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Salish Sea basin was one of continent's most densely populated areas when Europeans arrived

Study looked at more than 2,000 sites on Salish Sea islands that showed signs of ancient inhabitation

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Vancouver has the highest population density among Canadian municipalities, according to the 2016 census, and New Westminster, the City of North Vancouver, Victoria and White Rock all make the top 10.

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It was like that, too, before the first Europeans arrived in the 1700s, according to a study published in the Journal of Northwest Anthropology that was co-written by Richard M. Hutchings of the Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism.

The Salish Sea Basin was one of the “most densely populated” pre-contact geographical areas, Hutchings said from his home on Gabriola Island, which is home to 98 of the pre-contact sites the study counted. Immediately after contact, indigenous populations began crashing, he said. The arrival of diseases such as measles and smallpox carried by Europeans was primarily responsible.

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Hutchings and fellow researcher Scott Williams, of the Washington state Department of Transportation, examined 85 large Salish Sea islands, defined as at least two kilometres long. In total, the looked at 2,368 sites from Johnstone Strait and Bute Inlet in the north down to Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but not including ones on Vancouver Island, for their finding that the Salish Sea Basin had one of the highest pre-contact population densities in North America.

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And they discovered something else: The earliest physical evidence of human seafaring and island occupation in the Americas is at Ayer Pond on Orcas Island in Washington, dating back 13,900 years ago, 900 years older than the previously known oldest such site, in California.

“It’s the oldest maritime site in North America by almost 1,000 years,” Hutchings said. “We didn’t know that, we had no expectation of (discovering) that whatsoever.”

The men had it confirmed by an expert, Jon Erlandson, an anthropologist at the University of Oregon and director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Eugene.

Gabriola Island’s Richard Hutchings of the Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism, co-author of Salish Sea Islands Archaeology and Precontact History which was published in the spring 2020 edition of the Journal of Northwest Anthropology.
Gabriola Island’s Richard Hutchings of the Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism, co-author of Salish Sea Islands Archaeology and Precontact History which was published in the spring 2020 edition of the Journal of Northwest Anthropology. Photo by handout /PNG

Although the Salish Sea is an arm of the Pacific Ocean, the study compared its pre-contact waterways to the Mediterranean Sea, its inhabitants comparable to ancient Greek and Phoenician traders, or like Vikings trading into the heart of Europe via its rivers.

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“Not the violent part, but the trading part, the large-scale movement,” Hutchings said.

Consider, for example, paddling a canoe from Haida Gwaii to present day Victoria. And then back again. That’s some journey. A lot of people today don’t travel that far, let alone by canoe, as Hutchings pointed out.

While the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island have been inhabited for more than 14,000 years, only a small number of island sites are more than 5,000 years old. But that shows islands were occupied immediately after they were formed at the end of the last ice age, the study says.

The study says there are thousands of island sites younger than 5,000 years old, which indicates the use and management of all island ecosystems, many intensively.

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“The paucity of early island sites is understood to reflect not the lack of early human use and occupation but rather landscape submergence and contemporary archaeological management and land use strategies,” the study says.

The Salish Sea seen from one of the hundreds of sites that predate contact with Europeans discovered by Richard Hutchings of Gabriola Island and Scott Williams of Washington State in a study called Salish Sea Islands Archaeology and Precontact History, published in the spring edition of the Journal of Northwest Anthropology.
The Salish Sea seen from one of the hundreds of sites that predate contact with Europeans discovered by Richard Hutchings of Gabriola Island and Scott Williams of Washington State in a study called Salish Sea Islands Archaeology and Precontact History, published in the spring edition of the Journal of Northwest Anthropology. Photo by Handout /PNG

Hutchings and Williams counted 627 sites in B.C. waters, the rest being in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. Saltspring Island had the most sites in B.C. with 183, while Raza in the northern part of the Salish Sea had just one.

Today, those sites — defined as being a place with material evidence of a human presence — are threatened.

“One of the lessons from the Salish Sea study is there are sites everywhere,” Hutchings said. “Everywhere you pull up a canoe, chances are there’s a site there. Everywhere you want to build your house, if there’s not already a house there, chances are there’s a site there.”

Gabriola Island’s Richard Hutchings of the Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism, co-author of Salish Sea Islands Archaeology and Precontact History which was published in the spring 2020 edition of the Journal of Northwest Anthropology.
Gabriola Island’s Richard Hutchings of the Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism, co-author of Salish Sea Islands Archaeology and Precontact History which was published in the spring 2020 edition of the Journal of Northwest Anthropology. Photo by handout /PNG

And now, on top of the development that’s been going on for decades, these sites are threatened by rising sea levels.

“The impacts are enormous, the threats are enormous, that’s the downside of a fun, uplifting study,” Hutchings said. “All these sites are at enormous risk from a double whammy.

“This is the record of Coast Salish people and it’s all disappearing.”

gordmcintyre@postmedia.com

twitter.com/gordmcintyre

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