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Home , Akaitcho, Great Slave Lake, June Helm, Lac de Gras, Lac La Martre, Old Fort Providence

First Nation Land and Environment

Proposed Dinàgà Wek'èhodì Protected Area YKDFN Traditional Knowledge Report

From: Yellowknives Dene First Nation Fax: (867)766-3497

To: Conservation Network Planning Environment and Natural Resources Government of the

March 31, 2018

YKDFN YKDFN Land & Environment

This report is a compilation, from data in our Traditional Knowledge Data Base and workshops held with Yellowknives Elders on November 17, 2017 and December 5, 2017, of Dene past and present use of the proposed Dinàgà Wek'èhodì Protected Area.

Details of places in the North Arm for which Elders gave information is proprietary and while it will form a useful part of YKDFN’s participation in future management of the Dinàgà Wek'èhodì Protected Area it is not included in this pubic report.

Details of the spatial extent of known cultural assets, along with additional historical information, will be gathered through fieldwork planned for the summer of 2018.

Fieldwork is necessary to complete this project but will only happen if funding is made available.

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Introduction

The North Arm of Great Slave , including the far northwest portion, the proposed Dinàgà Wek'èhodì Protected Area, is a very important place for us. We are the Yellowknives Dene whose occupation and use of this entire area dates back many, many generations, to a time long before the Tłı̨chǫ came to this area.

We are descendants of Tetsǫt’ı́ né (“copper or metal people”), the indigenous -related people living around Great and referred to in exploration and records as Copper Indians, Yellow-knife Indians, Red-Knife Indians, Couteaux Jaunes, etc. These names all refer to the copper tools we were using when first encountered by Europeans. Some members of the Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation of Łútsëlk'é, and the Deninu K’ue First Nation of , are also descendant from the Tetsǫt’ıné.́ The common ancestry of these three is the reason we joined together, under the name Dene First Nation (ADFN), to negotiate a land claim with the Federal and Territorial Governments.

Akaitcho was a powerful Tetsǫt’ıné́ leader who we remember today as man who played an important role in protecting Tetsǫt’ıné́ traditional lands during a time when the arrival of the fur trade resulted in significant competition for rich resource areas and the shifting of once stable boundaries between many First Nations across . Two hundred years ago the area nominated by the Tłı̨chǫ for protected status was one of the areas on the western edge of our traditional lands where fur trade pressures brought us into conflict with the Tłı̨chǫ.

For us documentation of the occupation and use of a huge traditional exploitive range around is a significant part of our participation in the Akaitcho Process. Beginning in the late 1960s Elder’s interviews, backed by exhaustive research in historic records, have revealed a history that definitively links the people who occupied these lands over millennia with their descendants, the Yellowknives Dene.

Digitization, in our Trailmark Traditional Knowledge Database (http://www.trailmarksys.com/), of the record of our land use became a priority more than ten years ago. Now, with hundreds of Elders interviews; many thousand data points, lines, polygons and traditional place names; and, a considerable volume of both archival and published historical data, we now have much better understanding of who we are.

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This map, generated from our Trailmark Traditional Knowledge Database, gives a powerful visual representation of the extent of our past and current land use:

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Who We Are

For more than a hundred years, we have endured commonly held misperceptions of who we are descendant from, the extent of our traditional lands, and our historic relationship with neighbouring First Nations.

Thirty years ago the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre distributed brochures telling of the history of each of the NWT’s Dene, and groups. The one for the “Yellowknife Indians” claimed that they were “extinct”, the last having died in the influenza epidemic of 1928. The explanation given for the existence of the indigenous people of Yellowknife, and Rainbow Valley (Ndilo) was simple, they were Tłı̨chǫ (Dogrib) who had moved, in the late 1800s, into the void created by the extinction of the “Yellowknife Indians”.

The source for the information in this brochure came from the often-referenced Smithsonian Institution’s Handbook of North American Indians. During the 1960s and 70s June Helm and Beryl Gillespie conducted field work among the Dogrib (Tłı̨chǫ) of “Fort” Rae (Behchoko). They published the results of their work in academic journals and, most significantly, in the Smithsonian’s Handbook. June Helm edited Subarctic, Volume 6 (1981) of this series, and also authored the Dogrib chapter. Beryl Gillespie was the author of the Yellowknife chapter, the factuality of which has been vigorously disputed by the Yellowknives Dene.

