Daniel Williams Harmon Visits Babine Lake, January 1812
On January 20th, 1812 Daniel Williams Harmon of the North West Company became the first European to record their visit to Babine Lake and almost certainly the first European to set foot among the Babine villages. Harmon’s observations were necessarily superficial, limited to what he saw and was able to understand through his interpreters. Between the numbers that Harmon himself observed and the information he garnered from discussions with the Babine, the population around the lake was well over 2000. Harmon’s observations also revealed that the Babine had a healthy trade relationship with the Gitksan to their west and that this tied them into an extensive trade network linked to the coast. He commented on the great hospitality that he was shown by his Babine hosts throughout his stay on the lake. Harmon’s journal is the earliest recorded glimpse into the lives of the ancestors of the Lake Babine Nation and he found a people who were hospitable, well off with many different goods, and well-connected to economic networks. His journal entry for 20 January 1812 reads:
On the 17th Inst. I accompanied by Mr. McDougall & twelve of our People and also two Carriers, set off for the Nate-ote-tains Lands a Tribe who never had any intercourse with White People & after searching hard Seven Days generally upon Lakes we arrived at their first Village whose inhabitants were not a little surprised and alarmed to see People among them of so different complexion from themselves. As their Village stands on the border of a long Lake they perceived us at a considerable distance & came out to meet us (Men & Women) armed some with Bows & Arrow & other with Axes or Clubs &c. However they did not attempt to do us the least injury, but they made many savage gestures, as if in defyance. But after we told them we had not come to war upon them, but to bring them such articles as they stood in need of, in exchange for their Furs we ever after were treated with much respect and great hospitality. The Day following we proceeded further on and during our jaunt saw four others of their Villages and at all of which we were well received for at the second we found the two Indians who last Summer came to our Fort therefore they were not much surprised to see us among them, for I had promised the two that I would in the course of this Winter pay them a visit to see their Country &c. and they now gave us some account of the White People who came up the large River as they had done before when at the Fort last Summer and to convince us that what they had said was true they showed us many articles, which they barter from their Neighbours the Atenas who purchase them directly from the white people which were Guns, Cloth, Blankets, Axes and cast Iron Pots &c. At the five Villages we visited we might have seen two thousand Souls , who are well made and appeared healthy, but they like the other Carriers subsist principally on Salmon & other small Fish. Their cloathing was much the same as that of the Carriers. They let me have vessels curiously and ingeniously wrought of the smaller Roots of a Species of the Pine Tree, and are made into different shapes and sizes, some like that of an open Kettle, which serves to put water &c. in—and they also let me have a Blanket or a Rug which was manufactured by the Atenas, of the wool of the Sheep that are numerous in the Mountains of their Country. They told us that we saw but a small part of the Nate-ote-tains for added they “we are a numerous Tribe.” They have a dialect peculiar to themselves, yet the most of them speak the tongue spoken by the Carriers.
