The material culture that the Spanish and Portuguese brought to the NewWorld included a distinctive system of land transport – the carriage of

goods on the backs of mules and horses. In terrain which was mountainous,or where travel by water was impossible, packing by horse or mule becamethe principal form of transport and continued to be significant even duringthe railway era. Not until the coming of bush aviation and all-terrain vehi-cles was packing abandoned. In its organisation and methods packing wasstandard across the western hemisphere from 40° S (in modern Argentina) to60° N (in British Columbia).

Historians have paid little attention to packing. Few scholars possess thecommand of Spanish and Portuguese needed to study the institution as itexisted in Hispanic America, and packing was not part of the material cul-ture of the Northern European settlers in the New World. In what is noweastern and central Canada the layout of rivers and streams facilitated the car-riage of goods by sailing ship and canoe, while the density of the forests dis-couraged the use of horse and mules. Along the eastern seaboard of what isnow the United States carting provided the most common form of transport,as the development of the Conestoga wagon attested.

By contrast, packing was the main form of transport in what are now Mex-ico, Peru, Bolivia and central and southern Brazil. Supplies for the silvermines of Zacatecas and Potosí were brought in by mule trains which took outthe processed silver. The same happened in Brazil with the gold of MinasGerais and the coffee of the Paraíba valley.1

In North America the westward advance of the French and British dependedupon established forms of transport, while the Spanish, moving into what arenow the states of New Mexico, Arizona and California, found that packing ide-ally suited the area’s mountains and deserts. The United States’ conquest of theregion in 1846 did not displace packing, which provided the essential meansof transport in the California gold rush of 1848. That gold rush transformedthe entire west coast of North America, first drawing in newcomers by thethousand and then, as the original mining strikes ran out, inspiring a search forfresh goldfields. Throughout the 1850s miners moved relentlessly north fromCalifornia. James Watt, a veteran prospector and packer, later commented:

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Packing in British ColumbiaTransport on a resource frontier

Roderick J. Barman University of British Columbia

Figure 1 The Pacific North-west, 1840–1900

Folks now-a-days haven’t much conception of the richness and extent ofthose early placer [alluvial] mines. Why, the whole country from the BlueMountains [in Oregon State] to the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains,and from southern Idaho far north into British Columbia, was just one biggoldfield. There was rarely a stream that wouldn’t ‘pan at least a color’ andpractically every square mile of that vast territory was some time or othertraveled over and prospected by some of those prospecting parties in the lat-ter 50s and early 60s.2

‘That vast territory’, stretching north from the California border to theYukon and bounded by the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, was thelast region of North America to be occupied by Europeans. Difficult of accessby land and sea, the Pacific North-west was rich in furs, particularly the seaotter and the beaver, which attracted Russian, American and British trappers.By the 1820s the Hudson’s Bay Company, with its regional headquarters atFort Vancouver (on the north bank of the Columbia, opposite modern-dayPortland), had established a virtual monopoly over the fur trade in the region,with some twenty trading posts along the coasts and throughout the interior.The influx of Americans coming by the Oregon trail and settling in theWillamette valley led to the Hudson’s Bay Company gradually withdrawingnorthwards. Fort Victoria (now Victoria, the capital of British Columbia),established in 1843, eventually replaced Fort Vancouver as the entrepot ofthe fur trade in the Pacific North-west.3 In 1846 the Treaty of Washingtondivided the region between Great Britain and the United States, with the newboundary running along the 49th parallel but giving Vancouver Island (withFort Victoria) to the British. A decade later, in 1857, gold deposits, longknown to the Aboriginal population, were found in the bars of the Thomp-son and Fraser rivers that lay to the north of the 49th parallel.4

The ensuing gold rush into what became in November 1858 the colony ofBritish Columbia and the demarcation of the boundary fixed by the 1846treaty together introduced the system of packing already used in the westernUnited States.5 The British boundary commission, charged with the task oftracing the new border along the 49th parallel in conjunction with a similarUS commission, sent one of its members down to California to acquire muletrains and their crews. The gold miners, fanning out along the Fraser andThompson rivers and their tributaries, found that the numerous rapids pre-vented mining supplies and foodstuffs being brought in by water. Existingtrails were therefore improved and new ones developed, particularly theroute between Port Douglas and Lillooet (see Fig. 4).6 To work these trailsmule trains were brought north from the United States. This system of pack-ing did not end with the completion of the Cariboo Wagon Road in 1865,the decline of gold mining later in that decade, or the building of the Cana-dian Pacific Railroad (Canada’s first transcontinental railway) in the 1880s,but continued until the middle of the twentieth century. Until the establish-ment of bush aviation for prospecting and for the carriage of goods andhumans, packing by mule and horse was an indispensable part of the resource

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frontier as it expanded into the more distant and more isolated parts ofBritish Columbia.7 As the settlement frontier advanced, packing was usuallydisplaced but the pack trains and their crews did not vanish. They simplymoved on into new areas which needed their services.

During the hundred years that packing was a viable and indeed indispens-able part of frontier life in British Columbia the system remained remarkablystable both in its organisation – animals, equipment, personnel and cargo –and in its functioning – capability, management and costs. The dynamics andimportance of packing as a system of transport across the North Americanwest become clear through an analysis first of each element in its organisa-tion and in its functioning on the British Columbia frontier.

In respect to animals, pack trains could employ mules or horses. Contem-porary opinion, for a variety of reasons, was emphatically in favour of theformer. ‘Mules are far preferable to horses for all purposes of transport.’Mules were sturdier, with flatter backs than horses. Whereas horses couldnever carry more than 250 lb of cargo and usually carried a good deal less,‘a mule would carry from 300 to 500 pounds’.8 Mules required less feedand possessed greater endurance. More specifically, mules were far moresurefooted and reliable than horses in the mountainous terrain that charac-terises so much of British Columbia and other parts of western NorthAmerica. ‘A horse packed belonging to one of the Packers made a false steprolled down & was killed – he had just bought him for $224.00 [£44·80],’ atraveller to the Cariboo noted in his diary in May 1862. ‘As far as I can seenow we have made the wisest plan by getting our grub on a mule train forthey get along better than horses.’9 James Watt, a veteran American packer,recalled in old age, ‘On the Boise pack trail in early days some boys had acayuse [wild horse] pack train. I made one trip with that train. It was a pooroutfit.’10

Mules were certainly not perfect. The first drawback was their proverbialstubbornness and uncertain temper. ‘Every member of the crew carried ablind, mostly used on mules. It is not generally known but a mule won’t doanything right for you unless blinded.’11 Another means of control was toacquire a bell mare, which served, in the words of a modern guide to pack-ing, ‘as hostess, lure, mother confessor, and Emily Post [etiquette guide].’ Themules would stay close to the mare (which always wore a bell) and follow itanywhere.12 The second drawback to using mules was finding a supply. Beingthe offspring of a male donkey and a mare, mules are sterile. They cannotreproduce. For there to be a constant supply, the animals have to be system-atically bred. In areas with rich pastures and a mild climate, such as southernCalifornia, Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and Salta in Argentina, mules werebred as a business.13 No such enterprise was undertaken in British Columbia,partly because of the availability and lower price of horses and partly becauseof the harshness of the winters.14 Mules had to be imported from the UnitedStates or from Mexico, adding considerably to their cost. In 1860 two muletrains, composed respectively of thirty-four and thirty-two mules, each witha bell mare, were brought up from Washington Territory (later State) to the

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goldfields and sold for $5,150 and $4,750, or about $150 [£30] a head.Other evidence suggests that a single mule in good condition would com-mand a price in this range.15 Prices often went much higher. In September1861 a Victoria newspaper reported, ‘Frank Way’s pack train of fifty-eightmules and four horses was sold for $14,000 cash, to three Cariboo traders.’16

In this instance the mules changed hands at over $225 (£45) a head, aboutthe price an American packer remembered in old age. ‘The average pack mulesold for $250. A very good mule would bring $400.’17 This expense explainswhy, in September 1861, ‘Messrs Fellows and Way, packers, … are boundfor Sonora, Mexico, with $24,000 [£4,800] with which to buy animals.’18

In contrast, acquiring a large horse pack train was fairly easy and compar-atively cheap. Horses, usually termed ‘cayuses’, bred wild on the plains ofeastern Washington Territory and in the southern interior of British Colum-bia.19 In 1861 a herd of 100 horses was sold at Lillooet, the forward supplybase for the goldfields, for between $120 and $180 (£24–£36) each, but thefollowing year an American received a little over $43 (£8·60) a head for thesixty-one horses he had brought in.20 Since mules could be acquired only inthe United States or Mexico, their cost rose proportionately as the resourcefrontier moved northward, farther and farther from the US border. Thegrowing difference in ease of acquisition and purchase price between mulesand horses favoured using the latter. Even though mules could carry heavierloads, cost less to run and were more surefooted, they were increasingly usedin harness to pull wagons, not as pack animals. Two newspaper reports fromthe early 1880s illustrate this change. ‘A short time since we advertised in ourcolumns the 12-mule team of Messrs. Burns & McKane for sale. The outfitwas sold … to Mr. U. Nelson, of this place, for $2,200 [£440]. The mulesand wagons were brought to Yale last week, and Mr. Nelson divided the bigteam into two 6-mule teams, with a large and small wagon each.’ A year laterthe same newspaper noted, ‘Mr. U. Nelson has shipped a considerableamount of goods to the upper country this week. On Friday he sent out apack train of some twenty horses to Bridge River where several of our youngmen have lately gone to seek their fortunes’ in mining.21

By the early 1880s mule pack trains had become unusual but they contin-ued to be employed. At the start of the twentieth century the Hudson’s BayCompany still maintained a pack train of thirty mules in northern BritishColumbia, probably based on Hazelton. In 1901 that train was rented out toa contractor constructing the Yukon Telegraph line for the Dominion gov-ernment.22 It is also probable that, even from the earliest days, pack trainswere mixed, made up of both horses and mules as the state of the owner’sfinances dictated. In a diary kept in 1876 a novice packer usually referred to‘the animals’ in his train, distinguishing between horses and mules only whenthere was specific reason to do so.23

No matter which type of animal was used, the same equipment, or ‘rigging’,as it was called in the nineteenth century, was employed. The pieces of equip-ment had, as their names attested, been developed in the Hispanic world.24

