Tsilhqot'in

The Tsilhqot'in, or Chilcotin, are the southernmost Athabaskan-speaking people of British Columbia, whose country Tŝilhqot'in Nen lies along the Chilko and Chilcotin rivers west of the Fraser. Their name means people of the red ochre river, and they call themselves the Nenqayni.

Before contact they were feared warriors whose influence ran from Similkameen to the Pacific coast and the Rocky Mountains, astride an obsidian trade network for arrowheads. They raided all eleven Lillooet bands for captives until defeat in Graveyard Valley checked them.

Goods reached them in the 1780s and 1790s through sea otter trade; by 1808 the North West Company had posts among the Carrier, and in 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company opened Fort Alexandria on the Fraser, becoming the Tsilhqot'in's chief source of metal tools and guns. An 1836 epidemic swept neighbouring Carrier villages, a foretaste of later disease waves.