Visioning Thanadelthur: Shaping a Canadian Icon (1)‪.‬

Thanadelthur was a young Dene woman possibly from the Lake Athabasca-Great Slave Lake region who was captured in 1713 by Cree raiders. Today, she is usually considered to be Chipewyan, although that term was used in different ways during the early fur trade, and Dogribs also claim her as one of theirs. In Canada, she is famous for her role in an eleven month (7 June 1715 to 7 May 1716) epic trek across the Subarctic to find her Dene peoples. She was part of a party led by a Cree trading captain and accompanied by a lone Hudson's Bay Company servant, William Stewart. She is frequently credited with having negotiated a peace between the Dene and the Omushkego Crees who traded at York Fort, although enmity continued across this cultural border into the 20th century. (2) Thanadelthur is better known than most other Native women or men of the early fur trade, the result of the extensive records kept in 1715-1717 by James Knight, the Governor at York Fort, and his accountant, Alexander Apthorp. (3) Yet no paintings, sketches, or descriptions of her appearance exist from this encounter.