-=> Quoting Steven Horn to All <=-

 SH> It looks like it has been a month or so since anyone other than Dale
 SH> Shipp and I have posted in here.

Cause I get tired of talking about nothing except the weather.

Here's a new topic that may spark a thread....

A Northern history

The Inuit and the northernmost Dene have warred intermittently for
centuries. At one time the Inuit lived at least part of the time
south of the treeline; they were pushed back to the Arctic coast by
the Dene who in turn were under pressure from the Cree to the south
of them. I blame Daniel Boone for this. When he crossed the
Appalachians from the 13 colonies he set off a domino effect of
tribes moving to get the hell out of his way quickly and pushing
back other tribes which was eventually felt as far away as Texas and
here.

Also in the early 1800's the Chipewyan and Dogrib bands had a war
over the land around Yellowknife. The Chipewyan from the south side
of Great Slave Lake had been outfitted by the French Northwest
Company, which was in competition with the Hudson Bay Company, so
that they could act as middlemen between the French and the
Coppermine Inuit in the fur trade. They moved north of the lake and
set up villages in Dettah and N'dilo which were in Yellowknives'
land. Previously these two places had just been summer fishing camps
which all the bands shared. It was also an arena for meeting and
trading. In fact Yellowknife's Dene name is Sombe Ke or Trading
Place. Nobody lived here year round as there was no big game nearby.
As the Chipewyan population grew they began encroaching on Dogrib
traditional hunting land and eventually war broke out. After a bit
the two chiefs made a peace treaty and today one of the many
streams crossing the highway between Yellowknife and Alberta is
named Boundary Creek. The exact nature of that old verbal treaty
wasn't important until 10 years ago. The Dogrib remember it as "we
won the war but generously allow you access some of our land" and
the Chipewyan remember it as "we won the war and we own the land as
far west as Boundary Creek". This is important as BHP and Diavik pay
out generous royalties to the native people whose traditional land
they are on as well as the federal government and right now the
Dogrib get all of it.

BTW there are no more Yellowknives per se. They were gradually
assimilated first by the Chips and then by the Dogrib. The members
of the modern Yellowknife Band consider themselves Chip. Until the
diamonds were discovered. 80% of them were of mixed ancestry and
many declared they were really Dogrib when the royalties were being
handed out. [g]

Part II

The mainstream history books only cover the European explorers,
never the Native guides who actually made the trips possible.

The Europeans:

Samuel Hearne:

After two failed trips, Hearne began his third and most important
journey in 1770, this time with a good guide, Matonabee. On July 15,
1771, Hearne reached the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the Coppermine
River. He was thus the first European to reach the Arctic Ocean
overland from Hudson Bay. He returned to Hudson Bay on June 30,
1772, via Great Slave Lake and thereby proved the nonexistence of a
Northwest Passage in the territory that he had traversed.

Alexander MacKenzie:

A Scottish-Canadian explorer. In 1774 his family moved from Scotland
to New York, and then to Montreal in 1776 during the American
Revolution. In 1779 he obtained a job with the North West Company,
travelled to Lake Athabasca and founded Fort Chipewyan in 1788. He
was sent to replace Peter Pond, a partner in the North West Company.
From Pond he learned that the First Nations people understood that
the local rivers flowed to the northwest. Acting on this information
he set out by canoe and discovered the Mackenzie River on July 10,
1789, following it to its mouth in the hope of finding the Northwest
Passage to the Pacific Ocean. Although he ended up reaching the
Arctic Ocean, he named the river "Disappointment River" as it did
not lead to Cook Inlet in Alaska as he had expected. The river was
later renamed in his honour.

In 1792 he set out once again to find a route to the Pacific.
Accompanied by native guides and French voyageurs, Mackenzie went up
the Peace River. He found the upper reaches of the Fraser River,
followed an established Native trading route by ascending the West
Road River, crossing over the Coast Mountains, and descending the
Bella Coola River to the sea.                               

Thus, he completed the first recorded transcontinental crossing of
North America by a European north of Mexico ahead of Lewis and
Clark. And he was the first European to travel to all three oceans.

