Samuel Hearne

Samuel Hearne
Samuel Hearne
	Samuel Hearne
Born	1745; England
Died	November 1792 (aged 47)
Occupation	explorer

Samuel Hearne (1745 – November 1792) was an English explorer, fur-trader, author, and naturalist. He was the first European to make an overland excursion across northern Canada to the Arctic Ocean. In 1774 Hearne built Cumberland House for the Hudson’s Bay Company, its first interior trading post and the first permanent settlement in present Saskatchewan.

Early life

Samuel Hearne was born in February 1745 in London,England. Hearne’s father was a senior engineer of the London Bridge Water Works but he died in 1748. After some elementary education, (he failed grade 1) Hearne joined the Royal Navy in 1756 as midshipman under the fighting captain Samuel Hood. He remained with Hood during the Seven Years' War, seeing considerable action during the conflict, including the bombardment of Le Havre. At the end of the Seven Years' War, having served in the English Channel and then the Mediterranean, he left the navy in 1763. His activities during the next three years are unknown.

In February 1766 he joined the Hudson’s Bay Company as a mate on the sloop Churchill, which was then engaged in the Inuit trade out of Prince of Wales Fort, Churchill, Manitoba. Two years later he became mate on the brigantine Charlotte and participated in the company’s short-lived black whale fishery. In 1768, he examined portions of the Hudson Bay coasts with a view to improving the cod fishery. During this time he gained a reputation for snowshoeing.

Hearne was able to improve his navigational skills by observing William Wales who was at Hudson Bay during 1768-1769 after being commissioned by the Royal Society to observe the Transit of Venus with Joseph Dymond.

Exploration

From 1769 to 1772, Hearne was employed in north-western discovery, searching especially for certain copper mines described by Indians as "Far-Away-Metal River". These copper mines were found in the Barren Lands where the ground is permanently frozen to within a few inches of the surface, creating, in many areas, vast stretches of mosquito- and fly-infested swamp during the summer thaw. For this reason it was decided that travel in winter was preferable.

His first attempt began on 6 November 1769. The large size of the expedition and too much European equipment being carried led to the desertion of his Indian guides and the failure of the expedition. His second, commencing 23 February 1770, failed because his quadrant was broken and much of his equipment was stolen.

Learning from the mistakes of the first two expeditions Hearne contrived to travel as the only European with a group of Indians led by the great chief Matonabbee. The group also included eight of Matonabbee's wives to act as beasts of burden in the sledge traces, camp servants, and cooks. This third expedition set out in December 1770, in order to reach the Coppermine River in summer, by which he could descend to the Arctic in canoes.

Matonabbee kept a fast pace, so fast they reached the great caribou traverse before provisions dwindled and in time for the spring hunt. Here all the Indian hunters of the north gathered to hunt the vast herds of caribou migrating north for summer. A store of meat was laid up for Hearne's voyage and a band of warriors joined the expedition. Matonabbee ordered the women to wait for his return in the Athabasca country to the west.

The Chipewyans were generally a mild and peaceful people, however they were in a state of conflict with the Inuit. A great number of Indians joined Hearne's party to accompany them to the Coppermine River with intent to murder Inuit, who were understood to frequent that river in considerable numbers.^[1]

On July 14, 1771, they reached the Coppermine River, a small stream flowing over a rocky bed in the "Barren Lands of the Little Sticks". A few miles down the river, just above a cataract, were the domed wigwams of an Eskimo camp. At 1am on July 17, 1771 Matonabbee and the other Indians fell upon the sleeping Eskimo in a ruthless massacre. Approximately twenty men, women and children were killed; this would be known as the Massacre at Bloody Falls.

...a young girl, seemingly about eighteen years of age, [was] killed so near me, that when the first spear was stuck into her side she fell down at my feet, and twisted round my legs, so that it was with difficulty that I could disengage myself from her dying grasps. As two Indian men pursued this unfortunate victim, I solicited very hard for her life; but the murderers made no reply till they had stuck both their spears through her body...even at this hour I cannot reflect on the transactions of that horrid day without shedding tears.

