Have something to say about Lytton (Village) / Botanie Mountain / Jackass Mountain / Kwoiek Creek?

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Some say that Nicoamen is from the Thompson Indian word meaning 'wolf and that the river was so named because the water comes from a lake named 'wolf lake or water' or 'wolfs den.' On the other hand, an Indian informant told Dr. L.C. Thompson, a linguist from the University of Hawaii, that Nicoamen is derived from a word meaning 'means of carving out a valley' (probably referring to the stream). It was just downstream from the confluence of the Nicoamen and Thompson Rivers that gold was discovered in 1856, an event that resulted in the Fraser River gold rush of 1858.


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From a Thompson Indian name that can be translated as 'great crack between rocks' or 'split rock.' This fine mountain was an important one to the Indians, being in an area where the young people went to train for guardian spirit power. SKIHIST PROVINCIAL PARK on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Lytton is so named because of the fine view it affords of this distant mountain.

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This was the name of an old Thompson Indian village at the mouth of the river.

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Named after David Thompson, the famous explorer, who in fact never saw it. The river was given its name by Simon Fraser, who, when he reached the junction ofthe Fraser with the Thompson on 20 June 1808, wrote in his journal: 'These forks the natives call Camchin, and [they] are formed by a large river which is the same spoken of so often by our friend the old chief. From an idea that our friends of the Fort des Prairies department are established upon the source of it, among the mountains, we gave it the name of Thompson's River.' Actually Thompson had built Kootenae House the previous year on the upper reaches of the Columbia River. By a pleasing symmetry, it was Thompson who later gave the Fraser River its name.

David Thompson (1770-1857) came to Canada in 1784 as an apprentice in the service of the H BC. Partly self-trained, he became an amazingly proficient surveyor and switched to the service of the NWC as an 'astronomer' in 1797. In 1807, en route to the upper Columbia, he became the first white man to cross the Rockies by Howse Pass. In 1811 he became the first white man to use Athabasca Pass. On this second journey, he took a somewhat roundabout route to get to the mouth of the Columbia, where he arrived at Fort Astoria only a few months after it had been founded by the American-owned Pacific Fur Company. Had Thompson followed his instructions more promptly, he would have arrived there first and deprived the Americans of a major part of that weak case by which they secured, from a not particularly concerned Great Britain, the country lying between the lower Columbia and the present international boundary.

A person who met Thompson in 1817 described him thus: A singular looking person of about fifty. He was plainly dressed, quiet and observant. His figure was short and compact, and his black hair was worn long all round, and cut square, as if by one stroke of the shears, just above the eyebrows. His complexion was of the gardener's ruddy brown, while the expression of deeply furrowed features was friendly and intelligent, but his cut-short nose gave him an odd look. His speech betrayed the Welshman. The South Thompson was at one time known as the Shuswap River and the North Thompson simply as the North River.