BACKGROUND - Canadian Rockies: Including Banff and Jasper National Parks - page 516

means fast—perhaps only 40 kilometers (25 miles) in each generation—but about 10,000
years ago the first Kootenay arrived in the Columbia River Valley. They were hunters
and gatherers, wintering along the Columbia and Kootenay River Valleys, then moving to
higher elevations during the warmer months. Over time they developed new skills, learn-
ing to fish the salmon-rich rivers using spears, nets, and simple fish weirs. The Kootenay
were a serious people with few enemies. They mixed freely with the Shuswap and treated
the earliest explorers, such as David Thompson, with respect. They regularly traveled east
over the Rockies to hunt—to the wildlife-rich Kootenay Plains or farther south to the Great
Plains in search of bison. But as the fearsome Blackfoot extended their territory westward
to the foothills of present-day Alberta, the Kootenay made fewer trips onto the plains. By
the early 1700s, they had been driven permanently back to the west side of the Continental
Divide.
The Shuswap
The Shuswap make up only a small chapter in the human history of the Canadian Rockies,
although they traveled into the mountains on and off for many thousands of years. They
were a tribe of Salish people who, as the Kootenay did farther east, moved north, then
east, with the receding ice cap. By the time the Kootenay had moved into the Kootenay
River Valley, the Salish had fanned out across most of southwestern and interior British
Columbia, following the salmon upstream as the glacial ice receded. Those who settled
along the upper reaches of the Columbia River became known as the Shuswap. They spent
summers in the mountains hunting caribou and sheep, put their fishing skills to the test
each fall, then wintered in pit houses along the Columbia River Valley. The descendants of
these people live on the Kinbasket Shuswap Reserve, just south of Radium Hot Springs.
The Stoney
The movement of humans into the mountains from the east was much more recent. Around
1650, the mighty Sioux nation began splintering, with many thousands moving north into
present-day Canada. Although these immigrants called themselves Nakoda (people), oth-
er tribes called them Assiniboine (people who cook with stones) because their traditional
cooking method was to heat stones in a fire, place the hot stones in a rawhide or birchbark
basket with water, and cook meat and vegetables in the hot water. The white people trans-
lated Assiniboine as Stone People, or Stoney for short.
Slowly, generation after generation, smaller groups of the Stoney moved westward
along the Saskatchewan River system, allying themselves with the Cree but keeping their
own identity. They pushed through the Blackfoot territory of the plains and reached the