In her Dogrib chapter Helm makes some extraordinary claims about the traditional use area of the Dogrib people, she said their range is: … between 62° and 65° north latitude and between 110° and 124° west longitude … south to north, Dogrib land lies between Great Slave Lake and and extends, west to east, from the lowlands on the east side of the to Contwoyto, Aylmer, and Artillery … in the northwestern sector of their range, Dogribs meet Bearlake Indians; in the western and southwestern sector, Slaveys; along the eastern edges, ; and in the Contwoyto Lake region at the northeastern apex, they have occasionally encountered Eskimos.

Neighbours on all sides of the Dogrib, including the descendants of the Tetsǫt’ıné́ (also written Taltsąot'ıné)́ currently living in Yellowknife Bay, would strongly dispute this greatly exaggerated territorial claim.

Beginning in the late 1960s Helm sent her Research Associate Beryl Gillespie on several trips to Yellowknife to conduct fieldwork among the ‘Dogrib’ of Yellowknife Bay. Elders remember Beryl Gillespie’s work in our community. They say she spent weeks conducting interviews in Ndilo, Dettah and Yellowknife and that she was accompanied by a Dogrib interpreter from Rae. This interpreter only knew the Tłı̨chǫ language and Elders claim that he only took Gillespie to interview individuals who spoke Tłı̨chǫ and who had strong ties to the Tłı̨chǫ from Fort Rae. No interviews were conducted in Tetsǫ́t’ıné, a language that more recent research has demonstrated would have been known to most if

5 not all the individuals interviewed, a language that we know was the first language they learned as children and a strong indication of their cultural history and affiliation.

Gillespie’s field notes are held by the NWT Archives but access is restricted until 2032. From the accession description we know the family names of each interviewee, but not which individuals from those families were interviewed. The following accession description gives an overview of the collection and states that these restricted field notes were: … generated by field work conducted by Beryl Gillespie, an who visited the communities of Detah, Rae, Yellowknife, Fort Norman (Tulita) and Fort Franklin (Deline) between 1968 and 1972. The photographs, slides and negatives depict the people she interviewed and the communities that she visited. The textual material consists of field notes containing information and stories collected from the following families: Clement, Lennie, Andrew, Norwegian, Wright, Naedzo, Gladue, Karkagie, Gully, Sangris, Thomas, Abel, Potfighter, Crapeau, Drygeese, Fishbone, Blondin, Bruno, Martin, Mackenzie, Liske, Tobie, Betsina, Charlo, Baillargeon, Hetchile, Vital, Pochat, Yakeleya, Bernard, Mendo, Yukon and Etchinele.

What questions did Beryl Gillespie ask her informants? Interviews were conducted in Tłı̨chǫ but were there any questions concerning other languages the informants spoke? Were questions asked concerning self-identity? What about family history? Answers to these questions won’t be known until 2032 but we can surmise what answers Gillespie would have expected to receive had she followed this line of questioning.

Clues to what Gillespie expected to find when she came to Yellowknife – an expectation that likely played a role in guiding the nature of the questions she asked – can be found in the final paragraph of her Yellowknife chapter. Her work was guided by her belief that “the ‘disappearance’ of the Yellowknife [Indians] in the twentieth century precludes any research other than with historical materials”.

Gillespie knew emphatically that she wouldn’t find any Yellowknives living in Yellowknife Bay so it may not have occurred to her to ask questions that would challenge that belief. Concerning the question of who the indigenous inhabitants of Yellowknife Bay were, Gillespie appears to have gone with the simplest answer. It’s one that’s been given over and over again, that because the Yellowknives generally speak a form of the Dogrib (Tłı̨chǫ) language they must be Dogrib.

In 1991 the Yellowknife B Band Council began efforts to change the perception that the public, governments and academics had about who we are. The Council “made a landmark decision … to adopt the name Yellowknives Dene Band instead of Yellowknife B Band, since the people are descended from the Yellowknives or ‘Copper’ people.”