Sir John Franklin:

An English explorer and Admiral and first class idiot who proved the
existence of a Northwest Passage (a water route from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through Canada). In 1819 to 1822,
Franklin surveyed part of the northwestern Canadian coast east of
the Coppermine River. On a second expedition, from 1825 to 1827,
Franklin explored the North American coast from the mouth of the
Mackenzie River, in northwestern Canada, westward to Point Beechey
(Alaska, USA) and almost died several times from incidents with
hostile tribes, getting lost and starvation. In 1845, Franklin
sailed from England with an expedition of 128 men to Canada in
search of Northwest Passage. The ship became trapped in ice, and the
desperate, freezing and starving survivors resorted to cannibalism.
A small contingent of the expedition (without Franklin) may have
reached Simpson Strait, the final part of the Northwest Passage.
Scottish explorer John Rae determined that Franklin and his
expedition had died of starvation and exposure in the Arctic;
Eskimos at Pelly Bay told Rae of Franklin's fate. Lead poisoning
from poorly-canned food may have also hastened their death.

The Natives:

Francois Beaulieu (Beaulieu the Elder) was a French-Metis. Possibly
a Cree mother, but it is not recorded. In 1779 he went down the
Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean with Alexander Mackenzie. It was
a great hardship for Mackenzie and his men but Beaulieu had been
doing it routinely all his life.

His son Francois II (Beaulieu the Younger) was born on the shores of
Great Slave Lake near present day Fort Smith. Chippewyan mother. The
cabin still exists and should be preserved and a park set up around
it to protect it. He took eight wives from eight tribes along the
route from Winnipeg to Great slave Lake to Inuvik which helped keep
the peace among warring tribes and aided in his setting up a great
trading network. He was able to support those eight wives and their
many children quite well. At the age of 99 he was converted to
Christianity and divorced seven of his wives. All his half sons
continued to work together in the family business. He died in 1872
at the age of 101 years.

One son, Etienne "The King" Beaulieu (Chippewyan branch of the
family), was also a great leader and operated a meat supply post at
the east end of Great Slave Lake near present day Lutsel Ke (Snow
Drift).  He is my brother in law Matthew King's direct ancestor.
                   
Matonabee: 

Mixed Chipewyan and Cree, born 1738, had six wives. A Hudson Bay
man, trader, hunter, interpreter, traveller, and peace maker. He took
Hearne up the Coppermine River using a map purchased for a $20 gold
piece drawn by Beaulieu the Elder. When Hearne was held prisoner by
the French in 1782 at Churchill, he hung himself. The subsequent
winter all his wives and children starved to death.

Akaitcho:
   
Akait Cho means "Big foot" as he was a traveller. He was a
Yellowknife Chippewyan. Ran a trading post at Old Fort Rae starting
in 1790 and prospered. His older brother travelled with Matonabee
and a sister was one of Beaulieu the Younger's wives. He rescued
Franklin on his disastrous second trip and refused to go on the
third and fatal on in 1845. In 1823 the Dogribs lead by Edzo started
a war to retake their land. They made their peace at Boundary Creek
which I have already written about.

The Beaulieus, Matonabee, Akaitcho and Edzo were all larger than
life heroes, multitalented, multilingual, multicultural, successful
politicians and diplomats, astute businessmen and epic travellers.
And also extremely polygamous (they made their own rules) and
ancestors to tens of thousands of Canadians today from Winnipeg to
British Columbia to the high arctic.

A post script on Matthew. He was born in 1951 on the south side of
Great Slave Lake in a place called Rocher River. It was a
settlement of about 50 families scattered  on the vicinity of a
small independent trading post. He was not scooped up and placed in
a residential school like so many Natives with disastrous results,
as the place just was not on the government's radar. The post burned
down when he was a kid and the 50 families all moved eventually to
either Lutsel Ke or Fort Resolution. Rocher River is a ghost town.
He came to Yellowknife as a teen, worked as a construction labourer
and carpenter's helper learning English as he went along but never
went to school. He helped build several houses in Yellowknife and
got well known and liked by mining people and building contractors.
After a while he got into heavy equipment and worked his way up to
pit boss at the small Colomac gold mine. Today he is a supervisor
and lead hand in the pit at BHP's Ekati diamond mine. He can read
well enough to understand a newspaper and use a computer but has no
formal education whatsoever and as a result he has gone as far as he
can go in the mining industry. His remarkable life spans five
hundred years of advancement in civilization from hunter-gather, to
trapper-trader to the wage economy to the internet age.



Cheers

YK Jim


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