The most important was the aparejo. ‘What is an Aparejo? Why it is a Span-

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ish pack saddle made of leather and stuffed with moss, dry hay or grass – any-thing handy; it protected the mule’s back from any rubbing of the load, andequalised the weight of the pack on the animals.’25 ‘The aparejos are made likea couple of square leather sacks, all in one piece, one intended for each sideof the animal,’ a novice packer wrote in his diary in 1876. ‘These sacks arefirst filled with willows, placed upright in them and about 3 or 4 inches apart,then hay is stuffed in so that the whole is like a couple of large pads.’26

Before the aparejo was put on, the animal’s back was covered with threedifferent cloths. First came the ‘sweat’ cloth, and on it was laid the carona, acoloured and embroidered cloth reserved for a specific animal. Over thecarona went the ‘bed’ blanket, and finally the aparejo was laid on. Attachedto the back edge of the aparejo’s two sacks was a crupper, a broad leatherstrap, that ran around the animal’s hindquarters and under its tail. The threeblankets and the aparejo were secured by the latigo, or cinch strap, which cir-cled the animal’s belly and was pulled as tight as possible before being buck-led up. The cargo was next loaded, a highly skilled operation involving twomen standing on either flank of the animal. Two large boxes or casks werefirst hoisted up on each side of the aparejo and tied to each other by the slingrope, the intent being to ensure a balance of weight and burden. The rest ofthe ‘pack’ was piled on and around these first items. The entire cargo was

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Figure 2 ‘Packed mule. The load is supposed to represent four 50 lb sacks of flour. a,a, lower edge of aparejo. b, b, showing where the aparejo rests on the mule’s back. h, h,showing where the “riata” is tightened upon the load. g, the crupper. e, corner of sweatcloth. c, the corona. b 2, synch. f, loose end of the riata.’

Source: J. K. Lord, At Home in the Wilderness (1876), p. 75. Reproduced by courtesy ofthe University of British Columbia Library

secured to the aparejo by means of the lariat, some 50–60 ft of cord, loopedover and under in the celebrated ‘diamond hitch’.27

The rigging for packing was widely available. In 1863 a tack shop in Vic-toria offered for sale, as its invoices proclaimed, ‘Spanish Saddles,Pennsylvania and Concord Harness, Aparejos, Enameled Cloths, Whips,Spurs, &c. &c.’28 A set of rigging for a pack animal was by no means cheap.The aparejo alone cost from $35 to $60 (£7–£12), and the ‘bed’ blanket,made of the best wool, from $15 to $20 (£3–£4).29 It was a price, however,that had to be paid. Alternative forms of equipment, such as the crosstreesaddle, were markedly less efficient, while cheap rigging gave endless troubleon the road, trouble that meant loss of time and money.30 Careful mainten-ance of the aparejo was essential. The internal stuffing, if wetted, becamematted and lumpy and required swift replacement. Similar care had to betaken with the leatherwork. ‘One of the packers known as the “saddler” hadto be familiar with leather; his job was to repair pack saddles, etc.’31

If healthy animals and good equipment were essential to the successfulrunning of a pack train, so too was capable personnel. Packing was essentiallya male occupation, although there are records of women owning or runningpack trains.32 It required great strength and stamina. Working conditionswere hard. The items of cargo often weighed over 200 lb and were awkwardin size. Each crew member had to oversee six or seven animals when the trainwas in motion. Once the route to the Cariboo mines was well established,trains could stop at the many roadhouses, but packers often had to sleep out-side, regardless of the weather. ‘A big spruce tree was our camp each night,’a train master from northern British Columbia recalled in old age.33 The day’swork was long, varied in its demands and full of the unexpected. Strengthand stamina were not the only qualities demanded. Adept handling of ani-mals, swift and certain loading of cargo and resourcefulness in emergencieswere necessary skills. ‘If straps and ropes broke you had to splice them; youhad to mend the pack saddles; sometimes you had to shoe the mules; some-times animals got sick and you had to nurse them,’ James Watt recalled.‘Worst of all, sometimes the packs broke, or sprung a leak, and you had todevise means – way out alone in the wilderness – to save your cargo.’34

Finally, packers had to possess integrity. They were in charge of valuable ani-mals and expensive equipment and were entrusted with the delivery of goodsworth thousands of dollars and with bringing back the gold dust, specie andletters of credit offered in payment for those goods. As the Rev. James Rey-nard aptly remarked in 1869, the packers’ work ‘demands strength, skill, dar-ing, endurance and trustworthiness.’35

Not surprisingly, in view of the demands made on them, pack crewsexpected to receive good treatment, including copious food, while on thetrail. ‘I always treated my men well and fed them the best,’ the former ownerof a pack train recalled in 1929. ‘It is no economy trying to cut down on theexpenses for grub in this game. The men had lots to eat and it was all goodand a good cook got it ready.’36 Good the food may have been by the earlytwentieth century, but traditionally packers ate the beans, bacon and bannock

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(unleavened bread) that formed the staple diet of the frontier. ‘A case ofBrandy and a Box of preserves for our Grub arrived,’ a builder of the Cari-boo Wagon Road noted with satisfaction in June 1862, ‘as we [had] com-plained [of] having nothing to eat but Beans and Bacon three times a daywhich is a very good thing now and then, but 21 times a week is too often.’37

In addition to being fed well, packers expected to ‘earn considerable wages’,as the Rev. Reynard commented in 1869. South of the 49th parallel thesewages varied from $100 to $120 (£20–£24) a month, while a train mastercould earn as much as $150 (£30) a month. Court cases from the early 1860sindicate that pack crews in British Columbia were paid at similar rates. ‘Plain-tiff had been in our employ before – he was getting $100 p.m. He was a verygood packer. He had his victuals & expenses besides.’38 The packers certainlyearned their money. ‘In many respects the packers I worked among were,take them all in all, a rough, lawless and profane bunch of men,’ concludedJames Watt, a veteran train master, in old age, ‘but they were brave, hardyand extremely loyal and trustworthy towards their employers.’39

Packing was an occupation that rewarded innate qualities and paid littleregard to status or civility. In the early years most of those in the pack crewswere Mexicans, with some Chileans and other Spanish Americans. In June1859 the secretary of the British boundary commission commented in hisdiary, ‘You must first of all understand that all of our muleteers & packersare Mexicans.’40 A year later, in June 1860, the Anglican Bishop of Victoria,the Rev. George Hills, travelling from Yale to Lillooet, recorded talking ‘toMexicans who are the muleteers of the country’.41 The make-up of the workforce is in no way surprising. These nationalities had dominated packing inboth California and the Oregon Territory during the gold rush. Many mensimply moved north when the British Columbia boom began.42 The size ofthe new finds attracted packers directly from Spanish America. PanchoGutierrez and his two brothers arrived at Victoria by steamer from Mexico.43

Some of these men did not stay long or did not survive. Others contracted aunion with Aboriginal women and put down roots in British Columbia. Thedescendants of Manuel Alvarez, Jesus Garcia, Pancho Gutierrez and JoséMaria Tresierra – to name but four of these early packers – can be foundacross the province to this day.44

The first packers were Catholic in religion, Spanish in speech and oftenmestizo (mixed Indian and European) by descent. To the Canadians, Britishand Americans who controlled the official and commercial life of BritishColumbia the Spanish Americans were neither civilised nor white.45 It is notsurprising that packing as a calling attracted other men who, like the Span-ish Americans, were outsiders by reason of their race or their culture. Twosuch men were David Wiggins, an Afro-American who had learnt the art ofpacking in California, and Jean Caux, a native of the French Pyrenees whobegan his life in British Columbia as a gold miner.46 Aboriginal men quicklylearned the art of packing. In July 1862 ‘Indian George’ took out at Lyttona trading licence as a packer. The Indian Superintendent for British Colum-bia reported in 1886 to Ottawa, ‘Owing to railways construction, the last five

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years have been profitable seasons for these Indians who are expert packersand good labourers.’47 By the end of the nineteenth century Aboriginals prob-ably constituted the largest group among the packing crews.48 Some ran theirown outfits, as did Pierre Jack over the Hope–Princeton trail and Jean Marie,a Babine packer on whom the Omineca miners depended during the 1920sfor contact with the outside world.49 Also increasingly prominent in packingwere men of mixed race, sons of the union of native women and newcom-ers. Packing was one of the few occupations open to this group of men caughtbetween the settler and Aboriginal societies.50 Last, but not least, a very visibleelement in packing were the Chinese, who both owned and ran pack trains.During 1861 no fewer than six Chinese took out at Lytton trading licencesas packers. In 1867 Kwong Lee & Co. had a train of thirty-five mules work-ing out of Yale, then the starting point of the wagon road to the Cariboomines.51

Healthy animals, good equipment and tough, expert personnel meantnothing without cargo. Cargo depended upon a demand for goods byhumans working in areas unreachable by water transport. In British Colum-bia none of the gold strikes subsequent to the original discoveries could besupplied solely by steamer or canoe. The first need of the miners was forfoodstuffs. ‘What they usually carried for grub was beans, bacon, flour forbannock, and a little tea, sugar and salt, and maybe some coffee,’ the daugh-ter of an early miner and packer later recalled. ‘The Californians liked cof-fee but tea has always been a great favourite with the miners and packers.’52

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Figure 3 ‘A pack train “pulling out”. The four men belong to four races: Indian, negro,half-breed white, and Chinaman.’

