Talk:Chilcotin War

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:24, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Request for article
re:  chilcotin war.. my name is Fredrick and i 'am chilcotin Indian and was looking thru indian wars. i notice chilcotin war wasn't in there. how ever there is few versions of the war. now i'am not writing about the war but trying to find right place and get back later and write story from local chilcotin indains versions. please get back to me would be greatly appreciated thanks. injun337@yahoo.ca     Fredrick E —Preceding unsigned comment added by Telegate (talk • contribs)

[I moved the above comment to this talk page.] TruthbringerToronto (Talk | contribs) 19:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Been meaning to write these for a while, Frederick
And sorry I hadn't; partly because I'm intimidated by the story and partly because I don't currently have any of the books describing it on-hand, so was wary of putting in wrong details and not having dates 'n' stuff. But now that it's a stub it's a starting point; someone also created a Klattasine article. Don't forget you can add/create articles, too, so if you think there should be an article on Anahim or Alexis (the chiefs, as well as the communities) you can start them, too. BTW I'm more focussed on Lillooet-area history....any chance you might share some of the Chilcotin version of the story of the war between the Chilcotins and the Lillooets in the early 19th Century (or thereabouts)?? Such as the reason for the attacks on Blackwater, Seton and Pemberton Meadows which started the war, and the Chilcotin version of the wars' ending at Graveyard Valley (supposedly). If not here, you can "email this user" from the links at left and send me a private note. Thankx. Also, any stories about a Lillooet named Chief Hunter Jack - apparently he was the first St'at'imc to learn to speak Tsilhqot'in and brokered the end to the war; his hunting turf verged into Big Creek/Taseko so I imagine he had Chilcotin acquaintances/friends and visited up there; be grateful of any stories about him (quite the character, y'see)Skookum1 22:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Chief Ahan
There's an article in the Canadian Press today about the possiblity that the remains of a chief executed after the Chilcotin War are buried under the parking lot of New Westminster High School:

"After three months, the area's police chief invited the native leaders to a meeting. Ahan was one of six chiefs who the Tsilhqot'in say thought they were invited to peace talks when they were arrested. They were tried by B.C.'s first chief justice, Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie, and sentenced to death. Five were hanged in the Interior, Ahan in New Westminster"

No mention of Ahan on the page here, that I can see, but I'm a little hesitant to add it on the strength of a CP article that might just have its history mixed up. Does anyone know about this character? It's not just an alternative name for someone already mentioned in here is it?

Stevecudmore (talk) 14:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I remember the name from Rothenburger's book, but for now as mentioned in the above section it's a complex story; not all characters in it, white or indigenous, are yet in the article either. Can't remebmer why it was that Ahan was tried in New West instead of Quesnel; Rothenburger's book is highly POV but it has lots of details I haven't seen in more modern/scholarly works....this is typical of non-academic "popular histories" in BC - they're often more detailed than the scholarly stuff, which tends to pass over things the prevailing dogmas consider irrelevantk, or inconvenient...Skookum1 (talk) 15:34, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Note of possible source
Canadian Dictionary of Biography has an article about Robert Christopher Lundin Brown (link) who was an early missionary in BC. The passage "Klatsassan, and other reminiscences of missionary life in British Columbia. Klattsasine* was the Chilcotin chief who in 1864 led a rising against the attempt initiated by Alfred Waddington to build a road from the coast across his tribe’s territory, and the book gives a valuable contemporary account of an event on which firsthand evidence is scarce." suggests there may be useful material in his writing. -- KenWalker | Talk 18:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There is; passages from his writings are in Irene Edwards' Tales From Seton Portage, which I've got on digi-copy somewhere here (not on this drive); he's the one who claimed to have taken Klatsassan's deathbed conversion in the jail at Quesnellemouthe and also there's an account of the chief's wedding, from before the war. There's another "saddlebag parson" whose name escapes me just now - Taylor? Turner? - who has tidbits too....and Mel Rothenburger's The Chilcotin War is amateurish in tone but has lots of detail you won't see anywhere else, including accounts of public meetings in Victoria and the Cariboo at which half the meeting spoke in favour/sympathy with the natives and amnesty "in time of war"; the problem with "primary sources" is that newspaper, court and official records/statements from the time are heavily polemicized and "play to the rabble".  It seems a lot of citizens were more sympathetic to natives (and Chinese btw) than histories built using only the usual primary sources ever begin to indicate; reading Lunden Brown or Rothenburger and others you start to get a sense of how inaccurately portrayed our history generally is, whether the older official record or the new "post modern critical analysis" school of axe-grinding....Skookum1 (talk) 18:41, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Might be something in Charles Hill-Tout too, though he was writing at a later date and didn't meet Klatsassan himself.....Skookum1 (talk) 18:42, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Useful points. Found Brown's text online here.-- KenWalker | Talk 00:29, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Blanking/vandalism from BC Govt servers
Seeing that this page, or some of it, got blanked for the umpteenth time, I used the GeoLocate tool to find out where the 142.x.x.x editors were located; to my surprise, or maybe not-quite-surprise, I found that the ISP in all cases is the Government of British Columbia, and all were done during working hours; in other words these vandalisms and blankings were performed on the public nickel, and on publicly-owned servers. It may be possible for BC Systems to identify the actual ministry and office involved; in fact they surely can. I'm not sure of procedure with this, but it does have me wondering how many other politically-oriented edits/blankings are going on, and who it is, exactly, that's doing it. Hell of a note if it turned out to be, for example, the Aboriginal Reconciliation Office huh? I know that WikiScanner can block known IPs, but not regular named accounts; but in the case of suspicious edits from named accounts, especially SPAs, I think we should be a little more ready to invoke WP:Checkuser....in the case of this particular series of edits, I will ask BC Systems to identify the terminal/office it came from; the person in question may get fired (unlikely), but if I find anything out I will report back here about who, or which office, it is, who's been vandalizing this article....Skookum1 (talk) 01:23, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Article was moved
This article was moved, rather roughly, from Bute Inlet Massacre to this article namespace. The IP was User:174.7.22.242 I've moved it back to maintain the article history. -- Esemono (talk) 23:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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Assessment comment
Substituted at 11:29, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Intentional Biological Warfare....? Absolutely no Evidence
The idea that the introduction of smallpox was used as a form of biological war on First Nations people is long and unproved. Tom Swanky is not a credible source as the only proof for such assertions. His conclusions are based solely upon speculation and allegations of profit to be had in stealing land... True enough, but he does not produce any credible evidence and completely ignores vectors, and capabilities of viruses in such vectors - the most common being the idea the smallpox infested blankets spread smallpox... if and how well is unknown. Contrast that to the work of Paul Hackett from the University of Saskatchewan, a trained historian with 100s of hours in archives who found absolutely no evidence of intentional spread of smallpox amongst First Nations. That is not to say that it did not happen, just that there is no proof. Using Swanky's lack of proof as proof is not just shoody history, but erects an weak edifice for future historians, especially in light with all of the prosaic evidence of travellers arriving in BC with Smallpox. Smallpox spreads well enough by itself as Covid as demonstrated. It does not require conspiracy to kill. Some conspiracy theorists believe so ... but that is conspiracy, not history. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Pull the reference to Swanky. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Canadaman1 (talk • contribs) 19:15, 4 January 2022 (UTC)