July 02, 2011 | Tips from Travellers >
Terrace, Arts, Culture & History Tours
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This past Tuesday, I embarked on a FAM tour of the local Nass area with one of the local guides from Split Mountain Adventures. Preparing to take an educational approach to the area, I brought along a camera and an open mind to absorb all the cool lore and culture the area had to offer.
The guide took us up Hwy 113 where we met up with one of the local first nations guides at Vedder Falls where he shared the tales of his culture's past. As we crowded around him at the flooded Vedder Falls, he began the tail of the Gods of the Nisgaa people warning children who had been abusing and ridiculing the fish who were spawning by cutting them open and putting shale in their backs, making them unable to swim. The children did not heed the warning and Gods became angry. He set forth a dangerous flow of lava on the area which killed nearly 3000 of the native people. Another God yelled across the mountains to stop the lava flow, and that he had done too much damage. The God who had started the lava flow called back that he was too weak to stop the lava flow and he would have to watch his people die. The God (seen in the picture with the long, sharp nose) on the other mountain would not tolerate this, and with one swift hit, he hit the lava flow with his long nose and stopped the lava flow completely. Curiously, the edge of the lava flow in the Nass ends with a sharp ninety degree angle, almost as though something huge had hit the flow away to stop it.