The Social Landscape of Bridges
Aboriginal bridges existed along the many key transportation
routes that followed and crossed Northwest Rivers and their tributaries well
before the arrival of Europeans to the region. These bridges were necessary in
shaping the social history of the Northwest region of what is now British
Columbia (BC).
Extensive pre-contact transportation routes spanned great
distances across the physical landscapes of northwestern BC. Physical evidence
of some of these routes is still evident on the landscape, some through
continued use. These transportation routes are most often described as
'trails', and even more specifically as 'grease trails'. Evidence, both written
and oral, indicates that these routes facilitated social interactions between
indigenous peoples and their communities. Clearly, 'pre-contact' First Nations
communities were not isolated pockets of human existence within a rugged and
vast 'wilderness'. A wide range of social interactions, including the trade of
goods and ideas, connected communities, shaped the complex social landscape of
the region, and resulted in a 'known' physical landscape.
Transportation routes were far-reaching, connecting communities
across a vast landscape. Aboriginal peoples faced many challenges in
maintaining their overland routes throughout the often rugged mountainous
terrain of northwestern BC. Long-distance routes necessarily crossed the many
rivers in the three main drainages of the Skeena River, Nass River and Stikine
river cut through and 'cut-up' the land.
Local ingenuity and engineering was required to cross fast
moving rivers and streams where the geography of the land precluded the use of
rafts, canoes or fording on foot. Bridges were the answer to the problem and
their construction could range from simple log bridges to complex suspension
bridges. Larger, sophisticated works were required to cross the larger rivers
with their deep canyons and dangerous waters. All these types of bridges served
to lengthen important transportation routes; they required sophisticated
technologies that would expand and re-shape how people knew and understood the
physical landscape. This was a relationship to the physical landscape that also
extended the social landscape of northwestern BC by connecting communities and
by facilitating the transportation and exchange of goods and
ideas.
Bridges hold great importance to the history of the province;
yet an initial literature search on pre-contact bridges in the northwest
revealed little to no attention paid to this part of the regions history. In
his 1950 compilation of archival information and photographs of bridges in this
region, A.F. Buckham noted that there had been no prior acknowledgement given
to Aboriginal peoples for the engineering feats that many of these bridges
were. Buckham (1950:174) quotes Diamond Jenness as stating 'Not only was there
an absence of roads in the Dominion, but an absence of bridges also... '.
Archival evidence reveals that there were in fact a number of
bridges, necessary for connecting communities along key transportation routes.
The Aboriginal bridges reported here are located across a vast landscape,
encompassed by the territories of the Gitxsan, Wetsuweten, Nisga'a and Tahltan.
Unfortunately, the indigenous bridges have long since disappeared, with the
exception of a few that have been replaced with more contemporary structures.
What is left is bits and pieces of archival information that, when brought
together, reveal a complex social landscape.
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