For many non-Dene this didn’t seem to fit the ‘facts’ as printed in the Smithsonian’s Handbook. It was not only common knowledge among many of the residents of Yellowknife, among Federal and Territorial government officials, among the academics and specialists employed at the PWNHC, and even among many other First Nations throughout the north, that the Dene of Yellowknife Bay were

6 Dogrib (Tłı̨chǫ). They spoke Dogrib and were, up until 1991, not publicly denying the misperception that they were Dogrib.

This landmark Band Council decision also stated that the Yellowknives “were thought to be extinct”. When we became aware of this we were surprised to hear there were academics who believed we were extinct. We found it insulting and blamed not only anthropologists in general but in particular Helm and Gillespie. While Helm and Gillespie weren’t the first to claim that either the Yellowknives had been completely absorbed into neighbouring First Nations – and were therefore no longer culturally identifiable or relevant – or that the last of the ‘real’ Yellowknives died many years ago, they were still blamed for spreading these false claims through the Smithsonian’s Handbook.

We once lived in more than thirty distinct villages along the north shore of Great Slave Lake, from near Old Fort Rae in the extreme north-west end of the North Arm of Great Slave Lake to the east end of the East Arm of Great Slave Lake. The locations of many of these villages are still known and still used seasonally by the descendants of the families who lived there.

Our Tetsǫ́t’ıné ancestors weren’t just nomadic wanderers who followed the season migration of caribou herds. The rich resources of the waters and land around Great Slave Lake allowed families to live, according to Elders, year-round in their caribou skin lodges (tipis). When the fur trade brought steel tools these lodges were replaced by log cabins with stone and clay chimneys. By the early 20th century, when locally sourced lumber became available and cast-iron stoves could be brought in from the south, these log homes were replaced by more modern structures. In the 1950s and early 1960s, when government policy forced Yellowknives to move closer to the City of Yellowknife, most north shore villages were either abandoned or today see only seasonal use.

To differentiate ourselves from other NWT communities where there are descendants of the Tetsǫt’ıné́ we began to refer to ourselves as Weledeh Yellowknives Dene. In 1996 we created the Weledeh Yellowknives Dene Cultural Society with the stated mandate to record the Traditional Knowledge of the Weledeh Yellowknives Dene. The Society developed a research plan that clearly stated the reasons for conducting this research: Weledeh Dene are people indigenous to lands in between Great Slave Lake and the barrens north of the tree line to the Ocean. Our ancestors, T’atsaot’ine (or “metal people”), were known to Europeans in the mid-1700s as people who used natural copper from the to make pots[sic], knives, and other tools … Some Yellowknives Dene families gathered in camps around the Weledeh [Wı̨ìlı̨ìdeh], which in now called the ; intermarriage between Weledeh and other T’atsaot’ine was common, as well as with Dogrib Dene, after the declaration of peace between our peoples in 1823.

The Society also wrote of their frustration with the early work of anthropologists: Weledeh Dene today – members of Yellowknives Dene First Nation – are not recognized by Western anthropologist as Yellowknives. Errors made by early anthropologists visiting our people soon after we were moved off our lands into

7 Canadian-style communities in the early 1960s resulted in reports that our language no longer exists and we no longer exist as a people. Information and findings by these researchers were not verified by our people. Their errors have been perpetuated by later social scientists and by incoming federal and territorial government administrators. Local media, government staff, court personnel, and visiting anthropologist ignore our people’s language and cultural identity. Most recently, government officials have tried to dissociate our First Nation’s current membership from our ancestor’s lands, in effect denying that we are indigenous to our lands.

At that time we began actively pursuing funding for Traditional Knowledge research projects that would establish, beyond any doubt, our claim to a very long history of traditional land use around Great Slave Lake.

Funding was found for Traditional Knowledge projects that gathered information on traditional place names; on our fall caribou harvesting areas around Mackay Lake, Courageous Lake and ; and, on the Great Slave Lake north shore villages and the ancient trails connecting these villages to the barrens. From numerous Elder’s workshops and individual interviews conducted for these projects common threads can be seen. While we know our occupation and use of this land is ancient others don’t. Elders often voiced their deep concern for the way we are seen by others and how these misperceptions have affected our rights to this land.

These early reports were meant to become public documents but had very limited distribution. These are the words of Elders who have long since passed away but this significant culture and historical information remains known only to a few Yellowknives Dene. The result is today we still see recently published sources say we are Tłı̨chǫ and that we moved to this area in the late 1800s.

