Mackenzie River

Well, bear in mind that at the time Meadowcroft was discovered, a particular model for the peopling of the New World that had been promulgated in 1933 basically had persisted relatively unchallenged.

Uh, that model essentially says that roughly 13,000 years ago, a small group of hunters crossed the Bering Straits on foot, passed between the waning Cordilleran and Laurentian ice sheets down the Mackenzie River drainage and ended up on the east side of the Rockies, and thereafter basically sprinted to the tip of South America in 500 years, killing off 35 genera of Ice Age animals.

It was a rather dramatic story.

Their signature artifact was the so-called Clovis Fluted Projectile Point, and despite the fact that between 1933 and 1973, more than 500 archeological sites had been discovered in North and South America and claimed to be older than this Clovis horizon, none of them withstood the barrage of criticism that obtained and each time one of them had its Warholesque 15 minutes of fame and disappeared, it reinforced that old model and the resistance to yet another claimant like Meadowcroft was fierce and it was suggested that, but never demonstrated that the early radiocarbon dates from the site and only the early ones, there are 52 dates from the site of which 11 are older than Clovis.

There was an interpreter on board, Mierczing by name, so that whenever any natives were encountered, inquiries could be made for tidings of the missing explorers.

At Cape Bathurst, near the Mackenzie River, a part Franklin had explored many years before, a large tribe was observed, and at once a boat party put off from the ship.

As they approached the shore, 30 tents and nine winter houses were seen.

Immediately the boats were run ashore, a tremendous stir was caused in the village, the men running to and fro and then charging down a steep slope to where the boats were aground on the beach.

Rosanne and I, uh, have kayaked in the North-- Pacific Northwest.

We've kayaked the Mackenzie River out to the Beaufort Sea.

So I, I love traveling by sea kayak because you're self-propelled, so wherever you get, you've gotten there under your own power, and you've burned no fossil fuels to do so.

A s- a sea kayak can...

The country which the explorer was to traverse in this and his succeeding journeys may be ranked among the most inhospitable regions of the earth.

The northern limit of the great American forest runs roughly in a line northwestward from Churchill to the mouth of the Mackenzie River.

East and north of this line is the country of the barren grounds, for the most part a desolate waste of rock.

It is broken by precipitous watercourses and wide lakes, and has no vegetation except the mosses and grasses which support great wandering herds of caribou.

The distance from Fort Churchill to the Slave Lake, even as the crow flies, is some 700 miles, and from thence to the Arctic Sea, 450, and the actual journey is longer by reason of the sinuous course which the explorer must of necessity pursue.

The whole of this vast country was as yet unknown.

No white man had looked upon the Mackenzie River, nor upon the vast lakes from which it flows.

It speaks well for the quiet intrepidity of Hearne that he was ready alone to penetrate the trackless waste of an unknown country among a band of savages and amid the rigor of the northern winter.

So, I just wanted to make it clear that this place that I visited, uh, one of my cousins was getting married, so we made a trip up to Yellowknife, and we stopped at Fort Providence to have a look at that place.

And I just want you to picture The Mackenzie River, it's a, it's way bigger than a lot of the rivers I'm sure you're all used to seeing.

It's just a massive, massive river.

And there's this road that goes down to a clearing, um, a really big clearing.

There was an interpreter on board, Mierching by name, so that whenever any natives were encountered, inquiries could be made for tidings of the missing explorers.

At Cape Bathurst, near the Mackenzie River, a part Franklin had explored many years before, a large tribe was observed, and at once a boat party put off from the ship.

As they approached the shore, thirty tents and nine winter houses were seen.

Immediately the boats were run ashore, a tremendous stir was caused in the village, the men running to and fro and then charging down a steep slope to where the boats were aground on the beach.