On October 2nd our family got together in Kitwanga to lay our mother's ashes to rest on the ridge overlooking the Skeena near the property my parents owned for 30 years.
As you can see above the fall colours were at their very best. And the rain held off for our small ceremony.
In attendance, daughter Sybille, granddaughter Sonja, son-in_law Dave, daughter Cornelia, nephew George, daughter Dorothea, Dorothea's partner Richard, good friend Monica and Son_in_law Leo. Grandchildren Chris, Stephen and Andrea attended via Zoom.
Sybille read a poem by Germany's great writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and another by local poet Sheila Peters.
Afterwards we visited Kitwanga's national historic site.
Battle Hill is the site of a fortified village where the Gitwangak people defended their domain in the mid-1700s to 1800s.
It's built in a beautiful and strategic location
Looking over Kitwanga River.
This model shows how they constructed the fort, including the placement of spiked tree trunks to deter invaders.
Here's more information copied from the Canada's Historic Places website.
Gitwangak Battle Hill was designated a national historic site because of
- the presence of an 18th-century Gitwangak hill top fort (Ta’awdzep),
- the association with legends which recall the epic battles of the warrior Nekt who fought to gain control of the network of lucrative trading trails from the Nass to the Kitimat Rivers.
The heritage value of Gitwangak Battle Hill lies in its associations with Gitwangak history as illustrated by the site itself and the archaeological resources discovered there. According to legend, the warrior Nekt was the builder of Fort Kitwanga as a defensive stronghold. Occupied from at least the 18th century, the fort comprised five longhouses on top of the hill and enclosed by a palisade. Closely connected to the main residential village of the Gitwangak, situated over the hill for its protection, the fort was used by the Gitwangak people as they raided settlements along the Skeena River and the coast. It was burnt and abandoned about 1835.
CHARACTER-DEFINING ELEMENTS
Key features contributing to the heritage value of this site include:
- the site on a high terrace surrounded by low, open terraces on three sides, overlooking the river;
- its setting in a deep, undeveloped river valley among the mountains;
- landscape features identified in oral history of the warrior Nekt;
- remains of former longhouses in their extent with subsurface pits and their location and orientation on the hill summit;
- remains of the palisade and defensive works on the summit of the hill;
- evidence of adaptation of the hill for use as a defensive work (water pits and pools made by diverting the flow of the Kitwanga River to act as mirrors, remnants of intoxicating plants on the surrounding hills, indications of the movement of earth to increase the height of the fort);
- physical evidence of life on the site including puberty pits and food pits;
- surviving Gitwangak totem poles in whole or part;
- artifacts stored off-site, with their photographic and documentary records, and all recordings of oral history;
- the site’s controlled vegetation, with low bushes, poplar, and cottonwood trees;
- remnants of paths to the main residential village over the hill;
- viewscapes from the fortress to the Kitwanga River with its fields and meadows, north and south along the Kitwanga River valley, to the mountains, and to remnants of the Kitwankul (“Grease”) Trail;
- visibility of the fort remnants from the road and the water.
