92 NOETH AMERICAN FAUNA. [xo. 27. 



Red River, or Fort MacKay, before referred to." The valley here in 

 much reduced in depth. About 50 miles below Fort McMurray. on 

 a high bank on the right, is the site of an early post called Pierre 

 au Calumet, so named because the natives procured pipestone in 

 the vicinity. Only the cellars and ruined chimneys now remain to 

 mark the site.^ As the river is descended the banks gradually be- 

 come Jower and the mixed woods give Avay to. poplar and willows, and 

 lower down to willows alone. At Poplar Point, 90 miles below Fort 

 McMurray, the banks are still fairly high and the prevailing char- 

 acter of forest is indicated by the name. At present a small trading 

 establishment is maintained here during a part of the winter. The 

 banks now lower rapidly, and at a point about 40 miles above the 

 lake we pass the site of the first post established in this region.^ Its 



° In the early part of tlie nineteenth century at least two trading posts existed 

 for longer or shorter periods near this point. Beren's House, a post of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, was in existence in 1825, apparently on the right bank 

 of the Athabaska a few miles above Red River. (Franklin's Narr. Second 

 Journey, p. 5, 1828.) Apparently this post had been established subsequent 

 to 1820, and it was still in existence in 1848. Another trading post, probably 

 of the Northwest Company and then known as " La vieux Fort de la Riviere 

 Rouge," is mentioned by liichardson in 1848 as long abandoned. (Arctic 

 Searching Expedition, I, p. 125, 1851.) 



* Pierre au Calumet, a Northwest post, was in existence as early at least as 

 1814, as W. F. Wentzel speaks of it in a letter written during that year. 

 (Masson, Les Bourgeois, I, p. 115, 1889.) It was still occupied in March, 1820, 

 but a Hudson's Bay post on the opposite bank was said to have been aban- 

 doned during the previous December. Subsequent narratives mention these 

 posts as abandoned, and I can find no evidence that their sites were ever 

 reoecupied. 



^ This post, which seems never to have had a distinctive name, being known 

 in later years merely as the " Old Establishment," was built on the right bank 

 of the river about 40 miles above the lake, by Peter Pond, a partner in the 

 Northwest Company, in 1778-79. In 1789 it was removed hj Roderick McKen- 

 zie to Athabaska Lake, and there established on a point about 8 miles east of 

 the mouth of the Athabaska, and was named Fort Chipewyan. It was re- 

 moved not many years later to its present site, and early in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury the X Y Company, which was merged into the Northwest Company in 1804, 

 is said to have had a post near the same place. The Hudson's Bay Company 

 later built a small post on Coal Island, near Fort Chipewyan, and named it 

 Fort Wedderburne. Franklin in 1820 speaks of it as having been built about 

 five years before. The present site of Fort Chipewyan appears to have been 

 occupied continuously since 1821. when the Northwest and Hudson's Bay com- 

 panies united. 



Fort Fond du Lac, near the eastern extremity of Athabaska Lake, also has 

 been occupied many years. J. B. Tyrrell gives the following : " In 1892 it was 

 in charge of Jose Mercredi, a venerable old French half-breed seventy-five years 

 of age, who had lived there continuously for the past forty-seven years. In 

 the immediate vicinity is a Roman Catholic mission church, where a priest lives 

 during the w^inter. Mr. Mercredi informed me that in the early part of 

 the century the Hudson's Bay Company had a trading post on a point on the 



