12 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 



Norton's interest was thoroughly aroused in the possible value 

 of the copper "mines," and as they were said to be only four 

 hundred miles from Churchill, he determined that, if possible, 

 something definite should be learned about them. Accord- 

 ingly, that very summer, when the ship came from England, 

 he took passage back in it to London, and laid a plan for 

 the discovery of this supposed great body of copper ore before 

 the directors of the Company and received their approval 

 for its execution. The plan was not to entail any very great 

 expense to the Company, A man was to be sent out with 

 the Indians, who should be supported by them and live as 

 they lived. 



Before that time other men had been sent into the wilder- 

 ness, in the same way, from factories, especially from York, 

 where, in 1690, Henry Kelsey had travelled southward until 

 he met the so-called " Naywatamee poets " or Mandan Indians, 

 somewhere near the banks of the Assiniboine or South Saskat- 

 chewan Rivers,^ and in 1754 Anthony Hendry had made a 

 notable journey up the North Saskatchewan River to the great 

 plains, where he had endeavoured to establish friendly relations 

 with the Blackfeet Indians and their allies, and to prevent 

 them from selling their furs to Luc la Corne and the French 

 merchants from Montreal, who had penetrated into the same 

 country several years before. Both these men had been treated 

 with the greatest kindness by the natives and had brought back 

 intelligent accounts of the countries visited by them, though 

 neither of them had the ability of Samuel Hearne to enable 

 them to prepare a report such as the one here published. 



^ Henry Kelsey's account of this journey has given rise to a good deal of 

 dispute and scepticism. It gives me the impression that it is a story written 

 from memory years after the journey was performed, but his general descrip- 

 tion of the country on the Red Deer River just north of the Province of 

 Manitoba, and of the plains of Saskatchewan to the south-west of it, is too 

 clear to be mistaken. I am indebted to Professor W. H. Holmes, Director 

 of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, for assistance in identifying the 

 " Nayvvatamee poets" with the Mandan Indians. 



