Samuel Hearne

1745-1792

English Explorer

The first European to travel across the vast interior of northern Canada, Samuel Hearne also became the first to reach the Arctic Ocean from North America via an overland route. The findings of his journey, including the discovery of the Coppermine River, added to the growing knowledge that no viable Northwest Passage existed between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

Born in London in 1745, Hearne was the son of an engineer who died when Hearne was three years old. By age 11, he was working as a servant on a Royal Navy ship, and would remain in the naval service until the age of 18. At that point he took a post as mate on a trading ship bound for Churchill, Manitoba.

Churchill was a fur-trading post, but at that time Hearne's employer, the Hudson's Bay Company, had begun looking for opportunities to diversify. Copper looked promising, and after proving himself by his service to the company at sea, Hearne was commissioned to undertake an expedition for copper deposits in the Canadian interior.

He made the first of three trips in November 1769, but his Native American guide deserted him, and Hearne was forced to turn back. Another attempt in the following February ended in disaster, and Hearne spent several months wandering alone. On the third try, however, he had a highly experienced guide, the Chipewyan chief Matonabbee.

Departing from Churchill in early December 1770, the party crossed a wide desert, living on buffalo and caribou, before arriving at the Coppermine River on July 14, 1771. Along the way, the Chipewyan met a band of Inuit, their enemies, and Hearne later recorded the slaughter of the Inuit that he witnessed. The party followed the Coppermine all the way to the Arctic Ocean, then turned upstream to look for copper.

Though in fact there are sizeable copper deposits in the area, Hearne ran out of time before he could locate them, and returned with nothing more than a lump of copper he had found. On his trip back south with Matonabbee and the others, he became the first white man to see and cross the Great Slave Lake. They reached Churchill at the end of June 1772.

Recognizing Hearne's abilities, the Hudson's Bay Company chose him to open its first inland trading post, and in the winter of 1774-75 he established Cumberland House, the first European settlement in what came to be the province of Saskatchewan. Later he became head of the post at Churchill, and in this capacity was charged with defending it during the American Revolution. The post was attacked by French allies of the Americans in August 1782, and Hearne was forced to surrender to the superior forces.

In the following year, Hearne rebuilt the fort at Churchill, and continued at his post until he retired to England in 1787. He later recounted his historic travels in A Journey from Prince of Wales' Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean. This book and his journals were published in 1795, three years after his death at the age of 47.

JUDSON KNIGHT