To the Mountains

“The Headwaters of the Canoe River,” painting by James Vanslyk, Valemount Historical Society. Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History, Valemount Historical Society, & Kootenay Gallery of Art, History & Science, image number 0105.0001

In an earlier blogpost in this series, Governor George Simpson and John Rowand reached Edmonton House, on the North Saskatchewan River. In this post, we should make it to the Mountains and perhaps through them: the mountains in this case being the Rocky Mountains. How far we will get, I do not yet know. But to remind yourself of where we have been and how we got to Edmonton House, then read this last post in the series: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/simpson-edmonton/ 

So, on July 23, 1841, the rough notes read, “Edmonton on the Saskatchewan. Cool & [misty].” And the book, An Overland Journey round the world during the years 1841 and 1842. (By the way, there is also a book titled, “Narrative of an Overland Journey…” and while I did accidently download it, I haven’t compared it with An Overland Journey. It might actually be interesting to see the differences between the two publications, if any exist).

You can order my books, The HBC Brigades, and The York Factory Express, through Amazon if you wish — at https://amazon.com/author/nancymargueriteanderson

However, if you don’t want to use Amazon, then order from me via my contact sheet on my home page. I have Paypal; when paid, I will sign the books (if you wish), and mail them off to you. 

From my rough copy of “Rough Notes:” “28 July. Crossed the Saskatchewan… 60 miles by the clear stream of Atchakapesequa Seepee or Smoking-Weed River.” These men left Edmonton and are travelling south toward the Red Deer River. Now, I don’t know if the First Nations [Blackfoot?] name for the “Smoking Weed River” is correctly spelled, and perhaps someone from Edmonton area can correct it for us. But Smoking Weed River: do they mean tobacco? 

Googling this question makes absolutely no sense, because of course all you come up with is Marijuana. However, I changed the wording of my search slightly, and discovered that in the Ponoka News, there is a 2008 article titled “The hills and valleys were covered with spruce, poplar, and smoking weed.” In 1863, Captain John Palliser “explored the rugged area from Fort Edmonton to Mountain House (now Rocky Mountain House); tracing some of the footsteps of the legendary explorer David Thompson.” On January 11, 1863, Palliser wrote 

This morning, keeping a little more to the west, our course hitherto having been SSW, we soon reached a range of hills, over which we had to pass. We entered them along a very abrupt gully, in which runs Weed Creek, called after the smoking weed, which is found in great abundance here.

Unfortunately Palliser does not give us the Indigenous name of the river. But it does at the moment sound like Palliser is following Governor Simpson’s route, especially as Palliser’s route ended up in a marshland, just like Simpson’s did. This is what the book, An Overland Journey, says:

About five in the morning of the twenty-eighth of July, we started from Edmonton in high spirits with a fresh band of forty-five fine horses, and struck into the adjacent woods before the Indians made their appearance on the opposite side of the river. Crossing the [North] Saskatchewan at the place where we found our boats, we breakfasted in a secluded spot; and thence we pursued our course during the whole day through a land of marshes and thickets, forming a remarkable contrast with the rolling prairies which we had recently traversed. As the forest had been almost entirely destroyed by fire, the fallen timber, often concealed alike from horse and rider by the high grass, occasioned a good deal both of delay and danger. In spite, however, of all our difficulties, we contrived with our new stud [?], to accomplish sixty miles by eight in the evening.

Was the “stud” the guide, who was a First Nations man named Peechee, a man who Simpson said was a great man among the First Nations people who were here. I don’t have the answer to that question. 

The next day, the “Rough Notes” read: “29 July. Beyond the level prairie. Among woods. The scenery bolder… Encamped on the banks of fish Lake 20 x 6 near Fort Pitt.” ????? They are nowhere near Fort Pitt, of course. But the book itself clears this up:

In the morning, Mr. Rundle accompanied us as far as the Battle River, which falls into the Saskatchewan near Fort Pitt.

Reverend Robert Terrill Rundle is the Wesleyan missionary at Edmonton House. He arrived there on October 18, 1840, and spent eight years in the area, leaving in the autumn of 1848 for England. That shortens the timeline for this story a little: this shared journey to the Smoking Weed River can only have occurred between late 1840 and the Waillatpu Massacre in November 1847. However, Rundle’s bio on Dictionary of Canadian Biography online does not mention that he travelled with George Simpson in 1841, but it does have him at Carlton House with his kitten, as mentioned in Paul Kane’s journal. (In 1846, Paul Kane crossed the Rockies into the Columbia district by Athabasca Pass, and he left the Columbia in the outgoing Fall Express of 1847, shortly before the Massacre at Waillatpu. We know this because he met Thomas Lowe at Boat Encampment, and went over the mountains to Edmonton House with the horses that had brought Lowe from Jasper’s House. Paul Kane mentions Lowe, and Lowe mentions Paul Kane in his own 1847 York Factory Express journal.)

So, a bit of a diversion. The next entry in the book is this: 

After passing two or three very beautiful lagoons, we encamped for the night on the banks of the Gull Lake, a fine sheet of transparent waters of about twenty miles in length by five or six in width, surrounded by high hills, of which the remotest summits to the westward command a view of the Rocky Mountains.

So this explains that “20 x 6 near Fort Pitt” that I had above: the 20 x 6 refers to the size of Gull Lake. Gull Lake is also mentioned in Rundle’s biography, and on January 12, 1863, Captain Palliser also reached Gull Lake, which he says is on the South Saskatchewan River system. In fact, the stream that emptied Gull Lake flowed into the Red Deer River. Is Gull Lake now called Sylvan Lake? No. Sylvan Lake is about 12 miles south of today’s Gull Lake.

