The region now known as British Columbia was one of the last mid-latitude areas of the world to be discovered by Europeans, little more than two hundred years ago. Even today, despite its physical dominance, the European presence is just a thin veneer on a rich native cultural record stretching back more than ten thousand years. Indeed, those who bemoan a "lack of history" in western Canada are really referring to the shallowness of European roots in the land; the total human history of British Columbia is at least as long as that of much of northern Europe. The ancestors of the Indians who greeted Captain James Cook and Alexander Mackenzie lived here for hundreds of generations. Their's was an epic tale of human adaptation to changing environments, achieving over thousands of years some of the most complex tribal societies in the world. It is a story revealed mainly through archaeology (the study of material cultural remains), since the Indians of British Columbia had no written languages, and the old oral traditions are fading quickly.
In the following pages we will try to unravel the complex fabric of British Columbia's prehistoric past before the arrival of Europeans and written records. Prehistory is a much tattered and worn cloth, full of large gaps and stretched by divergent archaeological opinions. Our present understanding of British Columbia's ancient cultures is doubtless very imperfect and many of the interpretations presented here will inevitably change as new information is discovered.
The Land and Its People
British Columbia is environmentally diverse, ranging from rain soaked Pacific shores, through dry interior plateaus, to Rocky Mountain summits and Peace River plains. An equal variety of historical native lifeways reflected some of the myriad cultural adaptations possible in a naturally rich and varied land. The cultural heterogeneity of British Columbia in historic times is illustrated by the thirty-four distinct native languages, each at least as different as English and French, spoken across the province. The historical Indian cultures provide both important sources of comparison and significant challenges in our efforts to reveal what, and who, came before. Anthropologists lump the varied Indian lifeways of British Columbia into three large culture areas: Coast, Plateau (southern interior) and Subarctic (northern interior). The essay is organized according to these regions, because, unlike languages and other non-material aspects of culture which are not preserved archaeologically, the material traits characterizing culture areas can be traced and compared through prehistory.
The Coast:
Coast peoples spent much of their time in large plank-house villages, where elaborate social customs and sophisticated art were sustained by the exceptional natural bounty of ocean and rivers. Groups such as the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Tsimshian of the northern mainland and the Nootka of the west coast of Vancouver Island, all speaking totally different languages, shared in one of the most complex tribal ways of life ever known. Here were aristocrats and slaves, warrior heroes and artists, mystics and traders, who used a complicated technology of wood, bone and stone to harvest the riches of the land and sea. Most important were the massive runs of Pacific salmon annually harvested like mobile crops, and tall straight grained red cedar trees that provided the soft, easily split wood essential for huge plank houses and dug-out canoes.
Regional variations in these cultural themes allow anthropologists to subdivide the historical Northwest Coast into northern, central and southern subareas. As we shall see, this regionalization persisted through the entire known span of prehistory.
The Plateau:
The tribes of British Columbia's southern interior lived in a land of forested mountains and open valleys drained by the Fraser and Columbia rivers. Most people who occupied this area, such as the Shuswap and Thompson Indians, spoke Salishan languages related to those spoken around the mouth of the Fraser River on the south coast, although the Kutenai, in the south-eastern corner of the province, are linguistically unrelated to any other group. Plateau economy depended on a mix of hunting, fishing, and wild-plant collecting, with those living along the Fraser more oriented to salmon fishing. A typical winter dwelling was a semi-subterranean pit house built of logs and covered with earth, while summer camps consisted of mat-covered tents and lean-tos.
Subarctic:
The northern interior of British Columbia was occupied by speakers of Athapaskan languages, such as the Carrier, Tahltan and Beaver. This was a harsher land than the Plateau or Coast, and Athapaskan culture reflected a need for mobility and adaptive flexibility. Some Athapaskans had access to Pacific salmon and could afford greater settlement stability and cultural elaboration. Most lived a mobile existence, taking fish, caribou, or small game as they became available, and building temporary brush, skin and bark shelters in their seasonal camps.
A knowledge of these historical native cultures is essential to understanding and reconstructing prehistoric lifeways. Archaeologists cannot dig up languages or other non material aspects of culture, so it is usually difficult to assert that a prehistoric site was occupied by ancestors of a specific historical tribe. However, culture areas give us a way to compare archaeological collections of artifacts and other remains with those of historical cultures, to search for developmental trends and changes through time.
The First People
It is sad that we know far less about the first humans to enter British Columbia than we do about the much later European "discoverers," because those first British Columbia Indian pioneers were participants in one of the greatest human adventures of all time, the initial colonization of the entire Western Hemisphere. The first people may have entered Alaska dry shod from northeast Asia about 20,000-15,000 years ago, when the water locked in continental glaciers lowered world oceans l00m, exposing the floor of Bering Strait. Much of interior Alaska and Yukon was then unglaciated and inhabitable, but people would have been hindered from moving south until the ice began to melt. When the glaciers did start to withdraw 13,000-12,000 years ago, two routes would have initially opened south of Alaska. One lay along the Pacific coast, and the other, often known as the Ice Free Corridor, paralleled the eastern flanks of the Rocky Mountains. The first British Columbians came from the north by one of these pathways, as part of a major population expansion throughout North America at the end of the last Ice Age.
