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 These images above and at left from Irene Edwards' book. the one just above is the Portage as seen from the Mission Mtn Microwave (or from Mission Peak/Skam?); The moire pattern is a scanning effect from the dot matrix halftone used for photos in the print edition. If someone would kindly go up and take a photo on nice day and send it to me for use here it would be greatly appreciated - and duly credited, of course. |
| First things first,
or almost . . . Quoting and/or adapted and photos when not otherwise labelled are used with permission from the late Irene Edward's "Short Portage to Lillooet": her text in dark orange, additions by myself in black. "The Beginning" With a thunderous roar, a large piece of the mountain broke off and tumbled in a giant cascade of rocks and shale into the valley and lake below. Like a broken dam, the seemingless endless torrent poured on and on. When the last vibrations has finally died away, a great wall of broken rocks stretched across from one side of the valley to the other, and there were two lakes instead of one. Thus was born the land area between Anderson and Seton Lakes, known today as Seton Portage. From a hillside view one can see clearly the great cavity in the mountain from which the slide emerged, and the contours of the slide itself, from the mountain base to the extended thrusts on the far side. We do not know if human eyes ever witnessed the greaet havoc that changed foreever the geography of this mountain valley. Hundreds, or even thousands of years of wind, snow, and rain settled the rocks and gradually ground them into earth. Vegetation grew and covered the ugly scards, as is the way of nature, and the Portage became a place of beauty. But everywhere great rocks and boulders lie close to the surface, covered more deeply in places by river silt. Streams from the mountainside and upper lake worked their way through the rocks, and gradually a river joined the two lakes. Smaller slides blocked its course many times so that it had to break through new channels. There are at least six old river beds visible on the Portage today. Though well established in its present bed, Seton Portage River is threatened by small slides from time to time. [in the last decade huge floods from Whitecap Creek which meets the Seton Portage River just below the ouitlow from Anderson Lake have sourged the community more than once: erosion in mountain country is a given, especially when upper basins of many creeks have been thoroughly clearcut with no cleanup.] |
The following photo is from May 2015,
and shows the slope of the slide that cut proto-Seton Lake in half.  The map-sketch below is by Mrs, Irene Edwards from her book,which has been also titled in a 2nd eidtion as "Tales from Seton Portage":  |
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 Seton Portage 2015 as seen from Upper Whitecap Canyon |
Through the years the two lakes have become strangely different,
Anderson Lake is a deep blue, but the lower Seton Lake, fed from silted
streams, and waters from the Bridge River Dams, has become green.
Sometimes it has a pale chalky appearance, but after the spring floods,
it settles to a beautiful jade green - truly a beautiful gem in its
mountain setting. The fact that these two lakes were one was corroborated by thte Dept. of Geology in Victoria. The big slide could have happened as far back as 10,000 years ago. Many rocks and mud slides occur year after year, building up the land portion.' The last complete blockage occurred in 1907. Lillooet residents, noting that the level of Seton Lake and the creeks was lowering rapidly, went up by boat to investigate. They found the Portage River blocked completely by a huge slide, and its waters flowing back into Anderson Lake. The spring fhreshettes soon broke through the slide again, and a new river channel was formed. [note - that spelling of "freshette: is in Mrs Edwards; the usual modern spelling is "freshet"]. |
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| I've
quoted the opening passage of Mrs. Edwards' in the preceding sections
as it''s an excellent local history that sums up the origin of
the Portage well, and with the
appropriate drama suitable for a natural cataclysm of the scale which
created the tiny bit of land separating Anderson and Seton Lakes.
