The mystery of the Stuwix - an Athapaskan or Chinookan peopleamongst the Secx'emc (fwd)

[Mike Cleven]

David Robertson wrote:
>
> Hayu mersi, Dell; khanawi-lhaksta, according to a book on (Montana Salish)
> legends of the northern Rockies, there are old stories of a people who
> came from the ocean, up the Columbia and perhaps the Snake River, and
> settled among the Selish.  They are reported to have had powerful canoes,
> a strange language, and flat heads.  They were "not Su-appi [suyepi,
> 'Whites'] and not true Indians."  The arrival of these "Mystery People"
> predated that of Whites by a long time; "when the first Su-appi came, they
> saw with the Salish a few old Mystery men with flat heads."  The Mystery
> People knew of traveling by sailboat.
>
> Sounds a little like Chinooks, maybe, amd their women are said to have
> been Coast Indians.  But these men did insist that their forefathers came
> from across the Pacific Ocean.
>
> I have heard that the Salish also talk about the "stupid people".  The
> word is...um.../smtew's/, "stupid; uncivilized; a lost tribe of Indians
> occurring in legends", and while I'm checking the dictionary, I'd like to
> mention that the (Spokane) Salish word for whale (!) is /smtus/.  Hmm.
> Lastly, I will wonder whether somebody older and wiser knows if these
> folks were /stIk shawash/, Salish /sc'weney'ti/, "Stick Indians".

Stuwix => stick, maybe??  Unlikely, but in intriguing connection.
Weren't there (or aren't there) also the Seahtic Indians from whence the
backwoods-people 'stick' term might have come from.

The region the Stuwix were in was certainly isolated, well-walled to the
southwest by dense mountains and hidden within a network of amenable
highland valleys just in the rainshadow of the last Cascades; but I
think the context of "stick Indian" comes from the early fur trade
jargon, therefore from the lower Columbia and Fraser where "stick" meant
the bush, i.e. the wilderness; the country of the Stuwix was completely
unknown in those days; white exploration and settlement of the upper
Similkameen and Tulameen region didn't really take place until after
1885, although Douglas Lake Ranch was established in the early years of
the Colony (the early 1860s, I think) and the Nicola-Coldwater Country
was well-known to the fur trade employees, this being the original route
from Fort Langley to New Caledonia before the development of the Lakes
Route and the Fraser Canyon.

The culture/language/claims maps show the Nlaka'pamux (including the
Sce'exmx) national claim as overlapping the border, taking in some of
Washington State in the region north of Lake Chelan; from the summit of
Manning Park eastward almost to the Similkameen, the southern limit of
their territory extending what must be forty or fifty (or more?) miles
into the US.  Are there any Nlaka'pamux people in this region?  I can't
say I can think of many roads or towns on the map, other than Chelan and
Stehekin if they're even geographically close.  Otherwise this is one of
those great untenables; when the Nlaka'pamux peoples finally legitimize
the sovereignty of their claims on the region, there might have to be an
interesting international legal case to determine whether the 1846
Oregon Treaty boundary was valid in the context of existing
jurisdictions . . . ;-)  oh, if I were a lawyer...... ;-)