While it is possible that some people penetrated into parts of British Columbia as early as 12,000 years ago, no firm archaeological evidence for this has yet been found. Instead, the oldest sites in the province dated by the radiocarbon technique, which measures the amount of a radioactive isotope of carbon remaining in organic materials, are only about 10,500-10,000 years old. It is nearly certain, however, that finds at least a thousand years older than these will eventually be located. Perhaps as you read these pages, somewhere a farmer digging a post-hole or a child playing along a beach is inadvertently making the initial discovery.
Early Period of the Interior
(10,500+ to 8,000 years ago)
The oldest archaeological site known in British Columbia is Charlie Lake Cave, near Fort St. John in the Peace River District of northeastern (Subarctic) British Columbia. Here, a deep sediment fill has accumulated in front of a small cave, and scattered through it are animal bones and artifacts left by brief Indian encampments repeated over thousands of years. In the lowest levels a number of large bison bones, some with breaks and scratches caused by human butchering, were found with several stone artifacts. Among these was a single spearhead of a type known to archaeologists as a fluted point because several large flaking scars, or flutes, extend up from its base. Besides the point, the earliest levels at Charlie Lake Cave also contained a large flaked stone chopper and, surprisingly, a small perforated soft-stone bead. The latter, which could have decorated an item of skin clothing, is among the oldest stone ornament in North America, since it and the other finds are associated with three radiocarbon dates averaging 10,500 years in age.
At the time of the earliest occupation of Charlie Lake Cave, northern British Columbia was still recovering from the last glaciation. A large lake, formed by ice-damming of the Peace River, was apparently in its final stages of draining and the present stream valleys were just beginning to form. The cave lies close to one of the last shorelines of the ancient lake, at a place where narrows may have provided a crossing point for animals and hence a good place for bison hunters to lie in wait.
In the Plateau, the only excavated Early Period site consists of an incomplete human skeleton found near the city of Kamloops and dated at about 8,200 years old. No artifacts were found with "Gore Creek Man," who was apparently the victim of an ancient flash flood, but chemical analysis of the bones shows that he was nutritionally more dependent on land mammals than salmon. This seems reasonable, despite the historical importance of salmon in the area, since before 8,000 years ago the Plateau possessed more extensive grasslands than present, improving the habitat of large grazing animals. At the same time, rivers still suffering residual effects of the last glaciation were probably not as suitable for salmon spawning as they are today. A few scattered surface finds of fluted and stemmed spearheads, which cannot be directly dated, also tell of this distant time, when early Indian hunters pursued their prey around the freshly formed lakes and valleys of interior British Columbia.
Coastal Lithic Stage
(10,000+ to 5,500 years ago)
There seems to have been few major changes in coastal ways of life from the first occupations up to about 5,500 years ago. Consequently this entire early period is known as the Lithic Stage, a term signifying that the archaeological record is dominated by flaked stone (lithic) tools.
Some of the potentially oldest sites on the coast can only be provisionally dated. Most are dominated by pebble tools, rounded beach pebbles with enough flakes knocked off one end to produce a steep, strong cutting edge, while the other end was left unmodified to fit the hand; most pebble tools were probably used for woodworking and meat-butchering tasks. Although superficially primitive, pebble tools were clever adaptations to a landscape littered with suitable stone "blanks." Some specimens found in high river terraces or scattered over modern ocean beaches could be more than 10,000 years old, but the lack of organic materials containing carbon prevents radiocarbon dating. The search for early coastal sites is complicated by profound sea-level changes in the past, with ancient shorelines lying high above, or below, present beaches along different parts of the coast. Throughout the Lithic Stage, the sea level was still influenced by the last glaciation, and the present shoreline was not finally attained until 5,000-2,000 years ago.
After 10,000-9,000 years ago the sea level was getting close enough to the present shoreline to allow the modern preservation and discovery of associated archaeological sites. This is probably why all known radiocarbon dated coastal sites are less than 10,000 years old. Because they exhibit considerable variation in artifact content from area to area, Lithic Stage cultures have been divided into northern and southern variants, with a zone of mixture in the central coast.
North-coast Lithic Stage cultures are best known from the Queen Charlotte Islands and southeastern Alaska; curiously no early sites have yet been identified on the northern mainland coast of British Columbia. Queen Charlotte sites are radiocarbon dated back to 7,200 years in age, associated with a shoreline 12-15 m above present. However, the presence of an undated cultural level underlying 7,200-year-old finds at the Lawn Point site suggests that the first humans reached these now isolated islands at least a thousand years earlier. This would have necessitated capable watercraft, although even older arrivals might have been aided by lower sea levels on a much reduced water gap to the mainland.
