B Street: The Notorious Playground of Coulee Dam

2. The Town Hall

2 THE TOWN HALL O n Friday night, shortly after 6:00 p.m., people began arriving at the General Store. They were quiet and serious as they entered the building. There was no lighthearted horseplay or laughter as there usually was at large gatherings. Everyone seemed to sense that a very important meeting was to take place. The town of Inchelium rarely received any news of significance, but when it did, the People would assemble at the General Store. The store was commonly referred to as the town hall, and many of the meetings that at first seemed important usually turned out to be of little interest. The People didn’t mind, since, over the years, they had become accustomed to such results. But they welcomed any assembly because it gave everyone an opportunity to have a get-together, and they could exchange news, no matter how minor, with others. Talking and sharing news had always been the most important entertainment for people in Inchelium. Everyone looked forward to it. The meeting scheduled to discuss the rising of the Swah net ka and the flooding of the little town of Inchelium promised to be of great importance. Wagons arrived at the General Store from various directions, hauling members of the tribe. Some individuals 17 came on horseback. Families that had always formed the backbone of the community were there: the Toulous, the Seymours, the DeSautels, the Marchands, and the McClungs. Other important members of the tribe arrived later, including the Finleys, the Jerreds, the Michels, and the Stones. The Gendrons, the Lemerys, and the Noyes and Bass families came loaded into a few cars and pickups. Charlie and Eliza Hall with their son, Dewey, and Jerome and Florence Quill with their offspring, Moops, Mike, Jim, Gerlie, and Edo, were among the last to arrive. Florence was a respected elder in Inchelium. She was in her early seventies, and her composure was always purposeful and straightforward . Her mission in life was to protect the interests of her people, the Sin-Aikst. Now that Chief James Bernard was ailing, she had become the principal spokesperson of the Inchelium community . She was articulate and fluent enough in the Swhy al puh and Sin-Aikst tongues that the elders could understand what she was saying. Alec Covington had volunteered to chair the meeting. After everyone was seated, he asked Florence to take the floor. She immediately asked Antoine and Eneas to go over in detail what they had learned from the white men who were working on the upper benches above Inchelium. She wanted everyone in the General Store to hear firsthand how the young men had learned the news. Florence studied Antoine and Eneas evenly as they spoke. After they were finished, she remained quiet, in deep thought. There was absolute silence as she sat there, eyes staring at the floor. Florence finally looked up and then rose to address the People with a determined look on her face. She began her talk with a brief history of Inchelium. She felt it important to inform the young why they all lived in the little town. She reminded everyone that the government had forced the People 18 THE TOWN HALL into the area because it had taken all of their land to the north. The government, she informed her audience, was now about to take what was left of their land by covering it with water. “The People, the Swhy al puh and the Sin-Aikst, had to tolerate the white man’s greed,” Florence explained. “As the years went by, our tribe began to lose everything. At one time, the land of the SinAikst stretched from Kettle Falls to nearly two hundred miles north of Revelstoke, B.C. It was great country. The People were a tribe of several bands; they were always close to the Swah net ka and the Kettle River. “At the beginning of the century, things turned for the worse. In about 1912, people from Russia came to the Castlegar area, a religious sect called Doukhobors. I hear there were over five thousand of them. These trespassers from another country began to take up Sin-Aikst land in what is called today the Brilliant area. One of our favored families, the Christian family, lived there. Their forebears had lived in Brilliant for centuries. It was a beautiful place to live, along the Kootenay River. The salmon...