"Despite the fact there's only a few sources obsidian was widely traded across all of BC. There are no volcanoes in the Broughton Archipelago, but Hammond explained this is where the grease trails come in. That leaves a lot of stone tool debris around," she said. "You're looking at close to 15,000 years of continuous occupation on the coast, that's upwards of 500 generations of people making stone tools. A kayaking mate declared the obsidian was from the area's many overland "grease trails", a term I was only vaguely familiar with.Īccording to archaeologist Joanne Hammond, the scattering of obsidian flakes I'd found is known as debitage (waste flakes from tool making) and they are pretty widespread. Digging back in, I was soon inspecting a growing pile of volcanic glass. Sifting my fingers through the sun-warmed sand, I'd come up with an unexpected prize: a small, glassy shard of obsidian. I'd been sitting on a beach in the Broughton Archipelago, 200km south of Bella Coola, after spending the day spotting orcas and visiting long-abandoned Mamalilikulla First Nation villages. And, like many stories, my hike had a prologue. Stepping out of the woods and into a clearing, Mackenzie's 228-year-old words predicted the view: "Before us appeared a stupendous mountain, whose snow-clad summit was lost in the clouds."Ī hiking trail is a little like an unfolding story. By my thousandth (or so) uphill footstep, the forest around me had thinned and the past felt ever present. And as I hiked, I imagined encountering one of the Ulkatcho families he wrote of, who were heading "to the great river to fish" or maybe a group of young Dene men on a trade journey.Ĭlimbing upward, I left the valley's monumental cedars behind and entered a forest of stunted trees and bright green moss. This "great road" as Mackenzie called the trail in his journal, "was very good and well traced". In 1793, this was the last section of the route that carried the first European, Alexander Mackenzie, from Montreal across what's now known as Canada to the Pacific Ocean – constituting the first known transcontinental crossing of the Americas north of Mexico. Taking my first steps on the ancient pathway in the Bella Coola Valley, I half expected to feel something transcendent echoes of the past perhaps.
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