Paul Kane's Journal of his Western Travels, 1846-1848 - History and ...

Guide to People and Places in Kane's Journal
I. s. MacLaren
The entries are ordered alphabetically by the first spelling Kane
uses. Any references to the book, Wanderings o!an Artist among
the Indians of North America, are cited as WA ; the page references
refer to the same edition cited in the author's essay. All
references to the Hudson's Bay Company have been shortened to
HBC. Finally, dates given for the establishment of forts refer to
the first date when any fort existed at the location. After 1821, all
forts listed were operated by the HBC.
Alaxander / Alexander See Fort Alaxander / Fort Alexander.
Asneboin, Frot See Frot Asneboin.
Asneboin river The Assiniboine River flows into the Red
River at the modem city of Winnipeg, Manitoba (Upper Fort
Garry in Kane's day). It stretches 660 miles, flowing eastward
across the prairies from southeastern Saskatchewan.
Although a principal route onto the prairie, the Assiniboine
did not fonn part of the transcontinental fur trade water route.
Asneboins/ Asne boins The Assiniboine tribe, which received
its name from an Ojibwa word for "boiling food by dropping
heated rocks into containers of water, " had an original homeland
around the Mississippi headwaters, but by the 1840s had
long been settled northwestward, in the vicinity of Lake of
the Woods and Lake Winnipeg. During the height of the fur
trade, Assiniboine were noted for their pemmican production,
and for their role as middlemen, trading European
goods to the distant Plains tribes. In this way, their territory
spread west, up the Saskatchewan, Assiniboine, Milk, and
Missouri river Valleys . Their allies were the Cree, and their
adversaries the Blackfoot, Gros Ventres, and Sioux (Dakota).
Numbering as many as 10,000, they declined rapidly with the
onset of European diseases such as smallpox.
(Astoria), man with the tin box Kane here refers to Astorian
John Reed, an Irish clerk in the Pacific Fur Company, which
New York merchant John Jacob Astor founded in 1809. In
1810 he sent two expeditions, one by ship and one overland
by boat, to establish a fur trade post at the mouth of the
Columbia River (at modem Astoria, Oregon). Kane errs in
claiming that Reed was shot at the Chutes on the Columbia
River. Chinook did attack Reed, on the portage at the Dalles;
they did so because, according to Washington Irving, "the
unlucky tin box" in which Reed was carrying dispatches
from Fort Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River, to
Astor, in New York, "shining afar like the brilliant helmet of
Euryalus, caught their eyes." On this occasion, Reed "received
a blow on the head with a war club that laid him
senseless [but not dead] on the ground. " The next year, in the
summer of 1813, Reed was, in fact, slain by Indians. His
death occurred at a dwelling he had built on the Snake River,
upriver from its confluence with the Columbia.
Athabasca, the river ie / Atbabaskia This is the southernmost
headstream of the Mackenzie River and Arctic Ocean drain-
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age system. Starting at the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National
Park (on the British Columbia/ Alberta border), it
flows northeast for 7(J) miles across the province of Alberta
to Lake Athabasca. As a fur trade route, it provided access
from the prairies to the Columbia River, via Athabasca Pass,
on the extreme southwest boundary of the park.
aux Chene See Point of Woods.
Bareings river See Lake Winapeg.
Barriere portage Kane portaged around the Barrier Falls on
the Winnipeg River, 112 miles downstream from Lake of the
Woods, on June 10, 1846, and August 9, 1848. The site today
is mistakenly called Sturgeon Falls.
Bateseis River Known in the fur trade period as the Baptiste
River, today this tributary of the Athabasca River is called
Berland River. Both names refer to an early trader, Baptiste
Berland. The Berland enters the Athabasca from the north,
about 130 miles downstream from where the Athabasca Pass
trail brought the fur brigades to the Athabasca River.
Belcour, Mr. George-Antoine Bellecourt (also Bellecours,
Belcourt) ( 1803 -1874), a Roman Catholic priest and missionary
from Lower Canada, started several missions in 1840,
including the one at Wabassimong, on the Winnipeg River
(today's White Dog, Ontario). The mission had failed by the
time of Kane's return trip, principally because, like so many
others, Bellecourt attempted to use agriculture and a policy of
permanent residence to convert nomadic tribes to Christianity.
big dog poartage This scenic portage led fur trade brigades
from the Kaministikwia River to Big Dog or Great Dog Lake,
and thence to the height of land between the Lake Superior
and Lake Winnipeg (Hudson Bay) watersheds. The name
derives from an Indian effigy of an oversized dog, which was
located on the portage atop a 400-foot hill that overlooked the
Kaministikwia River valley; hence Kane's description,
"verry beautifull.' ,
Black feet / Blackfoot / Blackfeete Blackfoot are the smallest
of the three tribes (Blood and Peigan are the others) of the
Blackfoot Nation, and occupied hunting grounds north of the
other two, in the Battle and Red Deer river valleys of modem
central Alberta. Numbering between 2000 and 3000 in Kane's
day, they were bison hunters and warriors, the principal
enemies of the Cree and Assiniboine.
boat-incampment/boat incumpment/Boat in campment/
Coumpmont de Barge Boat Encampment was established
in 1811 by David Thompson, the North West Company
explorer, fur trader, and cartographer. Located at the northernmost
bend of the Columbia River (in modem British
Columbia), it served for more than fifty years as the rendezvous
for brigades coming up the Columbia from the Pacific
by canoe. and those coming from the prairies through
Guide