A number of Indian dictionary words have been applied to mountain peaks by modern travellers. The Indian practice, however, is more to describe a physical feature by a sentence than by a word. Such artificial names include the following: Chetang (hawk)…

— Douglas 1919

“Chetang Ridge” is listed at the Indigenous Geographical Names dataset as a word of undetermined language.

“Wapiti” is named after the Cree word for elk (wapiti).

On the south-west side, Wapiti Pass is at the headwaters of Framstead Creek, which flows via Herrick Creek and the McGregor River to the Fraser River. On the north-east side, Wapiti Pass is at the headwaters of the Wapiti River which flows into the Smoky River and thence to the Peace River.

Mary Lenore Jobe Akeley [1878–1966] visited the area with Donald “Curly” Phillips [1884–1938] and party in 1915:

From Mt. Alexander Mackenzie, we travelled north to Jarvis Pass, and crossed pass to the Wapiti. This was our “farthest north.” Returning via Jarvis Pass, the Porcupine, Providence Valley and Sheep-Creek, we crossed to the Muddy, which we followed to its mouth, rafted the Big Smoky below the mouth of the Sulphur and followed the old Indian trail to Grand Cache. From this point we travelled up the Sulphur, crossed Hardscrabble Pass to Rockslide Creek, and again struck the Big Smoky near the mouth of Short River (“Glacier Creek,” Collie and Mumm), and thence returned to Robson Station the 1st of September.

In October 1917 she returned with Phillips:

The early winter of 1917 my desire to make a winter trip through the northern Canadian Rockies was realized. I was I fortunate In being able to combine my trip with Mr. Donald Phillips’s business of taking in supplies for a scientific expedition to the Wapiti River, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution….

Once across the Wapiti Pass we found ourselves in a veritable den of wolves. Their tracks were everywhere. They came near our camps and howled so dismally in the night-time, that we did not hesitate to burn fuel lavishly; in broad daylight the morning we were breaking our ten days’ camp on the Wapiti, they became so inquisitive and so vocal that they almost stampeded our outfit; and once, as we were moving our pack train at twilight along the Wapiti River, two black monsters crossed in front of us and stood in the timber a few yards away yelping and whining like hungry curs. They are vicious beasts and are afraid of nothing smaller than grizzly.
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“Wapiti” is listed at the Indigenous Geographical Names dataset as a word of Cree language.

Mary Lenore Jobe Akeley [1878–1966] submitted the name “Kitchi” to the Geographic Board of Canada in April 1915, to apply to the very high mountain just south of this location, now known as Mount Sir Alexander. In her article in the 1914 Canadian Alpine Journal, she wrote that “Kitchi in the Cree Indian language means ‘Great,’ ‘Mighty.’”

The Geographic Board adopted the name “Kitchi Mountain” for the high mountain in September 1915, and Mary Jobe’s article: ”Mt. Kitchi, A New Peak in the Canadian Rockies” was published in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol XLVII, No. 7, 1915, pp 481-497. The following September, the Board was persuaded by climber Samuel Prescott Fay [1884–1971], associated with New York’s Museum of Natural History, to reverse their decision and adopt his recommendation — “Mount Sir Mackenzie,” which was changed in 1917 to “Mount Sir Alexander.”

To perpetuate the name “Kitchi, ” Alan John Campbell [1882–1967], British Columbia Land Surveyor, placed it on this mountain to the north, as shown on his 1929 survey plan 10T264, McGregor River area.

Kitchi Mountain is listed at Indigenous Geographical Names dataset.

Language: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ (Nēhiyawēwin)
Dialect: Plains Cree
Meaning: Mighty, or great
Year Adopted: ‪1965‬

Name appears on BC-Alberta Boundary Atlas sheet No. 39, 1924. The river was labeled “Porcupine River” on 1912 map of BC Northern Interior (publisher not cited), and on BC Lands 1913 Preliminary Forest Map, and on BC Lands 1917 map of the Forest Stand Types in British Columbia.