Source: W. A. Baillie-Grohman, Fifteen Years’ Sport and Life in the Hunting Grounds ofWestern America and British Columbia (1900), p. 22. Reproduced by courtesy of theUniversity of British Columbia Library

The attention that government reports, newspaper stories and private lettersof the period paid to the price per pound of flour, bacon and beans confirmsthat these were the indispensable victuals. Foodstuffs constituted a good pro-portion, probably the predominant part, of the early cargoes carried into theinterior.53 Pack trains going up to the mines willingly sold such staples tothose they met in need of provisions. Indeed, as Bishop Hills noted in hisdiary on 8 July 1862, ‘I found it was a custom for returning trains if short offood to purchase of the laden trains what they want.’54 Salt, tea and tobaccowere also carried, but just as important were the barrels of cheap whiskystocked by the roadhouses on the way to the goldfields and by the countlesssaloons and bars that sprang up in the mining camps.55

Besides drink and foodstuffs the pack trains brought in the pickaxes, shov-els and other ironware that the miners required when sinking shafts to reachbedrock. Just as important were the footwear, such as waterproof boots, andheavy clothing rapidly wore out. All these goods commanded high prices inthe mining communities, as did the saws, nails and building tools required toconstruct the stores, saloons and gaming establishments, built of rough-cutlumber, which rapidly sprang up at the site of a successful gold strike.56 Sincethe miners who made the strikes customarily made little or no attempt tohoard their new-found wealth, the pack trains brought in a whole range ofluxury goods, such as champagne, canned and bottled comestibles and fancyclothing, all of which found a ready market.57

Most of these goods were dispatched on consignment in the expectationthat they would sell quickly. A significant part of cargo was composed ofitems which had been specially ordered or which the pack train’s ownerswere to use for a commercial venture. To the first category belonged the bil-liard tables which were such an indispensable part of every saloon. The sonof an early packer recalled proudly how ‘four billiard tables were taken in byhim one time from the Fountain to Barkerville and he got $4,000 [£800] forthem’.58 In the second category came the metal parts, engine and boilerrequired to build the first steamer launched on the upper Fraser river. It tookat least four mule trains to bring these items to their destination.59 The onlygoods not to figure in cargo, given the slow pace of travel and the great dis-tances to be covered, were perishables. Milk cows and beef cattle could beand were driven in on the hoof, while the farms established near many of themining camps ‘got good prices for everything they had to sell, and there wasa good demand all the time for vegetables of all sorts, and for beef and mut-ton, poultry, eggs and butter’.60

Sound animals, good rigging, capable crew and suitable cargo were the pre-requisites of a successful pack train. Equally important was the train’s actualfunctioning, which can be analysed in its three aspects – capability, manage-ment and costs.

The capacity of pack trains, and in particular mule trains, to carry cargosafely over long distances was very great but it was not absolute. Pack trainscould function only if feed and water were available along the route. To havehad to carry such items would have so reduced cargo capacity as to make the

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entire venture impracticable.61 Terrain that was permanently or seasonallyarid, such as existed in eastern Washington Territory, defeated the packtrains. During the winter months blizzards and heavy snowfalls closed trailsand covered the grass on which the pack trains depended. At that time of yearlittle or no packing took place. At Lillooet, at the start of the newly openedCariboo Wagon Road, the number of pack trains and the weight of cargostood at 103 outfits carrying 194,053 lb in October 1862, declined to fiftyoutfits carrying 55,775 lb in November and dropped to only six outfits car-rying 5,556 lb in December.62

Another unfavourable environment for pack trains was vividly painted by theRev. John Sheepshanks, who went up to the Cariboo in the summer of 1862.

But, oh, the green timber! The rays of the sun could not get down to thenarrow trail, which was in some degree walled in on either side by the felledtrees and the logs that had been rolled out of the way. Thus the hundredsof pack animals, mules and horses, all the time going up to or returning fromthe mines, had trampled the trail into a long continuous line of quagmire.The tramp of the animals had worn the trail into ‘ridge-and-furrow’ steps.63

Sheepshanks was describing the trail that linked Quesnel Forks, the originalentry point to the Cariboo gold mines, to Williams Creek, the heart of themining area. This stretch of trail through green timber was, a governmentofficial asserted, the main cause of packers losing some 20 per cent of theiranimals each year.64 Mountain ranges were another serious obstacle, espe-cially where the route went by a narrow trail along the edge of a precipice.Such a terrain necessitated the employment of mules alone, and even theyoccasionally came to grief, as the secretary of the British boundary commis-sion recorded in June 1859. ‘Roche’s return mule train came in from a moun-tain gorge called Tommeahai this evening & I am sorry to say the news arerather bad, one mule had fallen over a precipice & broken its neck, the bur-then all lost, & one man broken his leg.’65 On narrow trails through themountains pack trains had above all else to avoid meeting another going inthe opposite direction. In such circumstances mules could not and would notturn about or stand still, and some losses inevitably occurred. The mules hadto wait at places where the trail widened until it was certain that the wayahead was unimpeded.66 Another obstacle that required careful handling wascrossing rivers. ‘Cannot ford a pack train in four feet of water,’ so as to avoidwetting the stuffing in the aparejos, Donald Graham, a novice packer, notedin 1876. The animals had to be unloaded and the rigging and cargo carriedacross.67 Fast-flowing rivers, without a bridge or a ferry, presented a consid-erable challenge. The crossing had to be carefully reconnoitred and the land-ing place chosen with care. The mules were unloaded and swam across,following the bell mare. The cargo and equipment were taken over by boator raft.68

Skilled management was crucial in the functioning of pack trains. It isregrettable that so little documentation on management has survived. How-

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ever, sufficient information exists for its dynamics to be understood. The keyindividual was the cargador or pack-train master who managed the outfit onits journeys, oversaw animals, equipment, men and cargo and saw to the safedisposal of the goods at their destination. It was not a job for a novice, asGraham observed in May 1876: ‘in fact, without going any further into it, itrequires a great deal of experience to take charge of a train’.69 The success ofthe entire venture depended upon the energy, shrewdness and integrity of thetrain master and his segundo, as his foreman was sometimes called. It is notsurprising that some train masters were the owner of the outfit they com-manded. A larger number were probably part owner, running the venture inpartnership with a merchant or merchant firm, which supplied the capitaland the cargo. Some cargadores were simple employees who worked for theexcellent wages the calling offered. Such men may not have aspired to a moreexalted role, especially since illiteracy was common among packers. WhenRafael Carranza, one of the earliest and most prominent of the Mexicanpackers, took British citizenship in October 1873 he could not even sign hisapplication papers and had to mark them with a cross.70

Neither illiteracy nor lack of capital barred the way to an ambitious andcapable man who sought to own a pack train. Pancho Gutierrez, who in the1880s ran an outfit over the Hope–Princeton trail, began life in BritishColumbia as a porter, carrying goods from the steamers arriving at Yale tothe pack trains awaiting their loads.71 Acquiring a string of animals was thefirst step to success, as the career of Jesus Garcia attests. Garcia’s son recalledin 1934:

For two years my father stayed on this pack train job, then made up his mindto quit and work for himself. He went to the boss and told him his inten-tion was to buy a few head of mules for a starter. Raphael Carranzo [sic]told Father that if he intended to have a train of his own he would give hima show. Father asked him, ‘In what way?’ He said, ‘I’ll sell you half of mytrain.’ Father said,‘It’s a go.’ The bargain was made in a few words and thiswas his start in business for himself.72

Once the first animals had been acquired, an astute packer could build upthe size of his outfit, either slowly – animal by animal – or by the purchase(probably on credit) of a string of them. It is clear that the independent trainmasters, who knew that the economy could not function without them,depended a great deal on credit to finance their operations. During the pack-ing season merchant houses provided cargo and allowed the purchase ofequipment and supplies, with payment delayed until the trails closed in theautumn.73

The size of a packing outfit had an important influence in determining costsand so the efficient running of a train. ‘Trains of twenty-five pack animalswere easier to handle than larger trains,’ an American packer recalled in oldage, ‘on account of the greater convenience in making camp and findingfeed.’74 A listing in The Pacific Coast Business Directory for 1867 of the fifty-

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seven pack trains then working out of Yale shows them to have ranged in sizefrom four to 174 animals. The average size of a train was just over thirty-seven animals, the median being twenty-eight.75 A portion of the cargo con-sisted of victuals to feed the pack crew, but the rest was goods to be deliveredto the consignee or to be sold by the pack master. In the latter case the car-gador had to be sure that the goods he loaded would find a ready sale.

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Figure 4 Transport routes, 1858–1890

Pack trains of any size worked out of a base where cargoes could easily beprocured, fresh animals purchased and packers hired. In the years of the goldrushes the bases stood at the head of navigation. On the lower Fraser river,Hope served the outfits which carried goods to the strikes at Rock Creek(1860), Cherry Creek (1863) and Wild Horse Creek (1864) in the far south-east of the province. Port Douglas, at the head of Harrison Lake, Lillooet, onthe middle Fraser, and finally Yale, on the lower Fraser, served consecutivelyas the bases of outfits going up to the Cariboo goldfields. In 1867 the PacificCoast Directory recorded three packing outfits with a total of fifty-four ani-mals working out of Hope and fifty-seven outfits with 2,115 animals workingout of Yale.76 The goldfields along the southern border of British Columbia,discovered in the first half of the 1860s, drew a good part of their suppliesfrom the United States. American packing trains worked out of Wallula on theColumbia river and out of Walla Walla, farther to the east, which was the gar-rison town of the US army in eastern Washington Territory.77

At the start of the packing season (ranging from March to May), whensnow had left the trails and fresh pasture was available, the trains assembledat their bases, recruited such crew as was necessary, loaded cargo and setout.78 The distance an outfit could travel each day depended upon conditionsalong the trail and the distance from camp to camp. ‘Twelve or fourteen milesis considered a long way for a pack train,’ a novice packer commented in1876.79 The ideal camping site was sheltered from the prevailing winds andpossessed good water, plentiful pasture and a supply of wood.80 The daywould begin well before first light: ‘we would roll out of our blankets at twoor three in the morning.’81 The outfit’s cook would get the banked fire goingand prepare breakfast. Some of the crew would break camp while otherswould gather the mules or horses in. The easiest method was to find the bellmare, which was usually white or grey in colour. The mare’s bell wouldattract all the mules, but in the case of horses one or two stragglers often hadto be searched out. The bell mare would be led to the head of the waitingpacks and ‘the animals stand there in line like a regiment of cavalry’. DonaldGraham continued, ‘Now the work of the Cargadore and his assistant com-mences. They start at opposite ends of the line and throw a halter over eachanimal’s head. When they are all haltered, they pass along, tying one to theother until the whole line is thus fastened.’82 Each animal faced its ownaparejo and rigging, which had been covered with mantas, waterproofsquares. Breakfast would follow. The crew, divided into pairs, then went towork, untying each mule in turn, saddling it and loading the assigned cargo.‘The mysteries of the “diamond hitch” were then swiftly performed’ and themule, ‘tightly sinched up until his stomach looked like an hourglass, grunted,and was dismissed with a kick, and another victim selected to take his place.All this was done with bewildering rapidity.’83 It took two experienced mena minute and a half to two minutes to load a mule, James Watt, an Americanpacker, recalled.84