Queen Charlotte and Alaskan early sites are characterized by distinctive artifacts called microblades. These are tiny, sharp, rectangular stone flakes, chipped in series from "specially shaped cores," which could be inset into shafts of bone, antler, or wood to form points and knives. Like modern utility knife blades, these little stone tools could have served as disposable modular edges on a wide range of composite spearheads and other tools. Microblades are known in 20,000 year old northeast Asian sites and the technology reached interior Alaska -- Yukon about 15,000-12,000 years ago; the idea then spread southwards, coming to coastal British Columbia at least 10,000-8,000 years ago. Besides microblades, early Queen Charlotte sites contain pebble tools and numbers of stone flakes with single-bevel chipped edges designed for various cutting, scraping and carving tasks in organic materials. No flaked stone spearheads or other bifacially flaked (flaked on both sides) artifacts occur in the early north coast sites, setting them apart from all contemporary cultures of continental North America. This lends credence to the theory that the earliest coastal peoples followed cultural traditions quite distinct from those of the interior. Unfortunately, no organic remains other than charcoal were preserved in the Queen Charlotte Island sites and we can only speculate about the food preferences of the early coastal dwellers and the use of tools made of wood, bone and other organic materials. Considering the setting, marine and intertidal resources were probably exploited, but land game, including caribou, may also have been pursued. No remains of houses or other structures have been identified, and north-coast Lithic Stage camps were probably simple and temporary.
South-coast Lithic Stage sites are concentrated around the Strait of Georgia and along the lower reaches of the Fraser River. Artifact collections from Milliken, Glenrose and other south-coast sites share pebble and flaked tools with their northern contemporaries, but they lack microblades. Instead, their most characteristic tools are large leaf-shaped flaked spearheads and knives, whose prototypes probably lie with early interior cultures of Washington and Oregon states. The riverside location of many south-coast Lithic Stage sites implies an interest in salmon fishing, even though salmon runs were likely not as rich 9,000 years ago as they are today. A handful of charred cherry pits found at the Milliken site, in the Fraser Canyon, suggests that people were coming here to intercept sockeye, which ascend the river at the same time as wild cherries are ripening. Historically, the Fraser Canyon around Milliken was an extremely important fishing station for the Coast Salish, who came there annually from all over the south coast. Even today a few Indians still net salmon and dry the rich red flesh on pole racks in the warm canyon winds.
Besides taking salmon, early south-coast people exploited various food sources, including elk, deer, seal, salmon, sturgeon, eulachon (an oily smelt), and some shellfish, based on the evidence of a few bones and shells found at the Glenrose site in the Fraser Delta. The presence of some small chips of obsidian (natural volcanic glass that makes very sharp stone tools such as microblades) chemically attributed to sources in Oregon about 600 km distant, suggests that long-distance trade was already developing in northwestern North America at this early time.
Glenrose is the earliest of a long sequence of Fraser River-mouth settlements that culminated in the modern city of Vancouver. We do not really know what kinds of houses were in use in the area 8,000 or more years ago, but probably they were relatively small dwellings made of poles and bark. Woodworking was apparently still rudimentary, judging from the absence of adzes, and at this time red cedar trees were far less common on the coast than they are today.
Early cultures of the north and south coasts differed in the presence and absence of microblades and flaked spearheads; however, on the central mainland coast and western Vancouver Island these two patterns seem to have mixed. The most important site in the central area is Namu, where the decaying remains of an early twentieth-century fish cannery rest on buried cultural deposits spanning the last 10,000 years. Lithic Stage materials from the bottom of Namu include both microblades and leaf-shaped points, as well as the ubiquitous pebble and flake tools. A few bones from 6,000 year old levels indicate that besides deer and fish, late Lithic Stage peoples at Namu ate seal, sea lion, sea otter, and porpoise, suggesting considerable abilities as sea-mammal hunters by this time.
In trying to assess current knowledge of the earliest cultures on the Northwest Coast, one is struck that even 9,000 years ago, northern, central and southern subareas were already distinct. As far as the often dim window of archaeology permits us to see, the foundations of historical Northwest Coast ways of life were laid in the interaction of two early cultural traditions, one from the north out of Alaska and the other from the south out of the interior, which met and blended along the waterways of Vancouver Island and the central mainland coast.
Middle Period of the Interior (8,000 to 4,500 years ago)
In the interior, the time range approximately equivalent to the coastal Lithic Stage is divided into two cultural periods, Early and Middle. One of the most important developments distinguishing the Middle Period from its predecessor is the first appearance of salmon fishing in the interior about 7,500 years ago. The earliest evidence of this lies in the Drynock Slide site in the Thompson River valley.
