tributary
A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...
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 annual d ...
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
Fountain Creek
Fountain Creek is a stream that originates in Woodland Park in Teller County and flows through El Paso County to its confluence with the Arkansas River near Pueblo in Pueblo County, Colorado. The creek,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydr ...
s, approximately 16 miles upstream from the town of Lillooet; the next tributary southwards is the larger Sallus Creek.
Course
The creek begins high in the northwestern ramparts of the plateau-like
Clear Range
The Clear Range is a small mountain range located in the angle of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers in south-central British Columbia. It has a small subdivision just northeast of that confluence named the Scarped Range. The Clear Range totals 16,27 ...
, and its upper course is between eroded mountainsides that are actually only the flanks of the flat summits of the range. In the midst of its course, as with most other tributaries of the Fraser in this region, it cuts through benchlands formed by old lake beds via a steep canyon. The benchlands are ranchland and have been at times irrigated for alfalfa and other crops.
History
On one of those benchlands is the Keatley Creek Archaeological Site, which was once a large riverside housepit ( quiggly hole or ''kekuli'') village. Of great antiquity like X̱á:ytem in the Fraser Valley, the site is among the most important in Canada and has been exhaustively studied and documented by archaeologists. Investigations have been led by Brian Hayden of Simon Fraser University, who dubbed the largest pithouse in the site as "Coyote's Big House" in the title of one of his works, as the trickster-being
Coyote
The coyote (''Canis latrans'') is a species of canis, canine native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. It fills much of the same ecologica ...
is important in local legends and name-stories. What caused the demise of the village's society is as yet unknown, though a landslide blocking the Fraser near Texas Creek, south of Lillooet, may have critically destroyed the local indigenous fishery. Alternative theories put emphasis on relative over-population and resource over-exploitation in the context of climate change. The large village is one of the biggest of its kind found to date in the Mid-Fraser.