ETEC 511

Shawna Jensen
January 16, 2022
Truth and Reconciliation Assignment

I have chosen to discuss an article provided by The Great Unsolved Mysteries of

Canadian History in “Nobody Knows Him: Lhatŝ’aŝʔin and the Chilcotin War”, as well as make

connected to additional news articles that are present on the site. Located under the subheading

“journal articles,” in the Archives tab, the “Homatcho,” or “The Story of the Bute Inlet

Expedition, and the Massacre by the Chilcoaten Indians,” is a first-hand recollection of events

between 1862 and late 1863. In particular, the article highlights a European surveying party

getting the lay of the land in prospect of creating a route between the Bute Inlet and the Cariboo

Gold Mines. I chose this particular piece of text because it was the only journal article resource

and I was slightly familiar with the site as I had used it a few years ago during my teaching

practicum. I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit and analyze its place in teaching

about Indigenous peoples and BC history. The site is set up for exploration and for the user to

investigate why both sides of the eventual conflict acted the way they did. “The Story of the Bute

Inlet Expedition, and the Massacre by the Chilcoaten Indians,” is an article that creates a

particular type of picture of the Tŝilhqot’in First Nation in comparison to the Homatcho and a

few other First Nations groups in the area. Additionally, this source and subsequent others are all

told from the perspective of the Europeans, which is another issue that needs to be considered

when studying BC history.

 Q1: Immediately after a quick browse of this resource and its subsequent site I noticed that there

were a number of ways that “Tŝilhqot’in” was spelled. Therefore my question is, why are there

multiple spelling choices and in which contexts are they used?

What I ended up doing was searching the general tabs on the site for these terms and then

the one article that I chose because there were too many additional sources to click on and

explore.

Term Indian Indigenous Aboriginal First Native Tŝilhqot’in Chilcoaten Chilcotin

Nations

Counts 69 on site 1 on site 13 on site 0 on site 2 on site 103 on site 14 on site 59 on site
22 in 0 in article 0 in article 0 in 2 in 0 in article 12 in article 0 in
article article article article

Total 91 1 13 0 4 103 26 59

So the 3 terms that I added are all pronounced the same but spelt differently and the reason I did

this is to highlight the misunderstanding of language. The numbers recorded are exclusive of

each other. The first term that I added is the way that the Tŝilhqot’in nation correctly spells its

name, however, this is not one of the ways it is spelt on the page with my chosen article. If you

explore the rest of the site, the site author has correctly spelt the nation’s name for all the

background and additional information provided. Chilcoaten and Chilcotin are very similar and

relate to the phonetic ways that Tŝilhqot’in is pronounced and how that would have been written

by English settlers.

Q2: There are two main First Nations groups discussed in the article, the Tŝilhqot’in and the

Xwémalhkwu or Homalco (Homatchos as they are named in the article), and there are also a

number of bands and additional First Nations that area also mentioned. How are these groups
described and what are the attributes that the European author, Frederick John Saunders, chooses

to highlight?

● The Xwémalhkwu tribes were described in a more positive light because they were

friendly and more civilized “ by donning, what seemed to be, second-hand soldiers’

uniform of no nationality in particular”. Some were noted to also be wearing face paint,

which Saunders thinks is both strange and interesting

○ The Klahoose Tribe is described to have “a fair degree of intelligence, and are

willing workers; these tribes are all Roman Catholics and appear to be faithful to

their Creed.”

○ At the end of the journey, once they have all returned to the BC Coast, the

Xwémalhkwu are described as friends.

● When Saunders describs the Tŝilhqot’in First Nations people he meets, he believes that

they are troublesome and very different from the Nations they had interacted with before.

Here’s his description of their appearance: “their clothing was decidedly scant; their

features were haggard, describing almost a hungry look. Some wore rings in their noses,

and their faces frightfully bedaubed with paint; the youngest men tying up their hair in a

brush-like fashion at the side of the head, adding more to their peculiar appearance. They

are of the medium height, and speak much in the same twang as the Chinese.”