The ancient cultural materials at Drynock were deeply buried beneath a massive landslide sometime after the site was abandoned, and they have only recently been re-exposed by a modern highway cut. The landslide was not the only dramatic environmental event to affect this site in the past. The layer of wind-blown sands containing the artifacts is capped by a bright white streak of Mount Mazama ash. Volcanic ash (really pulverized pumice or lava) which erupted from Mount Mazama (now Crater Lake, Oregon) was erupted over a huge area of western North America about 6,800 years ago. One can only imagine the impact that this powerful event must have had on the early occupants.
Cultural finds at Drynock include one or two microblades, a small straight-sided flaked spearhead or knife, some nondescript flakes, as well as bones of salmon and unidentified land mammals. The Drynock salmon remains are the oldest evidence for native fishing in the interior. The microblades from this site are also the earliest dated finds of this technology in the British Columbia Plateau; probably the idea reached the southern interior from coastal Lithic Stage cultures.
By 6,000-5,000 years ago, dated Middle Period sites are found in both the Subarctic and Plateau. Characteristic artifacts are medium sized flaked projectile points with notches chipped in from the sides and corners to facilitate hafting. These are probably not arrowheads, since it is thought that the bow did not enter North America until 4,000-3,000 years ago, but probably tipped light spears thrown by means of an atlatl. An atlatl (pronounced at-lat-il) is a wooden shaft with a hook at one end to engage the butt of the spear; the length and flexibility of the atlatl shaft increased the force of a hunter's throw. No atlatls have been found preserved in British Columbian sites, but evidence from the western United States makes it likely that they were in use in the interior by at least Middle Period times.
Microblades also occur in some Middle Period interior sites. Evidence for microblades in the Subarctic comes from Mount Edziza in the northwestern interior, near the little town of Telegraph Creek. Mount Edziza is the largest known source of obsidian in Canada and here in spectacular alpine settings, dense carpets of broken obsidian fragments mark prehistoric tool-making workshops. Native people were probably coming to Mount Edziza 10,000 years ago, and by 5,000 years ago Edziza obsidian was reaching sites all over northern British Columbia and adjacent areas. Much of this obsidian mining may have occurred when temperatures were slightly warmer than present and snow conditions in the alpine zone less severe. Similar kinds of stone-quarrying activities were also going on in the Chilcotin and Kootenay regions in Middle and Late prehistoric times.
Beyond details of stone-tool technology not much is known about the customs and beliefs of Middle Period residents of the interior. No remains of houses or other major structural features have shown up in sites excavated to date, and Middle Period camps, like those of the coastal Lithic Stage, were probably simple and impermanent. Subsistence practices were apparently still unspecialized, with deer, elk, caribou and other large game taken where available, along with small animals and fish. A 5,500-year-old site near Ashcroft in the southwestern Plateau has yielded a number of notched pebble net weights, indicating the use of seine or gill nets by this time, and salmon fishing probably continued to grow in importance throughout the Middle Period along Pacific river systems. These changes set the basis for new lifeways that were to characterize the interior in the final 4,500 years before the arrival of Europeans.
Coastal Development Stage
(5,500 years ago to European Contact)
Between 5,500 and 2,500 years ago the people of the Northwest Coast crossed an important threshold between earlier relatively simple hunting and gathering ways of life, and cultural patterns similar to those known historically. This transition is manifested archaeologically in many ways, one of the most striking being the first appearance of large shell-midden sites about 5,500-5,000 years ago. Shell middens are heaps of clam and mussel shells, mixed with ash, fire-broken rocks, animal bones and other camp debris. They are typical of coastal cultures all over the world, and some of the British Columbia shell middens, like the famous Marpole site in Vancouver, were originally very large, with thicknesses of 3-4 m covering several hectares. Unfortunately, most of the big middens have now been destroyed by modern development, but here and there in gardens and vacant lots throughout Vancouver and other present-day communities, scatters of white shell flakes mark the remains of ancient settlements that flourished when the Egyptian pyramids were young.
The rise of shell middens along the Northwest Coast probably was the result of a number of factors coinciding at this time. One of the most important was a marked reduction in the rate of sea-level change by about 5,000 years ago, which allowed coastal and river ecosystems to stabilize and increase in abundance. Populations of shellfish, salmon and other food species rose to much higher levels of productivity. Increasingly rich salmon runs in summer and fall would have meant more dried food for the winter. Shell middens tell us more about Developmental Stage populations than just their food preferences; the thick cultural deposits also indicate that people were able to spend much more time in a single location than their Lithic Stage ancestors. Thus, large shell-midden sites may represent the advent of the historical style of semi-permanent winter village settlement.
Historical coastal winter villages were the focus of all the large-scale and complex aspects of Northwest Coast culture. Here were the great plank houses, monumental art, and elaborate ritual; and here social status distinctions between nobles, commoners and slaves were most clearly expressed. Archaeological evidence for many of these traits appears early in the Developmental Stage, and all of the fundamental elements of historical Northwest Coast culture seem to have been in place by at least 2,500 years ago.
