Canadian Exploration Literature
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction to the Second Edition
Introduction to the First Edition
Part I Discovery or Contact?
1660 Pierre-Esprit Radisson travels to Lake Superior
1690 Henry Kelsey carries the Governorâs pipe to the interior
1729â1739 The Sieur de La VĂŠrendrye looks for the Western Sea
Part II The Great North-West in the Eighteenth Century
1743 James Isham dispels the vapours by recording his observations
1754â1755 Anthony Henday is permitted to enter the Blackfoot chiefâs camp
1760â1776 Alexander Henry survives a native attack on Fort Michilimackinac, and later travels to the prairies
1769â1791 Andrew Graham becomes a scholar of Bayside life
1770â1772 Samuel Hearne journeys across the Barren Lands
1772â1773 Matthew Cocking seeks trading partners inland
1791â1792 Peter Fidler spends a winter with the Chipewyans
Part III Life and Letters among the Explorers
1771â1782 Edward Umfreville considers âThe Present State of Hudsonâs Bayâ
1775â1788 Peter Pond describes a traderâs life in the Mackinac region
1784â1812 David Thompson imagines the Great Plains
1787â1788 Saukamapee describes native life on the plains
1800â1816 Daniel Harmon tries to make an Eden in the wilderness
Part IV An Imperial Enterprise
1789 âAlexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by landâ
1792 Captain George Vancouver carries out an Imperial agenda
1808 Simon Fraser descends a perilous river
1819â1821 Captain John Franklin is bested by the Arctic
1823 George Nelson encounters âthe Dreamedâ
Part V Prelude to Settlement
1830 Frances Simpson travels west
1832 Governor George Simpson satirizes fur trade personalities
1840 Letitia Hargrave: the Factorâs wife
1857â1858 Professor Henry Youle Hind visits a civilization on the wane
1857â1859 Captain John Palliser considers prairie settlement
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In compiling and annotating a large anthology like this, some of it edited from original sources, I have accumulated debts to almost every friend I have, and indeed to some I have never met. I have tried to list below all those who helped, and hope I have not forgotten anyone who assisted me in tracing a lost reference, or set me straight when I had gone astray. My first debt is to the students of my course âExploration Writing in English Canadaâ, for whom the anthology was first prepared; it was their enthusiasm which convinced me it might have a wider audience. I am deeply grateful to Victoria College for material help in the form of research funds to assist my work on Radisson and Kelsey, and to the Library staff at Victoria University in the University of Toronto, especially David Brown of Readersâ Services, and at Robarts Library, University of Toronto, especially Jane Lynch of Inter-Library loan, for answering many urgent requests for books no one ever looks at. The special skills of my research assistants, Lalage Grauer and John C. Parsons, made a major contribution to the project. Phyllis Wilson and Olive Koyama of Oxford University Press were unfailingly patient as I completed what turned out to be a larger task than I anticipated. Judith Hudson Beattie, Keeper of the Hudsonâs Bay Company Archives, and her predecessor Shirlee Anne Smith were instantly responsive to my queries, as was Edward J. Dahl, early cartography specialist in the Cartographic and Architectural Archives Division of the National Archives of Canada. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Sylvia Van Kirk were firm supporters whenever I wearied. The typists at Oxford University Press who input most of the manuscript, and Ingrid Smith of Victoria College who did the remainder, have my particular gratitude. In addition I owe thanks to (in no particular order): the New Oxford English Dictionary project at the University of Waterloo, David Galbraith of Victoriaâs Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, George Lang, Laura Peers, Henri Pilon of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, an un-named assistant in the library at Regis College, Toronto, Sean Peake, Jay Macpherson, Richard Telekey, Conrad Heidenreich, W.J. Eccles, Dennis Carter-Edwards, Ian MacLaren, Hugh MacMillan, William E. Moreau, Carolyn Podruchny, Ian Bowring, William R. Bowen, Diana Patterson, John Noble, Joan Winearls, Rivkah Zim, W. McAllister Johnson, Glyndwr Williams, Harry Duckworth, Mary A. Gallagher, Neil Semple, and John J. McCusker. The most important debt of all is acknowledged in the dedication; this volume is a retirement present to my husband, the geographer John Warkentin, who first introduced me to the writing of the explorers when he edited an anthology of his own, The Western Interior of Canada (1964), and thus dispatched me on a journey of exploration that has sometimes surprised both of us.
