C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

XXIVTHE LADIES, THE GWIGH'IN, AND THE RAT"Gwich'in" is rather like a suffix; the prenx clarines where in the region a particulargroup is living. Those Gwich'in living around Fort McPherson today callthemselves "Teetl'it Gwich'in" (also spelled "Tatlit"), while those from Old Crowhave taken the name "Vuntut Gwitchin" (also spelled "Vantut" or "Vunta"),Many older people still prefer to be identined as Loucheux (Kritsch; Osgood 13;Balikci 14). These Athapaskan-speaking people knew the Rat River route butseldom canoed over it. They preferred a more direct trail between FortMcPherson and the upper Yukon River basin. Known as the Peel River Portage,this trail is an ancient portage of 130 km that proceeds westward across low-lyingmuskeg, up foothills, around a shoulder of La Chute Mountain, across itsglacier, and through a canyon, nnally reaching the Bell River (LaPierre 29, 132). Itis called Gwitoh traa taii in Gwich'in, which means "over well used trail." When hecrossed it inJuly r898, Anglican archdeacon Charles Whittaker noted a remarkablefeature of it even up at the higher, less boggy, elevations: "generations ofIndians have worn into the soil. This trail was about four or nve inches wide, andfour to ten inches deep. There is no splay to the Indian foot, and such a trail, orrut, is hard walking for a white man" ("Sunrise" 56-7). GwitchinJohnJoe Kayeset its age at "1000 years or more" (LaPierre 132).When it began operating in the area, the HBC regularly hired Gwich'in tocarry supplies over this trail, which became "the line that made the Company'soperations in this remote area possible" (Allen Wright 77). The trailhead on thePacinc Slope was La Pierre House, a company staging post on the Bell River.According to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the company employed "no man ... whocould not make eighty miles in four days carrying in addition to the ninetypoundpiece whatever he needed in the way of food and bedding" (Hunters 2ro).Sarah Simon (b. 1901), who has lived in both Old Crow and Fort McPherson,travelled widely through the western Arctic during the middle decades of thiscentury in order to minister to her people with her husband, Anglican priest RevJames Simon. During a conversation in 1994, she was asked if she had crossed themountains: "'Oh, many, many times, '" she replied, "'Mostly in winter. Once wemade it from Fort McPherson to Old Crow in ten days by dog team'" (Simon).Indeed, almost half a century ago, she told Ethel Stewart that in January eachyear, '''everyone went over the mountains for caribou'" ("Early" 41). Because thePorcupine herd's migration route normally remains west of the RichardsonMountains, the eastern Gwich'in could hunt this valuable animal only after atransmontane trek (Benyk 24), although Jim Koe remembered caribou on the