The oldest excavated house on the British Columbia coast is an unusual semi underground dwelling, dated 5,000-4,000 years in age, in the lower Fraser Valley, and looking more like a historical interior pithouse than a coastal dwelling. By about 3,000 years ago a village of long narrow houses partly sunk into a steep slope was occupied at the Paul Mason site on the lower Skeena River. Although packed together in rows rather like historical north-coast villages, the Paul Mason houses were apparently of lighter construction. Definite archaeological evidence for the massive post and beam construction of the historical house-types did not appear until about 2,500 years ago, in sites like Marpole on the south coast. This change to heavier wooden construction styles may have been partly due to increased abundances of large red cedar trees on the coast in the last three millennia, as well as developments in aboriginal woodworking technology.
Although a few antler splitting wedges are known from late Lithic Stage levels at Glenrose, the first stone adze blades did not appear in the coastal archaeological record until about 3,500 years ago. These tended to be small at first, but slowly increased in size and diversity through time. Most are made of hard green rocks like nephrite or Fraser River jade. Well-formed hand mauls (unhafted stone hammers shaped somewhat like old-fashioned telephone receivers), used to drive wooden and antler wedges to split cedar planks and carve dug-out canoes, showed up about 2,500 years ago on the south coast. In the north, heavy hafted mauls and splitting adzes characteristic of the historical carpenter's tool-kit of that area appeared a thousand years later. Mainland materials in 3,000-5,000-year-old Queen Charlotte Island sites suggest that dug-out canoe building had progressed to the point where regular communication was now possible across hazardous Hecate Strait. However, the earliest direct evidence for watercraft on the Northwest Coast consists of several 1,600 year old wooden canoe paddles preserved in waterlogged deposits in Prince Rupert harbour.
A number of waterlogged sites allow archaeological glimpses of prehistoric wooden and fibre artifacts lost in normal shell-midden contexts. These finds include basketry, cordage, woven hats and mats, wooden wedges, plank fragments, pieces of wooden boxes and bowls and other perishable objects dating back as much as 3,000 years. Many of the early pieces are remarkably similar to baskets and wooden items used in historic times. Basketry containers, bentwood boxes and carved wooden bowls and dishes took the place of pottery on the Northwest Coast for most food preparation and storage tasks, and native ceramics are totally absent in British Columbia. Rare, prehistoric wooden sculptures and decorated pieces are also found in Northwest Coast wet sites. One of the most spectacular is a carved yew-wood atlatl in the form of a sea monster rearing up over a human head, dredged from a river mouth just south of the Canadian border in Washington State and dated at 1700 years in age. A 1,600-year-old decorated cedar handle for a box or bowl from Prince Rupert harbour shows that the historical art style for which the Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshian are famous was already then well under way.
Artistic productivity in a wide range of media was a hallmark of the Development Stage, as it was of the Northwest Coast in historic times. The first three-dimensional sculptures, in antler, occurred as early as 4,500 years ago, and by a thousand years later a great variety of sculptures, engravings and ornaments in antler, tooth, bone, shell and stone point to a developing social concern with symbols of wealth and spiritual power. Well-formed stone sculpture appeared by 2,500 years ago on both the northern and southern coasts, although it always remained very rare in the central area. South-coast stone art objects include figurines and bowls in various human and animal forms. Outstanding examples of stone sculptures are "seated human figure bowls" with a squatting human form holding a bowl in its lap, intertwined with animal or serpent elements. These may have been part of a shaman's paraphernalia, but little is known of their function. The few dated examples are about 2,500-1,500 years old, but there is a possibility that some bowls continued in use up to European contact. Other prehistoric stone art objects include hard-stone sculptures of humans up to 50 cm high, stone bowls in the shape of human heads, elaborately decorated stone clubs, and petroglyphs.
Petroglyphs are pecked and engraved designs of faces, humans, animals and mythical beings done on bedrock exposures and boulders. Hundreds are known along the British Columbia coast; most cannot be positively dated, although it is possible that much of this rock art goes back well into the Developmental Stage. Some petroglyphs may have functioned in secret rituals, given their isolated and hidden locations; other designs may have marked important fishing sites.
Many portable south-coast stone sculptures were carved of steatite, a soft greenish soapstone found along the Fraser River. This easily worked material was also used to make personal ornaments, including labrets, flanged plugs fitted in a perforation of the lower lip, and earspools, pulley shaped ornaments worn in the earlobe. The use of labrets goes back 4,500 years on the northern and southern coasts of British Columbia, but they were never popular in the central zone. Labrets were still worn by historical north coast peoples like the Tsimshian and Haida, but went out of fashion on the south coast about 1,500 years ago. Earspools were apparently limited to the south coast between about 3,500 and 2,500 years before present, where their use is illustrated on several stone and antler sculptures. Contemporary with earspools on the south coast was a complex of small, finely worked steatite objects, known among local archaeologists as "Whatzits." With odd shapes, some perforated, others not, whatzits may have been ornaments or parts of ceremonial costumes, although, as the name implies, there is no certainty about their function.