^[2]

A few days later Hearne was the first European to reach the shore of the Arctic Ocean by an overland route. By tracing the Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean he had established there was no northwest passage through the continent at lower latitudes.

This expedition also proved successful in its primary goal by discovering copper in the Coppermine River basin. However an intensive search of the area yielded only one four-pound lump of copper and commercial mining was not considered viable.

Matonabbee led Hearne back to Churchill by a wide westward circle past Bear Lake in Athabasca Country. In midwinter he became the first European to see and cross Great Slave Lake. Hearne returned to Fort Prince of Wales on 30 June 1772 having walked some 5,000 miles (8,000 km) and explored more than 250,000 square miles (650,000 km²).

Later life

Hearne was sent to Saskatchewan to establish Fort Cumberland, the second inland trading post for the Hudson's Bay Company in 1774 (the first being Henley House, established in 1743, 200 km up the Albany River). Having learned to live off the land, he took minimal provisions for the eight Europeans and two Home Guard Crees who accompanied him.

After consulting some local chiefs, Hearne chose a strategic site on Pine Island Lake in the Saskatchewan River, 60 miles (97 km) above Basquia. The site was linked to both the Saskatchewan River trade route and the Churchill system.

He became governor of Fort Prince of Wales on 22 January 1776. On 8 August 1782 Hearne and his complement of 38 civilians were confronted by a French force under the comte de La Pérouse composed of three ships, including one of 74 guns, and 290 soldiers. As a veteran Hearne recognized hopeless odds and surrendered without a shot. Hearne and some of the other prisoners were allowed to sail back to England from Hudson Strait in a small sloop.

Hearne returned the next year but found trade had deteriorated. The Indian population had been decimated by smallpox and starvation due to the lack of normal hunting supplies of powder and shot. Matonabbee had committed suicide and the rest of Churchill’s leading Indians had moved to other posts. Hearne's health began to fail and he delivered up command at Churchill on 16 August 1787 and returned to England.

In the last decade of his life he used his experiences on the barrens, on the northern coast, and in the interior to help naturalists like Thomas Pennant in their researches. His friend William Wales was a teacher at Christ's Hospital and he assisted Hearne to write A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean. This was published in 1795, three years after Hearne's death of dropsy in November 1792 at the age of 47.^[3]

Legacy

On 1 July 1767 he chiseled his name on smooth, glaciated stone at Sloop's Cove near Fort Prince of Wales where it remains today.

One of Wales's pupils, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, made a brief notebook entry where he mentioned Hearne's book. Hearne may have been one of the inspirations for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Hearne's journals and maps were proven correct by Sir John Franklin when he verified the discovery of the massacre at Bloody Falls during his own Coppermine Expedition of 1819-1822. He wrote:

Several human skulls which bore the marks of violence, and many bones were strewed about the encampment, and as the spot exactly answers the description, given by Mr. Hearne, of the place...

^[4]

Hearne is mentioned by Charles Darwin in the sixth chapter of The Origin of Species:

In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water.

^[5]

There is a Junior/Senior High School that was built and named after him in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. A school in Toronto, Ontario was also built in his name in 1973.

References

^ Laut, Agnes C. (1909), Canada: the Empire of the North (1st ed.), Boston and London: Ginn and Company, retrieved 2009-11-09
^ Hearne, Samuel (1795), A journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, in Hudson’s Bay, to the northern ocean . . . in the years 1769, 1770, 1771 & 1772, London: Strahan & Cadell, retrieved 2009-11-09
^ Canadian Association of Aboriginal Entrepreneurship, http://www.aurora-inn.mb.ca/hearne.html {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^ Franklin, John (1824), Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-2 (3rd ed.), London: John Murray, retrieved 2009-11-09
^ Darwin, Charles (1859), [[On the Origin of Species]] by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1st ed.), London: John Murray, retrieved 2009-11-09 {{citation}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)

Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

Early life

Exploration

Later life

Legacy

References

Further reading