Recorded by Dorthea Calverley INTERVIEWER: When you went to Fort Nelson in 1928, how did you find the Indians’ honesty? GEORGE HUNTER: We found them very trustworthy. Any dealings we had with them, we found them very honest. When I were trapping with Henry Courvoisier there, the Indians would cross or travel over our trap lines,… Read More

By Gerry Clare ” Lo, the poor Indian, whose worth and claim to the dignity of manhood are measured by the number of animal skins he hands the white trader…” (Morice, 1906: 135) Introduction The purpose of this study is to describe the aboriginal and early post-contract Sekani Indians of northeastern British Columbia using four… Read More

By Dorthea Calverley In an interview on the CBC network with a well-known Alberta Indian, Adrian Hope, the following folk-tale was told concerning the origin of the name “Sarcee”: “A lot of people wonder where the Sarcees come from. From Indian legends that I have heard, apparently there were twenty-six tipis that were sent out from… Read More

By Dorthea CalverleyWhen Inspector Snyder reported on his Peace River Country Patrol in 1897, he told a slightly different story of the Beaver-Sarcee schism. “A rather interesting story was told me at Dunvegan regarding the division of the Beaver Indians, when what are now the Sarcee Indians, located at Calgary, severed from the main tribe…. Read More

By Dorthea H. CalverleyThe Athapaskan speakers of the Peace River area have some distinguished relatives (in a manner of speaking) in the Western United States – – The Apache and Navajo. In the Handbook of American Indians, the Bureau of American Ethnology provides material to make surprising comparisons between tribes so far apart on the… Read More

By Dorthea CalverleySince Alexander Mackenzie’s time, the Cree have displaced the Athapaskan-speakers as the majority group in the Indian population of the Peace River Country. It is interesting to have Mackenzie’s observations about them. We must remember that at Fort Fork where Mackenzie observed them in 1792, the Cree and Beaver had been at peace… Read More

By Dorthea CalverleyFurther to the phenomenon of the “white” Indian, Wabi Calazon, mentioned elsewhere. In the summer of 1974 I met and interviewed a young man, a Cree-Beaver Indian, whose anglicized name suggested that he might know something about blonde Indians like “Wabi”. Although reluctant at first, and obviously shy about speaking of his people… Read More

By Dorthea CalverleyThere were Iroquois free traders in the Finlay River country in the early years of the nineteenth century. So reports R.M. Patterson in the book Finlay’s River, where he calls them ” the pioneers… the free Iroquois hunters and trapper who traded with the Northwest Company’s posts.” Patterson describes the Iroquois as wanderers… Read More

By Dorthea CalverleyThe traders themselves brought a second kind of immigrant – the Iroquois. This group furnished the expert voyageurs who propelled the fastest canoes. Daniel Williams Harmon noted their presence in 1808 around Dunvegan where a band of them were encamped, while hunting meat for the post. A settlement of Iroquois had been established… Read More

By Dorthea Calverley Goddard’s account of the Beavers he visited around Dunvegan, about 1914, provides us with an account of the animals they ate, and how they were caught with more or less traditional methods. Large hares of rabbits, – snared, or shot when lured by a “rabbit call” which imitates the cry of the young… Read More