In addition to labrets, earspools and whatzits, Developmental Stage people decorated themselves with beads of slate and shell, and a great variety of plain and embellished pendants fashioned of bone, antler, animal tooth, and shell. Even rare pieces of native copper, probably traded from Alaska and cold hammered into bracelets and pendants, are occasionally found. Such prehistoric valuables would undoubtedly have enhanced and symbolized the wealth and power of a nobleman and his family. Long-distance trade systems, which saw Pacific coast shells reaching southern Saskatchewan as early as 3,500 years ago, may have been fostered by a growing desire for exotic valuables on the part of increasingly status-conscious Northwest Coast societies.
Carving of steatite and other stones seems to have diminished in the last 1,500 years of south coast prehistory, but two new cultural traits were introduced at this time, probably via trade contacts with southern and eastern parts of North America. Steatite tobacco pipes, sometimes decorated with animal or human figures, first appear in south-coast sites of the last 1,500 years, along with spindle whorls and blanket pins heralding a native weaving industry. A spindle whorl is a disc of wood, bone or, rarely, steatite, sometimes decorated, used as a weight to keep a hand turned spindle rotating. Native people made their yarn by spinning indigenous fibres such as hair from dogs and mountain goats. While weaving spread to the north coast prior to European contact, tobacco apparently was not smoked outside of the south coast until the late eighteenth century; instead, in the north, it was chewed, mixed with burned and crushed clam shells. Interestingly, tobacco was grown by early historical north-coast Indians in small gardens, which suggests that the basic principles of horticulture had reached coastal British Columbia before European contact. However, it is unlikely that gardening or even wild plant foods contributed much to aboriginal coastal diets, and domesticated crops such as corn, beans and squash were totally unknown in the province.
Developmental Stage cultures were sustained by a rich array of marine, riverine and terrestrial food resources. With the stabilization of sea levels after about 5,000 years ago and the establishment of optimum populations of salmon and other fish, people could become increasingly specialized in their subsistence pursuits, investing greater time and energy in a single type of resource. By at least 4,500 years ago, Developmental shell-midden sites possess evidence for complex fishing and sea-mammal hunting gear generally comparable to that of the historic period. This includes various kinds of barbed antler and bone harpoons and fishing spears, bone fish hooks, pecked-stone net sinkers, ground-slate and shell knives and projectile points. Through time this basic inventory expanded and diversified. For instance, toggling harpoon heads, which pivot at right angles to the pull of the retrieving line within the prey animal, and thus are better than barbed harpoons for hunting large fish and sea mammals, first appeared about 3,500 years ago. By 1,000 years ago toggling harpoon heads ranged in size from large composite whaling harpoons armed with shell cutting blades to small salmon-fishing tips. Similar diversification and specialization occurred during the Developmental Stage in other aspects of subsistence technology, suggesting a need to continually increase fishing and hunting efficiency, perhaps in response to growing human populations.
Flaked-stone implements such as pebble tools, with traditional roots far back in time, persisted along much of the coast into the Developmental Stage, hand in hand with many new technologies. On the north and central coasts microblades ceased to be used 5,500-4,500 years ago, at the same time as they first appeared on the south coast. Along the south coast earlier leaf-shaped spearheads diversified into a variety of stemmed and notched forms in the last 5,500 years, with small arrowheads appearing for the first time in the archaeological record about 1,200 years ago. However, early in the Developmental Stage, new ways of manufacturing stone tools began to gain popularity, eventually all but replacing flaked stone in the last few centuries of prehistory.
The first of the new technologies involved pecking a granite or diorite cobble with a hammer stone, slowly wearing away the surface grain by grain, and then finishing the rough shape by grinding with abrasive materials. This method permitted modification of rock types not easily worked by faking or grinding alone and allowed hollow and perforated forms to be made in stone. Thus, the invention of "pecking-and-grinding" was critical to the appearance of heavy stone sinkers, clubs, adzes, bowls and sculptures in the archaeological record. The second new technique was the polishing or grinding of slate and other relatively sort platey stones to manufacture long, straight-edged lance heads, knives and other implements. The first ground-slate spearheads showed up on the British Columbia coast about 5,000 years ago, and in another 3,500 years skilled craftsmen were creating slender lance heads over 40 cm long. Like some big, well-made flaked stone spearheads of the period, these long delicate points may have had values as status or wealth symbols beyond their utility as weapons.
