Okanagan Lake really should have been called Syilx Lake.

(BEN BULMER / iNFOnews.ca)

While First Nations people living in the Okanagan are commonly known as Okanagan, they actually refer to themselves as Syilx.

That’s likely because an early fur trader with the Pacific Fur Company, named David Stuart, didn’t understand how to relate to the Indigenous people he met on his 1811 journey through the Oakinacken to Cumcloups.

“He learned our language but not necessarily how we talk,” Coralee Miller, the docent at Westbank First Nation’s Snc?wips Heritage Museum, told iNFOnews.ca. “What that means is, when you ask us a question, we’re going to be very direct and we’re not going to give more information than what you asked. That’s just the way we are.”

Stuart made the mistake of asking a group of Syilx scouts: “What are you.”

They took that literally so they answered: “suknaqinx.”

Miller broke that word down to explain that it means 'carrying a message to the top'.

While Stuart said he would remember suknaqinx, as he travelled, it got twisted in his head and came out Oakinacken. Even if he had remembered, it would still have been the wrong name for the people and the area.

The word Okanagan has gone through about 46 different spellings and is still spelled differently in the U.S. as Okanogan.

And even some recordings of Stuart’s spelling are different. The Oakinacken spelling is from a lengthy article on the Pacific Fur Company on the Mysteries of Canada website.

In the 1948 edition of the Okanagan Historical Society report, they have the Pacific Fur Company spelling it as Okunaaka and credit the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805 as initiating the name as Otchen-aukane.

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The Syilx territory stretched south of the Columbia River to Wilbur, WA so the exchange could have been with Lewis and Clark rather than Stuart. Still, Okanagan is a long way from Syilx.

What Stuart should have asked, Miller said, is: “Who are you?”

That answer would have been Syilx, meaning “people who weave.”

“We’re not talking about baskets or clothing,” Miller said about the word weaving. “It’s a philosophical weaving, an understanding that land, animal and people – we are all interwoven together.”

The Pacific Fur Company was founded in 1810 by New York businessman John Jacob Astor who made a fortune trading furs in the east, according to the Mysteries of Canada article.

He decided to expand to the West Coast.

He sent a ship called the Tonquin around Cape Horn and landed at the mouth of the Columbia River in what is now Washington State on March 11, 1811 where his men built the Fort Astoria trading post.

The Tonquin was captained by Jonathan Thorn who was “as prickly as the protrusion which his surname evokes,” the article says.

The ship continued on to trade with the Nootka in Clayoquot Sound where, seven years earlier, the crew of an American merchant ship had been massacred.

The same fate befell the Tonquin after Captain Thorne reportedly insulted a Nootka chief.

“June 15, 1811, several hundred Nootka warriors boarded the ship on the pretense of resuming trade,” the Mysteries of Canada article says. “At a prearranged signal, they dropped their furs, drew their knives, and massacred the ship’s entire crew, sparing only one native interpreter.

“In the aftermath of the slaughter, one of the ship’s crew members, mortally wounded, retreated to the cargo hold and set fire to the gunpowder supply. The ensuing explosion obliterated the Tonquin and killed about two hundred Nootka warriors.”

It was a much different experience for Stuart when he led a team from Fort Astoria through the Okanagan to the Thompson River.

When they reached the confluence of the Okanagan River and the Columbia River they started building Fort Okanagan at the end of October 1811.

Shortly after, Stuart took the rest of the men to explore up the Okanagan River, becoming the first Europeans to reach Okanagan Lake.

“They continued north up the lake and travelled northwest overland to the South Thompson River, where they encountered Shuswap Indians,” the article says. “Due to thick snow, which made travel all but impossible, Stuart and company decided to spend the winter with the Shuswaps.”

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They found the area rich in beaver and other fur bearing animals so vowed to return. First, they went back to Fort Okanagan, leaving the Thompson area near the end of February, 1812.

On May 6, 1812, two of Stuart’s men and a Syilx man headed north from Fort Okanagan with 16 horses piled with trade goods.

“After riding for ten days, the three men reached a place which (Alexander) Ross called Cumcloups (i.e. Kamloops; meaning ‘meeting of the waters’ in the Shuswap language), which lies at the confluence of the South and North Thompson Rivers,” the Mysteries of Canada article says.

That, too, was a distortion of the actual spelling.

“The Tk‘emlúpsemc, ‘the people of the confluence,’ now known as the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc are members of the Interior-Salish Secwepemc (Shuswap) speaking peoples of British Columbia,” says the Tk’emlúps website.

But at least it carries the same meaning.

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Ross stayed there for 10 days of trading.

“The number of Indians collected on the occasion could not have been less than 2,000,” Ross wrote in his memoirs, according to the Mysteries of Canada article.

“Not expecting to see so many, I had taken but a small quantity of goods with me; nevertheless, we loaded all our horses - so anxious were they to trade, and so fond of tobacco, that one morning before breakfast I obtained one hundred and ten beavers for leaf-tobacco, at the rate of five leaves per skin; and at last, when I had but one yard of white cotton remaining, one of the chiefs gave me twenty prime beaver skins for it.”

Later that summer, Stuart returned to build Fort Cumcloups. Shortly after, men with the North West Company built their own fort.

Rather than fight each other, the two companies remained on friendly terms over the winter.

“In reference to his experience wintering at Kamloops, David Stuart is quoted as having said, ‘I have passed a winter nowise unpleasant,’” the Mysteries of Canada article says. “The opposition, it is true, gave me a good deal of anxiety when it first arrived, but we agreed very well, and made as much, perhaps more, than if we had been enemies.”

That winter was the last for the Pacific Fur Company in Canada.

“This wide field of commercial enterprise fell into the lap of the North West Company almost without an effort; for misfortunes alone, over which man had no control, sealed the doom of the unfortunate Astoria,” the Mysteries of Canada article says.

The company lost two more of its ships and, by that time, England was at war with the U.S.

“Left with little choice, the agents of the Pacific Fur Company sold their assets to the North West Company and abandoned the country, some returning overland to easterly civilization,” the article says.

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