From “Rough Notes:” July 30 (they crossed Red Deer River.) From the book, 

Soon after the commencement of our afternoon’s march, we had to cross the Red Deer’s River, a large and beautiful stream flowing between well wooded banks of considerable height; and while we were riding three or four miles down the current in quest  of a ford, we found on the bank perfectly fresh tracks of bear, red deer [elk], moose, antelopes and wolves. Had we been on a hunting excursion instead of travelling against time we might here have enjoyed a few days of excellent sport. While the horses were fording the river, we had a pleasant bath, after which we continued our march across a prairie almost covered with dwarf willows.

From “Rough Notes,” it seems they are on the Bow River near the Mountains west of Calgary. The book says:

It was six o’clock next morning before our people returned with the missing horses, which they had found about fifteen miles behind. On starting we proceeded up a bold pass in the mountains, in which we crossed two branches of the Bow River, the south branch, as already mentioned, of the Saskatchewan. 

About two in the afternoon we reached, as Peechee assured us, the Bow River Traverse, the spot at which a fresh guide from the west side of the mountains, of the name of Berland, was to meet us with a relay of horses. But whether this was the Bow River Traverse or not, no Berland was here to be found. Thinking that the two guides might have different notions as to the precise place of rendezvous, we dispatched two men to another crossing place about twenty miles farther up the stream, instructing them, according to circumstances, either to return to this point and pursue our track, or else to cut across the country in order to join us. 

The guide who is supposed to meet them here is Edouard Berland, long in charge of the post in the Kootenays: sometimes called Kootenais House. We will come up with him later in this journal. And, in fact, Bruce Watson says of Berland in his Lives Lived West of the Divide:

In the fall of 1841, he had been assigned to provide Governor George Simpson with horses at the Continental Divide, and sketched a pictograph message with a piece of burnt wood on a tree, signing his name. After some confusion and contact was made, Berland guided the party to three hot springs which he claimed had cured him from a severe illness two winters previously…

According to the “Rough Notes,” on August 4 the men in this party were at the sources of the Columbia River and the South Saskatchewan. This journal and (I believe) the book does not mention the Sinclair Expedition who is following in their footsteps, having apparently decided not to take Simpson’s advice to cross the mountains by Athabasca Pass. It is at this point that the “Rough Notes” tells us that “this is better than the Athabasca Pass where there is perpetual snow and no trees, the Punch Bowl supplying the Columbia [and] McKenzie [Mackenzie] Rivers.” This is what the book, An Overland Journey, says:  

About seven hours of hard work brought us to the height of land, the hinge, as it were, between the eastern and the western waters. We breakfasted on a level isthmus which did not exceed fourteen paces in width, filling our kettles for this our lonely meal at once from the crystal sources of the Columbia and the Saskatchewan, while these welling feeders of two opposite oceans, murmuring over their beds of mossy stones as if to bid each other a long farewell, could hardly fail to attune our minds to the sublimity of the scene. But between these kindred fountains, the common progeny of the same snow-wreaths, there was this remarkable difference of temperature, that the course of the Columbia showed 40 degrees, while that of the Saskatchewan raised the mercury to 53 1/2 degrees, the thermometer meanwhile standing as high as 71 degrees in the shade.

Oh, so romantic! It doesn’t actually sound like Governor Simpson, does it? I am taking a bet that Edward Martin Hopkins, his secretary, who is accompanying him on this journey, wrote the physical book. Did you know that in 1841, Hopkins (born in 1820) was barely twenty-one years old when he accompanied Simpson on this journey? Here is Hopkins’s story, from Bruce Watson’s Lives Lived:

 Edward Martin Hopkins spent only a couple of months in the Columbia as personal secretary and assistant to George Simpson. Uncle to the future poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Edward was at first a parliamentary reporter. Soon after joining the HBC and becoming secretary to George Simpson, he embarked on a round the world voyage. In early 1841, Hopkins and Simpson departed Liverpool, and and from Boston, made their way from Montreal across land and arrived at Fort Vancouver on August 25, 1841. After a short stop at Fort Vancouver, the group headed north, but on September 8, 1841, Hopkins took charge of Fort Nisqually while Simpson went north to Sitka. When Simpson returned, Hopkins joined him for the trip to California and eventually the Sandwich Islands, where Hopkins rested for one month. As Simpson felt that Hopkins could not hold up under the rigours of the voyage, he sent him back to Fort Vancouver with dispatches for London on March 14, 1842. From there he [Hopkins] made his way up the Columbia to York Factory….

From there he made his way up the Columbia to York Factory in the outgoing Express led by my great-grandfather, Alexander Caulfield Anderson. Another note here: Hopkins was not yet married. He would marry his first wife in 1847, and his second in 1858. His second wife was the now-famous painter, Frances Ann Hopkins. 

Back to Governor Simpson’s campsite: pull out your copy of Mapmakers Eye, by Jack Nisbet, and see the map on page 43. The very western end of the Bow River, and the north-eastern end of a tributary of the Kootenay River, are very close to each other. That’s exactly where these men are!

When I continue this journey, it will be posted here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/through-the-mountains/ 

To return to the beginning of this story, go here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/simpsons-rough-notes/ 

Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2025. All rights reserved.

• ← Simpson to Edmonton House
• Through the Mountains →