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3 unusual facts about Spuzzum First Nation


Spuzzum First Nation

The Spuzzum First Nation reserve community and offices are located at Spuzzum in the lower Fraser Canyon, near the Alexandra Bridge and about 10 miles north of Yale.

The chief of the Spuzzum in 1858, Kowpelst ("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 between the American miners and the upstream Nlaka'pamux of Camchin.

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.



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