Volume 1

LAKE WINNIPEG—TRAVERSE BAY. 37
Aug. i6th. Early I embarked and soon overtook my
people at Pointe de Sable ; they were all busy loading.
Having waited for them, we instantly entered Lake Winipic,
keeping the last land on the S. shore. The weather being
fine and clear, we stood out with the intention of making the
but had not gone above a mile when suddenly the
traverse ;
wind rose to a gale from the N., followed by a high swell.
Before we could reach the shore we had several sand-banks
to pass over, where it was almost too shallow for the craft to
swim. This occasioned a short, tumbling sea which dashed
over us, and before we could land our canoes were half
full
of water, and all of us wet to the skin. After much trouble
we got everything on shore, though one of my canoes was
split asunder from one gunnel to the other. The guide
about 12 m. W. N. W. of Sandy pt. Close off this land's end is present Elk
isl., formerly Red Deer isl.,
and before that Isle a la Biche— a name which once
caused Traverse bay to be known as Baie de I'lsle a la Biche. Henry has
to weather the land's end and then turn S. to the head of Lake Winnipeg,
to reach the mouth of the Red River of the North. The immense
body of water upon which he will thus enter has probably been known,
or known of, by the whites since 1660, through information received
from Radisson and Groseilliers ;
it appears on Franquelin's map, 1688,
and about the end of the century was well enough known to be delineated
in the two parts into which it is separated at the Narrows ; and these
two had already received different names. The lake has been called by four
distinct names, without counting the unnumbered variants of three of these.
I. About the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century
the main upper portion was the Lake of the Crees or Kris—Lac des Christineaux,
Cristinaux, Kristineaux, Kinistinoes, Killistinaux, Killistinoes, Killistinons,
Knistineaux—and what not in way of variation in that insufferable word.
elder Henry says that the lake was sometimes so called in 1776 : but the Cree
designation seems to
The
have usually attached rather to the main part than to the
whole, and from the first was alternative to the name which reflected a different
tribe of Indians—the Stone Sioux, or Assiniboines. 2. Thus, we find Lac des
Assinipoualacs, Assinebouels, Assenepolis, Assinipoils, Asiliboils, etc., as a name
of the whole, though with more special application to the southern extension of
these waters, and often so applied exclusively. I have cited only some of the
early forms of this word, which ran through variants probably only less numerous
than the other one just said. 3. Nothing like the present name Winnipeg
has been traced back of the Ouinipigon of Verendrye, 1734 ;
so that this series of
names probably comes third in order of time : see note ^"j p. 27. 4. But about
the middle of the last century, at least as early as 1749, when Verendrye estab-