the liberated Clarke. Arrested by the persistent Samuel Black in October on charges of attempted murder and imprisoned in Fort Chipewyan (Alta), Robertson contrived to smuggle out messages to his men

NWC was far more strongly established than the HBC. The explorers therefore stayed at the NWC’s Fort Chipewyan (Alta) rather than at the HBC post. Through correspondence with Willard Ferdinand Wentzel

colony and the United States. An Athapaskan tribe, the Chipewyans, occupied the basins of the Churchill, Athabasca, and Mackenzie rivers. Red River was

the mouth of the Reindeer River. Finally, in 1796, while Ross went down to the bay for a new outfit of supplies, Thompson dashed north from Fairford House with two young Chipewyan guides and reached the

, and he is said to have had one-eighth Indian blood, his paternal grandmother being a Franco-Chipewyan Métisse. Louis Sr, an educated man, had obtained land on the Red River, where he gained a