Explorer Samuel Prescott Fay [1884–1971], who spent the summers of 1912 to 1914 tracking big game in this area, suggested that the name “Porcupine” be changed [or revert (?)] to “Kakwa”, the Cree word for porcupine.

“Kakwa” is listed at the Indigenous Geographical Names dataset as a word of Cree language.

A Native camp, Tête Jaune Cache area, 1910s.
Valemount & Area Museum

The river appears as “Big Shuswap R.” on the 1912 map of John Norman Collie [1859–1942].

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.

Milton and Cheadle were in Jasper in 1863, preparing to cross the Yellowhead Pass .

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)

The Texqakallt band of the upper North Thompson River were the earliest known inhabitants of the upper reaches of the Fraser River. They were almost completely nomadic. Lodges and fish drying racks were constructed in prime salmon fishing territory at the confluence of the McLennan River and Fraser Rivers in the vicinity of what is now Tête Jaune Cache. As well as salmon from the Fraser, trout were reportedly taken from Yellowhead Lake. They hunted bighorn sheep, mountain goats, moose, marmots, and other small mammals and birds. They also relied on edible plants in the area, especially berries.

In his “Notes on the Cariboo Range” of 1925, Munday wrote, “The local name of the Big Shuswap conflicts with the Shuswap River further south and appears on recent government maps as Raushwap or Rausch River (from Riviere au Shuswap). Kiwa Creek is known locally as Little Shuswap.”

This 260-kilometer long reservoir behind Mica Dam takes the name of a former small lake engulfed by the flooding of the Columbia River valley.

“We crossed the Columbia river, and at a short distance came to a little camp of Shuswap Indians, where I met their headman, Kinbaskit,” wrote Walter Moberly in his book Rocks and Rivers of BC. “I now negotiated with him for two little canoes made of the bark of the spruce, and for his assistance to take me down the river. Kinbaskit was a very good Indian, and I found him always reliable. We ran many rapids and portaged others, then came to a Lake which I named Kinbaskit Lake, much to the old chief’s delight.”

Moberly first met Kinbasket in 1866. In 1871, they met again when Kinbasket guided a survey party for the Canadian Pacific Railway near Howse Pass. Surveyor Robert M. Rylatt wrote, “In mid-August Chief Kinbasket came to grief when a grizzly bear attacked him. The old chief had barely time to raise the axe and aim a blow, ’ere the weapon was dashed aside like a flash and he was in the embrace of the monster; the huge forepaws around him, the immense claws dug into his back, the bear held him up. Then fastening the poor chief’s shoulders in his iron jaws, he raised one of his hind feet, and tore a fearful gash, commencing at the abdomen, and cutting through to the bowels, he fairly stripped the flesh and muscles from one of his thighs, a bloody, hanging mass of rent flesh and clothing.” Kinbasket survived the attack, although he was not found until the following morning.

The Kinbaskets, or children of Kinbasket, are a Shuswap tribe who, before their confinement to reserves, lived in a more or less nomadic state, wintering and ranging in the Columbia Valley, chiefly between Golden and Windermere. From 1973 to 1980 the reservoir was called McNaughton Lake, after General Andrew McNaughton. The former name still appears on many maps.

Kinbasket Lake is listed at the Indigenous Geographical Names dataset as a word of Shuswap language.

“Chushina” is a Stoney word signifying “small” and was thought to be descriptive of this ridge when members of a 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition named this feature.

[From the crest of Phillips Mountain] a glacier slopes down for a mile and a half to the edge of the cliffs west of Snowbird Pass. It is such a fine example of a small and complete glacier from névé to foot that I think it worthy of the name Chushina.

— Charles Doolittle Walcott [1850–1927]

Walcott applied his name to the glacier, but now it applies to the ridge.

“Chushina Ridge” is listed at Indigenous Geographical Names dataset as a word of undetermined language.