MATTHEW COCKING. âMatthew Cockingâs journalâ, ed., Lawrence J. Burpee, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Third Series, Section 11 (1908). Used by permission of the Royal Society of Canada.
PETER FIDLER. âJournalâ in The Journals of Samuel Hearne and Philip Turnor, ed. J.B. Tyrell. Publication of the Champlain Society, xxl, Toronto, 1934. Used by permission.
SIMON FRASER. From The Letters and Journals of Simon Fraser, 1806â1808, ed., with an introduction by W. Kaye Lamb (1960). Used by permission of W Kaye Lamb.
ANDREW GRAHAM. Observations on Hudsonâs Bay, 1767â91, ed. Glyndwr Williams, with an introduction by Richard Glover. Publications of the Hudsonâs Bay Record Society, XXVII (London, 1969). Used by permission of Keeper, Hudsonâs Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Provincial Archives.
ANTHONY HENDAY. ââYork Factory to the Blackfeet Countryâ: The Journal of Anthony Hendry [sic], 1754â55â; Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Third Series, Section II (1907). Used by permission of the Royal Society of Canada.
DANIEL HARMON. From Sixteen Years in the Indian Country: The Journals of Daniel William Harmon, 1800â16, ed. W. Kaye Lamb (1957). Used by permission of W Kaye Lamb.
LETITIA HARGRAVE. The Letters of Letitia Hargrave, ed. Margaret Arnett MacLeod. Publication of the Champlain Society, xxvili, Toronto, 1947. Used by permission.
SAMUEL HEARNE. From The Narrative of Samuel Hearne (ms. Stowe 307). Used by permission of the British Library Board.
JAMES ISHAM. James Ishamâs Observations on Hudsonâs Bay, 1743, ed. E.E. Rich and A.M. Johnson. Publication of the Hudsonâs Bay Record Society, xii. (Published by the Champlain Society for the Hudsonâs Bay Record Society, 1949.) Used by permission of Keeper, Hudsonâs Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Provincial Archives.
ALEXANDER MACKENZIE. From The Journals and Letters of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, edited by W. Kaye Lamb. Used by permission of The Council of the Hakluyt Society.
JOHN PALLISER. The Papers of the Palliser Expedition, 1857â1860. ed. Irene M. Spry. Publication of the Champlain Society, Lxiv, Toronto, 1968. Used by permission.
PETER POND. âThe Narrative of Peter Pondâ was transcribed by the Minnesota Historical Society especially for publication in a reprint edition of Five Fur Traders of the Northwest, edited by Charles M. Gates, copyright 1965 by the Minnesota Historical Society. The original Pond document is held by Yale University. Used by permission of the Minnesota Historical Society.
PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON. MS. Rawlinson A 329. Used by permission of Keeper of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
FRANCES SIMPSON. âJournal of a Voyage from Montreal, throâ the Interior of Canada, to York Factory on the Shores of Hudsonâs Bayâ (1830). Winnipeg: Hudsonâs Bay Company Archives, D6/4. Used by permission of Keeper, Hudsonâs Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Provincial Archives.
SIR GEORGE SIMPSON. âThe Character Book of Governor George Simpsonâ in Hudsonâs Bay Miscellany 1670â1870, ed. Glyndwr Williams. Publication of the Hudsonâs Bay Record Society, XXX (Winnipeg, 1975). Used by permission of Keeper, Hudsonâs Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Provincial Archives.
DAVID THOMPSON. David Thompsonâs Narrative, 1784â1812, second edition, ed. Richard Glover. Publications of the Champlain Society, XL, Toronto, 1962. Used by permission.
GEORGE VANCOUVER. The Voyage of Captain George Vancouver 1791â1795, ed. W. Kaye Lamb. 4 volumes. London:The Hakluyt Society, 1984. Used by permission of The Council of the Hakluyt Society.
