PREFACE

The literature descriptive of Northern Canada, from the days of Hearne and Mackenzie to those of Tyrrell and Hanbury, is by no means scanty. A copious bibliography might be compiled of the records of its exploration with a view to trade, science, or sport, particularly in recent years; whilst the accounts of the search for Sir John Franklin furnish no inconsiderable portion of such productions in the past. These books are more or less available in our Public Libraries, and, at any rate, do not enter into consideration here. Such records, however, furnished almost our sole knowledge of the Northern Territories until the year 1888, when the first earnest effort of the Canadian Parliament was made “ to inquire into the resources of the great Mackenzie Basin.”

Through the instrumentality of the late Sir John Schultz, then a Senator, a Select Committee of the Senate was appointed for that purpose. Sir John had always taken a great interest in the question, and was Chairman of the Committee which took evidence, oral and by letter, from a great many persons who possessed more or less knowledge of the regions in question. The evidence was voluminous, and the reader who lacks access to the Blue Book containing it will find the gist of the Report in the Appendix to this volume.

A treaty with the Indians of the region followed this Report in 1899 ; but, owing to the absence of roads and markets, and other essentials of civilized life, not to speak of the vast unsettled areas of prairie to the south, the incoming, until now that railways are projected, of any great body of immigrants was very wisely discouraged, and this in the interest of the settler himself. The following narrative, | therefore, has lain in the author’s diary since the year of the expedition it records, its publication having been unavoidably delayed. It is now given to the public with the assurance that, whilst he does not claim freedom from error, which would be absurd, he took pains with it on the spot, and can vouch, at all events, for its general accuracy.

The writer, and doubtless some of his readers, can recall the time when to go to “Peace River” seemed almost like going to another sphere, where, it was conjectured, life was lived very differently from that of civilized man. And, truly, it was to enter into an unfamiliar state of things; a region in which a primitive people, not without faults or depravities, lived on Nature’s food, and throve on her unfailing harvest of fur. A region in which they often left their beaver, silver fox or marten packs—the envy of Fashion— lying by the dog-trail, or hanging to some sheltering tree, \ because no one stole, and took their fellow’s word without question, because no one lied. A very simple folk indeed, in whose language profanity was unknown, and who had no desire to leave their congenital solitudes for any other spot on earth: solitudes which so charmed the educated minds who brought the white man’s religion, or traffic, to their doors, that, like the Lotus-eaters, they, too, felt little craving to depart. Yet they were not regions of sloth or idleness, but of necessary toil; of the laborious chase and the endless activities of aboriginal life: the region of a people familiar with its fauna and flora—of skilled but unconscious naturalists, who knew no science.

Such was the state of society in that remote land in its golden age; before the enterprising “free-trader” brought with him the first-fruits of the Tree of Knowledge; long before the half-crazed gold-hunters rushed upon the scene, the “ Klondikers ” from the saloons and music-halls of New York and Chicago, to whom the incredible honesty of the natives, the absence of money, and the strange barter in skins (the wyan or aghti of the Indian) seemed like a phantasmagoria—an existence utterly removed from “ real ” life— that ostentatious and vulgar world in which they longed to play a part. It was this inroad which led to the entrance of the authority of the Queen—the Kitchi Okemasquay—not so much to preserve order, where, without the law, the natives had not unwisely governed themselves, as to prepare them for the incoming world, and to protect them from a new aggressor with whom their rude tribunals were incompetent to deal. To this end the Expedition of 1899 was sent by Government to treat for the transfer of their territorial rights, to ascertain, as well, the numbers and holdings of the few white or other settlers who had made a start at farming or stock-raising within its borders, and to clear the way for the incoming tide of settlement when the time became ripe for its extension to the North. This time is rapidly approaching, and when it comes the primitive life and methods of travel depicted will pass away forever. It is important, therefore, that as many descriptive records as possible, and at first-hand, should be preserved. Though the following account is but one of many experiences in remote Athabasca, it may claim some special value as a record of the Great Treaty by which that vast territory was ceded to the Crown; a territory equal in area to a group of European kingdoms or of American states, and whose resources, as yet comparatively unknown, are arousing eager surmise and conjecture in all directions.

Whilst, putting on record the methods and hardships of travel during a singularly adverse season, the negotiations with the Indians and half-breeds, and the superficial features of the country passed through, the writer was also aware of the fact that much information of great scientific value regarding the fauna of the North, collected by his friend, Roderick MacFarlane, Esq., for many years a chief-factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, had been hitherto withheld from the general public. This keen observer’s ¹¹ Notes on Mammals, with Remarks on Explorers and Explorations of the Far North ” was an important contribution to the Archives of the Smithsonian Institution (United States National Museum) ; and his “ Notes on and List of Birds and Eggs Collected in Arctic America/’ if not exhaustive, was a similarly valuable addition to its records. It seemed to the writer very desirable that this information, hidden away in the “ Proceedings ” of a foreign scientific institution, should be given to the Canadian public, and, by Mr. MacFarlane’s kind consent and wish, he is now enabled, with pleasure to himself and profit to his readers, to connect it with his own narrative of the Treaty Expedition of 1899.

The author has tried to make his narrative not merely an official record, but interesting as an itinerary, and to impart to it something of the novelty and fervour of his own sensations at the time. Notwithstanding its shortcomings in these respects, it may yet be of service in attracting to the remarkable regions described the pioneer who is not afraid of toil, or the traveller who loves the unprofaned sanctities of Nature.

Through the Mackenzie Basin
A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 by Charles Mair (1908) (pdf)