it is unknown when the name “The Rocky Mountains” first came into use.
Equivalent French terms -- “montagnes Rocheuses” or “Montagnes de Roche” -- was possiby recorded in 1700s.
French Canadian explorers, Louis-Joseph Gaultier de La Verendrye and his brother Francois, might have brought the term “montagnes Rocheuses” back to New France from their 1742 explorations in the foothills of Wyoming.
Jacques Repentigny Legardeur de Saint-Pierre used the term “Montagnes de Roche”
[he is said to be commander at Fort La Jonquiere on the Saskatchewan River but DCB says he commanded De Niverville to organize the construction of that fort]
He might have made up the name – or had it translated from the Cree word Usinnewucheyu or Assinwati. He recorded the words “Montagnes de Roche” in a journal detailing his futile search for the Western Sea.
(His journal is not in Peel's PP website, and is not mentioned in the DCB biography)
A 1796 map of North America, published by the John Reid Company, dubbed a nebulous mass of western peaks the “Stony Mountains.”
Shining Mountains is a different term for the Rockies, perhaps in reference to glittering stones that covered its surface...
In 1730 a sketch by the fur-trading Cree guide Auchagah, showing a possible trade route west from Lake Superior, found its way to Paris. Somewhere in its travels, it accrued a written name for a possible set of mountains, in its frayed, left-hand margin are the words “Montagnes de Pierres Brilliantes.”
In the English translation on Jonathan Carver’s 1778 map, the name reappeared in sepia calligraphy as “Mountains of Bright Stones.”
Gabriel Franchere’s journal, from his 1811-14 fur-trading explorations, claimed that “the first travellers called them the ‘Glittering Mountains,’ on account of the infinite number of immense rock crystals, which, they say, cover their surface, and…reflect to an immense distance the rays of sun.”
[his 1854 journal (Peel's PP 80) says this:
"The first travellers called them the Glittering mountains, on account of the infinite number of immense rock crystals, which, they say, cover their surface, and which , when they are not covered with snow, or in the bare places, reflect to an immense distance the rays of the sun.
The name of Rocky mountains was given them, probably, by later travellers in consequence of the enormous isolated rocks that they offer here and there to the view." (p. 301)
[one wonders what they offer to the view between those "enormous isolated rocks" --trees? the glittering stones that early travellers saw, which are apparently seen no more? - today it is only the snow that reflects the sun...]
(Franchere wrote that Millet's Rock near Rocky Mountain House, a rocky outcropping about the size of a church building or steeple, may contain metals or previous stone.
Rocky Mountain House was condisdere very much in the mountains and Franchere said he saw mountain sheep on rocks near RMH.)
In 1977 John Snow – Intebeja Mani, “Walking Seal” – chief of the Nakoda First Nation, recorded yet another phrase for what might have signified either one part or the whole of the western cordillera. “In the olden days,” Snow explained, “some of the neighbouring tribes called us the ‘People of the Shining Mountains.'”
Gabriel Franchere in the book quoted above, says some estimate the height of the Rockes as about 3000 feet above sea level. he estimated its heights as 6000 feet above sea level, saying the pases he went through were at least 1500 feet above the valleys, and yet were only about halfway up the mountain slopes. and the valleys must be about 3000 feet above the sea level to allow for the cataracts and rapids of water that occur as the water flows down to the sea.
Today we know that Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadain Rockies, is 13,000 feet above sea level.
Mount Elbert in the U.S. is at a height of 14,400 feet.
Obed Summit, the highest point on the Yellowhead Highway, is 3800 feet above sea level.
Athabasca Pass is at 5700 feet.
Howse Pass is at an altitude of 5000 feet.
Howse Pass was a preferred route through the Rockies,
said to be be the only low pass in the watershed of the N. Saskatchewan River,
It is the lowest point on the height of land between Mount Assiniboine and Mount Columbia.
nearby Conway 10,000 feet
Howse Peak 11,000 feet
so in that case Franchere was correct - the pass is half the height of the mountain,
the relationship to the "valley" nearby is unclear.
Howse River below the Howse Pass on the east side, ends (at Saskatchewan Crossing) at an altitude of 4700 feet. its headwaters at the feet of the Howse Peak cannot be lower than that. so that does not give much room for a valley below the pass.
(A footnote provided, when the 1854 edition of Franchere's book of his 1811-1814 travels was published, gives the "average" height of the Rockies as 12,000 feet with the highest peak [Mount Robson] being 16,000 feet, which is 3,000 feet too much)
Howse Pass
Howse Pass was named by David Thompson in 1811 for Hudson's Bay explorer Joseph Howse. Thompson had met Joseph Howse 2 years earlier at Kootenay Plains. Howse and a party of seventeen traversed the pass in 1809 trying to establish contact with native groups in BC. It is interesting that David Thompson chose to name the pass after a Hudson's Bay explorer even though Thompson worked for the North West Company.
The Pikuanni natives carefully guarded this stretch of the Rocky Mountains. They did not want either explorer to gain direct access to trade with western Native groups, such as the Kutenai.
The Pikuanni were a formable threat which was possibly why Thompson went north, where he eventually explored and transversed the Athabasca Pass.
Although Howse returned to England with a 1500-pound profit from a successful season trading with the Flathead peoples of present day Kalispell, Montana, the pass was deemed too dangerous for future trade. The Howse Pass was not used by the Hudson's Bay Company for another twelve years.
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