○ In a recollection about a massacre the Tŝilhqot’in committed on another First

Nation group in the region, Saunders describes them as savage and “are a dirty,

thriftless lot, and many have to follow the chase with bow and arrow.”
 ○ The members of the Tŝilhqot’in members accompanying the surveying party are

also caught stealing, which provides more opportunity to paint them in a negative

light.

Report the results (and limitations) of your search, and your analysis of those results.

My first question and the terms searched provides a more broad look at the site where the

primary source is found. “Indian” was used the most on the names of documents, which would

have stemmed from when they were written and were not changed over time. In the article the

term is used twenty-two times, usually in place of where a name would go. The only First

Nations people who are named are the Chiefs who help out the Europeans, as I assume they are

the only ones Saunders deemed important enough to know the name of. I hypothesize this

because I noticed that all of the Europeans who were a part of the party were formally named

every time they were mentioned. The term “Aboriginal” is chosen to discuss all groups as a

whole, which I thought was interesting because “Indigenous” is what I think is the preferred term

in this context. As for the terms that I added in my search, “Tŝilhqot’in” is used correctly

throughout the site for summaries of events and in descriptions that were not otherwise naming

primary sources that are found on the site. The use of “Chilcotin” is in the titles of a lot of

sources, as well as a plateau and the war with its name, whereas “Chilcoaten” is used on journal

article and Newspaper titles. I think that it is interesting that there were two different spellings

for these and I was unable to find a reason why. My best guess is that this term was written by

different people who heard the word and wrote down their interpretations of how it was spelt and

both have stuck through time in different places.

 A major part of this assignment is to see how Indigenous groups are perceived, so in

question two I looked more closely at the ways the First Nations are described in the journal

article. There was a significant difference in the way that the Xwémalhkwu and the Tŝilhqot’in

people were described, with one group being predominantly favoured. The title is even a

testament to this since it unfairly chooses to highlight the Tŝilhqot’in’s massecre, but the event is

just mentioned and briefly described in the article. In the description of both Nations’

appearances there is a use of face paint, but Saunders calls the Xwémalhkwu use of paint as

interesting, whereas he describes the Tŝilhqot’in use of paint as frightening. They are also

contrasted as civilized and savage because of the ways they live their lives. The Xwémalhkwu

are favoured because they have begun to adopt Europeans practices and dress, of which we do

not know if totally forced upon them or if they did so on their own accord. The Tŝilhqot’in had

had less interaction with the Europeans but they are also not interested in conforming to their

ways, which most Europeans would not have liked.

Overall, it is important to note that a lot of the primary and secondary sources alongside

this one journal article that I looked at are all written from the perspective of a non-Indigenous

person, however, there are sources and stores provided by the Tŝilhqot’in Nation for this site.

This significantly impacts the way that we look at different groups and events of the past. This

resource was a great demonstration of bias and how that can both positively and negatively affect

the picture that is created in our heads about things or people we know little about. It also

demonstrates the importance of having multiple sides to a story, which would have been difficult

back in the 1800s because Indigenous peoples did not document events in the same way that

Europeans did. With more Indigenous stories now becoming more readily available to us in

many different forms, it is important for us as educators to pull from both sides and not just teach
one side of a story, even with something as simple as a peaceful expedition to the interior from

the coast.

Resources:

Lutz, J. et al. (2004). Nobody knows him: Lhatŝ’aŝʔin and the Chilcotin War. The Great

Unsolved Mysteries of Canadian History. Accessed January 12, 2022.

https://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/klatsassin/home/indexen.html

Saunders, F. J. (n.d.) 'Homatcho,' or, The Story of the Bute Inlet Expedition, and the Massacre by

the Chilcoaten Indians. The Resources of British Columbia. Accessed January 12, 2022.

https://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/klatsassin/archives/journalarticle/725en.html