Prehistory of Great Bear Lake

Great Bear Lake, the largest lake in North America outside of the Great Lakes (click here to see a map locating Great Bear Lake), is situated in an area inhabited by a few hundred Athapaskan (Dene) people. This unique place is at the northern edge of the immense boreal forest where the subarctic and arctic regions meet. Since the early 1950s archaeologists from the National Museum of Man have been going to the lake and surrounding country to look for the remains of ancient campsites of early hunters who passed that way at the end of the last Ice Age and to discover evidence for more recent occupations.

Formation of Great Bear Lake

By the end of the Ice Age, about 11,000 years ago, the climate was only a little colder than it is today. Streams of meltwater slipped across the dirt-strewn ice cap, plunged into crevasses and gushed forth at the edge of the cracking ice to form Great Bear Lake. With the opening of the Great Bear River outlet through the wastage of the ice cap, the water level drastically fell and over the decades ring after ring of unvegetated rocky beach ridges formed on the western shore of the lake.

Early Migrations

During the Ice Age, most of Canada was beneath a huge ice mass. However, the land in what is now interior Alaska and adjacent parts of Siberia and the Yukon Territory was not glaciated. This area is called Beringia. Although the climate was harsh, game animals roamed freely across the land bridge which then connected Asia and North America. Hunters travelling eastward from Asia in pursuit of their prey had arrived in North America at least 11,500 years ago, possibly earlier. As lands opened in the northwestern subarctic area with the melting of the glaciers, people moved there from Beringia. Similarly, as new lands in the south of Canada opened up they were inhabited by ancestral Indians from the mid-continent region who had already migrated southward to North America by a westerly route. Although both these groups originated in Asia; they had, through separation, developed different languages and lifeways. II is believed that they met, intermarried and probably fought too, in the Mackenzie River drainage region about 11,000 years ago when the ice disappeared. Although traces of their campsites have not yet been found, their descendants could have been the first persons to reach Great Bear Lake.

Ancien Lifeways

The possibilities for living off the land in the Great Bear Lake region probably did not vary much from earliest times until the arrival of the fur traders. The people of the area hunted mainly caribou. Caribou not only provided food, but also skins for shelter coverings, boats, clothing and bags; warm hides for winter clothing and bed rolls; and even sinew for thread. There were also fish, small game like hare, and beaver. Blueberries and low bush cranberries were stored and eaten. Later, perhaps only recently, moose spread into the area and became an important resource.
 

Wood was important for construction of shelters, for tepee poles, possibly for fish traps, for caribou fences, and for canoes, and for fuel. Soon after the Ice Age, the forests spread down the Mackenzie Valley making the task of gathering wood an easier one.

5000 B.C. to 4000 B.C.
The First-Known Inhabitants

Tools of the first-known people at Great Bear Lake, referred to as Acasta people, were found in the eastern and northern parts of the lake, and east of the lake at Acasta Lake Implements include widely known types of stone tools such as knives, distinctive lobate-stemmed spear points and a peculiar form of scraper called a burinated flake (click here to see examples). The flake was shaped by craftsmen who cleaved off the whole tool edge in a single blow. It is not known what happened to the Acasta people.

4000 B.C. to 1400 B.C.
A Poorly Understood Period

Archaeological evidence of the next 3,000 years of prehistory at Great Bear Lake is fragmentary, and it is impossible to piece together a complete picture. However, many people spent busy seasons at the outlet of the lake, judging from the large numbers of manufacturing tools and knives recovered from ancient encampments. Here, where people could fish, hunt and meet travellers coming in from around the lake, stone implements, 3,500 to 5,000 years old, have been found (the Franklin Tanks and Great Bear River sites). These implements consist of spear points, knives, choppers and scrapers, and especially end-scrapers, which were intended to be mounted at the end of handles. Also discovered was a quantity of fused rock prized for making flaked tools. This material, unique to the Keel River area, must have been brought by travellers from the west. Perhaps they were planning to trade some of it to people from the east.

During this period, some of the people who lived around the lake made an interesting type of tool. It was a tiny, narrow, sharp, perfectly straight flake, like an injector razor blade in appearance (click here to see examples). Archaeologists refer to these tools and the ancient Indian groups who ma dethem as Northwest Microblade tradition. “Tradition” means a way of doing things or a style lasting a long time, presumably handed down among related peoples. Microblades were hafted to form various tools. The special techniques for making them spread from Asia to Alaska about 11,000 years ago. Microblades had reached the Mackenzie Valley by about 4,000 years ago and soon after they spread to Great Bear Lake. Perhaps they were brought in by new people from the west. However, they are found no farther eastward among the interior Indians. The migration stopped or these tools simply went out of style before people living farther east became interested in them.

