Grease trail
As Grease Trails (fat paths), also Oolichan trails, the traditional trade paths were designated through which the fat used like the butter of the candle fish ( Thaleichthys pacificus ) was transported in America's northwest. It was a highly sought after commodity that was traded throughout British Columbia, the Yukon, in Washington and Oregon, but also further to the east. Its advantage was that, in contrast to other specialist fish oil was firm and could therefore be transported over long distances. Therefore, the coastal population, as Tsimshian, Tlingit, Haida, Coast Salish and Kwakwaka'wakw not only themselves, but the hinterland served. There was a wide area network of trading paths between the Pacific coast and the interior of British Columbia. The most important fishing area was the mouth of the Nass River, where thousands of Indians met in February and March, to stock up on the important staple food.
The trade was the one facing enormous geographical hurdles, because the enormous mountain ranges, stretching down to the coast, made it difficult to exchange with the hinterland. A second obstacle was the unusual linguistic fragmentation of the region. In British Columbia, there were 25 languages from six language families. Thus arose along the paths an interpreter system.
The end of the 18th century onset of fur and fur trading benefited greatly from the system of the Grease Trail. Alexander MacKenzie and Simon Fraser drew on their long journeys often interpreters. This extreme dependence of the work force, the paths, the translators and the logistic system of paths continued in the Pelzhandelsära (about 1770-1850 ). This was due to the fact that in the vast area almost only Indians lived. 1824, George Simpson established by the Hudson 's Bay Company that, in the Columbia District, so in the present territory of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon together only 151 officers and men lived. Even in 1855 were still less than a thousand whites on Vancouver Iceland and around the Puget Sound. The number of indigenous people may have located 70 to 100 times higher.
The starting material was the candle fish that eats both on site or was boiled. George Dawson reported in 1876 that he had seen "Indian women cooking of fish heads in pots of a square ", whose walls were 3/8 inch thick. To this end, they put heated stones in the waterproof pots, and stirred with long sticks. The skimmed grease is packed in wooden containers and was so well preserved and ready for transport. The transportation was either waterways or on foot, often also on horses.
The control of the paths was, as with all important business routes, often contested. So occupied a chief of the Tsimshian middle of the Gitxsan territory a hill on which there is the Gitwangak Battle Hill today. The fortified village existed between (pre) in 1700 and about 1835. It was mainly about the 60 -km-long Grease Trail, the wet and the Skeena River joined together. The Kitwankool Grease Trail in turn linked the Gitxsan villages with the mouth of the Nass River, the main fishing area of the candle fish.
When the Europeans established trading posts on the coast, the product range changed significantly. The European goods were blankets, calico, boilers, axes and knives, traps, guns and other metal goods, but also coffee, tea, flour and tobacco. The Indians wore next to the fish fat edible seaweed, baskets made of wood fibers, shells that were made into jewelry, slaves, dried meat, hides and furs, berries and the fruits of Camas, but also blankets from dog hair and eel-grass, from tree fibers and other animal hair with.
Some of the fat paths are still partially preserved or will continue, albeit for other purposes used. This is about 450 km long Alexander MacKenzie Heritage Trail (also Nuxalk Carrier Grease Trail or Nuxalk - Carrier Route ), the Chilkoot Trail and the Cheslatta, the Dalton Trail and the Nyan Wheti.
In the case of Alexander MacKenzie Heritage Trail, which had been used for millennia by the Nuxalk and the southern Dakelh as fat path, the First Nations themselves fought against the designation for a European to the path " was gone along only once". So appeared on the way brands and describe the additional Nuxalk Carrier Route. The Path to highlight four historical and contemporary aspects, namely the role of the British explorers, archeology and natural history, and the relationship of First Nations to the benefits they built and used over millennia path. These four aspects were in 1985 in a cooperation agreement between the government and First Nations a.