The devastation must have been intense, with displacement waves - a freshwater "megatsunami" - scouring the valley in both directions to a high elevation, and not dissipating until many miles later down the Fraser and Lillooet Rivers - though it seems to have mostly rolled eastwards as there is little sign of it in the Gates or Birkenhead valleys; and it's likely that the Place Glacer at Birken/Gates/Summit Lake may have still been there and blocked the pass. Any human habitation or other living thing below a certain contour would have been washed away, and any hunting or berry-picking party on the ridges above the valley must have watched aghast as their lakeside villages were destroyed and their families obliterated by the disaster -unless there was some sign or warning of the impending disaster and all were evacuated to high ground long before the slide came down; but iike the Hope Slide such landslips are often instantaneous and without warning . There is a large cliff on the south side of Seton Lake past Machute Creek which appears to have been torn from the mountainside by that ancient mega-wave - and the overhang cliffs above Cayoosh Creek between Seton Beach and the Fraser also seem to have been the result of that ancient catastrophe. I nope to find that U.Vic story Mrs edwards mentions to see what other detals there might be. I know about about geological history in general and it doesn't make sense to me why the terminal moraine between Seton Beach and Cayoosh Falls - "Pick's Falls" as they have come to be known since Vernon Pick up their hydropotential to work for his Walden North estate/factory/laboratory. |
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 This aerial by Kat shows the Gorge of Nkoomptch/Nkempts showing the terminal moraine; The Clear Range's highest summits Cairn Peak and Bustry Mtn in behind of the southern part of Fountain Ridge. Nkooomptch means something like "water crossing over" referring to the merging of Cayoosh Creek and the Seton drainage as their merger connects Seton Lake to the Fraser River. Ucwalmicwts name for Cayoosh Creek often appears on gold rush-era maps - 'Tukumath". PGE/BCR rail line at left; McNeil's Lodge was in the green alluvial fan. The white shape in the middle of Seton Beach is the outflow of a diversion tunnel feeding part of the flow of Cayoosh Creek as part of fisheries effort to mix the Cayoosh and Seton waters to try to lead salmon towards the outflow of Cayoosh Creek, instead of struggling futilely into the turbines of the Lillooet Powerhouse. |
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The Lillooet of the Lakes -
Lêxalêxamux or Miil-le wa-qua But people did return, and in time the sheltered and benign climate of the Portage and nearby shores became home to one of more populous native communities of the St'at'imcets-speaking peoples, who were in earlier times were known as the Lakes Lillooet, or Liluet-ol of the Lakes, or Lêxalêxamux (those x's are something like h's). As Mrs. Edwards recounts, "white people couldn't pronounce this, so it was changed to 'mil-le wa-qua' (water mixes)". At the time of the change of modern Lillooet's name from "Cayoosh", all the native peoples of the Lillooet River, Long Portage, Lakes and the Fraser up to Fountain adopted the name Liluet-ol (Lil'wat'ullh), or Lillooets. Old maps somtimes show Sili-ko or Silico Lakes, which so far as I can guess are Tsilhqot'in or Nlakapemctsin names, but would be why a large reserve of the Seton Band is named Silicon IR 7 which is just east or the sharp bend in Seton Lake oposite Machute Creek. |
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| The
Lakes Lillooet people today are comprised of the Seton Lake Indian
Band. who are part of the Upper St'at'imc of the Lillooet Tribal
Council
(or St'at'imc Nation), plus the Nequatqua (D'arcy) Band, which opted
out
of the St'at'imc Nation in recent times and belong instead fo the Lower
Stl'atl'imx Tribal Council. St'at'imc and Stl'atl'imx are the same word
in the two main spelling systems for St'at'imcets / Ucwalmicwts - the
latter meaning something like "our language". The St'at'mc spellilng was come up with by university linguists who wanted to develop a spelling system that had nothing to do with English use of Latin orthography; the actual characters in 'proper' St'at'imc spelling are quite a bit different - /t'/ in particular, and "Lil'wat" havin g a sort of "click" when pronouncing the /l'/. St'at'imc has nevertheless come into newspaper English due to the unworkabklity of the special chacters of the "correct" version's special characters, as is also the case with Sto:lo, Skwxswu7mesh and Hwmethkwyem and so on. Very little is known in white histories of the population and culture of the Lakes Lillooet, but in Mrs. Edwards account, "an old story teller relates that his father, returning from a trip in the mountains, looked down on the settlement and saw 'the lights from the campfires like the stars in the sky'" - some estimates of the population of the Lakes Lillooet prior to the depredations of smallpox and the various impacts of colonization run well over 10,000. For the Lower Lilooet of the Lillooet River I've heard estmates of 35,000, with Mount Currie (Lil'wat) alone having had 15,000. These are reasonable, even modest, estimates