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

Winnipeg, to which it is connected by a narrows, or the
recommencement, after passing through the north end of Lake
Winnipeg, of the Saskatchewan River, its waters continuing on
to Hudson Bay.
point de boan/Point de boan In the Wood River valley, Pointe
des Bois, flooded today by one of the Columbia River's thirteen
dams, was a point of land around which the ttail across Athabasca
Pass had to negotiate. It was both densely wooded and
boggy. In such a narrow valley, the ttail must have seemed at
times to be the riverbed itself, at times dense, flooded woods -
both bitter tonnents, especially in cold weather, for man and
horse alike.
point de Tramble See Lake Winapeg.
point min. See Lake Winapeg.
Point of Woods Pointe des Bois, or Pointe aux Chenes, was the
name given to the fall and portage ten miles downriver from
Chute a Jacques (see rapid de gock) on the Winnipeg River.
Alternatively, it lay one mile above Rocher Briile portage.
)lOuder See Muck-e-too.
Pourtage new In his list of portages on the Columbia River, Kane
mentions a name not commonly used. His list appears to follow
the course of the Columbia, the last entry being the lowest
feature on the river. The Cascades, however, were always
described as the last downriver, or, for those venturing inland,
the "first" (WA [180]) upriver obstructions; yet, the name of the
Cascades precedes that of Pourtage new in this list.
Powder See Muck-e-too.
prarie de fay Thirty-six miles up the Columbia River from Fort
Vancouver and fourteen miles downriver from the Cascades,
Prairie de The must have been somewhere between modem
Multnomah Falls, Oregon, and Skamania, Washington. Its
whereabouts have not been confirmed, but it is known that the
name was widely used in accounts of the lower Columbia.
Prew This is another voyageur who is known entirely by his
(probably) misspelled surname. See also Lefrombeys.
Prudence, Mr. Chief Factor John Peter Pruden (bapt. 1778; d.
1868), the man for whose baptismal place Fort Edmonton was
named, was the great uncle of the bride, Margaret Harriott
Rowand, the daughter of John Harriott (see Haritt/Harett/
H., Mr.) and his first wife, Elizabeth, who disappeared in
Athabasca Pass, and who was herself John Peter Pruden's
daughter. (Could the bride, then, possibly have been the newborn
baby who had to be saved in Athabasca Pass and taken to
Fort Edmonton? She would have been age seventeen that
December of 1847.)
Pruden had become a councillor of Assiniboia in 1839,
retiring to Red River eventually, although he had obviously
come to Fort Edmonton (perhaps for the wedding) in De·
cember, 1847. In his "Character Book," Governor Simpson
thought little of him: "A man of good conduct and character
and of respectable appearance and manner but weak minded
vain & silly without decision in or knowledge of business
beyond the simple process of dealing with an Indian across the
Counter" (188).
Punch Bowl
82
See Cometees punch boal.
R. River See Red River.
rabbet point See Lake Winapeg.
Raney Lake/ Lack Ie Plue Rainy Lake is located in rough
woodlands along the modem Ontario/Minnesota border, 150
miles west of Lake Superior. By way of Rainy River, its waters
flow west to Lake of the Woods.
rapid de god/Chute a Jocka Chute a Jacques, a fall of fifteen
feet on the Winnipeg River, ninety miles downstream from Lake
of the Woods, was seen by Kane on June 9, 1846, and August
11, 1848. WA explains that the fall takes its name from a
voyageur who attempted an unprecedented shooting of it and
died (44). The modem name is Lamprey Falls.
rapped de More Named "Rapids de Mort" in WA (101),
today's Gooseneck Rapids lie forty miles below the town of
Hinton, Alberta, on the Athabasca River, they form part of a
swift stretch of the river, with waves more than three feet high,
which extends from the mouth of Oldman Creek (Kane's oald
mans river) to the mouth of the Berland River (Kane's Bateseis
River of November 22, 1847). This is likely the same rapid as
the one Kane called Grand raped when he went by snowshoe
downriver on November 18, 1847.
Rapped de prate Probably Kane's spelling of Rapid de Pretre,
Priest Rapids is now inundated by a reservoir of the same name
in central Washington state. According to Gabriel Franchere,
an Astorian (see Astoria), the rapid on the Columbia River
was "thus named in 1811 ~y [another Astorian] Mr [David]
Stuart and his party on meeting a number of Indians, one of
whom mimicked religious ceremonies and the action of sprinkling
with holy water."
rapped of deth See daD de more.
Rapped St. Marton/river S~ Martin/Rappe st Maran Presumably,
Kane means St. Martin rapids and St. Martin River. At
the rapids the incident concerning cannibalism by the Iroquois
began. Given the order of incidents in that narrative, both the
river and the rapid, where it joins the Columbia, lie upriver of
Dalle de Mort, that is, below Boat Encampment and above
modem Revelstoke, British Columbia, and Upper Arrow Lake.
Rat portage/Rat Portage Rat Portage (est. 1790) was passed
by Kane June 7, 1846, and visited August 14-16, 1848.
Situated along the portage of the same name at the outlet
(north shore) of Lake of the Woods into the Winnipeg River
(at modem Kenora, Ontario), Rat Portage was built by the
North West Company and maintained as a provisioning point
and trading post by the HBC following the merger of 1821 .
","Red River The name refers to both a river and the oldest
settlement in the fur trade empire. At 550 miles, Red River
takes its rise at Lake Traverse, on the Minnesota/North Dakota
border, flowing north into Manitoba and Lake Winnipeg. The
river's color comes from the clay in its trench.
Red River Colony began as a settlement for retired voyageurs
and their Metis families, and was introduced to systematic
farming in 1812, when Lord Selkirk attempted to
"plant" a colony of British and European immigrants at it.
Of tangential interest are the Red River carts of the Metis, to
which Kane refers (see, for example, the entry under June 24,
1846) and which several of his paintings depict. These were of
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