While the Weledeh Yellowknives Dene Cultural Society only existed for a few years there were still many Traditional Knowledge projects undertaken in the early 2000s. In 2012 we created the Traditional Knowledge Program within our Land & Environment department. In addition to continuing to conduct our Traditional Knowledge research projects one of the major accomplishment of the Program has been the development of a Traditional Knowledge GIS Database using software developed by Trailmark Systems. Data gathered during past projects, including the mid-1970s Dene Mapping Project, has been entered into the system. Data from written historic sources, including the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Northwest Company, Fr. Emile Petitot, and published accounts of the travels of explorers and anthropologists, is also being entered.

This work is ongoing but to date an impressive data set of traditional trails, traditional camps and archeological sites, graves and cemeteries, etc. has been entered for areas throughout the Yellowknives Dene’s traditional territory.

8 This map shows a combination of Traditional Knowledge gathered during projects conducted from the mid-1970s through to the present, including workshops held specifically for the proposed Dinàgà Wek'èhodì Protected Area. It was generated from our Traditional Knowledge Data Base and shows our use of the area. Evidence supporting what our Elders say about our use of this area, as recorded in historic documents, is being gathered and will become part of our Traditional Knowledge Data Base.

Historic Evidence

The Hudson’s Bay Company became aware, sometime around the mid-1700s, of an indigenous people living far to the northwest of Fort Prince of Wales who made tools from the copper they mined along a river flowing into the . This river became known as the Coppermine River.

In 1770 , a Hudson’s Bay Company employee, travelled with a group of Chipewyan from Fort Prince of Wales, on the west shore of , toward the Coppermine River. Hearne and his guides were joined by a large group of “Copper Indians” who then travelled with them down to the mouth of the river on the Arctic coast. This encounter is believed to be the first direct contact between a European and our Tetsǫt’ıné́ ancestors. On his return journey Hearne is said to have been the first European to see Great Slave Lake and likely crossed the lake from Gros Cap to the south shore along a

9 traditional Tetsǫt’ıné́ trail that followed the western edge of the islands at the entrance to the East Arm.

Fur traders from the Montreal-based North West Company arrived on the south shore of Great Slave Lake in 1786. They established a trading post on the edge of the delta, this became today’s Fort Resolution, and began plans and preparations for establishing fur trading posts all the way down the Grand River which later became known as the Mackenzie River.

A trading post was constructed on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, adjacent to the mouth of Yellowknife Bay, in 1789. It later became known as and now is most often referred to as . North West Company employees quickly established that the land north of Great Slave Lake was poor fur country but it did have what the company needed for its expansion down the Mackenzie River, a reliable supply, from our Tetsǫt’ıné́ ancestors, of processed caribou, fat and berries called jewa etsìtle.

The North West Company transportation system depended on rapid travel in large birch bark canoes paddled by Métis voyageurs who, when travelling, had little time to hunt or fish for fresh meat. The long-established process of separating meat from fat, drying and pounding the meat into a powder, then recombining the powdered meat with rendered fat and adding berries, produced a light-weight, calorie-rich, long-lasting food called, by the fur traders, pemmican.

The Tetsǫt’ıné́ of the north shore of Great Slave Lake had established, in their pre-contact hunting and gathering patterns, a means for harvesting and processing large numbers of harvested caribou over a very short period of time.

At the edge of the barrens are large lakes that caribou, during their fall migration southward, swam across. This was at a time of year when the around those lakes was covered in berries. The focal point of that harvest was the area around MacKay Lake, Courageous Lake and Lac de Gras, each of which still carry traditional names from pre-contact times related to that harvest.

From the 1790s through to its amalgamation with the rival Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821 the Northwest Company built and operated a number of small trading posts on the north side of Great Slave Lake. These included (1) “Old” Fort Providence, adjacent to the mouth of Yellowknife Bay; (2) a post built on Mountain Island in the North Arm of Great Slave Lake near where the Hudson’s Bay Company, in 1852, built Fort Rae (now called Old Fort Rae); and, (3) a post on Old Fort Island south of Whitebeach Point.

