Hudson's Bay Archives HBCA-G1-25-001
the earliest maps of the west Earlier maps prepared the ground work for Dawson’s 1879-80 survey. Peter Fidler, a fur trader, surveyor, explorer and cartographer, born in 1769 in Bolsever England, joined the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1788 as a labourer. He reached York Factory on Hudson’s Bay by ship and was given intensive instruction in surveying and astronomy during the winter of 1789-90 by cartographer Philip Turnor, who was the first surveyor engaged by the Hudson’s Bay Company to work in the northwestern interior of the continent. In early 1791 Fidler spent several months living with the Chipewyans in what was to become northern Saskatchewan, and spent the following winter with them in the area of Great Slave Lake (in today’s North West Territories), learning their language. The ability to transact business with Indigenous Peoples in their own language was a significant step if traders at the time were to successfully complete their work.
The cooperative arrangement between Peter Fidler and the indigenous people he encountered greatly assisted his ability to survey and map the western territories. An example of this are the 'Indian maps' he drafted between 1801 and 1810, now preserved in the Hudson’s Bay Company archives in Winnipeg. His 1801 map, one of many, was first drawn in the snow by Ac Ko Mok Ki, a Blackfoot leader, in February 1801, and copied onto paper by Fidler. This map describes a very large region of the western North American territories. West is at the top. The double line crossing from left to right represents the Rocky Mountains. Two rivers run west from the Rockies and seventeen rivers flow eastward. The line down the centre of the map is the Missouri River. Fidler added many details of the Indigenous tribal populations in the region .2
2 Judith Hudson Beattie. 'Indian maps in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives: A Comparison of Five Area Maps Recorded by Peter Fidler, 1801-1802' Archivaria 21 (January 1985-6) pp 166-75 https://archivaria.ca/index.pp/archivaria/article/view/11246
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on site review 42: atlas :: being in place
:: colonial processes
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