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38-619: The basin of the Stikine is sparsely populated, mostly by members of the Tahltan people, though the lower reaches are the territory of group of the Tlingit people centred on Wrangell, Alaska , which is on Etolin Island just outside the mouth of the Stikine. The region is noted for its rugged and unusual mix of glaciated ranges, semi-arid subarctic volcanic plateaux and cones, and deep river canyons, most of all

76-519: A coalbed methane mining project planned by Royal Dutch Shell . The Sacred Headwaters (Klappan Valley) is home to the headwaters of the Nass , Skeena and Stikine Rivers . Not only do these rivers provide a home to important salmon stocks, Tahltan oral history holds that these headwaters are the place where the earth was first created and where Talhtan culture began. According to the Klabona Keepers,

114-682: A continuing influx of newcomers replaced the disenchanted, with even more men storming the route of the Douglas Road to the upper part of Fraser Canyon around Lillooet ; others got to the upper canyon via the Okanagan Trail and Similkameen Trail , and to the lower Canyon via the Whatcom Trail and the Skagit Trail. All these routes were technically illegal since the Governor required that entry to

152-599: A group of rebellious American miners. Governor Douglas placed restrictions on immigration to the new British colony , including the proviso that entry to the territory must be made via Victoria and not overland, but thousands of men still arrived via the Okanagan and Whatcom Trails . Douglas also sought to limit the importation of weapons, one of the reasons for the Victoria-disembarkation requirement, but his lack of resources for oversight meant that overland routes to

190-740: A side-road to the west of the Stewart-Cassiar Highway , which traverses the region from north to south, connecting parts of British Columbia farther south with the Yukon Territory to the north. To the northeast of the Stikine Country is another region known as the Cassiar Country , and to its southeast is the Omineca Country (both of which had also at one time been "Mining Districts" resulting from their own gold rushes). The region

228-576: A year later it was merged into the Colony of British Columbia . In the early 1860s, Perry Collins , obtained financing from Western Union Telegraph to build a telegraph line from San Francisco through British Columbia and Alaska and across the Bering Strait to Russia and ultimately Europe . The line was begun in 1865 at New Westminster , and continued as far as the Skeena River in 1866, but then

266-581: The Bulkley Valley against a project planned near Telkwa, British Columbia . In a unanimous 2003 resolution, the Union of B.C. Municipalities asked for a moratorium on coal-bed methane mining in the province. Since 2005, the Klabona Keepers, a group of Tahltan elders, have watched the road leading through Tahltan territory towards the Sacred headwaters (Klappan Valley) in opposition to development there, specifically

304-679: The Cariboo Gold Rush in their respective regions, it did draw the attention of British Columbia’s Governor James Douglas , who petitioned the British government to create the Stikine Territory from the line of the Finlay and Skeena Rivers, which were the Colony of British Columbia's northern boundary, north to the 62nd parallel and east to the 125th meridian . The territory was established in 1862, and

342-557: The Grand Canyon of the Stikine , which was described by naturalist John Muir as "the northern Yosemite ". Also notable and rather famous on the river's course is the Great Glacier , which fronts along the river's right (west) bank a few miles north of the Alaska frontier. Mount Edziza Provincial Park , Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park and Stikine River Provincial Park are

380-845: The Hudson's Bay Company . On September 12, 1861, the Victoria newspaper, the British Colonist , reported a rumor that gold had been discovered on the Stikine River, and by the following spring, more than 200 miners struck out for the Cassiar. Sixty of them went on a sternwheeler, the Flying Dutchman , owned by Captain William Moore . While the rush did not settle the area, as had the Fraser Canyon or

418-577: The Tahltan Nation , which comprises the membership and governments of the Tahltan First Nation and Iskut First Nation . Ten thousand years ago, the Tahltan people used obsidian from Mount Edziza to make tools and weapons for trading material. This is the main source of obsidian found in northwestern British Columbia. Coal-bed methane extraction had already been the subject of protests in

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456-609: The Yukon via the all Canadian route, up the Stikine River to Telegraph Creek and overland to the Teslin River . Tahltan The Tahltan or Nahani are a First Nations people of the Athabaskan -speaking ethnolinguistic group who live in northern British Columbia around Telegraph Creek , Dease Lake , and Iskut . The Tahltan constitute the fourth division of the Nahane (People of

494-608: The B.C. government announced that Shell would be withdrawing its plans to explore and drill for coalbed methane gas in the Tahltan Territory. According to the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition , Shell has launched a lawsuit against Talhtan elders for loss of revenue. The Klabona Keepers have filed a counter-suit for failure to consult. Employment opportunities have come from natural resources development in recent years. Because of various concerns over

