Here's one for ya....

[Lisa Peppan]

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM> writes:

>The Qw'ó:ntl'an people had many ties with Fort Langley, who also used
this area to
>make wooden staves for their barrels.

They certainly did.  <BIG grin>  I draw breath because great great
granddaddy Pepin -- a Fort Langley blacksmith -- took a shine to a
Kwantlen woman named Isabelle in 1830.

>Any clues on Xwéwenaqw?  I don't know any Halqemeylem, but when I had a
go at >pronouncing that I was instantly reminded of the hordes of geese
and gulls and other >birds that swarm the lower Stave, and did even
moreso in the old days when the >fishery >was still rich and the river
undisturbed by industry.  Could Xwéwenaqw be >onomatopaeic in some way,
perhaps?

Well, now, this book I have in my hand (Fort Langley Journals: 1827-1830
by Morag MacLachlan), may offer some clues.  And I quote:

"A spread up river [from their original home on the Fraser River at what
became New Westminster] may have become possible because the area had
become vacant.  The site where the fort was built in 1827, which later
came to be called Derby, had earlier been the village of a tribe whose
territory on the Fraser included Kanaka Creek and the Salmon River and
extended southward to include the Serpentine and Nicomekl rivers and the
eastern shore of Boundary Bay*.  The Derby people , like those of several
other villages in the region, had been largely wiped out by smallpox some
time earlier (probably during the epidemic of the 1770s), leaving their
territory to be taken over by tribes with ties of kinship to them."

*The site of the first fort was evidently called _snak/w/emel_ (Hill-Tout
in Maud 1978:3:68; Duff 1952:27), from which snek/w/emalel, the Semiahmoo
name (hence the English) for the Nicomekl River, is derived.  Hill-Tout
gave as the name of the tribe what appears to be a plural of the name of
the village; however, in the 1940s my Semiahmoo-Lummi consultant, Julius
Charles, and in the 1950s my Katzie source, Simon Pierre (Suttles
1955:52), identified this tribe with a name that may be anglicized
"Snokomish."  This name must be the source of "Snugumish," which McKelvie
(1991:52) implies is the  Native name for the site of the first fort.
There were also at least three small groups on the north bank of the
Fraser above the site of the fort, at Whonnock, Stave River, and Hatzic,
that were earlier or later absorbed by the Kwantlen.

Maud 1978:3:68 = Ralph Maud, ed, 1978.  The Salish People: The Local
Contribution of Charles Hill-Tout.  Vancouver: Talon Books

Duff 1952:27 = Wilson Duff.  1952.  The Upper Stalo Indians of the Fraser
Valley, British Columbia.  In _Anthropologist_ 41:55-64 (reprinted in
McFeat 1966, 134-46)

McFeat 1966, 134-46 = Tom McFeat, ed.  1966.  Indians of the North
Pacific Coast.  Toronto: McClelland and Stewart (reprinted Seattle:
University of Washington Press 1967)

Suttles 1955:52 = Wayne Suttles.  1955.  Katzie ethnographic notes.  In
_Anthropology in British Columbia Memoirs_.  Vol 2.  Victoria: Provincial
Museum.

McKelvie 1991:52 = B.A. McKelvie.  1991.  Fort Langley: Birthplace of
British Columbia.  Victoria: Porcepic Books

Lisa Peppan
lisapeppan at juno.com
http://members.tripod.com/~LisaPeppan/index.html
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