History of the Squamish people

Prior to colonization, they recorded their history orally as a way to transmit stories, law, and knowledge across generations.

After the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, a massive influx of foreign settlers was brought into their traditional territory and drastically changed their way of life.

Policies conducted by the government included the founding and enforcement of the Residential schools on Squamish children, fighting for their rights and land, and their work in restoring their culture.

[3][4] In another story of the first ancestors, two men first appeared at Chekw’élhp and Sch’enḵ,[5][6] located at what is now known as Gibsons, British Columbia.

He scraped off the bark and then asked X̱i7lánexw if he had a bowl plate and told him to put three rocks in to boil the water.

The story passed down tells of a man committed to his marriage, trained for the coming of his future child by taking morning swims in the water near Ambleside Park in what is now West Vancouver.

In the valley along the Squamish River, there was a large two-headed serpent called Sínulhḵay̓ which terrorized the people, eating them and making a loud screeching noise.

[8][9] In the village of Stá7mes, a young man named Xwechtáal had recently become married and was enjoying the days after the big feast, when his father told him, "You must go kill that serpent."

Xwechtáal protested that he had only recently been married, and wanted to enjoy his time with his new wife, start a family, and live his life.

While following the serpent, Xwechtáal would train spiritually by taking morning baths in the creeks, lakes and rivers to cleanse himself and become stronger.

[9] During the 1770s, smallpox (variola major) eradicated at least 30 percent of the indigenous population on the Northwest coast of North America, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh.

... One salmon season the fish were found to be covered with running sores and blotches, which rendered them unfit for food.

Men, women, and children sickened, took the disease and died in agony by hundreds, so that when the spring arrived and fresh food was procurable, there was scarcely a person left of all their numbers to get it.

The remains of which, said the old man, in answer by my queries on this, are found today in the old camp sites or midden-heaps over which the forest has been growing for so many generations.

Little by little the remnant left by the disease grew into a nation once more, and when the first white men sailed up the Squamish in their big boats, the tribe was strong and numerous again"[10] The epidemic of the 1770s was the first and the most devastating more to follow.

The Sḵwx̱wú7mesh were the first indigenous people on the mainland in British Columbia known to have met Europeans, who first came to the head of Howe Sound in 1792 near Stá7mes, a village near the town of Squamish.

Along the Burrard Inlet, where numerous villages existed, Spanish Captain Jose Maria Narvaez was the first European to explore this area in 1791.

In the following year, 1792, the British naval Captain George Vancouver (1757–1798) met the Spanish expedition in Burrard Inlet.

In oral history passed down through Sḵwx̱wú7mesh families, first contact between the natives and the explorers resulted in Captain Vancouver's shoulder being dislocated.

Andy Paull notes, "It seems that it was a tradition among Indians of Early days that a calamity of some sort would befall them every seven years.

Vancouver came in 1792, a year which coincided with the seventh year, the year in which some calamity was expected, regarding the form of which there was much trepidation, so that when strange men of strange appearance, white, with their odd boats etc., etc., arrived on the scene, the wise men said 'this may be the fateful visitation, what may it bring us', and took steps to propitiate the all powerful visitors"[11] Captain Vancouver had this to say about the residents of the Burrard Inlet: Here we met about fifty Indian's, in their canoes, who conducted themselves with the greatest decorum and civility, presenting us with many cooked fish, and undressed, of the sort already mentioned as resembling the smelt.

These good, people, finding we were inclined to make some return for their hospitality, shewed much understanding in preferring copper to iron.

[12]A part of the first contact, a number of people in from the Burrard Inlet communities circled the British ships, throwing swan down in the air, customary in their culture to represent peace.

As Captain Vancouver sailed off, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh families began to pick a part of the traded goods, a custom among Sḵwx̱wú7mesh after potlatches, that is, large amounts of gifts being given away.

The families that lived in the village were placed on a barge and sent out to sea, with the intent for them to move up to the Squamish River area.

Like most indigenous peoples of the coast, the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh were hit hard by the contact of foreign diseases like influenza and smallpox which continued to attack the community in waves throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

Although early trade with the Hudson's Bay Company was largely controlled by indigenous people who vastly outnumbered Europeans, the Fraser River Gold Rush brought a sharp increase of immigration, and more waves of disease.

With expansion from the east, repeated epidemics, and sometimes violent conflict with settlers, the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh people became a minority in their own lands.

Most of the population was confined to government-allotted reserve lands (the largest around the village of Chiyakmesh) and not allowed to move about without permission from agents sent by the Department of Indian Affairs.

Other programs and services offered through the Squamish Nation include strong cultural components in their Health, Lands, and Education departments.