A grease trail is an overland

trade route A trade route is a logistical network identified as a series of pathways and stoppages used for the commercial transport of cargo. The term can also be used to refer to trade over bodies of water. Allowing goods to reach distant markets, a sin ...

, part of a network of trails connecting the

Pacific coast Pacific coast may be used to reference any coastline that borders the Pacific Ocean. Geography Americas Countries on the western side of the Americas have a Pacific coast as their western or southwestern border, except for Panama, where the P ...

with the

Interior Interior may refer to: Arts and media * ''Interior'' (Degas) (also known as ''The Rape''), painting by Edgar Degas * ''Interior'' (play), 1895 play by Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck * ''The Interior'' (novel), by Lisa See * Interior de ...

in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

History

Trails were developed for trade between

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

, particularly the trade in eulachon oil (also spelled oolichan oil). The grease from these small fish could be traded for furs,

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish ...

, and obsidian, among other things. The Stó:lō people of the

Fraser River The Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for , into the Strait of Georgia just south of the City of Vancouver. The river's annua ...

simply ate the fish, either fresh or smoked, but the people of the interior used the oil as a condiment (similar to

butter Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 80% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread (food), spread, melted a ...

) and in various other ways.

Origin of the name

"Grease Trail", Carrier /tl'inaɣeti/. The name comes from the fact that the most important item traded into the interior was the processed oil of the eulachon fish Thaleichthys pacificus. Indeed, the Carrier word /tl'inaɣe/ "eulachon oil" is a compound of Carrier /xe/ "grease, oil" (combining form /ɣe/) with /tl'ina/, a loan from Heiltsuk or
Haisla Haisla may refer to: * Haisla people, an indigenous people living in Kitamaat, British Columbia, Canada. * Haisla language, their northern Wakashan language. * Haisla Nation, a First Nations band government in British Columbia, Canada. {{dis ...
, North Wakashan languages spoken on the coast.

"Because these trails were commonly used to transport Oolichan grease, they are now referred to as 'grease trails.' For thousands of years, First Nations traders followed well-trodden 'grease trails,' usually the easiest routes across plateaus, highlands and over challenging mountains far into the western interior, back-packing heavy boxes of valuable Oolichan grease, held in place by cedar rope 'tump-lines,' attached to headbands. The trails, operating on a relay system, covered a geographic area from what is now the Yukon Territories in Canada south to what is now northern California in the United States and as far east as central Montana and Alberta, to interior peoples like the Babine, Carrier and other Athabaskans."

Grease trails and former grease trails

* Alexander MacKenzie Heritage Trail * Chilkoot Trail * Cheslatta Trail * Dalton Trail * Nyan Wheti

Citations

References

* Birchwater, Sage. ''Ulkatcho. Stories of the Grease Trail'', Anahim Lake, Ulkatcho Indian Band 1993. * Harrington, Lyn. (1953, March). Trail of the Candlefish. The Beaver Magazine Of The North. (pp. 40–44) *{{cite conference, last=Hirch, first=Mirjam, date=September 12, 2003, location=Kamloops, BC, institution=University College of the Caribou, title=Trading across time and space: Culture along the North American "Grease Trails" from a European perspective, conference=Canadian Studies International Interdisciplinary Conference *''Grease Trails'', in: Turkel, William Joseph. ''The Archive of Place. Unearthing the Pasts of the Chilcotin Plateau'', pp. 108–135.

External links

Smelt
What's Cooking America?

Trade routes Roads in Canada by type