Why
is it Called Great Slave?
The 18th century northern explorer,
Samuel Hearne, knew it as “Athupusco.”
The aboriginal people who fished
in it called themselves the
“Etchareottine”
– “the people dwelling
in the shelter of the Rocky
Mountains.” But the fiery
Cree, who were contemptuous
of the mild-mannered lifestyle
of the lake-dwellers, referred
to them as “awonak,”
or “slaves.” The
derisive name, “Slave
Lake” found its way into
fur trader/cartographer Peter
Pond’s 1790 map of the
North West. Although a later
Pond map, created in 1790, restored
the earlier term of “Iotchinine’
(another form of “Etchareottine”),
the Slave Lake label became
part of common usage. The use
of the term “Great”
stems from the distinction between
the large Slave Lake to the
north, and the smaller “Lesser”
Slave Lake, located in central
Alberta.
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Great Explorers of
Great Slave Lake
Who was the first European to see Great Slave
Lake? Was it the Hudson Bay Company’s
designated explorer, Samuel Hearne? Was it
Gregory, MacLeod and Company’s trading
envoy Laurent Leroux, or the Northwest Company’s
Cuthbert Grant? Was it Peter Pond, the bellicose
and belligerent, but highly persistent veteran
fur trader who first placed the lake on a
map?
Or was it an unknown, unsung coureur de
bois who somehow found himself far from
home?
1771 –
Samuel Hearne: If the answer
is the latter, then we may never know precisely
who it was that first saw the broad expanse
of water that had long been known to the
Dogrib, Slavey and Chipewyan peoples. But
if we accept recorded history as our guide,
the distinction of being the Great Slave’s
European discoverer appears to belong to
Samuel Hearne, who trudged, famished and
frost-bitten, across the ice-bound lake
in the winter of 1771. Hearne was returning
from a harrowing and fruitless journey that
had taken him from Hudson Bay to the Coppermine
River and the Arctic Ocean in the company
of his First Nations guide, Matonabbee.
1776 –
Laurent Leroux and Cuthbert Grant:
The next Great Slave visitors are
thought to be Laurent Leroux and Cuthbert
Grant, founders of competing trading posts
at Fort Resolution on the lake’s south
shore in 1786. Some accounts suggest that
fur trader Peter Pond, the first European
to cross the fabled Meythe Portage into
Athabasca Country, journeyed himself to
Fort Resolution, but it is more likely that
Grant made the trip under Pond’s direction.
1789 –
Alexander Mackenzie: Next
to venture on to Great Slave Lake was the
legendary Alexander Mackenzie, still in
the early stages of his 1789 journey to
the Arctic Ocean. Although it was June,
Mackenzie and his crew – including
his Chipewyan guide, “English
Chief” – were forced
to contend with freezing temperatures and
lingering ice. After crossing the lake from
the Slave River delta to the north shore,
they wandered for weeks through western
bays and inlets before finding the river
outlet that would ultimately bear Mackenzie’s
name – and prove to be his lasting
disappointment.
1820 –
John Franklin: Last
among the great explorers of the Great Slave
was John Franklin, in the company of George
Back, Robert Hood and John
Richardson, who used Fort Providence
(now known as Old Fort Providence) on the
lake’s north shore as a base for his
1820 expedition to the Arctic Coast. It
was at Fort Providence that Franklin was
joined by the Yellowknife chief, Akaitcho,
and it was the far-flung fort that represented
salvation for the surviving members of Franklin’s
tragic first journey, in which 10 men lost
their lives.
As for the possibility that Hearne was
not the first white man to reach the lake,
history records that Francois Beaulieu,
legendary Métis resident of the Great
Slave area, was born in 1771 to a French-Canadian
father, Jacques Beaulieu, and an aboriginal
mother. Most accounts assert that Beaulieu’s
mother was of Chipewyan background, but
some have suggested that her heritage was
Montagnais, from eastern Canada. Did one
- or both - of Beaulieu’s parents
reach the North West wilderness before Hearne
passed through?
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