chapter 3: relationship with traders

Chapter 3: Relationship with TradersEventually the newcomers came into our land. When we were exposed to the trade items people wanted to go and get the items right from the source rather than through another Aboriginal group. Wouldn’t you want to go to the coffee shop on your own, rather than having someone bring you the coffee all the time? If you had these new trade items you could’ almost do anything’. This is when new names start appearing in our next chapter. The names on our land started to change. One place that had previously been named ‘water flowing through the willows’ changed to Marion River. The old names described what the place was used for, they were seasonal. New names started to appear like: New Net, Rifle Point, gun powder island.

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Some French and Scottish traders made the north their home and had children with Dene women. Their descendants are known as the Métis. The Métis are an Indigenous people with a unique identity, culture and language. One of the first to come was François Beaulieu, who was a boatman with Sir Alexander Mackenzie during the summer of 1789, when they paddled down the Dehcho River to the Arctic Ocean. The Beaulieu, Poitras, Cayen, Mandeville, Lafleur and Tourangeau names are but a few of the well-known Métis in the NWT today. Because the Métis people had knowledge of both their European and Dene ancestors customs and languages, they became very important interpreters and helped build relationships between the newcomers and the Dene people.


During this time new rituals were developed. As in a full brigade of canoes our people would head to the trading post. They would send runners ahead to say, ‘Big Chief coming’. He would get the runners to ask, ‘why should he come?’ The trader would respond with a small cloth with things inside it, essentially a ‘gift basket’. If it was an old rag the message would be that there would not be that much to trade for and the Big Chief would then decide if it was good enough to keep heading toward the trading post.


They would sing while paddling towards the post and when they arrived maybe they would go to church, maybe they’ll be blessed. Right before they would arrive they would put on a little show and shoot off their bullets, bang, bang, bang. The fur trade people would get frightened because there is some aggression coming their way. Now this is part of our tradition. When we go to assemblies we try to remember that period of how people lived. We have tea, hand out tobacco, have a tea dance and shake everyone’s hands.

When we talk of this chapter we call it the collective period, meaning, we do it together, we do it as one. This part of our history we learned how we are stronger as a group, that we can barter better as one. In this part of our history we had mutual exchange; both the Aboriginal and settler traders exchanged goods that were beneficial to both. The European settlers would not have survived without our knowledge of the land, our clothing, our food, our teachings and we wanted their guns, pots and more.


chapter 3: relationship with traders

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