200 A JOURNEY TO THE 



1771. very lately, seldom or ever exceeded six thousand Made 

 ^' Beaver per annum. 



At present happy it is for them, and greatly to the advan- 

 tage of the Company, that they are in perfect peace, and live 

 in friendship with their Southern neighbours. The good effect 

 of this harmony is already so visible, that within a few years 

 the trade from that quarter has increased many thousands of 

 Made Beaver annually ; some years even to the amount of 

 eleven thousand skins.* Besides [179] the advantage arising 



* Since this Journal was written, the Northern Indians, by annually visiting 

 their Southern friends, the Athapuscow Indians, have contracted the small-pox, 

 which has carried ofif nine-tenths of them, and particularly those people who 

 composed the trade at Churchill Factory. The few survivors follow the ex- 

 ample of their Southern neighbours, and all trade with the Canadians, who are 

 settled in the heart of the Athapuscow country : so that a very few years has 

 proved my short-sightedness, and that it would have been much more to the 

 advantage of the Company, as well as have prevented the depopulation of the 

 Northern Indian country, if they had still remained at war with the Southern 

 tribes, and never attempted to better their situation. At the same time, it is 

 impossible to say what increase of trade might not, in time, have arisen from 

 a constant and regular traffic with the different tribes of Copper and Dog-ribbed 

 Indians. But having been totally neglected for several years, they have now 

 sunk into their original barbarism and extreme indigence ; and a war has 

 ensued between the two tribes, for the sake of a few remnants of iron-work 

 which was left among them ; and the Dog-ribbed Indians were so numerous, 

 and so successful, as to destroy almost the whole race of the Copper Indians. 



While I was writing this Note, I was informed by some Northern Indians, 

 that the few which remain of the Copper tribe have found their way to one of 

 the Canadian houses in the Athapuscow Indians' country, where they get 

 supplied with every thing at less, or about half the price they were formerly 

 obliged to give ; so that the few surviving Northern Indians, as well as the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, have now lost every shadow of any future trade from 

 that quarter, unless the Company will establish a settlement with the Athapuscow 

 country, and undersell the Canadians.* 



[1 In 1778 Peter Pond, a fur trader from Montreal, had built a trading post 

 on the east bank of Athabasca River, about thirty miles up-stream from Atha- 

 basca Lake, and in 1786, after the formation of the North- West Company, 

 Laurent Leroux and Cuthbert Grant, two of the employees of this Company, 

 had descended Slave River to Great Slave Lake and had established a trading 

 post on its southern shore. The Copper Indians traded at the latter post, while 

 the Northern or Chipewyan Indians resorted to the more southern and older 

 post on the Athabasca River. Among the members of this latter tribe, who had 

 been accustomed to make long pilgrimages to Churchill in order to procure 



