385 
CHlPEWYA?s^ 
3’he Chipewyan (‘‘ l^ointed Skins,” a Cree term referring to the 
form in which the Chipewyan dried their beaver skins^) was the 
most numerous Athapaskan tribe in northern Canada in the first 
halt of the eighteenth century, and controlled the largest area. 
Although its exact boundaries are uncertain, and probably fluctuated 
at different periods, it seems to have claimed ])ossession of the vast 
triangle enclosed by a line from Churchill to the height of land sepai- 
ating the headwaters of the Thelon and Back rivers, “ another running 
south past the eastern ends of Clreat Slave and Athabaska lakes to 
the Churchill river, and a third east to the coast a little south of 
(diurchill,*^ After the Hudson’s Bay Company established its post 
at C’hurchill in 1717 the Chi}>ewyan, well supplied with firearms, 
drove the coast Eskimo northward, and oppressetl the two Athapas- 
kan tribes in the northwest, the Yellowknife and the Dogrib, by 
flenying them access to the trading post, forcing them to exchange 
their furs for a tithe of their value in European goods, and even rob- 
bing them outright of their possessions and women. With the Cree 
on their southern border they kept an uneasy peace after the Hud- 
son’s Bay Company established a truce between them in 1715, but 
with the section of the Cree that drove the Beaver and Slave Indians 
from the Athabaska and Slave rivers they fought intermittently until 
about 1760, when the two tribes concluded an armistice. In 1781 
smallpox destroyed the majority of the Chipewyan (nine-tenths of 
them, according to Hearne), and when Fort Chipewyan was estab- 
lished on lake Athabaska in 1788 most of the remainder preferred 
to carry their furs to the new trading post rather than undertake the 
long and arduous journey to Churchill. Since then they have enjoyed 
unbroken peace, but have become entirely dependent on the trading 
posts, suffered from constant malnutrition, expei’ienced epidemics of 
influenza and other diseases, and declined in numbers from an 
estimated 3,50(H in pre-European times to little more than 1,000. 
1 Thonip.soii : Op. tit., p. 128. Tlic Iliindlxiok ot Ainericiiii Indinns, ai(. Cliii)f\vy;iii, follows Potitot 
(Moiioisraphie dts Iltiie-Dindjlp, p. 24) in deriving the name from t!ie sliapc of the shirts, puinterl and 
oriiamenti’d with tails before and behind. 
-The line curved in Hearne's day to lanliiaec Yalhkyed and D'ubawnt lakes, but whetlier the 
Chipewyan controlled the.se lake.s in the early eighteenth century, or drove back the Eskimo later, i," 
unknown. 
•’1 The year liefore the establi.shnietd- of the fort at Cluireldl) a small parly of Chipewyan visited 
York Factory. Eskimo a.s well a.s Chliuwv,\-[Hi fretpiented Ch’.irchill at that time, the E.skimo in siimmci 
only in onler to secure wood, apparently, for sleds, boats, and otln i- needs (Captain Knight's Diary 
of York Factory, MS. copy in Doinitnon .\rchive.s, Ottawa). 
•t Mooney; t)p. cit., p. 26. 
