Where was Camp 16, BC?
A couple of the Chinuk Pipa letters that we’ve found, written by Indigenous people of British Columbia, are datelined “Camp 16” in 1893. Ever heard of the place?
Camp 16 was utterly new to me when I found those letters in the archives. It’s been one of the hardest to find of all the locations mentioned in those old letters.
So I was joyful to find a clear map showing Camp 16 in the “Report of the Commissioner of Fisheries of British Columbia” for 1913.
It turns out the Camp 16 was a Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) stone quarry, a granite mine, at a place also known as Cathmar, up to 1912.
It was located in Hell’s Canyon on the Fraser River, on the west bank and close to a number of Native villages whose residents wrote and read “Chinook Writing” — Spuzzum, Boston Bar, Chapman’s Bar, and so on.
Being a railway work site in that area, Camp 16 in the 1890s would’ve been a place where you’d probably hear and speak Chinuk Wawa daily.
I thought you might like to know!