given the former size of the Seton and Lillooet River-Birkenhead salmon runs and the abundant game and edible vegetatation in the area. Today's Seton Band population is around 725, plus around 300 non-natives, but as suggested in the old storyteller's account the pre-Contact population here must have been very much higher - not suprising given the lush greenery, mild climate and abundant fish and game around the Portage. In one sequence in Jeremy Williams' video, a chief of Cacli'p/Xaxli'p/Fountain says the survival rate was only 1% (i.e. of the Great Smallpox of 1862 though smallpox remained active in BC into the 1890s when a local plague hit Victoria). Such shocking realities are why I believe it's important for settler popultions to come to terms with what happaned here t that made colonization 'easy'. That 1% is much worse than the numbers I know to be the case for other BC peoples, which range from 5% to 50% but the fundamental truth about records in BC being typically conservative when it comes to estimating native populations and mortality. For those interested, this Substack essay of mine digs into the details of what is known or claimed and what is probable. Myself, I'm with the truth that oral histories are often far more reliable than assertions in written histories Of the original native village-complex which must have spanned the Portage very little remains today because of the displacement of native people from habitations now taken up by non-native settlement. Between placer workings and the tilling of the soil for farms and orchards, any archaeological evidence of former times can be expected to be negligible, but the great antiquity of native culture on the Portage is without doubt. |
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| Nicola's War, 1837 Among those impacts of colonization were an invasion by the Nicolas and other tribes from further inland in 1837 (see Nicola's War in Wikipedia) and perhaps the long war in which the Tsilhqot'in came over the passes and raided Shalalth, Blackwater Creek and Pemberton Meadows. When a Tsilhqot'in raid hit Shalalth, the survivors moved across the lake to "Slide", which I think was a one-time village on the broad flat between Machute Creek and the sheer bluff opposite Retaskit where I know or was told there were several large quigglies whose archaegology stood in the way of a non-native's construction plans; that site has beeen for sale lately, as has McNeil's opposite it to the east of Retaskit (which I'm onty guessing but may have been on Silicon IR 7). When my father was finishing preparations for the grand opening of the baseball diamond on Sk'il for teh 1858 Centennial celebrations, he had wanted to host a pan-native baseball tournament at the brand-spanking new baseball diamond he'd arranged with BC Electric to use their bulldozers and graders to build, he had enthusiastically called up various bands to invite them - including the Nicolas and the Mount Curries.... he had no idea about the history between them and received a call from the police (BCPP or RCMP I'm not sure which, but Mom said the Mounties) to PLEASE call it off as there was already trouble brewing in the respective bands about revenge. Some might say it's not my place to discusss indigenous history but this is also MY family's history.... I know that Dad would feel hurt to hear that the band doesn't allow non-indigenous to use the baseball diamond he built for the whole community and have been averse to joint sporting events with the local non-indigenous community, but he would understand. Elder Theresa Oleman welcomed me with a twiinkle in her eye when she met me at a Uechi-ryu karate function at Crane Hall in 1996 and told me how much she remembered him for telling any of the Manitobans who'd followed him out from Manitoba Hydro that if they didn't want to work alongside natives they should take the next train out of the valley; Fred Shields, who'd worked under Dad, told me much the same thing....... but it is what it is; a white guy on the rez is on the wrong side of the invisible line, I get it, and also got drive-by yelled at as a "white nigger" by some of the youth while picking sasjatoons along the bushes by the apple orchard down the road - and as I already knew, and empathized even though those kids didn't know much about me "I got it" as I understand all that's happened ad is happenigin in BC, I will always be grateful for the friends I have among the Tsalalthmc who are too many to name. I DO suspect that if Dad had still been alive in 1990 and in the Valley, he would have been up a the baseball diamond he built with his indigenous friends or trying to dissuade the Mounties down at the tracks from arresting the elders and youth; he may not have gotten anywhere with them, but i know he would have tried. What's certain in older white history about the Valley is that when A.C. Anderson came through in 1846 the Lakes Lilooet were starving and desperate for food; when Edward Ermatinger and another HBC voyageur came through in 1827 they made no mention of any desperation. The blog that link goes to is pretty thorough in sourcing from HBC journals so I'll try to find records of that trip. Note: According to UNDRIP it's supposed to be not my place to discuss indigenous history