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
When Canadian Exploration Literature: An Anthology was published in 1993, it was itself the outcome of an exploration. Much had been written in previous decades â indeed, centuries â about exploration in general and Canadian exploration in particular, but it was in a historical tradition even then disappearing. The eighties and nineties were the age of âtheoryâ; new concepts of Native culture, European discourse, gender socializing, all were in the air, and were being vigorously debated not only in the literature of discovery but in many academic fields across all the continents. In 1983 my article on exploration writing in English for the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature had caused much interest; I was receiving inquiries about particular explorers, and a couple of doctoral students arrived at my door with projects. For all of us, two vital questions were emerging: what had the explorers actually written, and in what ways were we reading it?
This anthology emerged from my investigation of these questions in a one-term course in the English department at the University of Toronto. None of the students had ever read any material like this before, and they were entranced; âWhy,â they repeatedly asked, âdidnât we read these texts in school, instead of just talking about them?â Or worse still, just hearing about them? Nevertheless, publishing Canadian Exploration Literature was an act of faith by William Toye of Oxford University Press. He was vindicated; the collection was enthusiastically reviewed, and remained in print for a decade. Now that Dundurn Press has shown similar faith in the project, itâs time to consider the original parameters of the book, ask what has been accomplished in further research on its authors, and survey the development of writing about exploration and discovery since the early 1990s.
If I were reviewing Canadian Exploration Literature today, I too would welcome it enthusiastically, but I would also ask (though none of the original reviewers did), âWhy are these explorers primarily writing about western and northern Canada? Where is W.E. Cormack crossing Newfoundland on his perilous journey in 1822? What about the magisterial figure of Champlain, and why hasnât some of the rich material in the Jesuit Relations been quarried for excerpts? Explorers like Thomas James and the Baron de Lahontan deserve to be represented too.â Iâm being overly severe, because we all know that both courses and books have their limits, and this was already a big book; clearly, I had to make some choices. On reflection I would make the same ones again, because the results enabled readers to engage in considerable depth with a substantial body of writing that issued from a single very large, yet varied, territory, the west and north of Canada, that existed vibrantly on the edge of colonial expansion for two centuries. âRupertâs Land,â as it is sometimes called, remains a superb laboratory for the study of all those questions about the Native experience, the explorerâs self-fashioning, gender identity, material culture, and geographical thought that have engaged the interest of the field over the past decade.
On a worldwide scale, the study of exploration and discovery has expanded enormously, as witnessed by the frequency with which encyclopedias and handbooks on travel and exploration, both early and modern, have been emerging from major publishers. They address a growing hunger in the general reader for detailed, factual information about the lives of the personalities involved in exploration, today not only the travellers themselves but the entrepreneurs, collectors, scientists, and government officials who sent them on their way, the women who travelled with them (like William Stuartâs Dene guide Thanadelthur), or those who stayed home and worried (like Lady Jane Franklin). There has been a marked broadening of horizons; in 2001 Carolyn Podruchny and I edited Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, a collection of essays by, among others, Selma Barkham, Natalie Zemon Davis, Denys Delâge, Olive Dickason, and RĂŠal Ouellet, that sought by reversing the accustomed angle of vision to consider how the encounter with Canada had affected the Europeans who first arrived here.
Most noteworthy, the Native populations the explorers encountered have begun to speak vigorously in their own voices about how it feels to be explored. John Long (for James Bay) and Wendy Wickwire (for the West Coast) have studied the oral narratives â often transmitted over centuries â of the encounters of Natives with European explorers. Samuel Hearneâs famous account of the massacre at Bloody Fall is now companioned by Robin McGrathâs article on the numerous Inuit versions of that story. Jennifer Brown and Elizabeth Vibertâs Reading Beyond Words and Laura Murray and Keren Riceâs collection Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts have both adjusted the emphasis on solely European discourse so as to focus on Native and MĂŠtis language and narrative.
The ecological movement also has led us to consider the effects of European incursion on landscapes that were routinely thought to be exploitable by extraction industries. Medical geographers like Jody Decker search the records of the Hudsonâs Bay Company for epidemiological information. The great trading companies themselves are examined by economists like Perry Gauci and H.V. Bowen. There is hardly an area of study today that does not have scholars and writers thinking about the history, modes, and consequences of European expansionism of whatever sort. Perhaps as a result, âexplorationâ has become a pervasive metaphor for the very process of critical inquiry itself.1
How we think about the writing of exploration narrative has also changed, in part because of what has been described as the âdeath of theory.â This is a rumour that has been greatly exaggerated, but c...