RONS #3 - Kullyspell House Traditional Cache
Rolling Oldies: We need to come up with a different design for this hide. In the mean time.......
RONS #3 - Kullyspell House
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NANO
Take in a short history lesson and a cache
David Thompson was an English-born fur agent, surveyor and
cartographer who worked across the breadth of the North American
continent between 1784 and 1846. Over the course of his long
career, he left behind more than 100 densely written field and
survey journals, watercolors of Western mountains, extensive
letters concerning his duties with the International Boundary
Survey in all five of the Great Lakes, and an unpublished
autobiography full of wide-ranging adventures and good humor.
He also drew numerous exquisitely rendered maps, including five
large visions of the continent that stretch from Hudson Bay and
Lake Superior west to the Pacific. As scholars bring these
documents to light – a newly annotated three-volume edition of
Thompson's autobiography and letters will appear this fall – the
man and his work are becoming much better known in both Canada and
the United States.
Some of David Thompson's most interesting and significant exploits
occurred during the five years he spent in what fur companies
called the Columbia District, between 1807 and 1812. As an employee
of the North West Company, he was charged with establishing a
viable circle of trade along the middle and upper Columbia River
and its major eastern tributaries; in order to accomplish this, he
and his crew had to make first contact and create working
relationships with a number of Plateau culture tribes. As the fur
traders made their way through the territory we now call
southeastern British Columbia, western Montana, eastern Washington
and the Idaho Panhandle, the trails and waterways they traveled all
seemed to converge at Lake Pend Oreille.
Building Kullyspel House
At a point somewhere between
the Sunnyside Peninsula and the Pack River Delta, the furmen were
met by several canoes, which took on part of the trade goods in
order to relieve the horses. The party continued east the next day
along the lakeshore to the vicinity east of the modern town of
Hope, Idaho, where they encountered an encampment of Flathead,
Kalispel/Pend Oreille, Kootenai and Coeur d'Alene families. As with
the Pend Oreille, Thompson used his own English translation of the
French to call the Coeur d'Alenes "Pointed Hearts." Thompson
wrote:
"They all smoked
... say 54 Flat Heads, 23 Pointed Hearts & 4 Kootanaes - in all
abt 80 men. They then made us a handsome present of dried Salmon
& other Fish with Berries & a Chevruil[mule
deer]".
For census purposes, Thompson usually calculated six or seven
family members for each adult male, so this gathering would have
numbered around 500 people in all – exactly the sort of large mixed
tribal encampment that called for a trade house. Early the next
morning, accompanied by two Flathead men, Thompson explored the
Hope Peninsula to look for a place to build. From this day on he
called both the lake and his new post after the Kullyspel (now
Kalispel), presumably because his guides and translators belonged
to that tribe.
Word of the fur company's arrival on the lake spread quickly, and
the newcomers had barely set up their tents before family bands
began arriving with furs to trade. Sixteen canoes of Coeur d'Alenes
paddled up to the peninsula and offered to perform a dance. Fifteen
"strange Indians from the west," who may have belonged to the San
Poil and Okanagan tribes, appeared. Two "Green Wood" (Nez Perce)
men brought beaver, muskrat and bear pelts in exchange for
manufactured goods. Thompson gave a demonstration of the way that
he wanted different types of skins to be prepared, then encouraged
the visitors to hunt beaver and bring in their furs to trade "by
the time the Snow whitens the Ground."
While Thompson parleyed, his crew began their routine search for
birch to make tool handles and pegs, then felled trees for a
warehouse, always the first building to go up. The men were
experienced in what is known as the "post-on-sill" method of
construction, and they had the tools to do the job: large and small
axes, two handsaws, a crosscut saw, and a "whip-pit" saw for
felling and shaping trees. They also used an adze and a variety of
files and knives to shape the timbers, different-sized augers for
boring mortise holes, and a hammer for pounding joints
together.
Kullyspell House consisted of one large log structure with two
stone chimneys - one at each end. Abandoned after several years the
building quickly decayed. The chimneys remained standing for 87
years until they were toppled by a windstorm. At that point,
Kullyspell house "disappeared", and even area locals forgot where
it had been located.
In 1928 a group of Idaho historians and pioneers relocated the
site. They were guided by a blind Indian named Kali Too who could
remember seeing the chimneys as a child. Using just memory, he was
able to guide them to two large piles of stone. Later the stones
were determined to be the remains of the Kullyspell House
chimneys.
I hope you
liked the short history lesson.
PS: Sorry
to do this again Loblollylove, but the power of the cache is too
strong to resist!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ab uvag'f - jnl gb rnfl, fbeel
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