Nuxalk couple with a spoon canoe at Bella Coola, 1900 (Iver Fougner Photo)
Travel | Rivers were the main travel routes two hundred years ago. Except for the foot trail between the Fraser and Bella Coola Rivers, Mackenzie and his companions relied on a vast chain of rivers and lakes to carry them accross the continent in birch bark canoes. On the Bella Coola River, they travelled in cedar dug-outs to the Pacific. With the assistance of a young chief, they travelled from village to village, changing to larger canoes as the river grew larger and larger and as they approached coastal waters.
Trade The Nuxalk controlled trade between the coast and interior. Their well-established trading ties resulted in considerable wealth. Large dug-outs were used for trading on coastal waters. Smaller ones, called spoon canoes, were poled upstream. From there, trade goods were carried over grease trails; named for the main item of trade, ooligan grease. It was over the Nuxalk-Carrier grease trail that Mackenzie travelled to reach the Bella Coola valley and by Nuxalk canoe to reach the rock, 60 km out the inlet, on which he inscribed his name and date of arrival before turning back. "I had imagined the Canadians who accompanied me were the most expert canoemen in the world, but they are very inferior to these people [the Nuxalk], as they themselves acknowledged, in conducting those vessels" - from Mackenzie's journal.
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