Once the loading was finished, usually by six in the morning, the cookmounted the bell mare and led the way out of the camp site, the animals fol-

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lowing in single file. Each member of the crew had charge of six or seven ani-mals and rode alongside them on his own mount.85 The cargador, or trainmaster, inspected each animal as it left camp, checking for incipient sores (therecurrent problem with mules), defective equipment or insecurely packedcargo. Any animal with an immediate or potential problem was pulled out ofline and the matter remedied at once. When the entire outfit was in motion,the train master and his segundo would take up position at the head and therear of the train, always alert to handle any emergency the day’s journeymight bring. If rain began to fall, for example, the cargoes had to be coveredwith mantas.86

The length of the day’s journey was determined in part by the difficulty ofthe terrain – a river crossing, for example, consuming a great deal of time –but also by the distance to the next desirable stopping place. The train wouldoften reach the camp by midday and always by the early afternoon. ‘Whenthe train gets into camp the unloading is gone about as systematically as theloading, everything laid away neat and safe, the Cargadore seeing that hisrigging and animals are in good shape for another day’s drive,’ DonaldGraham noted in his diary on 14 May 1876. ‘If any animal is hurt he fixeshis aparejo so as to bear as little as possible on that particular spot next day.’87

The bell mare was usually hobbled so as to prevent her from straying toofar during the night. Meanwhile a fire had been started and the cook pre-pared first a brew of tea and then the second meal of the day. The crew werekept busy inspecting and, if necessary, mending equipment and overhaulingcargo. ‘At the end of a hard day’s work the men would drink down a big pan-nikin of scalding hot tea, and feel that it was a pretty good world.’88 Any timeavailable after the meal was devoted to recreation. Hispanic muleteers, thecensorious complained, were irremediably addicted to gambling and playedmonte, a Spanish-American card game, whenever opportunity offered.89 Thecrew bedded down, often under blankets in the open, at an early hour, sincethey had to rise well before dawn the next morning.90

This demanding but fairly repetitive round lasted for a considerable num-ber of days, because the pack trains did not move fast in the best of circum-stances. As a British observer wrote, when aparejos rather than crosstreesaddles were employed, ‘the pace can never be more than a walk’.91 At a courtcase tried in December 1862 two packers testified that, during the optimummonths of June to August, a train would take at least thirty days to cover the230 miles from Lillooet on the middle Fraser river to the Cariboo goldfields(under eight miles a day), while a third estimated thirty-two to thirty-fourdays.92 There were plenty of causes for delay. A storm or heavy rain wouldkeep the train in camp for that day. A particularly heavy or bulky item, suchas the ship’s boiler plates transported to the upper Fraser river in 1862 or thegold stamp mill weighing 667 lb carried by a single mule over a 100 mile trail,would slow down the progress of an entire train.93 Encounters with outfitscoming from the opposite direction brought the train to a standstill. Haltswere made to sell foodstuffs and other goods. As an outfit travelled itswapped news and gossip with travellers and local inhabitants. ‘It is not

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nearly so lively these last few years since the pack-trains were given up,’ thedaughter of an early packer lamented in 1929. ‘Every now and then a motor-car goes along there but it is gone before you see it, but in the old days youcould hear the pack-train and it took some time to pass, and if you were downnear the boundary fence you would hear of the news from the packers.’94 Asthey made their slow way to their destinations the pack trains thus servedmore purposes than the carriage of goods.

On arriving at its destination a train would dispose of its cargo. When thegoods were to be delivered to a specific merchant, no problem existed. Sell-ing direct to the public was a more uncertain business. In the summer of 1862a miner at Van Winkle creek reported, ‘directly a train of grub arrives it ispicked up as soon as it is unloaded at any price they choose to ask and onlysold for cash even to the best men in the country’.95 In the autumn of thatsame year the gold towns of the Cariboo were ‘loaded up with winter stocks,and prices were so low that packers could get little more than freight rates forwhatever goods they might have on hand’.96 To avoid such risks, a cargadorcarrying his own goods might entrust them to a local merchant who ‘engagedin the commission business, advancing money to packers, and getting ten percent for selling goods’.97 Some pack masters ‘would wait for Sunday’, which‘was the miner’s day off and a busy day for all those in the mining towns’, aveteran American packer recalled, ‘and then, unpacking their goods, wouldoften sell out their stock in the day. If there was any remainder, it was dis-posed of to some merchant at a price which covered the packing charges anda fair profit on the goods.’98 There was no certainty that a speculative cargocould be sold. In 1870, during the Omineca gold rush, one packer took in aloaded train from Fort St James but, before reaching the mining camps alongVital Creek, learnt that no market existed. The diggings were exhausted andall the miners had departed to new strikes on Germansen Creek. He wasforced to dump his goods outside Takla Landing.99

For the journey back to the pack train’s base, at Lillooet or Yale in the earlydays and later at Quesnel, Ashcroft or Hazelton, the cargador attempted tofind as much cargo as he could, but the load was likely to be small. Packerswould have endorsed a judge’s 1863 observation about ‘gold dust being amost inconvenient freight’.100 The journey down to the coast would thereforebe made comparatively speedily. Indeed, the success of a packing outfit reallydepended on how many full cargo loads it could carry each year beforewinter closed the trails. When the snows came, the cargador took his animalsto a sheltered site where he could be sure of finding sufficient grass until thereturn of good weather. In the early 1860s a group of Mexican packers beganto spend the winter at the forks of the Nicola river, thus beginning a settle-ment that became the town of Merritt. Other Mexican packers spent theirwinters in the Similkameen valley, on the site of what is now the town ofCawston.101 Later in the century, when the building of the Canadian PacificRailroad line shifted the base of packing outfits northwards, the pack animalswere wintered in the Bonaparte and other valleys close to the railhead atAshcroft.102 As settlement thickened and road communication improved it

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became easier to provide pack animals with grain feed in winter, and soaccess to snow-free pasture became less important.

Pack trains were capable of moving very considerable quantities ofgoods, often through difficult terrain. A train of twenty-eight mules wouldcarry about four tons, a similar number of horses about three tons. Packingwas never a cheap form of transport. Animals and equipment required aconsiderable outlay of capital. The cost of personnel, in the form of wagesand keep, was high. Any attempt to cut expenditure in respect of animals,equipment and personnel was counterproductive. Since packing was forlong the only practical means of transport on the British Columbia resourcefrontier, pack-train masters had little incentive to keep their freight chargeslow. In April 1859 the Times correspondent in British Columbia estimatedthat, while it cost just over 1¢ per lb to carry goods from London to Vic-toria, the cost of moving goods from Victoria to the gold mines was abouteleven times greater (11·6¢). The cost of carriage from Victoria to Douglasor Yale, the heads of navigation, was not in fact markedly higher than thesea freights (1·4¢ per lb). It was the land transport that was so expensive,the basic charge in 1859–60 being 12¢ (2·4p) per lb.103 In July 1862, atthe very height of the Cariboo gold rush, the cost of freighting goods fromboth Lillooet and Yale to the gold fields reached as high as 65¢ (15p) perpound.104

Freight charges oscillated wildly in part because, as a mode of transport,packing was incapable of adapting to a sudden expansion or decrease indemand. The supply of animals, equipment and personnel was not elastic andan outfit could be neither rapidly assembled nor swiftly laid off. In 1861–62a prolonged winter put back the start of the mining season and the openingof the trails northward. The pack trains lacked the capacity to bring in suffi-cient supplies for the thousands of men pouring into the goldfields. ‘Therehas been such a rush of strangers here this year that animals are not in thecountry to pack provisions for one half the crowd,’ wrote a miner to his fam-ily in the summer of 1862.105 The selling price of flour, a key commodity, roseto $1·50 (30p) per lb in July and August. Bishop George Hills, visiting thegoldfields, noted in his diary on 13 August:

Yesterday the price of flour again rose to a Dollar & half a lb. It is downtoday at a Dollar & quarter. I met Mr S. MacDonald, a Packer, he said theprice of flour at Yale is 8 cents, the Packers freight is 65 cents to WilliamsCreek, in all 73. So upon $1.50 the Traders’ gain is 77¢, above hundred percent, & upon 1.25, 52¢ or near 70 per cent.106

These high prices did not last, since new cargoes came in and miners left thegoldfields for the winter. At the end of September 1862 a Victoria newspa-per reported that ‘freights in the upper country are now so low that packersare turning out their animals to winter, rather than work them for unremu-nerative prices’.107

It is no wonder that exploitation by merchants and packers was a constant

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cause of complaint among prospectors and miners, who, having no alterna-tive, could grumble but had to pay what was asked. Money was there to bemade by everyone involved in packing. In July 1860 Bishop Hills, then at Lil-looet, commented, ‘Packing is one of the most lucrative employments. A trainof 12 or 13 Horses, or mules, very soon pays the expenses of first cost[s] andthen great profits are made.’108 In December that year Ramon Gutierrez, aMexican who had been ‘previously working up the Country in the muletrains as Muleteer’, complained to the police at New Westminster that he hadjust been robbed of gold dust worth $450 kept in his saddlebags. The twomagistrates who heard the complaint expressed no scepticism as to the valueof his loss. In May 1863 a Latin American packer testified in court that ‘Iearned $693 last season beyond expenses starting with 5 horses’.109

The difficulty for packers lay not so much in making money as in keepingit. As a long-time resident of Lillooet remarked in old age, packers ‘used topasture their stock across the river at what was originally known as Parson-ville and afterwards as East Lillooet, and they came across here by ferry forliquor and women’.110 If drink and women did not consume a packer’s sav-ings, gambling might well do so. Hoarded savings could be easily stolen, asRamon Gutierrez discovered in 1860. Those who eschewed temptation andguarded their money carefully could still come to grief. Bad weather couldbring disaster. ‘In ’62 I lost my pack train on Bald Mountain during thewinter, many other packers suffered a similar loss,’ Donald Walker recalledin old age.111 Animals could easily fall sick, stray or be stolen. Cargoes couldbe lost, damaged or abandoned. Trusted employees could peculate orabscond.112 Illness and death intervened to thwart the best laid plans.Rheumatism and pneumonia were occupational hazards. In the summer of1883 Pancho Gutierrez contracted pneumonia while travelling with his packtrain. Miles from any medical care, he died at Clinton on 14 August, leavinghis Aboriginal wife to bring up four children.113 Not everyone had the fore-sight or the good fortune of Manuel Barcelo or Jesus Garcia, who managedtheir outfits efficiently and used the profits to buy land near where they win-tered their animals. Both retired from packing before it exceeded theirstrength and both died wealthy men.114

