Peter Pond’s maps of 1785 and 1787 refer to the River of Peace.
Other names have included Un-ja-ga/Unjigah, as recorded on a map to accompany Mackenzie’s “Voyage to the Pacific… 1793”
![Buckskin Suit [1872]](/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/rylatt-buckskin-suit.jpg)
Buckskin Suit [1872]
Rylatt, p. 138
Rylatt was born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, around 1840, a son of a boatman and the oldest of 11 children. After enlisting in the Royal Engineers and serving in the Crimean War, he was transfered to the Columbia Detachment, responsible for the foundation of British Columbia as the Colony of British Columbia (1858–66). After five years in British Columbia he was discharged with an Exemplary Character with eleven years’ total service.
In 1871 Rylatt was recruited by fellow Royal Engineer veteran Walter Moberly [1832–1915], who was in charge of S party of the Canadian Pacific Railway Survey. Rylatt served as quartermaster for the party until 1873, when he got word that his wife had died. He wrote a memoir of the trip for his family, now published under the title Surveying the Canadian Pacific — Memoir of a Railroad Pioneer(1).
Upon starting, our party consisted of 4 officers (surveyors), 16 men, principally axeman about one half of them Canadian, 8 Mexican and Indian Packers, and one hunter for the party — a Bavarian. There were 45 animals in the Pack Train, each carrying about 300 pounds.
S Party spent winter 1871-72 on the Columbia River near the Blaeberry River at the west end of Howse Pass. Moberly, who had spent the winter in Ottawa, arrived at their camp on June 16th. The ‘S’ party spent the entire season moving their equipment, supplies and pack trains through the Athabasca Pass, and north, arriving in January at the east end of the Yellowhead Pass, which Rylatt consistently called the Leatherhead Pass. On May 13, 1873, Rylatt set off through the Yellowhead Pass with one companion and three horses, reaching Kamloops on June 14. Rylatt continued on by stage to his home at New Westminster.
And now, my reminiscence is done. I might go on to state I found an empty house, my goods intact but stored in a ware-house. My return to my empty home, and the replacing of everything therein as it used to be in the days that were gone. My sad thoughts as l lay stretched upon the bed my poor wife had breathed her last upon. My many visits to her grave, and my final sale of home and belongings, and my wandering away to seek another home, under another government. But to what end?
Fur-trading district.
From Merk’s introduction to Fur Trade and Empire:
The accompanying journal of George Simpson [1792–1860] is a memoir of trade and of empire. The author was Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company Territories in America, and as such, director of the economic life of the greater part of what is now the Dominion of Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the United States. At the time of writing this journal he was primarily interested in the task of rehabilitating the fur trade of one section of this vast empire, the Oregon Country, stretching westward from the Rocky Mountains to the sea and from California to Alaska. His account opens with his embarkation in a North canoe on Hudson Bay bound for the Pacific and for the work of reorganizing this trade. He gives a lively narrative of his swift journey across the continent, with comments interspersed on the state of trade along his route. In Oregon the record becomes a memoir of Indian life, of trade problems, of the slashing reforms by which he revived a demoralized and profitless industry, and of his plans for holding possession of the country against any future competition of Americans.…
The Oregon Country, which is the central theme of the document, was in 1824-25 a region in dispute. Not only was it contended for by Great Britain and the United States, but it was claimed also by the Russian Czar, though he was preparing in 1824-25 to give up such rights as he had there for recognition of his sovereignty north of the parallel of 54° 40′. Governor Simpson was ambitious to win the Oregon Country, or as much of it as possible, for Great Britain and for the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Peace came by way of a coalition agreement entered into in London in 1821. In the merger the Hudson’s Bay Company retained its identity; it took over the assets of the North West Company, evaluated like its own at €200,000, and to finance the consolidation doubled its outstanding stock. The charter and the ancient privileges of the Hudson’s Bay Company remained undisturbed. To the privileges a princely addition was made. The British government as a reward for the peace and as a means of preventing any future outbreak of war conferred upon the reorganized Company, under an act of Parliament of 1821, exclusive trading rights for twenty-one years in all that part of British North America lying between Rupert’s Land and the Rocky Mountains, and, in addition, the sole British trading rights in the whole of the Oregon Country. Thus the entire area which is now the Dominion of Canada excepting only the valley of the St. Lawrence and the maritime provinces was, after 1821, under the control of the Hudson’s Bay Company, either as proprietor or as possessor of exclusive trading rights, and besides the Company held sole British rights of trade in all of what is now the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
The Company divided this empire, for purposes of trade, into four great Departments. Of these the Northern Department of Rupert’s Land was the largest and most important, embracing the area lying between the Arctic Ocean on the north, the United States on the south, Hudson Bay on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west, together with New Caledonia west of the mountains. The Southern Department extended from James Bay southward to the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and also East Main, the eastern slope of Hudson Bay. The Montreal Department comprised whatever business was done in the Canadas, and included the Kings Posts, and at a later date part of Labrador. The Columbia Department embraced the valley of the Columbia and after 1825 the province lying to the north of it — New Caledonia. Departments such as these were principalities! (1)
In his list of Shuswap names of places on the Kamloops Sheet of the Geological Map of British Columbia, Dawson includes Tsuk-tsuk-kwālk, a reservation on the North Thompson that means “red place (trees)” in the native language.
