[1] Also issuing into the head of Bute Inlet and Waddington Harbour, just east of the mouth of the Homathko, is the Teaquahan River.
[16] Download coordinates as: The harbour and the route it accessed into the British Columbia Interior via the canyon of the Homathko were central to the events leading to the Chilcotin War of 1862 and in the proceedings of that conflict as it unfolded.
In later years, the Canadian Pacific Railway Survey eyed it as a viable route for a transcontinental rail line that would end at Victoria (rather than Vancouver, which was their final choice).
The Tsilhqot'in were hungry and the survivors of the devastating 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic, which had destroyed the indigenous population of British Columbia in vast numbers.
That night, April 30, 1864, the Tsilhqot'in killed fourteen out of the seventeen men in the work crew, and destroyed their tools and provisions.
Among those disembarking and embarking at the harbour was Governor Seymour, who travelled to the theatre of war with his entourage, though to no great effect.