In 1748, ten years before the capitulation of Montreal to General Amherst, a motion was passed in the House of Commons “to enquire into the state and condition of the countries adjoining Hudson bay and the trade carried on there, and to consider how those countries may be settled and improved, and the trade and fisheries there extended and increased, and also to enquire into the rights the Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson’s bay pretend to have by charter to the property of lands and exclusive trade to those countries.” The result was an investigation, which produced a considerable amount of evidence throwing the first official light upon the natural resources of Canada’s great northland.

Up to this time the territory about Hudson bay had been commonly supposed “to be a mere waste and howling wilderness, wherein half-famished beasts of prey wage eternal war with a sparse population of half-starved savages; where the drought is more than Saharan, the cold more than Arctic, and that woe would betide the mad and unfortunate individual who might be so far diverted from the path of prudence as to endeavour to settle in those parts.”[[4]]

Evidence heard before the committee revealed the fact that intelligent men who have lived in the country several years considered that it possessed decided attractions as a field of settlement, and held that nothing but the policy of the fur-trading company kept settlement back.[[5]]

Some of the evidence as to the resources of the country and as to the conditions of the very slim white population is still edifying. The attack upon the legality of the company’s charter, however, came to nothing, and the revelations made as to the suitability of the country for settlement had no practical result, which is scarcely to be wondered at considering the conditions prevailing in both Europe and America—conditions which in the course of a few years were to result in momentous changes in the map of this continent.

No additional data as to the resources and geography of the great northland were produced until the years 1770 and 1771 when

Hearne Made His Historical Trip

of discovery. Many of the witnesses examined during the enquiry of 1748-49 had spoken of the statements of Indians regarding the rich copper mines existing on a great river many miles to the northwest of Churchill. The Indians who visited that post in 1768 so impressed the governor, Mr. Moses Norton, with their version of the richness of the copper deposits along the river they called the Neetha-San-San-Dazey (the “far-off metal river”), that being in London the following season he induced the Company to send out an exploratory expedition. The man selected for the command was Samuel Hearne,[[6]] a capable and experienced mariner, then serving as mate on the Company’s brig “Charlotte.” Hitherto all of the exploratory expeditions from Hudson bay towards the northwest had been in search of the northwest passage, and by sea, but now it was decided to undertake exploration by land.[[7]] Hearne really made three trips, two of which were unsuccessful. The first failed because of the lack of provisions, and the second because Hearne was plundered by his Indian companions and broke his sextant. On these trips he attempted to penetrate to the northwestward through the so-called Barren Grounds or Barren Lands, but on the third venture, leaving in December, 1770, he kept more to the westward and, being in the wooded country, was able to provide himself with provisions and to travel with much less discomfort. As he was accompanied by a number of Indian families as bearers and hunters, his progress was necessarily slow and indirect, on account of the difficulty of crossing lakes and large rivers, and of providing food for so large a party. His general line of travel was at first a little north of west to Clowey lake, which was reached May 3, 1771, and thence a little west of north to the eastward of Great Slave lake, probably passing Artillery lake (his Catt lake?) and Clinton-Colden and Aylmer lakes (his Thoy-noy-kyed lake?) to the stream since called Coppermine river, which was reached probably near Sandstone rapid.[[8]]

During the eighteen years or so following Hearne’s discovery of Coppermine river, considerable knowledge was acquired as to the resources of the more southern portions of the still unexploited north country by the activities of the Canadian fur traders, including the Northwest Company, in North Saskatchewan, Clearwater, Athabaska and Peace river regions,[[9]] and the resultant extension southward of the trading operations of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Mackenzie’s Trips of Exploration

including the discovery of the great river of the north which still bears his name, were notable events in the history of the north country; momentous events, in fact, in view of the knowledge first obtained through them of the vast natural resources of the great Mackenzie basin.