Northwest Company records state these posts were built for trade with our Tetsǫt’ıné́ ancestors who, through their knowledge of the land of the caribou, and their skill at harvesting those caribou in large numbers and turning them into pemmican, became the principle suppliers of ‘meat’ to these ‘provisioning posts’. While there are many trails that head north to the barrens from the north shore of Great Slave Lake the Fort Providence and Mountain Island provisioning posts were built close to two major Tetsǫt’ıné́ trails, the Yellowknife River trail and a trail that heads north from Marion and Russel lakes, a trail that over the past hundred years has been used mostly by the Tłı̨chǫ.

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Yellowknives Elders say their ancestors also traded at other posts over a very large area. From the fragmentary records of the Northwest Company we can see our Tetsǫt’ıné́ ancestors were trading, in the early 1800s, at a post on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, between the mouth of the and Big Island on the Mackenzie River, called Red Knife Post. We were also trading at posts on the Mackenzie River, south as far as Fort Chipewyan and in the far northwest corner of our traditional lands at a post called Bear Island on McVicar Arm of Great Bear Lake. The most common references in the Northwest Company records concerns our ancestors trading at Fort Resolution on the south shore of Great Slave Lake.

Tetsǫ́t’ıné (Yellowknives) - Tłı̨chǫ(Dogrib) Hostilities

The history of our Tetsǫt’ıné́ ancestors, and their sometime violent interactions with their Tłı̨chǫ (Dogrib) neighbors to the west, is complex. Adding to this complexity are the frequent references to Dog Rib and Slaves/ being the same people.

Willard Wentzel’s North West Company journal of 1805-8 made an interesting observation: With respect to different Tribes of Indians inhabiting MacKenzies river, the first is the Horn Mountain Indians who occupy the whole north side [of the river] as far down as Great Bear Lake; They are the principal branch of the Dog rib Indians & amount to about two hundred men & boys capable of pursuing the chace...

In the recent past the indigenous people of the area Wentzel described would have referred to themselves as Slavey and most recently as Dehcho Dene.

Anthropologist June Helm, after years of research and field work among the Dogrib, had some interesting observations on this subject: In the historical literature, the Dogrib identity – as a total societal-territorial body and in its regional subdivisions – remains elusive until after 1850. In the French and English writings from about 1680 to 1770 there are several references to people who are designated as ‘Dogribs’ or by some variant term…most observers between 1770 and 1850 did not distinguish Dogrib from Slavey populations in the sense that has become standard since 1860.

In the early 1800s, according to Elders and confirmed by early fur trade records, our traditional territory extended from the upper Mackenzie River along the south shore of Great Slave Lake, northwest to then northwest to Great Bear Lake then northeast to the Coppermine River and from there to Contwoyto Lake and east to Aylmer, Clinton-Colden, and Artillery Lakes then back southwest to the Great Slave Lake. At that time the entire region between Great Bear and Great Slave lakes, along a very old Tetsǫt’ıné́ trail connecting the numerous smaller lakes between these two great lakes, was within Tetsǫt’ıné́ traditional territory.

11 According to North West Company records Dogrib/Slave/Slavey territory, in the early 1800s, extended along the north side of the Mackenzie River all the way to Great Bear Lake. The inland extent of that territory may have been as far east as Lac la Martre.

Research summarized for the Deninu K’ue Ethno-history Report submitted in 2012 to the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board for De Beers Canada’s Gahcho Kué project quotes George Simpson’s 1821 Report on the Athabasca Department: The Carribeau Eaters and Yellow Knives chiefly frequent the North West Establishment at Montagne Island [Mountain Island], where they exchange provisions and the few Furs they collect, for ammunition, rum, tobacco and other articles of European Manufacture. They rarely and in small bands visit the principal establishment [Fort Resolution] as they get their supplies without the Trouble of going that length with them we have as yet little acquaintance.

In 1821 the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company had just merged and reports on the state of the trade were produced. In the above quote “Montagne Island” is a trading post in the North Arm of Great Slave Lake a few hundred meters from where the Hudson’s Bay Company built Fort Rae in 1852.