1400 B.C. to 800 B.C.
Ancestral Eskimos Move Inlands

Different faces appeared and words of another language were heard across the entire barren grounds about 1400 B.C. The Palaeo-Eskimos had moved southward. These people were related to others in Alaska believed to be the ancestors of the Eskimos. Their highly distinctive, carefully flaked, small stone tools have earned them the designation Arctic Small Tool tradition, in Canada also known as the Pre-Dorset culture (click here to see examples). The Pre-Dorset people may have been forced out of the arctic islands by a change in climate, but this is not certain. Indian inhabitants of the barren grounds and northern edge of the forest withdrew to the south at the same time, or were expelled by the newcomers.

In the west the Palaeo-Eskimos moved south to Great Bear Lake. About their activities in this region there are still many unanswered questions. Did they come to the lake only for late summer caribou hunting, or did they live here all year? Did they encounter Indians, share the land and trade with them? At their camp sites around Great Bear Lake, the very few stone tools they left were scattered close to the fire-cracked rocks of a hearth or roasting pit, suggesting that they did not stay long before moving to another camp.

700 B.C. to A.D. 1800
Taltheilei People

The Arctic Small Tool people disappeared from Great Bear Lake about 800 B.C. For the next 600 years, the archaeological evidence in the region is difficult to interpret. But by about 100 B.C. people of the Taltheilei culture (found elsewhere as early as 700 B.C.) were firmly established on the eastern shores of the lake. These people were part of a single long-lasting culture who occupied the central Mackenzie District and the interior of the District of Keewatin from about 700 B.C. to the establishment of the first trading posts. They were named after a place on Great Slave Lake, where important remains of their culture have been found.

The Taltheilei craftsmen of Great Bear Lake made distinctive styles of spear and arrow points, some of which changed through the passage of time-scrapers, large and small knives, large adze bits that served in place of axes (click here to see an example), whetstones, stone drills, and small native copper knives and awls. Most bone implements and items of wood, antler, hide and fur have not survived in the soil.

Historic Period

When traders reached Great Bear Lake, about A.D. 1800, bands from several tribes were living around the lake and in its hinterlands. These people, including some of the Dogrib, Yellowknife, Hare, Slavey, and possibly the Mountain Indians, all spoke dialects of the same Athapaskan language and were related, as they are today. The Taltheilei people were ancestors of the Yellowknives and perhaps the Dogribs..

Archaeological evidence from this period tells us that the shift from native technology to imported goods was gradual. The people used wooden shelters, brush lean-tos, tepees, or conical tents, and ancient hunting aids, such as caribou fences, until the beginning of the present century (click here to see the remains of a caribou fence). Traders wrote that in the early 1800s those Indians who had not trapped enough furs to buy pots continued to cook by dropping heated stones into waterproof baskets containing meat and water-a method called stone boiling. A few early trade goods such as glass beads have been found, but musket balls and gun flints are totally lacking from archaeological collections.

Late in the last century families from the various tribes-especially Dogrib, Slavey, and Hare-whose territories touched the shores of Great Bear Lake came together in a single community. Today these people are referred to as Bear Lake Indians, or Satudene.

As this brief account has revealed, the story of the peoples of Great Bear Lake is still emerging. National Museum of Man archaeologists will continue to search for clues to provide us with a clearer picture of this remote but interesting region.

Suggested Reading

Clark, Donald, W. Archaeological Reconnaissance in Northern Interior District of Mackenzie, 1969, 1970 and 1972. National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Paper no.27. Ottawa: 1975.
Clark, Donald, W. "Archaeological Survey of Great Bear Lake, 1976." In Problems in Prehisotory of the North American Subarctic: The Athapaskan Question, edited by J.W. Helmer, S. Van Dyke and E J. Kense, 55-64. Calgary: The Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary.
Clark, Donald, W. "The Vanishing Edge of Today in the Northern District of Mackenzie: A View from Field Archaeology." Canadian Journal of Anthropology 2, no.2 (1982): 107-128.
Harp, Elmer, Jr. "Prehistory in the Dismal Lake Area, N.W.T., Canada." Arctic 11, no.4 (1958): 219-249.
MacNeish, Richard S. Two Archaeological Sites on Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada. National Museum of Canada Bulletin 136, p.54-84. Ottawa: 1955.
Noble, William C. "Prehistory of the Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake Region." In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol.6: Subarctic, edited by June Helm (volume) and W.C. Sturtevant (general), 97-106. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1981.
Morris, Margaret W. "Great Bear Lake Indians: A Historical Demography and Human Ecology. Part 1: The Situation Prior to European Contact." The Musk-Ox 11(1972): 3-27.
Morris, Margaret W. "Great Bear Lake Indians: A Historical Demography and Human Ecology. Part 2: European Influences." The Musk-Ox 12 (1973): 58-80.