The high and uncertain cost of carriage by pack train encouraged demandsfor the introduction of speedier and more flexible means of transport. Thecolonial government responded by building the Cariboo Wagon Road, whichat first (1863) ran from Lillooet to Soda Creek on the upper Fraser and, whencompleted in 1865, from Yale to Barkerville in the heart of the mining area.Although exceedingly expensive, burdening the colony of British Columbiawith a heavy debt, the new road achieved its purpose, serving as an indispensable north–south artery.115 The road certainly reduced transportcosts. ‘On anything like a passable road,’ a veteran packer observed, ‘it wasfar cheaper to haul merchandise, than to pack it; bigger loads could be carried, better time made, and the expense of equipment and labor wasgreatly reduced.’116 Although freighting did not eliminate pack trains, evenon the Cariboo Wagon Road itself, by the early 1880s they had become a

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cause for comment, as the following item in the Inland Sentinel of Yaleshows:

A Good Turn-out. Friday of last week might have been seen one of the finestpack trains traveling the Cariboo road. There were 53 mules, in excellentcondition and full of life. … When the mules are loaded they look, to thosenot used to such scenes, rather singular. … [They] travel about 15 to 20 milesper day. Every night the animals are unloaded and reloaded again in themorning; this labor has to be gone through until the end of the journey,sometimes requiring weeks to perform the task and reach their destination.117

By the time the wagon road to the Cariboo was complete, in 1865, theyield from the goldfields had started a long decline. Using Quesnel, a townon the upper Fraser river and the northern end of the wagon road (whichthere turned east), as their base, the miners began prospecting northwards.The discovery of the Omineca mines in 1869 was followed in 1873 by thatof the far richer Cassiar mines, in the distant north-west of British Colum-bia.118 Supplying the mining camps in those areas expanded and revitalisedthe trading trails north of Quesnel already established by the Aboriginalpeople and the Hudson’s Bay Company.

There were no wagons above Quesnel when I came to the country twenty-three years ago [a former packer recalled in 1929] and of course no wagon-roads. You had to pack everything on horseback, or travel on foot with yourgrub and blankets. There were well-travelled trails in every direction fromQuesnel, and you could get anywhere in comfort, as we considered it, fromthere.119

The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, one of the benefitspromised to British Columbia in return for joining the Confederation in1871, stimulated a renewed burst of packing. When completed in 1885 thenew railway caused Ashcroft, the station closest to the Cariboo, to replaceYale as the base of both packers and freighters.120 The increased pace of eco-nomic life in British Columbia in the second half of the 1880s and into the1890s kept packers busy, especially in the Kootenay area, where the new hardrock mines were being prospected and developed.121 In the north of the pro-vince the Yukon gold rush of 1898, the construction of the Yukon Telegraphline in 1900–01, the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in 1910–14and a boom in mining in the years before the First World War meant that‘packing was big business’.122

During the thirty years from 1885 to 1914 the role played in BritishColumbia by packing changed significantly. It became subsumed in ‘freight-ing’ and generally ceased to provide a sole occupation for anyone. ‘CharleyBarrett did a great deal of freighting for the contractors [building the GrandTrunk Pacific] nearer the coast during construction days, and had a pack-train of sixty mules and fifty horses,’ David Hoy, a veteran rancher andpacker, recalled in 1929. ‘Like myself, he got a market for the produce of his

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ranch in the [railway] camps, and made use of his grain to feed his horses andmules.’123 These packers were doing themselves out of business, as Hoypointed out.

As soon as the railway was completed and in operation it was the finish ofthe pack-train and dog-team and other modes of freighting in this part of thecountry, and when the Pacific Great Eastern Railway began running [fromSquamish] to Quesnel it put an end to the Cariboo Road in the same way.’124

In the years between the two World Wars packing continued to survive inthe far north of British Columbia. Based on Hazelton, the trains carried insupplies for the Yukon Telegraph line, the Hudson’s Bay Company posts, thenewly opened mines, and the prospecting and surveying parties.125 By the1930s new technology in transport and communications increasingly madepacking unnecessary. From 1936 onwards short-wave radio stationsreplaced the posts on the Yukon Telegraph line. The development of bushaviation meant decreased traffic on the packing trails, which soon becameovergrown and unusable.126 The expansion of British Columbia’s road net-work from 1945 onwards and increasing use of the ‘cat’ (all-terrain vehicle)meant that pack trains finally ceased to be viable except as outfits for biggame hunting.

During this last era most of the pack trains were run by the local Indianpeople who provided the crews. One figure stood out: David Wiggins, ‘oneof the best saddlemen in the province’.127 Born around 1870, ‘Darkie Dave’was the son of David Wiggins, the Afro-American packer who had come toBritish Columbia in 1858, and an Aboriginal woman. The 1891 census showsWiggins as employed in the household of a Mexican packer, Rafael Valen-zuela.128 He thereafter became part of Cataline’s outfit. When George Beirnespurchased Cataline’s pack train, about 1912, David Wiggins was one of theassets that changed hands.129 He took over as cargador for Beirnes, packingsupplies each summer up the Yukon Telegraph trail. We even have a photo-graph of him, sitting encircled by the aparejos of his pack animals, busyrepairing the rigging.130 He continued active and employed during and afterthe Second World War. In the summer of 1949 Wiggins, then close to eightyyears old, was flown into the Ground Hog Basin, north of Hazelton, in orderto bring out a train of horses trapped there. ‘I’ll never fly them mechanicalbirds again!’ he informed his friends.131 Two eras in transport history had foran instant intersected. The death of ‘Darkie Dave’ Wiggins on 16 January1951 marked, as well as any single event could do, the end of packing as amode of carrying goods in the province of British Columbia.132

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Notes

1 See Herbert S. Klein, ‘The supply ofmules to central Brazil: the Sorocaba market, 1825–80’, Agricultural History64, 4 (1990), pp. 1–25; José AlípioGoulart, Tropas e tropeiros na formaçãodo Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1961); NicolásSanchez-Albornoz, ‘La saca de mulas deSalta al Peru, 1778–1808’, Anuario delInstituto de Investigaciones Historicas 8(1970), pp. 264–314; Floyd F. Ewing, Jr,‘The mule as a factor in the developmentof the southwest’, Arizona and the West 5(1963), pp. 315–26; Emmett E. Essin,‘Mules, packs, and pack trains’, South-western Historical Quarterly 74, 1 (1970),pp. 52–80.

2 James Watt, born in Ohio in 1843, cameto Washington State in 1860 and spentthe rest of his life as a prospector, packerand rancher in the region. His oral remi-niscences, recorded in the late 1920s,were first published in the WashingtonHistorical Quarterly 19 (1928) and 20(1929) and were reprinted as a pam-phlet, Journal of Mule Train Packing inEastern Washington in the 1860’s (Fair-field WA, 1978). References are to thepamphlet, in which the passage quoted ison p. 34.

3 See Jean Barman, The West beyond theWest: a history of British Columbia,revised edition (Toronto, 1991), pp.32–43; Richard S. Mackie, Tradingbeyond the Mountains: the British furtrade on the Pacific, 1793–1843 (Van-couver BC, 1997), pp. 3–34, 257–83,and Carlos A. Schwantes, The PacificNorthwest: an interpretative history,revised edition (Lincoln NE, 1989), pp.25–79.

4 See William J. Trimble, The MiningAdvance into the Inland Empire (Madi-son WI, 1914), pp. 15–27.

5 The colony of Vancouver Island hadbeen created in 1849. The two colonieswere merged in 1866 as the UnitedColony of British Columbia; see Barman,The West, pp. 53, 81.

6 This route, that ran from Douglas at thehead of Harrison Lake north, via a mix-ture of trails and lakes, to Cayoosh (laterLillooet) on the middle Fraser river, wasfirst surveyed in 1847 and opened up in1858–59; see James R. Gibson, Lifelineof the Oregon Country: the FraserColumbia Brigade System, 1811–47(Vancouver BC, 1997), p. 279, n. 48, andR[ichard] C. Mayne, Four Years in BritishColumbia and Vancouver Island: an

account of their forests, rivers, coasts,gold fields and resources for colonisation(1862), pp. 50, 56, 93, 130.

7 See Louis Lebourdais’s comments on thesupplying of the Omineca mining campsby air, British Columbia Archives (Vic-toria BC; hereafter BCA), Add. Ms 676LLB, vol. 9, file 19, Typescript headed‘New Slate Creek, Omineca’ and datedby hand ‘November 22, 1934,’ p. 2(hereafter Lebourdais, ‘New SlateCreek’).

8 Letter to the editor from ‘M.F.’, VictoriaGazette, 29 February 1860; BCA C AB30 3 N 1, British Columbia SupremeCourt, Notes of Proceedings, 1December 1862–16 April 1863, JudgeMatthew B. Begbie’s notes on the evi-dence of William J. Armstrong in thecase of Cranford v. Wright, 14December 1862, p. 51 (hereafter ‘Cran-ford v. Wright’); John Keast Lord, AtHome in the Wilderness: what to do thereand how to do it: a handbook for trav-ellers and emigrants (1876), p. 7; Watt,Journal, pp. 19–20; BCA E E M963,Typed reminiscences of AlexanderCampbell Murray, Fort St James, no date[but before January 1931], p. 16 (here-after ‘Reminiscences of A. C. Murray’).

9 BCA Add. Ms 843, Diary of James Willi-son G[rant] Nelles, entry of 22 May1862. In the 1860s the exchange rateoscillated around $5 = £1.

