tsekanies

Updated: May 7, 2025

Of the larger quadrupeds bears only are numerous, and in all their varieties, grizzled, black, brown, and chocolate: numbers of them are taken by the natives in wooden traps. A chance moose or reindeer is sometimes found. The mountain sheep generally keeps aloft in the most inaccessible parts of the mountains, and is seldom "bagged" by a Carrier, but often by the Tsekanies.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

The Takelly, or Carrier language is a dialect of the Chippewayan; and it is rather a singular fact, that the two intervening dialects of the Beaver Indians and Tsekanies, kindred nations, should differ more from the Chippewayan than the Carrier; the two latter nations being perfectly intelligible to each other, while the former are but very imperfectly understood by their immediate neighbours, the Chippewayans.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

There are four varieties of salmon, distinguished from each other by the peculiar form of the head; the largest species seems to be the same we have in the rivers of Britain, and weighs from ten to twenty pounds; the others do not exceed half that weight. New Caledonia is inhabited by the Takelly or Carrier nation, and by a few families of Tsekanies on the north-eastern extremity of the district.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

They seemed to be on the best possible terms together the white chief and his red "tail". They are Tsekanies, and are reputed honest, industrious, and faithful. The outfit for this post is conveyed on horse-back from Stuart's Lake.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

John's should be abandoned, and the establishment removed to the Rocky Mountain portage, for the convenience of the Tsekanies, who were excellent hunters, but who could not be well supplied from this post, on account of the greatness of the distance. Unfortunately a quarrel had arisen about this time between the Indians of St. John's and the Tsekanies.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

I consider the passage of this portage the most laborious duty the Company's servants have to perform in any part of the territory; and, as the voyageurs say, "He that passes it with his share of a canoe's cargo may call himself a man." In the passage we came upon a large camp of Tsekanies, Mr. Eraser's customers.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.