Trip Into The Past Forest Service Offers A Visit To The Era Of Fur Traders, Indians And Missionaries

Anyone with a little imagination can walk back in time Thursday to the 50-year period when fur-trading adventurers, missionaries and the Salish natives of the Colville Valley met and mingled.

Grizzled fur traders on horseback and black-robed Jesuit priests will lead the way in a 2-1/2-mile interpretive walk here that kicks off a four-day historical extravaganza called the Journey Past Heritage Celebration.

The free public program, sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service and others, will be a marathon of encampments with hands-on demonstrations of frontier skills, historical talks, native storytelling and the music and dances of various cultures that thrived here from 1800 to 1850.

Settlement of the disputed U.S.-Canadian border in 1848 ushered out the Canadian fur trade.

“As we began to research this era, we were struck by how many of the family names we read in the journals and records of the early fur trade are still present in this valley,” said Daniel Mattson, a Colville National Forest archaeologist.

There are numerous descendants of the furmen in Indian reservations and communities throughout northeastern Washington. Among the prominent family names are Finlay, Flett, Gendron, Inkster, Louie, Marchand, Narcisse, Stensgar and Wynne.

“This event is an excellent way to share with area residents this history and, in many cases, their own history,” said Mattson, who is producing Journey Past with help from Spokane historical author Jack Nisbet and numerous others.

Nisbet’s “Sources of the River” illuminates the diaries of North West Co. trader David Thompson. Thompson crossed the Continental Divide with his Cree wife and their three young children, and explored this region extensively.

Like the free-ranging people of the period, the Journey Past program will move to Colville on Friday and to Kettle Falls on Saturday and Sunday. Different aspects of the fur era’s colorful cultural stew will be traced at each location.

Some people may learn, for example, that Colville is named after Andrew Colvile, an English director of the North West Co. who never set foot in the area.

Unlike the monoculture of American prospectors and settlers who poured into the region after 1850, the North West Co. and Hudson’s Bay Co. furmen were liberally blended with native peoples.

Among the ethnic groups that came here in the fur era were French Canadians, Scottish-Irishmen, Hawaiians, Eastern woodland Indians such as the Crees, Iroquois and Chippewas, and an amalgamation of French Canadians and Indians known as Metis.

So many mixed-blood Cree Indians came here in the fur era that they were later able to establish their own agricultural village at Chewelah. The Rev. Pierre DeSmet, a Jesuit missionary from Belgium, established a Catholic mission to the Crees in 1845.

“I gave the name of St. Francis Regis to this new station, where a great number of the mixed race and beaver hunters have resolved to settle with their families,” DeSmet wrote.

The mission was relocated near Kettle Falls in the 1850s. The Metis community had dissolved because of disease, strife between white settlers and the indigenous Indians, and the lure of the California gold rush of 1849.

Among those on the mission roll in 1847-48 was North West Co. scout Jaco Finlay. The son of an English fur trader and a Chippewa woman, he established the Spokane House trading post in 1810 near what is now the community of Nine Mile Falls.

Finlay acquired three Salish wives and has numerous descendants, some of whom spell the name Finley.

Mixed marriages were less accepted after the fur era ended, Mattson said: “You had to decide whether you were white or Indian, and there wasn’t room for anybody else.”

Thursday’s kick-off hike will follow a route that Thompson used and will end at the St. Francis Regis mission site on the west edge of Chewelah, where a new historic marker will be dedicated.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: JOURNEY PAST EVENTS

Thursday/Chewelah 9 a.m. - A 2-1/2-mile interpretive walk from downtown Chewelah to site of St. Francis Regis Mission. 11 a.m. Dedication of historic marker at mission site. Noon: Fur trade encampment at Chewelah city park, featuring frontier skills demonstrations, period music and food throughout the afternoon and evening. 2 p.m. - “First Contact” historical symposium at Jenkins High School. Speakers: Pauline Flett, Salish culture; Jack Nisbet, “David Thompson and the Natural History of the Colville Valley;” Ken Favrholdt, “Fur Trade Routes Across the Boundary;” John Jackson, “Children of the Fur Trade;” and James Keyser, “Journal Art in the Jesuit Missions.” 8 p.m. - Evening entertainment at the city park bandshell.

Friday/Colville city park Noon: Fur-trade encampment re-enactment by American Mountain Men. Throughout the day - Food, workshops and demonstrations. Kalispel tribal members will show how to tan buffalo hides and make traditional bark canoes. Also: Loretta Watt, Lakes Band storyteller; music by Fiddlin’ Red & Patti; Celtic dancing, Haran Dancers; Northern Plateau Drummers; Mo Oliver and students, with Caroll Vrba; Selkirk Celts bagpipe music; music by Carolyn Hatch & Son. 5:30-7:30 p.m. - Bison barbecue. 8 p.m. - Fur trader-style “frolic” music and dancing.

Saturday/St. Paul’s Mission, Kettle Falls 11 a.m. - American Mountain Men arrive in canoe brigade. Throughout the day - Tshimakain Drummers; earth skills demonstrations; Selkirk Celts bagpipe music; music by Carolyn Hatch & Son; demonstrations by American Mountain Men. 1 to 6 p.m. - “People of the Falls” historical symposium. Speakers: Pierre Louie, “The Traditional Fishery and Seasonal Gathering at Kettle Falls;” Randy Bouchard, “Kettle Falls Place Names;” Jean Barman, “Early Fur Trade and Settler Families;” Ian MacLaren, “Sketchbooks of Paul Kane,” an artist who document the fur-trade era; Daniel Marshall, “Native Participation in the Gold Rush.”

Sunday/St. Paul’s Mission, Kettle Falls 10:30 a.m. - Salish Mass.