Shells neutralize normally acidic coastal soils, so preservation of bones and other organic materials is much better in shell middens than in earlier non shell sites. This results not only in a much more complete record of bone, antler and shell artifacts in the last 5,500 years, but also in the preservation of human bones in Developmental Stage sites. The majority of prehistoric coastal burials date about 4,500-1,500 years in age. Most are simple interments of individuals lying in flexed postures, sometimes with several large rocks which may have originally weighted the lid of a grave box. Occasionally burials include artifacts such as ornaments or weapons, suggesting that they are the graves of higher status people. Multiple burials of two or more individuals also occur, possibly representing a catastrophe which befell a group, such as the drowning of a canoe party. Some south-coast burials have been found under rock cairns, themselves buried under accumulated shell deposits, while earthen burial mounds with small stone-lined burial enclosures are also known. The frequency of midden burials diminishes in the last 1,500-1,000 years, probably reflecting a shift towards historical methods of disposing of the dead -- in trees, mortuary poles, grave houses, and caves.
Some prehistoric human skeletons from the Northwest Coast exhibit injuries likely obtained in combat, and there is other evidence for increasing warfare throughout the Developmental Stage. This includes the appearance of stone and whalebone clubs, some finely decorated, by at least 3,500-2,500 years ago, and fortified sites in the last 1,500 years of prehistory. The latter includes trench-embankment fortifications on the south coast, with excavated ditches and earthen banks protecting a headland from landward attack, and palisaded hilltops and rocky islands along the central and northern coasts. A famous historical example of a palisaded north-coast village is the Kitwanga hill-fort on the lower Skeena River. Coastal warfare seems to have reached a peak of intensity early in the post-contact period, as a result of competition for control of trade systems between rival tribes and chiefs. Prehistoric warfare may also have had similar motives: to control trade, to enhance chiefly status, and to capture slaves and other valuables.
When the first European ships appeared off British Columbia's shores in the late seventeenth century, their sailors encountered rich cultures resulting from over 10,000 years of local human adaptation. Although occasional Asiatic ships or wrecks possibly touched the Northwest Coast before the first recorded arrival of Spanish and British sailors, there is nothing to indicate that any such contacts contributed significantly to the formation of the prehistoric cultures of British Columbia. On the contrary, Northwest Coast lifeways evolved in situ, through the moulding of widespread native North American cultural themes by the unique adaptive requirements and opportunities of the north Pacific environment.
Late Period of the Interior
(4,500 years ago to European contact)
Like their coastal neighbours, interior peoples evolved increasingly complex and diversified cultures in the last four millennia of prehistory. Of course, they could not build huge shell middens, although small deposits of freshwater mussel shells are sometimes found in Plateau sites; instead the dominant cultural trait tying together the late prehistory of the southern interior is the pit house, which first appears in the archaeological record about 4,500-4,000 years ago. Despite its seeming advantage as a snug dwelling for cold climates, the pit house concept seems to have entered British Columbia from the south, where it is found in the Columbia River basin and northern California back 6,000 years. Prehistoric pit houses came in a wide array of shapes and sizes, including rectangular, oblong and circular ground-plans, and deep and shallow pits up to 20 m across. A common type was circular, 5-10 m in diameter and 1-2 m deep, with a conical earthen roof supported on wooden posts and rafters. A smoke hole in the centre of the roof provided light, air and access via a notched-log ladder, although some houses also had side entrances. Historical pit houses were occupied in winter, and villages of up to two hundred of the crater-like pits have been found by archaeologists. Pit houses are not known in British Columbia north of the Fraser and Skeena River drainages, although far less archaeological research has been done in the Subarctic than in the Plateau.
Pit houses, like coastal shell middens, signify a seasonally sedentary style of settlement, and their appearance in the archaeological record parallels evidence for a growing role for salmon and wild plant foods in the Plateau economy. Harpoons, net sinkers, other fishing gear and salmon bones become more frequent in Late Period archaeological sites, particularly in the last 2,500 years. Storage pits, used to keep dried salmon secure and edible, appeared in the Plateau about 3,500 years ago, and many hundreds can sometimes be found around old village sites. Baking pits up to 5 m diameter, filled with fire-cracked rocks and ash, were used in the last 2,000-3,000 years to cook wild crops like balsam root, whose bright yellow flowers carpet Plateau upland valleys and meadows in early summer. Antler handles, which formed a crossbar on a pointed wooden digging stick used by women for excavating roots, are also found in Late Period sites. However, neither baking ovens nor digging stick handles are known in the Subarctic, where northern forests supported few edible plants.
Another prominent aspect of the archaeological landscape of interior British Columbia is the numerous pictograph sites. The pictographs include human, animal and supernatural figures, as well as geometric designs, painted with red ochre, on boulders and cliffs. Pictographs cannot be directly dated, but the exposed locations of many suggest that they are not more than 200-300 years old. Some appear to have acted as "message boards" along trails and waterways, while more isolated examples were probably made by adolescents on their "spirit quests," a search for personal supernatural power alone in the wilderness. Like pit houses, pictographs are not found in most of the Subarctic area of the province.
