confiscated by the government of Canada under the reserve system. Joe Capilano traveled along with Cowichan Chief Charley Isipaymilt and Shuswap Chief Basil David, but their requests to see the King were denied.
Geography
The vegetation of the Squamish people's homeland is a dense temperate rainforest, formed mainly of conifers with a spread of maple and alder, as well as large areas of swampland. The evergreen trees are a typical British Columbia coastal mix of Douglas fir, Western red cedar and Western Hemlock. The largest trees of old growth forest were located around Burrard Inlet, the slopes of Sen̓áḵw and the area presently known as False Creek. This abundance in natural resources fueled the Squamish people's affluent culture.Traditional Squamish territory extends over 673,540 hectares. Squamish settled more permanently into Burrard Inlet to work in the mills and trade with settlers during the mid-1800s. This southern areas of the Indian Arm, along Burrard Inlet, through False Creek then English Bay and Point Grey now serve as the contested southern boundary. Traditionally Squamish would have passed Point Atkinson and Howe Sound as far as Point Grey. From here, it moved northward to Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast and up Howe Sound. The northern part included Squamish, Bowen Island, and the Cheakamus, Elaho and Mamquam Rivers. Up the Cheakamus River Squamish territory included land past Whistler, British Columbia.
Squamish territory also overlapped with the territories of neighboring Indigenous peoples. The territory is shared between the territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh to the south, and the Lil'wat to the north. These neighbouring peoples also have Squamish language names. The Tsleil-Waututh are Sel̓íl̓witulh, the Shishalh are the Shishá7lh, the Musqueam are Xwmétskwiyam, and the Lil'wat are Lúx̱wels. Roberts Creek is considered the border between the Squamish territory and Shishalh's. The Squamish are culturally and historically similar, but are politically different from their kin, the Tsleil-Waututh. Through family inter-marriage and the land rights that often came with it, many places for resource gathering were also shared.
Vancouver and adjacent municipalities are located within traditional Squamish territory, making the Squamish one of the few Indigenous peoples in Canada to have communities in or near metropolitan areas. Of the 673,540 hectares their traditional territory encompasses, currently less than 0.5% is reserve land allotted to the Squamish Nation. It is on these reserves that most of the current Squamish communities exist.