Mackenzie

  In Canada they call them First Nations. Them being the people living there in various tribes before the Europeans arrived. The First Nations were happy to exchange beaver pelts for steel knives, guns and glass beads, but were leery of the downsides. Disease seemed to follow these newcomers and they had strange notions about property. They thought a person could own land for himself.

   The newcomers propagated like the beaver themselves. But they wanted so many pelts that when the beaver were wiped out in one place, they had to push further west for fresh pelts. If the newcomers got too pushy perhaps they too could be exterminated.

  One of the pushiest of the newcomers was Alexander Mackenzie from the country of Scotland. His mother died when he was ten and his father took him to New York. When the American Revolution broke out, his father fought for the British. Alexander was sent to Montreal for safety. Soon he was working as an apprentice for the North West Company.

   The Company sent Mackenzie on a mission to find a northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean. He made his way to Lake Athabasca in northern Saskatchewan. The First Nations people told Makenzie the rivers all flowed northwest. Perfect. Except the river flowed more north than west and on July 14, 1789 he arrived at the Arctic Ocean. Even this would have made a decent route to the Pacific if Alaska hadn’t been in the way. The river was later named in his honor. It has the second largest drainage system in North America after the Mississippi.

   Makenzie went to Great Britain to study longitude, then returned to Canada to try again for the Pacific. In October, 1792 he headed west with two native guides, his cousin Alex, six voyageurs, and a dog unimaginatively named Dog. They made it as far as the Peace River in Alberta where they built a fort to wait out the winter.

  When the snow melted in early May, Mackenzie wanted to head down the Fraser River to the Pacific but was warned that the First Nations people that way were hostile. He was directed over the mountains on a grease trail, so named because it was used to haul smelt oil to the interior. Smelt oil was a valuable commodity among the tribes.

  On this day in 1793 Mackenzie and his group arrived at North Bentinct Arm, an inlet of the Pacific about 300 miles northwest of Vancouver, British Columbia. Mackenzie wanted to continue west another seventy miles for a clear view of the ocean, but the local First Nation tribe brandishing spears in their war canoes blocked his way. It’s unclear what their problem was. Perhaps they had an omen Mackenzie and his ilk portended bad medicine for their descendants.

   Mackenzie mixed up bear grease and vermilion and wrote “Mackenzie was here” on a rock then headed for home. He and his group had completed the first recorded crossing of North America north of Mexico and they did it twelve years ahead of Lewis and Clark. 

  Back east, Mackenzie published his journals, got knighted, and served in the Ontario legislature. In 1812 at the age of 48 he returned to Scotland and married the 14 year old Geddes Mackenzie (same clan, no blood relationship). They had three children and were apparently happy, until Mackenzie died of Bright's Disease at the age of 55 or 56. No one knows the exact date of his birth c.1764.

Alexander Mackenzie, at the age of 35 or 36