It is a member of the Fraser Canyon Indian Administration, one of three tribal councils of the Nlaka'pamux people.
The chief of the Spuzzum in 1858, Kowpelst[1][2] ("White Hat") was one of the first to work Hill's Bar at the onset of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush and was considered a "friendly Indian" during the Fraser Canyon War of that fall, which took place between the American miners and the upstream Nlaka'pamux of Camchin.
He was appointed as a magistrate by Sir James Douglas During the Fraser Canyon War, a few thousand miners from bars farther up the canyon thronged at Spuzzum in terror of the upstream Nlaka'pamux, and some villages and food caches of the Spuzzum people were destroyed by armed parties of miners coming up from Yale, even though relations with the Spuzzum were considered friendlier than with their Nlaka'pamux kin farther upriver.
Spuzzum First Nation has sixteen different reserves ranging greatly in size, and totaling 648 hectares (2.50 sq mi).
[7][8] The 1881 census listed only 146 people, but the number is dubious since that era (during construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway) would likely have been the community's peak population.