Introduction

The Gold Rush

Aboriginal Culture

Chief Isidore

Ktunaxa Food Supply

Preserving or saving food was very important to the Ktunaxa people. The Ktunaxa depended on the land and the rivers in the area for their food. They were extraordinary hunters and fishers and made inventions like bird traps and fish weirs.

The Ktunaxa were called "seasonal travellers". This meant that they travelled at different times of the season to hunt bison or to harvest berries. In the spring they would travel to places where the bitterroots were ripe and fish berries were easy and ready to pick. At the same time, the bison were heading north to their summer grazing land on the Canadian prairies.

Ktunaxa party on horseback Fort Steele (FS-5.72)

In early summer the Ktunaxa would then travel east to the foothills of Alberta where they would catch the bison heading north. After the exciting bison hunt the Ktunaxa made sure that they used every part of the dead animals, leaving nothing to waste. Most of the meat was dried in strips or made into pemmican, to be eaten later. Pemmican was made by grinding the meat with stones, then mixing it with berries and fat from the backs of the bison. This mixture was then packed together and dried. The bison skins were tanned and used for clothes, teepees and packing.

In the middle of summer the Ktunaxa would return to the Kootenay Valley, then north to the head of Lake Windermere. Salmon travelled up the Columbia River to spawn here at this time of year. Using spears or nets, the Ktunaxa caught the fish along the spawning beds.

At the end of summer other berries were ready to be harvested, and so the Ktunaxa picked huckleberries, chokecherries and other plants.

By fall hunters returned to the prairies to hunt more bison. The meat they brought back from their hunt was stored because it had to last the Ktunaxa people through the long cold winter.

Travel		Religion