532-774: The British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west" and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific." Moody arrived in British Columbia in December 1858, commanding the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment . Moody had hoped to begin immediately the foundation of a capital city, but upon his arrival at Fort Langley he learned of an outbreak of violence at the settlement of Hill's Bar. This led to an incident popularly known as " Ned McGowan's War ", where Moody successfully quashed

570-631: The Fraser at the peak of the gold rush. This estimate was based on the Yale area and did not include the non-mining "hangers-on" population. (The Fraser River Gold Rush started in 1858) When news of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush reached London, Richard Clement Moody was hand-picked by the Colonial Office , under Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton , to establish British order and to transform British Columbia into

608-470: The West). The Tahltan cultural practices and lifeways varied widely as they were often widely separated and would have to endure varying conditions depending on their locality. In Tahltan culture it was believed that some of their ancestors had knowledge that others did not from times before a great flood. Some of these ancestors used that knowledge for the good of the people, while others used it for evil and to

646-499: The apologies of the Americans who had waged war on the natives. Wanting to make the British military and governmental presence more visible, Douglas appointed justices of the peace and also revised the slapdash mining rules which had emerged along the river. Troops to maintain order, however, were still in short supply. Competition and interracial tensions between European Americans and non-white miners erupted on Christmas Eve 1858, with

684-460: The beating of Isaac Dixon , a freed American black. He was the town barber and in later years was a popular journalist in the Cariboo . Dixon was beaten by two men from Hill's Bar , the other main town in the southern part of the goldfields. The complicated series of events that ensued is known as McGowan's War . Its potential to provoke United States annexation ambitions within the goldfields, prompted

722-940: The colony to be made via Victoria, but thousands came overland anyway. Accurate numbers of miners, especially on the upper Fraser, are therefore difficult to reckon. During the gold rush tens of thousands of prospectors from California flooded into the newly declared Colony of British Columbia and disrupted the established balance between the Hudson's Bay Company 's fur traders and indigenous peoples . The influx of prospectors included numerous European Americans and African Americans , Britons , Germans , English Canadians , Maritimers , French Canadians , Scandinavians , Italians , Belgians and French , and other European ethnicities , Hawaiians , Chinese , Mexicans , West Indians , and others. Many of those first-arrived of European and British origin were Californian by culture, and this included Maritimers such as Amor De Cosmos and others. The numbers of "Americans" associated with

760-460: The disadvantage of others. Raven is considered to be the protagonist hero against these evil ancestors. Tahltan social organization is founded on matriarchy and intermarriage between two main clan designations. The two main clans of Tahltan people are Tses' Kiya (pronounced Tses-kee-ya) ( Crow ) and Chiyone (pronounced Chee-oanah) (Wolf) . These two clans are further subdivided into four parties: Contemporary Tahltan society constitutes itself as

798-502: The district did not occur until the 1770s with the arrival of Russian fur traders, who never traveled beyond the coastal areas, but relied on the Tlingits to provide the pelts from the inland animals. With the construction of a fort at Fort Wrangell , the Russian fur traders held a monopoly in the region until the 1830s when Fort Taku and Fort Stikine were both built on the Stikine River by

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836-577: The founding of many towns. Although the area had been mined for a few years, news of the strike spread to San Francisco when the governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island , James Douglas , sent a shipment of ore to that city's mint. People in San Francisco and the California gold fields greeted the news with excitement. Within a month 30,000 men had descended upon Victoria . 4,000 of these Gold Rush pioneers settlers were Chinese. Until that time,

874-471: The gold rush must be understood to be inherently European-ethnic to start with. Anglo-American Southerners (from states such as Missouri and Kentucky), Midwesterners, and New Englanders were well represented. Alfred Waddington, an entrepreneur and pamphleteer of the gold rush later infamous for the disastrous road-building expedition which led to the Chilcotin War of 1864, estimated there were 10,500 miners on

912-826: The goldfields could not be controlled. During the fall of 1858, tensions increased between miners and the Nlaka'pamux , the First Nations people of the Canyon. This led to the Fraser Canyon War . Miners wary of venturing upriver beyond Yale began to use the Lakes Route to Lillooet instead, prompting Douglas to contract for the building of the Douglas Road , the Mainland Colony's first public works project. The governor arrived in Yale to accept

950-409: The governor to send newly appointed Chief Justice Begbie , the colony's chief of police Chartres Brew and a contingent of Royal Engineers and Royal Marines to intervene. They did not need to use force and were able to resolve the matter peacefully. The team also dealt with the corruption of British appointees in the area, which had contributed to the crisis. The Fraser Canyon War did not affect

