Sir John Franklin makes the following reference to the Copper Mountains, which he visited in July 1821:
"We rejoined our hunters at the foot of the Copper Mountains, and found they had killed three musk-oxen. This circumstance determined us on encamping to dry the meat, as there was wood at the spot. We availed ourselves of this delay to visit the Copper Mountains in search of specimens of the ore, agreeably to my instructions; and a party of twenty-one persons, consisting of the officers, some of the voyagers, and all the Indians, set off on that excursion. We travelled for nine hours over a considerable space of ground, but found only a few small pieces of native copper. The range we ascended was on the west side of the river, extending W.N.W. and E.S.E. The mountains varied in height from twelve to fifteen hundred feet. The uniformity of the mountains is interrupted by narrow valleys, traversed by small streams. The best specimens of metal we procured were among the stones in these valleys, and it was in such situations that our guides desired us to search most carefully. It would appear, that when the Indians see any sparry substance projecting above the surface, they dig there; but they have no other rule to direct them, and have never found the metal in its original repository. Our guides reported that they had found copper in large pieces in every part of this range, for two days' walk to the north-west, and that the Esquimaux come hither to search for it. The annual visits which the Copper Indians were accustomed to make to these mountains, when most of their weapons and utensils were made of copper, have been discontinued since they have been enabled to obtain a supply of ice-chisels and other instruments of iron by the establishment of trading posts near their hunting grounds. That none of those who accompanied us had visited them for many years was evident, from their ignorance of the spots most abundant in metal.
"The impracticability of navigating the river upwards from the sea, and the want of wood for forming an establishment, would prove insuperable objections to rendering the collection of copper at this part worthy of mercantile speculation" ("First Journey," p. 340-1).
[AQ] This piece of Copper is now in the possession of the Hudson's Bay Company.
[AR] There is a strange tradition among those people, that the first person who discovered those mines was a woman, and that she conducted them to the place for several years; but as she was the only woman in company, some of the men took such liberties with her as made her vow revenge on them; and she is said to have been a great conjurer. Accordingly when the men had loaded themselves with copper, and were going to return, she refused to accompany them, and said she would sit on the mine till she sunk into the ground, and that the copper should sink with her. The next year, when the men went for more copper, they found her sunk up to the waist, though still alive, and the quantity of copper much decreased; and on their repeating their visit the year following, she had quite disappeared, and all the principal part of the mine with her; so that after that period nothing remained on the surface but a few small pieces, and those were scattered at a considerable distance from each other. Before that period they say the copper lay on the surface in such large heaps, that the Indians had nothing to do but turn it over, and pick such pieces as would best suit the different uses for which they intended it.[81]
[81] A slightly different version of this tradition is given by Sir John Franklin, who heard it at Fort Chipewyan in 1820 from an old Chipewyan Indian named "Rabbit's Head," a stepson of Matonabbee. See Franklin's "First Journey," pp. 145-7.
[AS] What is meant by Beaver in other kind of furrs, must be understood as follows: For the easier trading with the Indians, as well as for the more correctly keeping their accounts, the Hudson's Bay Company have made a full-grown beaver-skin the standard by which they rate all other furrs, according to their respective values. Thus in several species of furrs, one skin is valued at the rate of four beaver-skins; some at three, and others at two; whereas those of an inferior quality are rated at one; and those of still less value considered so inferior to that of a beaver, that from six to twenty of their skins are only valued as equal to one beaver skin in the way of trade, and do not fetch one-fourth of the price at the London market. In this manner the term "Made Beaver" is to be understood.
[AT] 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 off nine-tenths of them, and particularly those people who composed the trade at Churchill Factory. The few survivors follow the example 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.[82]
[82] 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 Athabasca 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 implements and utensils of various kinds in exchange for furs, but who afterwards found that they could buy such goods as they needed more advantageously from the traders on the Athabasca River, very much nearer home, was a man known to those traders as "English Chief." This Indian accompanied Sir Alexander Mackenzie, one of the partners of the North-West Company, and one of those who would have been spoken of by Hearne as Canadians, on his journey from Lake Athabasca to the Arctic Ocean in 1789.