10 Watt, Journal, p. 19. In Shavetails andBell Sharps: the history of the US armymule (Lincoln NE, 1997) E. M. Essinshows, on pp. 91–8, that in the 1870sthe superiority of mule over horse forcedthe US army, despite its prejudices, toadopt mule pack trains as its means oftransport in its wars with the Aboriginalpeople.

11 ‘Time and place: more about pack trainsand Cataline, by Hugh McLean, as toldto Wiggs O’Neill’, Terrace Omineca Her-ald, 24 December 1963 (hereafter ‘Timeand place’); and see Lord, At Home inthe Wilderness, p. 79: ‘when this dreadedaffair is fairly on, you might as wellattempt to make a log move as induce ablinded mule to shift its position’.

12 Joe Back, Horses, Hitches and RockyTrails (Boulder CO, 1989), p. 48, andsee Lord, At Home in the Wilderness, pp.19–21, and George M. Grant, Ocean toOcean: Sandford Fleming’s Expeditionthrough Canada in 1872 (Toronto,1873), pp. 272–3.

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13 George Harwood Phillips, Indians andIntruders in Central California, 1769–1849 (Norman OK, 1997), pp. 82–8;Goulart, Tropas, pp. 35–7; Sánchez-Albornez, ‘La saca’.

14 None of the photographs of animalstaken during the 1860s includes don-keys, indispensable for mule breeding;personal communication from RichardThomas Wright, 11 February 1999. Theadverse effect on mules of the severeBritish Columbia winters during the1860s can be deduced from Lord, AtHome in the Wilderness, p. 17, D. W.Higgins, The Mystic Spring, and otherTales of Western Life (Toronto, 1904), p. 204, and BCA Colonial Correspond-ence (hereafter ‘CC’), file 142f, JudgeMatthew Begbie Baillie to the ColonialSecretary, Victoria, Vancouver Island, 19January 1863.

15 Information given, citing no source, inRon Angelin, Forgotten Trails: historicalsources of the Columbia’s Big Bend coun-try, ed. Glen W. Lindeman (PullmanWA, 1995), p. 162. In late July 1862 agroup of Americans, arriving at VanWinkle, ‘sold Billy Mule at once for$140’; see BCA Add. Ms 676, vol. 5, file17, Diary of C. S. Hathaway, entry of 6August 1862. According to Lord, AtHome in the Wilderness, p. 16, mulespurchased in California ‘on a rough aver-age, will amount to about 120 dollars(25£.) to 150 dollars (30£.) per head’.

16 British Colonist, 23 September 1861.17 See Watt, Journal, p. 19.18 British Colonist, 23 September 1861.

This news item is separate from the onequoted above.

19 See James R. Gibson, Farming the Fron-tier: the agricultural opening of the Ore-gon country, 1786–1846 (VancouverBC, 1985), pp. 52–3, and Angelin, For-gotten Trails, p. 58. During 1862 686mules and 3,097 horses entered BritishColumbia by the customs post at Osyoos,on the inland trail from the UnitedStates; see BCA CC 1862, Report byJohn C. Haynes.

20 Memoir of Robert Stevenson, in W.Wymond Walkem, Stories of EarlyBritish Columbia (Vancouver BC, 1914),p. 142; Angelin, Forgotten Trails, p. 167,citing the diary of George Masiker, heldat the University of Oregon.

21 Inland Sentinel, 30 August 1883, 21August 1884. Between 11 and 18September 1876 eleven mule teams, pull-ing 96,850 lb, left Yale up the Caribooroad, compared with seven horse teams,

pulling 37,200 lb; British Colonist, 22September 1876.

22 Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Hud-son’s Bay Company Archives MF 1214,Correspondence, Manager to A. C.McNab, 23 January 1902; Reminis-cences of A. C. Murray, p. 11.

23 University of British Columbia Library,Special Collections, Typescript copy ofDonald Graham’s diary, 30 April–23September 1876 (hereafter ‘Diary of D.Graham’). See the entry of 8 May: ‘Wearrived at Clear Water River about 10a.m. … Train got to river about noon.With the exception of horned cattle, theanimals were got across easily.’

24 ‘Most of our packing terms were Span-ish, picked up by the Forty-niners fromthe Mexicans in California’; see Watt,Journal, p. 39. Of the equipment, thewords aparejo, carona, latigo and mantaare Spanish, while ‘lariat’ and ‘hack-amore’ derive from Spanish (la riata andjáquima).

25 Ibid.26 Diary of D. Graham, entry of 10 August

1876.27 The best description of the ‘rigging’ is in

Lord, At Home in the Wilderness, pp.69–71, 74-9, a description confirmed bythat in Watt, Journal, pp. 39, 41, 42, andby that in W. A. Baillie-Grohman, Fif-teen Years’ Sport and Life in the HuntingGrounds of Western America and BritishColumbia (1900), pp. 20–1. Lord distin-guished the aparejo from the rigging but,for convenience, it is here included.

28 Victoria City Archives and Record Ser-vice, W. A. G. Young Collection, Receiptfrom J. Martin, dated 2nd/16th Sep-tember 1863. In 1868 Ben. Douglasadvertised ‘A good supply of Whips,Blacksnakes, Ladies, Aparajo and otherLeathers’, British Columbia Examiner, 7December 1868.

29 See Watt, Journal, pp. 39, 41. Lord, AtHome in the Wilderness, p. 72, mentions$50 (£10) as the price of an aparejo andthe same amount for the rest of the rig-ging.

30 ‘The weight of this rig is very muchgreater than that of the pack-saddle, withits cross-trees at both ends, but, notwith-standing this, far greater weights can betransported on the aparejo, though thepace can never be more than a walk’; see Baillie-Grohman, Fifteen Years, pp. 20–1.

31 See Diary of D. Graham, entry of 10August 1876; Lord, At Home in theWilderness, pp. 71, 204; ‘Time and

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place’.32 In 1867 Mrs M. R. Toy was listed as run-

ning a pack train of ten animals out ofYale and as owning a hotel in Clinton;see The Pacific Coast Business Directoryfor 1867 … (San Francisco CA, 1867),pp. 565–6. Sophie Morigeau (1835–1916) ran a pack train in the Kootenaysand Montana; see Olga W. Johnson(ed.), The Tobacco Plains Country: theautobiography of a community (CaldwellID, 1950), pp. 41–50, and Marie CuffeShea, Early Flathead and Tobacco Plains:a narrative history of northwestern Mon-tana (n.p., 1977), pp. 98–102. In the1930s Mrs Dora Moore ran a pack trainin the gold-mining area around BridgeRiver; see BCA Add. Ms 676 LLB, vol.11, file 26, Undated clipping fromunidentified newspaper.

33 BCA E E H85, Typed reminiscences ofDavid Henry Hoy, freighter and trapper,Fort St James [interviewed at PrinceGeorge, 8 October 1929], p. 6 (hereafter‘Reminiscences of D. H. Hoy’).

34 Watt, Journal, p. 45. John Keast Lordnever discusses the treatment or the payof packers nor describes who they were.His references to packers’ trustworthinessare all negative and carping; see At Homein the Wilderness, pp. 71, 160, 164.

35 Report of the Rev. James Reynard,Twelfth Annual Report of the ColumbiaMission for the Year 1870 (1871), p. 63.

36 Reminiscences of D. H. Hoy, p. 6.37 Typescript of the diary of Sergeant John

(Jock) McMurphy (original held in theRoyal Canadian Engineers Museum,Camp Chilliwack, Chilliwack BC), entryof 10 June 1862 (hereafter ‘Diary of Ser-geant McMurphy’).

38 Report of the Rev. James Reynard,Twelfth Annual Report, p. 64; Watt,Journal, p. 19; BCA C AB 30 3 N 2,British Columbia Supreme Court, Notesof Proceedings, 24 April 1863–23 April1864, Judge Matthew B. Begbie’s noteson the evidence of Oscar Bailey inM‘Linden v. Snow & Bailey, LyttonAssizes, 2 May 1863; BCA GR 569, vol.1, Lillooet, County Court, p. 145, plaintNo. 75, 1 August 1862, Bidante v. Mat-tingley; p. 1924, plaint No. 98, 17November 1862, Flynn v. Mattingley.

39 Watt, Journal, p. 47.40 Diary entry of 19 June 1859, transcribed

in George F. G. Stanley (ed.), Mappingthe Frontier: Charles Wilson’s diary ofthe survey of the 49th parallel, 1858–62,while Secretary of the British BoundaryCommission (Toronto, 1970), p. 52.

41 Entry of 18 June 1860, at Yale. On 12July 1860, at Lillooet, he commented,‘The packers are principally Mexicans.There are, however, many Americans.’See R. L. Bagshaw (ed.), No Better Land:the 1860 diaries of the Anglican colonialbishop George Hills (Vancouver BC,1996), pp. 150, 184. Of the forty pack-ers treated during the 1860s and 1870sat the Royal Columbian Hospital, NewWestminister BC, twenty-eight wereLatin American; see BCA Film 95A, Hos-pital Register, 1862–1901.

42 See the references to Spanish Americansjoining the gold rush to British Columbiain 1858 in Doyce B. Nunis, Jr (ed.), TheGolden Frontier: recollections of HermanFrancis Reinhart, 1851–69 (Austin TX,1962), pp. 118–19, 120–1, 122, 134–5.

43 Oral information passed down in thefamily and kindly communicated to meby Mr Al Gutierrez, Khawathil (KatzLanding) BC, 17 March 1997. Other evi-dence shows that the brothers came fromBuena Vista, Sonora State.

44 This paragraph is based on my on-goingresearch into the pre-1914 Hispanic andPortuguese community of British Colum-bia. That research draws on the 1881,1891 and 1901 censuses, manuscript andprinted sources from the period, andsecondary literature.

45 Writing home to Nova Scotia in May1888, a schoolteacher remarked, ‘Therewere four half-breed girls there belong-ing to one family – Kossuth or Garcia,they get both names, one is Spanish &the other English. They have attendedschools for years but in spite of that theystill have the squaw looks & manners.Their father is a Mexican Spaniard, andis himself as black as any Dinash, so theycome honestly by their black looks.’ SeeNicola Valley Archive, Merritt BC,A78–34–06, Jessie McQueen to Cather-ine McQueen, Lower Nicola, 28 May1888. The father was Jesus Garcia,whose first name was customarily pro-nounced in British Columbia ‘Cassus,’heard by outsiders as ‘Kossuth’.