Various notched and stemmed atlatl points dominated interior weapons in the Late Period, although in the last 1,500 years small side-notched arrowheads heralded the arrival of the bow. In the Subarctic, large straight sided spearheads similar to Early Period types persisted into the last 3,000-4,000 years of prehistory, along with the other forms. Interior tool kits included numerous flaked drills, scrapers, knives and even flaked bangles or pendants, as well as projectile points. Most of these artifacts were made of basalt, a fine-grained grey-to-black volcanic rock which is today sometimes mistaken for flint. Some ancient sources for this raw material are still recorded in modern place names, such as the Arrowstone Hills near the Plateau town of Cache Creek.
Like their coastal contemporaries, prehistoric residents of the interior also began to work stone with pecking and abrasive techniques in the Late Period. Some of their most spectacular achievements include long, finely polished nephrite adze blades, as well as occasional small jade chisels and knives. Translucent green nephrite was sometimes associated with the water world, and nephrite sources occurred near some of the major salmon fisheries along the Fraser River. Besides their woodworking use, the adze blades, which were traded considerable distances, were perhaps also symbols of wealth. Late prehistoric Plateau people also carved steatite, and the best of their art rivals any coastal stonework. Indeed, some stone bowls with rattlesnake motifs found on the south coast were probably originally made in the interior. Numerous amulets, bowls and statuettes of animals and people have been found along the lower Fraser and Thompson River drainages, where late prehistoric peoples seem to have had strong cultural links with the coast. Steatite tobacco pipes, with flaring trumpet shaped bowls and straight stems, are another distinctive artifact type of about the last thousand years of Plateau prehistory.
Plateau artistic products include geometrically decorated miniature bows, clubs, awls, pendants and beads of antler and bone, and stone objects. Wooden carvings, boxes, bowls and masks would also have been originally part of prehistoric interior material culture, along with numerous items of basketry, birch-bark and cordage; unfortunately, only rare fragments of these perishable materials have survived in archaeological sites. Subarctic peoples, restrained by a more mobile seasonal round and less productive environment than the Plateau, seem to have restricted their artistic endeavours to work in hide, skin or bark.
Prehistoric human burials are also known in the Late Period, some of the oldest originally placed beneath the floors of house pits. Later burials were concentrated in hills, slopes and promontories overlooking valleys and river confluences. Large adze blades, carvings, beads, weapons and other artifacts have been found with some of these interments, but not all, suggesting social status differences among the burial population. Historical Plateau societies have sometimes been described by ethnographers as egalitarian, but traits such as rich burials, elaborate art and the occasional very large house pits suggest that some prehistoric individuals or families commanded greater wealth and status than others.
Warfare was also part of late interior prehistory, although it was probably never as intense as on the coast. Historical accounts describe many battles, particularly between the Shuswap and ChiIcotins, and Chilcotins and Carriers. Archaeological evidence for warfare includes clubs of stone, antler and whalebone, the latter traded in from the coast, and some skeletal remains with arrowpoints in their abdominal cavities. Despite this, most sites thought by modern interior residents to have been "Indian battlefields," because of finds of spear or arrowheads, are usually just villages or hunting camps.
The Chilcotins figured strongly in historical accounts of fighting between tribes because they were part of a wedge of Athapaskan speakers who pushed southwards into the Plateau in late prehistory. People as far away as the Navajo and Apache of the American Southwest speak languages closely related to those of Subarctic British Columbia because of the same great Athapaskan migration out of the far northwest. The reasons for this movement are not clear, although a massive volcanic eruption in the Yukon basin about 1,400 years ago has been cited as one factor. Archaeologists have searched for evidence of the first arrival of Athapaskans in interior British Columbia, with varying degrees of success. However, wandering Athapaskan bands would likely have acquired most of the cultural traits of their neighbours before settling in a new area, making them archaeologically indistinguishable from those people.
Popular images of the native cultures of British Columbia often dwell on the coastal peoples to the exclusion of their inland neighbours. There is a conception, fostered even by some anthropological writing, that the interior was simply a marginal area between the Northwest Coast and the Plains, where more important cultural developments took place. This perception may be a result of too much attention to historical or ethnographic data, collected after the aboriginal cultures had been profoundly altered by European contact. However, archaeology, which is the only means we have of reconstructing true pre-contact lifeways, clearly reveals unique and vital cultures in the late prehistory of the interior, the equal in complexity, in their own way, of those of any neighbouring area. The Plateau, and even some portions of the Subarctic, was a naturally rich land, well capable of supporting substantial native populations and nurturing the evolution of creative and dynamic cultures.
Today, few traces of the ancient interior ways of life remain and most modern residents go about their business unaware of the many generations who were there ahead of them. Occasionally, however, a hiker may stumble on some dancing red figures peering from a rock and perhaps wonder for a moment about the artist who painted them many years ago, when all the world was still just lakes and mountains.
