[burpee] HIGHWAYS OF THE FUR TRADE 189 



The accidental rediscovery of the old Kaministikwia route 

 is described in the Reminiscences of Roderick McKenzie, 1 of the 

 North West Company: 



"After a long absence in the Indian territories,", he says, "I 

 paid this year (1797) a visit to Canada. Returning the following 

 Spring, on my first trip from Grand Portage to Lac La Pluie, I met a 

 family of Indians at the height of land from whom I accidentally 

 learned the existence of a water communication a little way behind 

 and parallel to this, extending from Lake Superior to Lake La Pluie , 

 which is navigable for large canoes and, if adopted, would avoid the 

 Grand Portage. This was excellent information ; of course I imme- 

 diately engaged one of the Indians to meet me at a certain point in 

 Lac La Croix, to show me this new route, but on my arrival, as ap- 

 pointed, the Indian was not there. However, being acquainted 

 with the entrance of the route, I proceeded without him and reached 

 a post of the company where I procured a guide who accompanied 

 me to Caministiquia on Lake Superior, from whence I soon reached 

 Grand Portage, being the first who reached there from Lac La Pluie 

 direct by water communication." 



This, however, was not the first attempt to discover a practicable 

 canoe route for the North West Company north of Grand Portage. 

 As mentioned by Roderick McKenzie in his Reminiscences, the 

 company had as long before as 1784 sent an expedition to examine 

 a 'water communication reported to exist between Lake Nipigon and 

 the Winnipeg river. This expedition was in charge of Edouard 

 Umfreville. 2 Umfreville made his way through to the mouth of 

 English river, and reported the route practicable, but it was round- 

 about and inconvenient, and the fur-traders continued to use the 

 Grand Portage until the end of the century, when they finally adopted 

 the Kaministikwia route, and rebuilt near the mouth of the river their 

 famous post Fort William. 



From the Lake of the Woods to Lake Winnipeg, La Vérendrye 

 had long since led the way down Winnipeg river. His Journals 

 record the fact that he discovered another route between the two 

 lakes, by way of Roseau river and the Red river, but this was not 

 practicable except for light canoes, and Winnipeg river continued 

 to be the highway of the fur trade not only in his day but for a hundred 

 years or more thereafter. 



1 Masson, Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-ouest, I, 46. 



2 Umfreville's narrative is among the Masson Papers in the McGill University 

 Archives. An account of the journey will be found in "Canoe Routes from Lake 

 Superior to the Westward, op. cit. See also "Memorial of the North West Com- 

 pany," 1784, and letter of James McGill to Henry Hamilton, 1785, in Report on- 

 Canadian Archives, 1890, pp. 48 and 56. 