The authors of the Deninu K’ue Report summarized what HBC Factor R. McVicar had written: …three years after the Yellowknives-Dogrib “war” recorded the Yellowknives hunting north [actually northwest] of Great Slave Lake at “Martin’s Lake” (present day Lac la Martre) during the winter. Earlier they were also said to hunt in the area near Mountain Island (“Montagne Island”) at the site of the North West Company fort, which, on one occasion, is actually called “the Yellow Knives Indians island”.

The Deninu K’ue Report lists additional Hudson’s Bay Company Fort Resolution Post Journals, from 1818 to 1829, that refer to our ancestors trading at the Mountain Island post. This also suggests that after the merger with the Northwest Company the Hudson’s Bay Company keep Mountain Island Post open as the main point-of-trade for our ancestors.

In 1819 the North West Company re-opened Old Fort Providence post to provide support to the Franklin Expedition. This expedition introduced the world to Akaitcho, a Tetsǫt’ıné́ or “Copper Indian” leader who beginning with Franklin, is often described as “the Chief” of the Yellowknives. This is a misperception we have today of the use of the term “Chief” that leads us to believe that Akaitcho was Chief for all Yellowknives which he was not. There were other leaders with Akaitcho being the leader of the largest group that included his extended family and followers. Akaitcho’s role was to protect Tetsǫ́t’ıné traditional lands during a time when the fur trade had brought considerable displacement of other First Nations from their traditional lands. On the western edge of our traditional lands this brought Akaitcho and his people into direct contact with Tłı̨chǫ.

Our Elders tell stories, handed down through many generations, of the “war” between Akaitcho’s band and the Tłı̨chǫ. Stories about the peace that was eventually negotiated by Akaitcho and the Tłı̨chǫ

12 leader Edzo are often told as if it were a treaty, an agreement that is binding for all time. The most important points of this ‘treaty’ is that Akaitcho and Edzo (1) agreed to share traditional Tetsǫ́t’ıné lands between Great Slave and Great Bear lakes, (2) that a boundary was agreed to, from the North Arm of Great Slave Lake through Mesa Lake, where Akaitcho and Edzo met, to the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake, a boundary that Tłı̨chǫ agreed not to travel east of without permission, and (3) that the peace would be maintained through intermarriage between the two groups.

The role of Tetsǫ́t’ıné leader Kah-teh-whee is also an important part of the story: Kah-Teh-Whee is most remembered for his role in the most notable event between the T’satsaot’ine and Tli Cho Dene. On a journey through Tli Cho territory, near Mesa Lake, Akeh-Cho and Kah-Teh-Whee found themselves near a camp of Edzo. Kah-Teh-Whee persuaded Akeh-Cho to let him try to mediate with Edzo, to bring the two powerful leaders together to speak of peace. Edzo and Akeh-Cho made peace between their peoples, so that they could share their lands and benefits of trapping for the white people. After the Akeh-Cho-Edzo peace agreement in 1823 [Hudson’s Bay Company records suggest this took place in 1828], marriages between the peoples resulted in linguistic sharing. Children of a Weledeh Yellowknives and a Tli Cho parent may learn one or both languages. To this day, Weledeh Yellowknives Dene are a people, a nation, using their traditional territory.

When describing Akaitcho, Yellowknives Elders say he was a powerful leader who was defending the territory of his people, that this was his job. They say every few years he made a journey around the perimeter of the territory looking for intruders and either chasing them away or, as happened with the Tłı̨chǫ along the western edge of the Tetsǫt’ıné́ territory, to engage in battle. Often described as a ‘war’ it’s important to note that it did not involve all Tetsǫt’ıné́ nor all Tłı̨chǫ. The war is remembered as involving Akaitcho’s extended family and followers fighting against Edzo’s extended family and followers.

Shortly after agreeing to peace Akaitcho and his band headed east to hunt and trap around the East Arm of Great Slave Lake. There’s frequent mention of Akaitcho in the Fort Resolution Post Journals including the entry from April 22, 1825 where Robert McVicar wrote: … at 8 o’clock Ekicho the Yellow Knife Chief and 4 of his followers, with 15 Chipewyans and their families arrived at the Fort…had a long parley with the Chief on the Subject of Establishing a Post for his Tribe at old Mountain Island he said “that for his part he could not think of returning so soon to the Country where so many of his Relations were so recently murdered by the Slave [Dogrib] Tribe, that it was his full intention to receive his supplies at this Establishment [Fort Resolution] with the Chipewyans until time would lessen the grief and anguish with which his bosom is inflicted on account of the untimely death of his Relations”, he appears to be inclined for peaceful measures in the future …