46 On David Wiggins, Sr, see ‘WhiskeyCases’, British Colonist, 24 July 1860;BCA E E D42, Typed reminiscences ofJohn Dunlop, Lillooet, undated, p. 4;‘Pioneer packer frozen to death’, InteriorNews, 1 February 1951. On Jean Caux,better known as Cataline, see R. J. Bar-man, ‘Jean Caux’, Dictionary of Cana-dian Biography XV (forthcoming).

47 BCA GR 833, Trade Licences, LicenceNo. 367, 22 July 1862; National

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Archives of Canada, Department ofIndian Affairs, RG 10, vol. 3656, file9063, C10115, J. N. Powell, IndianSuperintendent, British Columbia, to theSuperintendent General, Ottawa, IndianOffice, Victoria, 22 July 1886. See alsoMargaret Ormsby (ed.), A Pioneer Gentlewoman in British Columbia: therecollections of Susan Allison (VancouverBC, 1976), p. 21, and Andrea Laforetand Annie York, Spuzzum: FraserCanyon histories, 1808–1939 (Vancou-ver BC, 1998), p. 76.

48 See BCA E C B172.2, Typed reminis-cences of Mrs August Baker (born SusieElmore), Quesnel, ‘October 11th, 1929’,p. 1 (hereafter ‘Reminiscences of MrsBaker’), and E E M311, Typed reminis-cences of William Francis Manson,Indian constable at Stony Creek, 2 Octo-ber 1929, p. 16.

49 See the obituary of Pierre Jack, born 16December 1869, died 28 March 1971, inthe Thirty-fifth Report of the OkanaganHistorical Society (1971), 140–1. OnJean Marie and his wife Agathe seeLebourdais, ‘New Slate Creek’, p. 5.

50 See ‘Time and place’.51 BCA GR 833, Trade Licences, Licences

Nos 266, 320, 344, 348, 354, 393; ThePacific Coast Business Directory for1867, p. 565. On Kong Lee, the leadingChinese merchant in British Columbia,see Walter Cheadle, Cheadle’s Journal ofa Trip across Canada, 1862–63, new edi-tion (Edmonton AB, 1971), pp. 267–8.

52 Reminiscences of Mrs Baker, p. 5, con-firmed by W. J. Trimble, MiningAdvance, p. 147.

53 Of the 25·6 (short) tons of goods thatRobert Cranford, Jr, sent north fromVictoria in the summer of 1862, food-stuffs made up 22·75 tons, or 89 percent; see Cranford v. Wright, 4December 1862, pp. 81–3, which itemisethe goods dispatched by the plaintiff.

54 The Anglican Church, Ecclesiastical Pro-vince of British Columbia, Archives,Typescript of the Bishop George Hillsdiaries (hereafter Diary of Bishop Hills).On 29 May 1862 a miner noted in hisdiary, ‘Struck tent at 6 AM walkd 19miles campd side Bonaparte river andfound had taken the wrong road and lostabout 20 miles. Bought flour and beansfrom one of the Hudson Bay Companytrains.’ See BCA Add. Ms 676, vol. 5, file17, LLB, ‘Diary of Unknown CaribooMiner found by Mrs Alf Brown in theold Bowron House (in the attic), 1930’.

55 On 5 July 1862 Bishop Hills deplored

the fact that in the Cariboo miningcamps ‘train after train was coming inladen not with the necessaries of life, tokeep poor men from starvation, but withwhiskey, and Billiard Tables’; see Diaryof Bishop Hills.

56 The cargo sent north in the summer of1862 by Robert Cranford, Jr, includedpicks, pick handles, shovels, nails, shirts,hose and boots and shoes, to a totalweight of 1·73 (short) tons; see Cranfordv. Wright, pp. 81–3.

57 On 5 September 1862 Bishop Hillsnoted, ‘I met today two trains whoseprincipal cargo was Champagne for themines’; see Diary of Bishop Hills. Thecargo sent north in the summer of 1862by Robert Cranford, Jr, included 252 lbof ‘ginger snaps’, 180 lb of canned lob-sters and 118 lb of canned oysters; seeCranford v. Wright, pp. 81–3.

58 BCA E C B81.3, Typed notes of conver-sation with James Nathaniel JeromeBrown, carpenter, 1515 Venables Street,Vancouver BC, 7 July 1930, marked ‘Astold to Robert Hartley’, p. 1.

59 Diary of Sergeant McMurphy, entries of7, 11 June, 11 July, 28 September 1862;and see entry of 16 October 1863 inCheadle, Journal, p. 245.

60 Reminiscences of Mrs Baker, p. 5.61 See the adverse comment made by the

Colonial Secretary of British Columbiain 1864 on the trail from Fort Shepherdto Kootenay Valley: ‘it would be impos-sible for packers to pass through thisportion without carrying food for theiranimals’. Arthur N. Birch to FrederickSeymour, Governor of British Columbia,New Westminster BC, 31 October 1864,transcribed in Matthew Macfie, Vancou-ver Island and British Columbia: theirhistory, resources, and prospects (1865),p. 257.

62 BCA Add. Ms 2013, Untitled ledger(misidentified in the archive catalogue as‘The Packers Account Book of Dodgeand Co.’), with toll entries from 1September 1862 to 17 December 1864.In September 1862 there were eighty-three outfits carrying 274,230 lb.

63 Diary entry cited in Rev. D. WallaceDuthie, ed., A Bishop in the Rough(1909), p. 74. Sheepshanks visited theCariboo gold fields in August andSeptember 1862.

64 BCA CC file 142f, Judge Matthew B.Baillie to the Colonial Secretary, Vic-toria, Vancouver Island, 19 January1863. In December 1862 John Jeffriestestified, ‘I wo.d not have taken a cargo

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to W.ms Crk with my own animals. Ish.d only take to [Quesnel] Fks – thenceto the mines on cayooshes. Very seldom atrain goes through’; see Cranford v.Wright, p. 166.

65 Diary entry of 19 June 1859, transcribedin Stanley, Mapping the Frontier, p. 53.

66 See R. Byron Johnson, Very Far WestIndeed: a few rough experiences on thenorth-west Pacific coast (1872), pp.74–5; Grant, Ocean to Ocean, pp.266–7, 280–1; ‘Memories of AliceMaude Mary Northcott, Mrs Early’,Quesnel Advertiser, 15 October 1976.

67 Diary of D. Graham, entry of 10 August.68 Ibid., entries of 1 and 16 June; Lord, At

Home in the Wilderness, pp. 184–8.Three Mexican packers employed by theBritish Boundary Commission drownedin July 1860 when two canoes swampedwhile crossing the Ashnola river; seeStanley, Mapping the Frontier, p. 119 n.

69 Diary of D. Graham, entry of 14 May.70 BCA GR 1554, British Columbia

County Court (Victoria), Naturalisationapplications and oaths of allegiance, box3, April 1873–May 1874, file 4, No.210B.

71 Oral information passed down in thefamily and kindly communicated to meby Mr Al Gutierrez, Khawathil (KatzLanding) BC, 17 March 1997.

72 Account by Frank Garcia in ‘Nicola Pio-neers Column, No. 12’, Merritt Herald,30 November 1934. On 8 September1859 a trading licence was granted atLytton to ‘Jesios Gasso’ as a packer; seeBCA GR 833, Trade Licences, No. 70.

73 On 14 August 1862 Bishop Hills noted,‘A Packer today told me there was greatdifficulty in getting supplies from theLower Towns. One reason was the pro-visions were not there, another reasonthe merchants would not sell except forcash. So that if a Packer could not payfor his goods before taking them hecould not have any. He complained ofthis on the ground of requiring a largecapital.’ Diary of Bishop Hills. In hismemoirs Dr Helmcken wrote, of theyears 1864–65, ‘The merchants were in abad state; the packers to whom hugecredits had been given without adequatesecurity could not pay, but the goodswere gone, tremendous losses’; seeDorothy Blakey Smith (ed.), The Remi-niscences of Doctor John SebastianHelmcken (Vancouver BC, 1975), p.207.

74 Watt, Journal, p. 45.75 The Pacific Coast Business Directory for

1867, p. 565. Fifty-nine pack trains werelisted, but two have to be excluded fromthe calculations. The number of animalsin the train of J. Davis is not given. Thetrain of the Collins Overland TelegraphCompany, which numbered 300 animals,was not a trading outfit.

76 Ibid.77 Watt, Journal, pp. 26, 32; Trimble, Min-

ing Advance, p. 58; and see R. Cole Har-ris, ‘Moving admist the mountains,1870–1930’, BC Studies 58 (1983), p. 5.

78 In 1861 the trading licences issued atLytton to packers were taken out mainlyin March, in 1862 not until May andJune, in 1863 in April and May, in 1864in March, in 1865 not until May, and in1866 in April and May; see BCA GR833, Trade Licences.

79 Diary of D. Graham, entry of 16 May.Camping sites ‘averaged about 15 milesapart, at convenient places where therewas feed and water’, according to Watt,Journal, p. 42.

80 These qualities characterise the twoprobable camping sites I have inspected:Mexican Flats, on the north bank of theFraser river, near Whonnock BC, andSpanish Prairie, just north of the town ofColville WA. The names of the sitespoint to their having served as campinggrounds for pack trains.

81 See Watt, Journal, p. 41.82 Diary of D. Graham, entry of 14 May;

and see J. H. E. Secretan, Canada’s GreatHighway: from the first spike to the lastspike (1924), p. 58.

83 Secretan, Canada’s Great Highway, p.58; Lord, At Home in the Wilderness, pp.158–69; Watt, Journal, pp. 41–2. Thepack train supplying the stations on theYukon Telegraph line from Hazelton tothe Naas river in the 1920s followed pre-cisely the procedures described by Gra-ham, Lord and Watt; see H.Glynn-Ward, The Glamour of BritishColumbia (Toronto, 1932), pp. 128–32.

84 See Watt, Journal, p. 41. In the earlydays the two men loaded fourteen ani-mals and later as many as eighteen ortwenty.

85 See ‘Time and place’. Packers used bothmules and horses to ride.

86 Lord, At Home in the Wilderness, pp.170–4; Watt, Journal, p. 42. Lord placedthe cargador at the head and Watt at therear of the train (which seems the morelikely). I infer that the foreman (segundo)took the other post.