988-554: The headwaters and, in June 2007, 14 different environmental groups sent a joint letter to Shell opposing the project. Representatives from Shell assert a determination to reach consensus in the community and note that the elected Tahltan Central Council (TCC) agreed to the exploration. Chief Jerry Asp was forced to resign in 2005 after protests from Tahltan members accusing him of a conflict of interest because of his involvement with two pro-development organizations. On December 18, 2012,

1026-680: The headwaters, but in 2005 four Shell employees who arrived at the band office in Iskut were turned away by a group of elders and no drilling occurred that summer. Non-violent blockades in 2005 and 2006 delayed development efforts and led to the arrests of 13 protesters. Talhtan territory was the site of half of all the mining exploration in British Columbia during 2006. Protests in Smithers have been as large as 600 people. David Suzuki and Wade Davis have both criticized plans for coal-bed methane mining in

1064-609: The lands, the parties involved balance development and environmental aspects. Talk of an Alaska-Canada railroad traversing Tahltan lands recurs every so often with feasibility studies being done. Tahltan is a poorly documented Northern Athabaskan language . Some linguists consider Tahltan to be a language with three divergent but mutually intelligible dialects. Other linguists consider these to be separate languages. The number of speakers are below. Fraser Canyon Gold Rush The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush , (also Fraser Gold Rush and Fraser River Gold Rush ) began in 1858 after gold

1102-597: The largest provincial parks in the region, which continues to be heavily explored for mineral potentials since first opened up by the Stikine Gold Rush of the 1860s, which forced the creation of the Stikine Territory , soon afterwards absorbed into the Colony of British Columbia . The term "Stikine District" was also used in reference to the Stikine Mining District, an administrative jurisdiction. Today

1140-634: The miners had either drifted back to the U.S. or dispersed further into the British Columbia wilderness in search of unstaked riches. Other gold rushes proliferated around the colony, with notable gold rushes at Rock Creek , the Similkameen , Wild Horse Creek and the Big Bend of the Columbia River spinning immediately off the Fraser rush, and gold exploration soon after led to the Omineca Gold Rush and

1178-524: The project was abandoned because the transatlantic line was built first, making the Collins line redundant. Despite the fact that the line would not be completed, surveyors had created a primitive route from Quesnel to the newly established settlement of Telegraph Creek, thus opening up the district for travel. The region was also affected by the Klondike Gold Rush when in 1897–1898, 5000 miners went to

Stikine Country - Misplaced Pages Continue

1216-450: The term Stikine Region is a British Columbia administrative district, similar to a Regional District but not fully qualified as one, but it does not include all of the Stikine Country and comprises mostly the Cassiar Country and Atlin District , which are to the north and northwest of the Stikine Country, respectively. The largest town in the district is Telegraph Creek , which lies on

1254-478: The upper reaches of the goldfields, in the area of Lillooet, and the short-lived popularity of the Douglas Road caused the town to be designated "the largest town north of San Francisco and west of Chicago ", with an estimated population of 16,000. This title was also briefly held by Port Douglas , Yale, and later on by Barkerville . By 1860, however, the gold-bearing sandbars of the Fraser were depleted. Many of

1292-491: The valley is used for fishing, hunting, and trapping. It is the site of a Tahltan burial ground and a cultural camp where Talhtan youth can learn their culture in the summer. In 2004, Shell was awarded the oil and gas rights to the Klappan Valley, one of British Columbia 's largest coal deposits with an estimated 230 km (8 trillion cu ft) of methane . That year, Shell drilled three exploratory wells at

1330-511: The village had had a population of only about 500. This was a record for mass movement of mining populations on the North American frontier, even though more men in total were involved in the gold rushes of California and Colorado. By the fall, however, tens of thousands of men who had failed to stake claims or were unable to because of the summer's high water on the river, pronounced the Fraser to be "humbug." Many returned to San Francisco, but

1368-617: Was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River a few miles upstream from the Thompson's confluence with the Fraser River at present-day Lytton . The rush overtook the region around the discovery and was centered on the Fraser Canyon from around Hope and Yale to Pavilion and Fountain , just north of Lillooet . Though the rush

1406-486: Was largely over by 1927, miners from the rush spread out and found a sequence of other gold fields throughout the British Columbia Interior and North , most famously that in the Cariboo . The rush is credited with instigating European-Canadian settlement on the mainland of British Columbia. It was the catalyst for the founding of the Colony of British Columbia , the building of early road infrastructure, and

1444-638: Was the traditional home of the Taku and Inland Tlingit people who by the 19th century settled around what was to become the gold rush town of Atlin . Other First Nations such as the Tahltan settled at Telegraph Creek and Dease Lake . The Sekani lived along the Finlay and Parsnip Rivers , while in the east the Kaska people occupied the Liard and Dease Rivers and eventually settled along McDame Creek . Non native exploration of

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