William Fraser Tolmie [1812–1886] (a.k.a. “Dr. Tolmie”) was a surgeon, fur trader, scientist, and politician. He was born in Inverness, Scotland, and by 1833 had moved to the Pacific Northwest in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). He served at Fort Nisqually, an HBC post at the southern end of Puget Sound, from 1843 to 1859. In 1859 he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where he continued serving the HBC as well as becoming active in politics. His written works include Comparative Vocabularies of the Indian Tribes of British Columbia (1884), in which this map is published [1], and his journals, which were published in 1963 as The Journals of William Fraser Tolmie, Physician and Fur Trader.

George Mercer Dawson, CMG FRS FRCS [1849–1901] was a Canadian geologist and surveyor. He performed many early explorations in western North America and compiled numerous records of the native peoples, in particular to the Spiral Road region Notes on the Shuswap people of British Columbia [2].