Text 11827, 148 rader
Skriven 2008-08-10 19:10:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av DALE SHIPP
Ärende: Northern History
========================
-=> Quoting Dale Shipp to Jim Weller <=-

 DS> Thanks for the detailed and interesting history.

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, Akait Cho 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 a small gold mine. Today he is a supervisor and lead
hand 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-gatherer, to trapper-trader
to the wage economy to the internet age.

Cheers

YK Jim


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