552 REFORT— 1895. 



' I saw the three old men who are said to know the old StuwrnamuQ 

 language, which was formerly spoken in Nicola Valley, and found that they 

 only remembered a few woi'ds of what they had heard from their fathers. 

 One of them could only give me five or six words, another one twelve, 

 and another one twenty. As many of these words were the same, I only 

 obtained twenty distinct words and three phrases. I also learned two 

 place-names used by them which I think are probably Tinneh. A few of 

 the words which I obtained are not on the lists of Dr. Dawson and 

 Mr. McKay. One Indian, who also knows some words of the language, is 

 living at present in Similkameen ; therefore I was unable to see him. It 

 is unfortunate that the work of collectinfj the remains of the language 

 was not undertaken a few years sooner. An old woman who was half 

 Stuwi'namuQ died in Nicola only five years ago. She was the last person 

 who could talk the language properly. The three Indians whom I saw 

 are only one quarter Stuwi'namuQ blood ; each of them is old and white- 

 haired, and I should judge over seventy years of age. One of them said 

 he remembered that when he was a boy his grandfather (who was then a 

 very old man and hardly able to walk) pointed out to him the spot on the 

 Nicola a little below the lake where he (the old man) was born, and also 

 told him that his people had always inhabited that region. This old man 

 must have been born in Nicola at least 120 years ago, and it seems that 

 he had no knowledge of the origin of his tribe. 



' Another old man whom I saw was taken when a lad, by his father, 

 all over the boundaries of the tribal territory in order to impress upon 

 him the different landmarks which constituted at that time the tribal 

 boundaries. One of the old men named his ancestors for four generations 

 back, saying that at that time the whole tribe lived in three camps or 

 subterranean lodges, and that there were not very many people in each 

 (probably from forty to fifty souls), and that they all wintered along 

 Nicola River below the lake, and in close proximity to each other. They 

 also had two fortified houses in which they took refuge when threatened 

 by war parties of other tribes. The man mentioned war parties of 

 Okanagan, Ntlakya'pamuQ, and Shuswap, who attacked their fortifications 

 unsuccessfully. These events happened three or four generations before 

 his time. 



' Three generations ago the tribe had some admixture of Okanagan and 

 Ntlakya'pamuQ blood. Some of them had wives from among their tribes, 

 and the latter took wives from among them. They claim that their tribe 

 never went on war expeditions into the territories of other tribes, and 

 they say, with pride, that their country is the only one in this region where 

 the white men's blood has never been shed. They have a tradition that 

 at one time their tribe was numerous and that their southern boundary 

 extended to Keremeous, on the Lower Similkameen River. They have no 

 tradition regarding a foreign origin, and were quite indignant when I 

 mentioned to them Mr. McKay's theory of tlieir being descended from a 

 war party of Chilcotin. They said that when young they had heard the 

 old people of the tribe telling mythological stories, but these were just the 

 same as those current among the Okanagan and Ntlakya'pamuQ. At my 

 request they told me some of these stories which had been told to them by 

 their grandfathers, and I recognised them as identical with those which 

 I had heard at Spence's Bridge, and which are current in slightly dif- 

 ferent versions among the interior Salish. I questioned them extensively 

 regarding the customs of their ancestors, and found that these corresponded 



