area near the native rancherie, worried for their safety but unable to proceed any further south. Snyder's and Centras' companies crossed to the east side of the river at this point, which was one of the only viable crossings, with Snyder sending Graham's group up the west side of the river. The New York and Austrian companies met no resistance on the journey north, and sent messages forward to Camchin, the ancient Nlaka'pamux "capital" at the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers (today's town of Lytton), that they were coming to parley peace, not make war. Meanwhile, Graham and his men rampaged up the west bank of the Canyon, destroying native food caches and potato fields but otherwise encountering only a few natives, most of whom had withdrawn into the deep mountain valleys flanking the canyon as refuge. The Whatcom Company were wiped out in a night-time gun-battle, witnessed by the other companies encamped across the river at the time. This was not due to native attack, but rather to a panicked reaction to a rifle falling over and misfiring, causing a melee from which only two or three men survived, as all the rest died shooting at each other in the dark. At Camchin, the assembled leaders of the Nlaka'pamux and allies from the Secwepemc (Shuswap) and Okanagan peoples held council. The Nlaka'pamux war leader tried to incite the assembled warriors to wipe out the white men once and for all, but the Camchin chief Cxpentlum (known commonly in English as Spintlum, or David Spintlum), had good relations with Governor James Douglas and argued for peaceful co-existence. Snyder and Centras marched into the midst of the Nlaka'pamux war council undaunted; if they had known about the thousands of warriors watching from the surrounding mountainsides they might not have been so bold. As per native custom, they were given the right to speak, presumably speaking through translators, and told the assembled natives that if the war were to continue, white men by the thousands would come and occupy the country and destroy all the natives forever. In their own notes they presumed it was because they showed the natives their more-modern rifles (most natives, if they had firearms, had only muskets and carbines) and thought that this had persuaded them to make peace. In reality, the decision to make peace had already been reached, in the indigenous account. The