Matonabbee

Path Matonabbees and Samuel Hearnes on the joint expedition.

Matonabbee (* around 1737, † after August 1782 ) was a hunter and outstanding leader of the Chipewyan or Dene. He played an important role in the development of the north of British North America and was of decisive importance for the success of Samuel Hearne's 3rd expedition .

biography

Matonabbee's mother was married to an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company and lived permanently with the British. It had fallen into the hands of a group of Cree , but was ransomed by the British. After the death of his father, Governor Richard Norton took the boy in at Fort Prince of Wales , where he learned a little the English language. In 1741 his father's relatives took him home because the fort's new factor, James Isham, did not care for him. Only when Ferdinand Jacobs became the new factor did he return in 1752. In addition to English, he learned Cree . At the end of the 1750s, the HBC used him as a mediator between two divided groups, the "Athapuscow Indians", ie Cree, who lived on Lake Athabasca , and some groups of the Chipewyan. He managed to equalize.

In 1762 he and another Indian named Idotliazee were commissioned by Richard Norton's son Moses Norton to explore the copper deposits on the Coppermine River . In 1767, Matonabbee brought a copper lump from this expedition. This prompted Moses Norton to move the Hudson's Bay Company to a larger overland expedition. Samuel Hearne was to lead the expedition, but he had already failed in 1769 and 1770 - probably by the guides chosen by Norton. On his first attempt, his guide Chawchinahaw left him in the lurch shortly after leaving, and his second guide Conneequese was lost after a few months in what would later become the Dubawnt River Country in the Northwest Territories .

In the third expedition, which lasted almost 19 months, Matonabbee, who attributed the double failure to the lack of women, played a major role in the success of the expedition, which lasted from 1770 to 1772. He was an experienced organizer and recognized the indispensable role that women's skills played. This included numerous jobs such as cooking and the manufacture and repair of clothing, the quality of which the survival of the expedition members in the extreme climate depended on. They also knew how the diet had to be composed in order to avoid deficiency symptoms. In addition, the relief of carrying the men gave them better opportunities to swarm in a wide area in search of food. Matonabbee herself had seven wives, Hearne reports. In addition, they adapted their movement through the vast area to the paths of the caribou and bison herds.

Mattonabee's influence was so great that he prompted entire “gangs” of Indian fur traders to come to the Company's fort to sell their booty. He also organized such groups himself, who carried out the exchange of goods over the vast distances. He maintained contacts as far as the Yellowknife , the Chipewyan who lived furthest away, as well as some Dogrib . Hearne describes him as an extremely polite, six foot tall man. His conversation was fluid, light and pleasant, at the same time modest, "mixing the liveliness of the French, the seriousness of an Englishman and the dignity and nobility of a Turk in the most pleasant way". He liked to drink Spanish wine, but he was never drunk. The only thing that resented Hearne was his attempt to kill the husband of the woman he had stolen. Usually, according to his account, such a dispute took the form of a strictly ritualized wrestling match.

During the Hearne expedition, he and his men killed a group of around 20 Inuit on July 14, 1771 . This massacre came to be known as the Bloody Falls Massacre . The Bloody Falls were declared a National Historic Site in 1978 and are now part of the Kugluk (Bloody Falls) Territorial Park in Nunavut .

In 1772 the merchants of the Hudson's Bay Company made him head of the Chipewyan, which completely misunderstood the power structures of this large Indian group. For the local leaders, the chief was only important and accepted because it offered good contacts to the company.

The death of many Chipewyan during a smallpox epidemic, the French conquest of Fort Prince of Wales , the destruction of the Churchill Factory in 1782, and the capture of his friend Samuel Hearne that same year all caused Matonabbee to commit suicide. With these catastrophes his outstanding position of power was destroyed.

This is the first mention in the literature of a suicide by a North American Indian person.

literature

• Strother Roberts: The Life and Death of Matonabbee: Fur Trade and Leadership among the Chipewyan, 1736–1782. In: Manitoba History. Volume 55, June 2007, pp. 7-17.

Web links

• Matonabbee . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
• Matonabbee ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
• Samuel Hearne's statements about Matonabbee