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Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

Title:

[Roman Catholic mission on the left bank of the Kootenay (i.e., Kootenai) River, south of the boundary in Washington Territory, 1861.]

Description:

Log cabin indentified as Catholic mission or church. The location of this mission is discussed in some detail by several American survey party members in "Evidence for the United States in the matter of the claim of the Hudson's Bay Company pending before the British and American Joint Commission for the Settlement of the Claims of the Hudson's Bay and Puget's Sound Agricultural Companies" (published 1867). Witnesses were shown a copy of this photographic view and examined in order to establish whether this mission site, below the 49th parallel, was part of or adjacent to an alleged Hudson's Bay Company "Kootenay post". James Alden testified the site was three or four miles south of the 49th parallel, on the left bank of the Kootenay as the river flowed southward (therefore the east side), and near the river but not in sight of it. He indicated there were three or four small log "huts" and this church. The buildings were not occupied at the time of Alden's visit, which may have been a bit earlier than when the photograph was taken. (See especially p. 551-554.)

Creator/Contributor:

Great Britain. Army. Royal Engineers., photographer
Great Britain. North American Boundary Commission, creator

Date:

[1861]

Contributing Institution:

UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library