Stepping Westward | 27

Mackenzie journeyed down by dog-team over the ice about Christmas time and remained there until February 1780, when he accompanied the winter express up the Athabasca as far as “The Old Establishment.”

By this post he informed his partners at Grande Portage of the building of Fort Chipewyan, and the opening up of an extensive trade with the Chipewyan Indians who had been accustomed to trade at Hudson Bay, though it cost them a seven months’ Journey. Boyer, who had been sent up the Peace, was going out, and Vaudreuil was being sent in to take his place. Le Roux had returned from the north side of Great Slave Lake on 22 March, where he had been trading with the Red-Knives and the Slaves, to whom he had promised a rendezvous that summer on the west side of the lake.

In May Roderick Mackenzie left for Grande Portage and says that, when he left Chipewyan, ‘“‘Mr. Mackenzie was preparing for his voyage of discovery.”

Speaking of Fort Chipewyan, Mackenzie: says “This being the place which I made my headquarters for eight years, and from whence I took my departure, on both my expeditions, I shall give some account of it, with the manner of carrying on the trade there, and other circumstances connected with it.

‘The laden canoes which leave Lake la Pluie [Rainy Lake] about the first of August, do not arrive here till the latter end of September, or the beginning of October, when a necessary proportion of them is dispatched up the Peace River to trade with the Beaver and Rocky Mountain Indians. Others are sent to Slave River and Lake or beyond them, and trafic with the inhabitants of that country. A small part of them if not left at the Fork of the Elk River [Athabasca River], return thither for the Knisteneaux,