87 Diary of D. Graham.88 Reminiscences of D. H. Hoy, p. 6.

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89 On the reputation of the Mexican pack-ers as gamblers see Johnson, Very FarWest Indeed, p. 67, and the comments inthe Victoria Gazette, 8 August 1858, onthe recent conviction of Antonio Garciafor keeping a gambling house at FortHope.

90 Lord, At Home in the Wilderness, pp.196, 204.

91 Baillie-Grohman, Fifteen Years, pp.20–1.

92 Evidence of William J. Armstrong,George W. Campbell and FrederickBlack in Cranford v. Wright, 9 Decem-ber 1862, pp. 50–2.

93 Diary of Sergeant McMurphy, entries of7, 11 June, 11 July, 28 September 1862;Wat, Journal, p. 43.

94 Reminiscences of Mrs Baker, p. 11.95 BCA Add. Ms 48, file 2, Typescript of

letters sent by Dr John B. Wilkinson tomembers of his family in Ontario, letter,Van Winkle Creek, undated [July 1862].

96 Memoir of J. C. Bryant in Walkem, Sto-ries, p. 142.

97 Memoirs of Robert Stevenson in ibid.,p. 261.

98 Watt, Journal, pp. 11, 43. In 1860Bishop Hills was informed that Sundayclosing of stores in the town of Lillooetwas not possible, since ‘it was the customfor the miners to do their business thatday & they came in from a distance’; seediary entry of 14 December 1860 inBagshaw, No Better Land, p. 278.

99 See Allan S. Trueman, ‘Placer Gold Min-ing in Northern British Columbia,1860–90’, M.A. thesis, University ofBritish Columbia, 1935, as reproducedin part in Thomas Turner (ed.), Sa Ts’e:historical perspectives on north BritishColumbia (Prince George BC, 1989), p.91.

100 BCA CC, file 142f, Judge Matthew B.Baillie to the Colonial Secretary, Vic-toria, Vancouver Island, 19 January1863.

101 Pat Lean, ‘The Garcia story’, NicolaValley Historical Quarterly 6, 4 (1984),p. 2; Sam Manery, ‘Sam McCurdy stagedriver passes’, Twentieth-eighth Reportof the Okanagan Historical Society(1964), p. 48.

102 Reminiscences of Mrs Baker, p. 10. In1868, after the laying of the secondAtlantic cable from Ireland to New-foundland had caused the Collins Over-land Telegraph Company to abandonconstructing its overland telegraph linethrough British Columbia, Alaska andSiberia, the mules and horses it was using

on the venture were being pastured atAlkali Lake, just to the west of the Bona-parte valley. See the offer for sale ofthese animals in the British Colonist, 19May 1868.

103 The Times, 3 June 1859; ‘Letter fromYale’, Victoria Gazette, 9 August 1859;letter from ‘M.F.’, Victoria Gazette, 29February 1860.

104 Evidence of Robert Cranford, Jr, inCranford v. Wright, 9 December 1862,p. 88; Diary of Bishop Hills, entry of 13August 1862.

105 BCA Add. Ms 48, file 2, Typescript of let-ters sent by Dr John B. Wilkinson tomembers of his family in Ontario, letter,Van Winkle Creek, undated [July 1862].In 1862 it was not until 28 April that thefirst trading licence was issued at Lyttonto a packer, whereas in 1861 the firstlicence was issued on 5 March; see BCAGR 833, Trade Licences, Nos 264, 486.

106 Diary of Bishop Hills.107 Daily Press, 25 September 1862.108 Entry of 12 July 1860 in Bagshaw, No

Better Land, p. 184.109 BCA CC, New Westminster Police,

Chartres Brew, Magistrate, to W. A. G.Young, Colonial Secretary, New West-minster BC, 13 December 1860, enclos-ing three depositions; BCA C AB 30 3 N2, British Columbia Supreme Court,Notes of Proceedings, 24 April 1863–23April 1864, Judge Matthew B. Begbie’snotes on the evidence of an unidentifiedSpanish-speaking witness in Burke v.Torres, Lytton Assizes, 2 May 1863.

110 BCA E E D42, Typed reminiscences ofJohn Dunlop, Lillooet, undated [c.1931], p. 8.

111 ‘A pioneer’s experiences, narrative oflife and adventure with the H. B. Co.’,Inland Sentinel, 12 February 1904. TheBritish Colonist, 3 November 1862, re-ported, ‘Among those who lost all theiranimals are Dan Shafer, Armstrong, andJohn Clugston – forty or fifty each. Sev-eral other smaller trains have also beenlost.’

112 In British Columbia packers were gener-ally spared one danger endemic south ofthe border. ‘Beside all this work we hadto be on the alert to preserve our ownscalps,’ James Watt remembered. ‘Onthe trail there was always more or lessdanger from attacks by hostile Indians,and murderous road agents [highway-men]. If they didn’t kill you they mightrun off with your horses and mules, orrob you of your freight. It wasn’t an easylife by any means.’ See Watt, Journal,

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p. 46.113 British Colonist, 26 August 1883. Four-

teen of the forty packers treated at theRoyal Columbia Hospital, New West-minster, in 1863–79 were suffering fromsome form of rheumatism; see BCA Film95A, Hospital Register, 1862–1901.

114 Lean, ‘The Garcia story’, pp. 2–11;Doug Cox and Elizabeth Pryce, ‘TheBarcelos of Cawston’, Fifty-fifth Reportof the Okanagan Historical Society(1991), 99–105.

115 See Harris, ‘Moving’, p. 7.116 Watt, Journal, p. 47.117 Inland Sentinel, 30 August 1883. These

comments suggest that on the road amule train could travel between 20 percent and 40 per cent farther a day (fif-teen to twenty as against twelve to four-teen miles) than on a trail. In terms ofcosts the wagon team’s key advantagesover the pack train were needing only asingle driver and its cargo staying loadedthroughout the journey.

118 Trueman, ‘Placer gold mining,’ pp. 85–7,92–3, 97–8, 99.

119 Reminiscences of D. H. Hoy, p. 5. Seealso Glynn-Ward, Glamour, p. 107.Waterways, travelled by steamer andscow, were far more available for trans-port in this area of the province than inthe south.

120 On the building of the CPR see J. Bar-man, The West, pp. 106–7.

121 See R. Cole Harris, The Resettlement ofBritish Columbia (Vancouver BC, 1997),pp. 196–9, and Louise McFadden, ‘AndyDaney of Ferguson’, in Pioneer Days inBritish Columbia (Surrey BC, 1973), pp.140–7. The ores around Idaho Peakwere discovered in 1890 and transportwas provided by mule and horse trainsuntil the first railway was built in 1895.

122 At Hazelton ‘seldom a day passed but aparty would depart’; see J. Glen, Sr,Where the Rivers Meet (Duncan BC,1977), pp. 48–9, also 23–4. See GuyLawrence, Forty Years on the YukonTelegraph (Vancouver BC, 1965), pp.36–9; Frank Leonard, A Thousand Blun-ders: the Grand Trunk Pacific Railwayand northern British Columbia (Vancou-ver BC, 1996).

123 Hoy added that in 1907 he had home-steaded ‘land on the Nechako uptowards Fraser Lake. On my ranch wegrew grain, and dandy crops at that, butwe had no market for it, so I went pack-ing to make a use for it.’ Reminiscences

of D. H. Hoy, pp. 4, 7. On Charley Bar-ret and his pack train see Glynn-Ward,Glamour, pp. 107–8.

124 Reminiscences of D. H. Hoy, pp. 6–7.The PGE Railway reached Quesnel in1921.

125 J. C. Loutet, ‘Pioneer days in Hazelton’,Pioneer Days in British Columbia (SurreyBC, 1973), pp. 8–9, 12. In 1937–39 amine just south of the border was regu-larly supplied by a pack train (composedof horses and one mule, which went last inthe train) based on a ranch at Chilliwackin the eastern Fraser valley; informationfrom Dr Neil Sutherland, telephone inter-views, 25 February, 4 March 1998. Onthe use of pack trains to take ore out fromthe Bridge River mines see BCA Add. Ms676 LLB, vol. 11, file 26, Undated clip-ping from unidentified newspaper.

126 See Lawrence, Forty Years, pp. 110–11;Ronald A. Keith, Bush Pilot with a Brief-case: the incredible story of aviationponeer Grant McConachie, new edition(Vancouver BC, 1997), pp. 78–99; per-sonal information from Mr G. B. Leech,Ottawa, 1 June 1998. Mr Leech man-aged the pack horses of surveying crewsin the 1940s.

127 ‘Time and place’.128 Census of Canada, 1891, British Colum-

bia 1, Cariboo (Clinton), household 56.His father is given as born in the UnitedStates, his mother in British Columbia.According Wiggins’s death certificate, hewas born at Douglas Portage BC and wasaged eighty when he died on 16 January1951; see BCA, Vital Statistics51–09–002815. H. Glynn-Ward, whomet him in the late 1920s, wrote, ‘he willassure you he was born at New Westmin-ster, down near Vancouver’; see Glam-our, p. 117.

129 BCA E E C61, Cataline, by Sperry Cline,Burnaby BC, March 1959, typescript, p.12. Cline stated, ‘I was present when thetransfer took place … I firmly believethat he [Cataline] considered Wiggins tobe his property.’

130 Photograph in Glynn-Ward, Glamour, p.132, and see the text on him, pp. 120–2,128–30.

131 Obituaries in Bridge-River-Lillooet News,25 January 1951, and Interior News, 1February 1951.

132 The US army disbanded its last two oper-ational mule trains on 15 December1956; see Essin, Shavetails and BellSharps, p. 1.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mr Christopher J. P. Hanna and Dr Jean Barman for aiding mewith expert research and invaluable assistance. I am also extremely grateful to Mr AlGutierrez, of Khawathil BC, Mr G. B. Leech and Dr Neil Sutherland for sharing withme personal and family information on packing. Since no secondary literature existson packing in British Columbia, and little on packing in the United States, the articlenecessarily cites a great many primary sources.

Address for correspondence

Department of History, University of British Columbia, 1297–1873 East Mall, Van-couver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada. E-mail rbarman@interchange.ubc.ca