without permission from the elders, but all I know was told by earlier elders to Mrs. Edwards or Hill-Tout and others; the story of Nicola's War is told in the History of the Okanagan Chiefs told by James Teit in his chapters about the Siylx and Nlaka'pamux and Nicolas in the papers of the Jessup Expedition. and to me, it's important that BC's many newcomer and settler peoples get to know native history, or it will be told to them by liars and dissemblers which is becoming very common of late. The map at left if you look very close names 'Nkumptch' a variant spelling for the name of the gorge; the Lilooet Declaration includes a signature of a chief from "Nkempts" a reminder that today's Indian Act-recognized bands are not all there once was; the Lakes Lillooet not only inlcluded the Netquatque Band at D'Arcy but also the Skimka'mc at Seton Beach, namedly the Oleman family; the site of their former camp and burial ground is now part of the LiIlooet Band's holdings |
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| The Portage as part of the Lakes Route/Douglas Road |
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Below
is a photo of the Oleman family at Skimka (Seton Beach). "Oleman"
or "Oloman" is the Chinook Jargon word for old or ancient or aged and
carries with it the tone of "venerated elder".  This photo was taken by my father Endre (Andy) Cleven I'm guessing in 1961 as No. 2 is finisihed; it's dusty as I wasn't taking care when scanning it so at some point I'll be updating the site with cleaned photos.  BC Archives # A-04369 This old bridge across the Seton Portage River is of the truss-span design common among bridges built by the Royal Engineers, but I believe this was built by Portage residents. In fact, this picture was probably taken to commemorate its completion, and the men shown are those who built it, although I don't know anything (for now) about its history. The numbers written on the photo are meant to identify the individuals whose heads they're over. |
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 upright totem Pole andy cleven photo  photo E "Andy" Cleven This is a distant view of the Portage from the tip of Shalalth Point, showing the visual evidence of the slide which created it as the slope of land emerging from the carved-out mountainside at left. The treed headland at right is Mt Skeil, aka Sk'il where the No. 2 Powerhouse is now and where alolng the top is the Elder's Complex housing and health centre. The peak at right is "the Owl" (centre in the colour view at left), a subpeak of Wihitecap Mountain, of the southern spur of the Bendor Range, the farther one to the right of centre in this picture is Mt. McGillivary which crowns the pass of the same name near D'arcy. Most of the settled area of the Portage is out of sight here, to the right behind the headland of Mt. Skeil. The sloped area shown is some of the evidence of the huge landslip which created the Portage. |
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 This view from Lha7us / Slosh over Sk'il is of the western end of Mission Ridge; Skam/Mission Peak is out of view to the right;  Mission Pass is to the left. |
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| The Coming of the PGE The consequences of the construction of the PGE along the lakes are too many to begin listing. This video by Jeremy Williams of Shalalth tells the native point-of-view about the consequences of the rail line better than I ever could.  BC Archives # NA-04411 During the construction of the PGE supplies had to be delivered to construction sites along the lakeshores by boat. This is the PGE wharf at Anderson Lake, just below the Hurley place. The contractors were Foley, Welch and Stewart of Vancouver but much of the timber for ties and other construction was supplied by Durban's Mill at the foot of Seton Lake. The farther shore at right here is called Buntain's, a neighbourhood of recreational homes named after the PGE stop, which itself gets it name from the Vancouver insurance agent whose getaway cabin was the first here. Today the High-Line Road to D'arcy makes a diagonal cut into the cliff-face above the lake to the left. | ||||||||
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| *pronunciation
note about "portage": The word "Portage" here is not pronounced the French way, rhyming with corsage, but rather the English way, rhyming with "porridge". I've been in furious arguments with newcomers to BC notably when living in Whistler about this pronunciation - actually they were furious, and I was just stubborn as well as in the right - with them insisting that because it was the Metis voyageurs who came through and "named" the Portage it should be pronounced the French way, and that I was obviously an ignorant and bigoted British Columbian for maintaining that the English pronunciation was even correct; that "portage" pronounced like "porridge" was even an English word. Thing is, actually coming from the place and being told I was wrong by people who'd never even seen it as anything but a place on the map or who'd passed through it on the train......well, I think I'm in a better position to account for how it's supposed to be pronounced, being from the place and all...... | |
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