Indigenous History

The Nlaka'pamux (pronounced in-KLAH-kap-muh) are the Indigenous people of the Thompson River canyon and surrounding plateau. Their territory spans the Fraser Canyon, the Thompson River valley, and the Nicola country — a vast landscape of river canyons, dry benchlands, and mountain forests.

Spences Bridge sits at the confluence of the Thompson and Nicola Rivers, a place of deep cultural and practical significance. This junction was a gathering point for trade, ceremony, and the seasonal harvest of salmon — the cornerstone of Nlaka'pamux life.

James Teit was one of the most prominent Nlaka'pamux supporters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Teit was born in Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland. Sometime in the early 1880s his mother’s brother John Murray invited James, as one of his nephews, to join him in British Columbia. Murray had previously established himself in 1859 as a storekeeper and farmer in Cook’s Ferry (Spences Bridge). Murray - a bachelor - offered the prospect of an inheritance to James who readily accepted this invitation. Moving to Spences Bridge from Scotland appealed to 19-year-old James, who relinquished his birthright to his younger brother John and arrived at Spences Bridge on 17 March 1884.  In Spences Bridge, Teit clerked at his uncle’s store, supplementing this work with whatever seasonal employment he could find – trapping, farming, and orcharding. Each fall he hunted in remote areas of central and northern British Columbia. His experience would soon enable him to advertise his skills as a guide for big game hunters. Through his uncle he came into close contact with the region’s aboriginal peoples, many of whom traded regularly at Murray’s establishment. Within three years of his arrival, he was living with Antko, a young Thompson (Nlaka’pamux) woman from Nkaitu’sus, a small native village in the Twaal valley just north of Spences Bridge. On 12 Sept. 1892 they were officially married in her village by Archdeacon Richard Small.  On 2 March 1899 Teit’s wife Antko tragically died from pneumonia. He explained in a letter to German-American anthropologist Franz Boas (a recently landed explorer and ethnographic researcher) that, “as she was a good wife to me and we had lived happily together for over twelve years, I naturally took her demise as a great blow.” It may have been the loss of his wife and his uncle within three years that prompted Teit to visit his parents in Lerwick in December 1901. After his wife's death, Teit moved to the small town of Spences Bridge, British Columbia. In the months that followed, Teit resumed a courtship he had begun earlier with Leonie Josephine Morens, daughter of colonists who had immigrated from the Savoie region of France. Together they had six children: Erik 1905, Inga 1907, Magnus 1909, Rolf 1912, Sigurd 1915, and Thorald 1919. Inga and Erik are buried in the Morens family graveyard with their baby brother. The Teits moved in with Leonie’s widowed mother on the family farm near Spences Bridge. Over the next 14 years, they would have six children, each of whom would be given a Norse name. In 1911 Teit would build a home for the family in Spences Bridge, where they would live until they moved to Merritt in 1919. James and Josephine are buried in Merritt B.C.

Teit was a key figure in the broader movement among BC First Nations to assert their title to their ancestral lands. He worked closely with other Interior leaders and with the Allied Tribes of British Columbia, a coalition formed in the early 20th century to press the federal and provincial governments on the land question. Aboriginal leaders all over the province were worried about the future of their peoples, having witnessed large-scale settlement and development in just a few decades, with a loss of their rights to their land base. Because there were so few who could communicate in English, the chiefs were in desperate need of translators to help them argue their position. With his linguistic ability and his ethnographic knowledge, Teit was perfectly placed to take on this role. As he would explain in 1920 to a Senate committee in Ottawa, the Interior Tribes of British Columbia, an alliance of Thompson, Shuswap, and Okanagan leaders, “insisted [in 1909] upon my attending their meetings and helping with their writing. Thus I commenced to act as their secretary and treasurer.” He also acted for the Indian Rights Association, an alliance of lower mainland, northern coastal, and Vancouver Island aboriginal groups formed the same year. He spent most of 1910 travelling to reserves throughout the southern interior region to create a liaison between the two groups. By the summer, with Teit’s help, the Interior Tribes had produced two important written documents, a declaration and a memorial to Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier*, outlining its position. This form of political advocacy was in keeping with the anti-state rhetoric that Teit had been following in socialist journals from Vancouver such as the Western Socialist and its successor, the Western Clarion, between 1902 and 1909.

In August 1910, James Teit supported Nlaka'pamux leaders who met with Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier during his visit to Kamloops. At that meeting, Interior leaders presented the now-famous Laurier Memorial — a formal declaration asserting that the lands of British Columbia had never been ceded by treaty and that Indigenous peoples retained their rights and title. The memorial was a landmark document in the history of Indigenous land rights in Canada, and Tait's participation marked Spences Bridge as a place connected to that pivotal moment.

Beyond his political work, Tait was known as a bridge between cultures — fluent in English and respected by both Indigenous and settler communities in the Thompson River canyon. He navigated the difficult realities of the reserve era with dignity, working to protect his community's access to fishing sites, water, and land that were essential to Nlaka'pamux survival.

Indigenous rights and recognition struggles continue today. Teit's legacy remains in the memory of the Nlaka'pamux people, where  the ongoing struggle for recognition of Indigenous title in British Columbia remains. His voice, raised at Kamloops in 1910, echoes in the land claims and rights assertions that continue to this day. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?BioId=42006

The arrival of gold seekers in the Fraser Canyon in 1858 brought dramatic and often violent disruption to Nlaka'pamux communities. The canyon war of 1858 saw armed conflict between miners and Nlaka'pamux warriors defending their territory. Despite being vastly outnumbered, the Nlaka'pamux negotiated a peace that allowed them to maintain a degree of autonomy.

The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway through the canyon in the 1880s brought further displacement, as traditional fishing sites, trails, and village locations were destroyed or cut off. The reserve system confined Nlaka'pamux families to small parcels of their ancestral lands.

Despite these pressures, Nlaka'pamux communities survived and maintained their language, culture, and connection to the land. Today, the Cook's Ferry Band and neighbouring First Nations continue to assert their rights and title, participate in land stewardship, and revitalize their language and traditions.

The Nlaka'pamux Nation Tribal Council represents several bands in the Thompson River canyon, including the Cook's Ferry Band at Spences Bridge. These communities are active participants in land use planning, environmental stewardship, and cultural revitalization across their traditional territory.

Visitors to Spences Bridge are encouraged to learn about and respect the Indigenous heritage of this place. The land, the river, and the canyon carry thousands of years of Nlaka'pamux history — a living legacy that continues to shape the community today.