Description

Image of the Baby Basket Rock, where Sto:lo people would bring the baby baskets.

Lexwp'oth'esála, Always Baby Basket Rock

Lexwp'oth'esála - Xwp'oth'esála, baby basket rock just below main bay and sand bar of Lexwtl'átl'ekw'em (Klaklacum, Indian Reserve #12, first village and reserve south of American Creek), on the west side of the Fraser River. The rock is about 20 or 30 feet high and hollowed out at its center where people put baby baskets when the baby outgrew them, they just left them and made a new one for the next child, this was done in memory of a story (sxwôxwiyám) in which a fish from salt water was sent a message to come upstream; she had a baby in a p'óth'es and it was heavy, so on the way up she and those travelling with her bathed the baby in medicines to make it grow fast so it could travel without the p'óth'es; at Xwp'oth'esála it finally got big enough and they left the p'óth'es at that rock (Susan (Josh) Peter 8/24/77); this is similar to and probably part of the story of the sockeye baby told in Hill-Tout 1902 and Wells 1970:14-18 (in story told by Dan Milo July 1964); Amelia Douglas went to the rock with Reuben Ware and others from Coqualeetza and they took photos of the rock.
Brent Douglas Galloway, Dictionary of Upriver Halkomelem, Volume I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009) 416.

Provenance

Sto:lo Archives