Yellowknives

The Yellowknives, who call themselves T'atsaot'ine (in the Wíílíídeh dialect, Tetsǫ́t'ınę), are a First Nations people of the Northwest Territories of Canada and one of the main groups of the Dene. Fur traders and explorers also knew them as the Copper Indians or Red Knives. Their English name, which later passed to the territorial capital Yellowknife, refers to the copper from which they made knives and other tools.

The historic Yellowknives lived north and north-east of Great Slave Lake, in the country of the Yellowknife River and its bay, and ranged northward along the Coppermine River, north-east to the Back River and east to the Thelon. The big rivers of this land served as their roads for travel and trade, reaching as far east as Hudson Bay. They were closely related to the Chipewyan, or Denesuline, and are described in some accounts as the north-westernmost Chipewyan group, with their own dialect. The copper deposits of the north, which they worked and traded, gave them both their reputation and their names.

European explorers encountered the Yellowknives in the 1770s, and Yellowknives helped guide the explorer Samuel Hearne over the tundra between Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean as he looked for the copper sources. Later explorers who traded with them marked the Yellowknife River on their maps. In the early nineteenth century the Yellowknives traded meat to the North West Company's post of Fort Providence on Great Slave Lake.

Their best-known leader of this period was Akaitcho (about 1786–1838). In 1820, when his people numbered about 190, he agreed to act as guide and hunter for John Franklin's Coppermine Expedition in search of the Northwest Passage. In return Akaitcho asked for his band's debts to the trading company to be cancelled and for goods such as cloth, ammunition, tobacco and iron. When the starving survivors of Franklin's party reached their winter base of Fort Enterprise in late 1821, Yellowknife hunters brought them meat and fish and helped them reach Fort Providence. In 1825 Akaitcho took part in a peace with the Tłı̨chǫ (Dogrib) chief Edzo, ending a long period of warfare between the two peoples.

The Yellowknives and Tłı̨chǫ, who also lived along the north shore of Great Slave Lake, had long been enemies. In the 1830s the Tłı̨chǫ were reported to have almost destroyed the Yellowknives; accounts differ on whether the survivors scattered south of the lake or intermarried with the Tłı̨chǫ. In 1899 Chief Snuff signed Treaty 8 for the Yellowknives. A group lived on the Taltson River near Rocher River until their schoolhouse burned down in the early 1960s and they had to move; soon afterwards the Taltson hydroelectric dam was built, which their last chief there, Pierre Frise, had strongly opposed. Families dispersed to Fort Resolution, Yellowknife and elsewhere.

After gold was discovered in the Yellowknife area, Tłı̨chǫ, Chipewyan and Yellowknives families settled in and around the new town. The Dene village of Ndilǫ was built in the mid-1950s at the tip of Latham Island, next to the Old Town of Yellowknife. The Yellowknives Dene First Nation, formerly the Yellowknife B Band, was formed in 1991, with most members living in Ndilǫ and Dettah, across Yellowknife Bay from the city. Their Wíílíídeh dialect grew out of intermarriage between Yellowknives and Tłı̨chǫ. Descendants of the Yellowknives also belong to the Deninu Kųę́ First Nation at Fort Resolution and the Łutsël K'é Dene First Nation, and these nations are organised together in the Akaitcho Territory Government, named after the nineteenth-century chief. They are negotiating a settlement of their land rights through the Akaitcho land claim process.

Our maps label the Yellowknives' territory with their own name, T'atsaot'ine, and draw it on the 1530, 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783 and 1800 maps, north-east of Great Slave Lake beside other Dene and Cree lands and south of the Inuit. The outline is approximate.