Since Akaitcho refused, in the spring of 1825, to return to Mountain Island Post in the North Arm of Great Slave Lake McVicar sent Akaitcho’s nephew Cheenazille (“Long Legs”) instead. He was to join

13 another Tetsǫ́t’ıné – frequently referred to in Post Journals as “Hook” – to hunt caribou and make pemmican for Captain Franklin’s Second Expedition to the Arctic. Akaitcho’s reluctance to return to the North Arm was short lived. By August 1825 he and his followers were back in the area of the North Arm where they concentrated on trapping beaver around what then was called “Jackfish Lake”. Today this lake is called Marian, the location of the main Tłı̨chǫ community of Behchoko.

Into the late 1820s the Tetsǫt’ıné́ , and in particular Akaitcho, ‘Long Legs’, and ‘Hook’, continued to hunt and trap in the area around the North Arm and continued to trade at the Mountain Island Post. For the Hudson’s Bay Company the post was expensive to operate and they appear to only have kept it open until after the 1829 season. Its closure was purposeful, so that the Yellowknives, and their Chipewyan cousins (Caribou Eaters) to the east, would be forced to shift their trade to Fort Resolution.

Akaitcho died in May of 1838, the result, according to Hudson’s Bay Company records, of an influenza epidemic. Yellowknives Elders say that the ailing Akaitcho knew he wouldn’t survive and asked two of his wives to take him back to where he was born, the mouth of the Yellowknife River. It was late in the season and the ice along the north shore of Great Slave Lake was breaking up and when Akaitcho died his wives couldn’t pull his toboggan any further so they buried him on an island at the entrance to Yellowknife Bay. The exact location, only a few kilometres south of Dettah, is a closely guarded secret.

Kah-Teh-Whee then became leader of the Tetsǫt’ıné́ in the North Arm until his death around 1860. He was followed by Nàyatu, who, when baptized in the 1870s, was given the Christian name Jean Kemellie. By the 1930s this family name became Sangris.

Nàyatu’s job was to keep the peace between our Tetsǫt’ıné́ ancestors and the Tłı̨chǫ. He spent much of his early life living near the Coppermine River but moved south when Kah-Teh-Whee died. He lived at old Enodah, a place halfway between Yellowknife Bay and Old Fort Rae. Elders say this was to keep peace between the two groups and to keep his people from starting new conflicts with the Tłı̨chǫ. At that time the residents of Enodah also included ancestors of the Beniah and Drygeese families.

The re-establishment, by the Hudson’s Bay Company, of a trading post on or near the location of the old Mountain Island Post had the desired effect of bringing Dogrib closer to Great Slave Lake. Anthropologist June Helm summed this up when she wrote: The founding of Fort Rae in 1852 and the entry of the first Roman Catholic missionary [Fr. Emile Petitot] into the Dogrib region in 1859 marked the inception of a way of life that was to endure for 100 years. Now the bulk of the Dogrib nation had a single point of trade that became the focus of tribal rendezvous at Christmas – New Year’s, at Easter time, and in June after the spring beaver hunt.

Helm also wrote that Tłı̨chǫ Elders, interviewed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, stated that Tłı̨chǫ did not live at Old Fort Rae and only came to the post three times each year from where they hunted and trapped around Lac la Martre and among the lakes between Great Slave and Great Bear lakes. This was an annual pattern of resource harvesting and trade the Tłı̨chǫ followed even after the Hudson’s Bay Company moved their trading post from Old Fort Rae to the shore of Marian Lake in 1907. It wasn’t

14 until the 1950s that Tłı̨chǫ began to move to Rae and began to use, in any substantive manner, the area the Tłı̨chǫ Government has requested be protected.

Our Elders say that when Old Fort Rae was abandoned, and Tłı̨chǫ no longer needed to come to the North Arm to trade, that Yellowknives moved back to some of the old villages near Old Fort Rae which, forty years later, they had to abandon when forced by the government to move to Yellowknife Bay. The pattern of our use of the far end of the North Arm went from year-round to seasonal and continues that way today.

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