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Alberta Online Encyclopedia
Virtual Museum of Canada The Making of Treaty #8 in Canada's Northwest
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1899 and After

Dog teams, Boats, Snowmobiles and Aircraft

   
Native northerners required transportation for collecting food, operating traplines and personal travel - as individuals, families and groups of families. The northwestern bush land is full of lakes rivers, and it was natural for the bush land people to use the waterways for travel. In the summer the water was open for travel by boat, and in the winter the frozen surfaces made good highways for travel by toboggan.

People living in northern forests traditionally had their principal residences near the shores of lakes or rivers. Lakes and rivers have always been the trappers' main "highways" and these local routes connected with major overland transportation routes to more outlying areas. Summer travel by water transport was always a connecting link in the social and economic life of bush land people.

Chipewyan Skiffs Barge Traditional Style Canoe Clearwater River Packing a Trail
Fishing in a Skiff Wolf-Dog Trappers in a Skiff Sled Dog Carryall
Sled Dog Harness Lake Fishing Building a Skiff Snowmobiles Airplane
Rat Canoe Chipewyan Skiff A Trapper and a Boat Builder Dog Race Pulling a Carryall

Reprinted from Bush Land People with the permission of the author. Copyright Terry Garvin, 1992-2002.

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