In 1808, the Ntlakyapamuk (or Ntlakyapamux or Nhlakapmuh), as they called themselves for “the people,” are believed to have witnessed an expedition headed by Simon Fraser, a fur trader and explorer for the North West Company, as it passed through their territory in present-day British Columbia, descending the Fraser River (later named for him). They are known to have eventually made contact with the expedition. Fraser, a Vermont-born trader who grew up in Ontario, Canada, named one of the river’s tributaries, also coursing through Ntlakyapamuk country, after another trader-explorer who worked for the North West Company, David Thompson. Subsequently, the Ntlakyapamuk, pronounced nit-lah-kee-AH-puh-muck, became known to non-Indians as the Thompson River Indians, or simply the Thompson. Another name for them, used by traders of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who started developing the region soon after Fraser’s visit, was the Knife Indians.
The Ntlakyapamuk, like many other tribes of the northern Plateau Culture Area, were Salishan-speaking (see PLATEAU INDIANS). They and other Interior Salis-hans (or Interior Salish) subsisted mainly by fishing and hunting, together with the gathering of wild roots and berries. They lived in circular, earth-covered pithouses. To their north were the Lillooet and Shuswap; to their south were the OKANAGAN, Lake (Senijexteee), Sanpoil, COLUMBIA (sinkiuse), and Colville—all trading part-
Ntlakyapamuk pit house
Nets—as well as numerous other Salishan tribes. The many Salishans to their west, such as the Comox, Seechelt, and Squamish, are discussed as the Coast Salishans (or Coast Salish), that is, part of the Northwest Coast Culture Area (see NORTHWEST COAST INDIANS). A non-Salishan people, the Athapascan-speaking STUWI-HAMUK, settled on the Nicola River near where some Ntlakyapamuk also lived. At first enemies, the two peoples merged by the early 19th century.
The fur trade had minimal impact on the Ntlakyapamuk way of life. In 1845, the Jesuit missionary Father John Nobili visited the Ntlakyapamuk, Okanagan, Shuswap, and other area tribes, preaching and baptizing in temporary chapels he had the Indians construct. The Indians retained their traditional rituals, however. It was the 1858 discovery of gold on the Fraser River, bringing more and more non-Indians to the region, that led to drastic change in the form of violence, alcoholism, and the reduction of Ntlakyapamuk hunting grounds, which had formerly extended as far south as northern Washington State. A smallpox epidemic among them in 1863 also proved devastating.
During the 20th century, Ntlakyapamuk numbers rose again. A number of contemporary Ntlakyapamuk First Nations hold reserve tracts in their ancestral Canadian homeland.
See NOOTKA
World History
