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First Nations Gallery
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Generally, in discussions of the gold rush and the building of the Cariboo Wagon Road, the First Nations of the area are overlooked.
However, the fact that they are rarely mentioned in this context does not mean that they played no role in this part of B.C.'s history.
The Aboriginal residents of the area were essential to the newcomers, providing them with goods, such as canoes and food, and services, such as guides and translators.
The relationship, at least in the beginning, was beneficial to both the Aboriginal groups and the newcomers.
The Aboriginals would only trade if they were satisfied with the deal they had struck; they were very unlikely to be coerced into bad deals because they held several advantages over the newcomers, such as manpower and a knowledge of the surrounding terrain.
The Wagon Road passed through the territories of several distinct groups, from roughly south to north the Nlaka'pamux, the Stl'atl'imx, the Secwepemc, the Tsilqot'in, and the Dakelhne.
These names may be unfamiliar; they are the names that the groups commonly known as the Nicola, Thompson, Shuswap, Chilcotin, and Carrier, respectively, generally prefer to use.
They prefer the names because they are the names they have given themselves; the names by which they were commonly known were given to them either by neighbouring First Nations or by white people, and as such had very little meaning to the people so named.
As part of this section on People of the Cariboo, some pictures of Aboriginal people from the collection of the Ethnology Division at the Royal British Columbia Museum have been digitised.
Unfortunately, the information accompanying the pictures is scant, to say the least.
The information under each image is transcribed directly from the Ethnology Division's information card for that image.
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