The Raush River was originally known as the Shuswap River, after the English name for the Secwépemc living in the area when Europeans showed up. The Robson valley marked their northern limits of the Secwépemc.
During the day several more half-breeds arrived [at the upper Athabasca] with their wives and families, and in the evening two Shuswap Indians made their appearance, and set to work to spear white-fish by torchlight. These were the first specimens of their tribe which we had seen. They were lean and wiry men, of middle stature, and altogether of smaller make than the Indians we had met before; their features were also smaller, and more finely cut, while the expression of their faces was softer and equally intelligent. They were clothed merely in a shirt and marmot robe, their legs and feet being naked, and their long black hair the only covering to their heads. These Shuswaps of the Rocky Mountains inhabit the country in the neighborhood of Jasper House, and as far as Tete Jaune Cache on the western slope. They are a branch of the Shuswap nation, who dwell near the Shuswap Lake and grand fork of the Thompson River in British Columbia. Separated from the main body of their tribe by 300 or 400 miles of almost impenetrable forest, they hold but little communication with them. Occasionally a Rocky Mountain Shuswap makes the long and difficult journey to Kamloops on the Thompson, to seek a wife. Of those we met, only one had ever seen this place. This was an old woman of Tete Jaune Cache, a native of Kamloops, who had married a Shuswap of the mountains.
When first discovered by the pioneers of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the only clothing used by this singular people was a small robe of the skin of the mountain marmot. They wandered barefoot amongst the sharp rocks, and amidst the snow and bitter cold of the fierce northern winter. When camping for the night they are in the habit of choosing the most open spot, instead of seeking the protection of the woods. In the middle of this they make only a small fire, and lie in the snow, with their feet towards it, like the spokes of a wheel, each individual alone, wrapped in a marmot robe, the wife apart from the husband, the child from its mother. They live by hunting the bighorns, mountain goats, and marmots; and numbers who go out every year never return. Like the chamois hunters of the Alps, some are found dashed to pieces at the foot of the almost inaccessible heights to which they follow their game; of others no trace is found. The Shuswaps of Jasper House formerly numbered about thirty families, but are now reduced to as many individuals. Removed by immense distances from all other Indians, they are peacable and honest, ignorant of wickedness or war. Whether they have any religion or not, we could not ascertain; but they enclose the graves of their dead with scrupulous care, by light palings of wood, cut, with considerable neatness, with their only tools — a small axe and knife. They possess neither horses nor dogs, carrying all their property on their backs when moving from place to place; and when remaining in one spot for any length of time, they erect rude slants of bark or matting for shelter, for they have neither tents nor houses. As game decreases the race will, doubtless, gradually die out still more rapidly, and they are already fast disappearing from this cause, and the accidents of the chase.
— Milton and Cheadle, 1863(1)
