Denesoliné

The Denesoliné, better known as the Chipewyan, are the northernmost Dene people, speaking a Na-Dene Athabaskan language, their ancestors traced to the ancient Taltheilei culture. Their own name means the original people, while Chipewyan is Cree for pointed skin, after the cut of their caribou parkas. Homeland runs from Hudson Bay across the Canadian Shield to Great Slave Lake and Lake Athabasca, country of Churchill and Reindeer lakes, nomadic bands following caribou between tundra and taiga, living in tipis and warring with Inuit.

English traders reached them at Churchill in 1717 after Chipewyan guide Thanadelthur brokered peace with rifle-armed Cree, and the Denesoliné became the chief fur middlemen of the subarctic.

Their leader Matonabbee guided Samuel Hearne to the Coppermine River in 1770, and the North West Company built Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca in 1788, around which groups gathered to control the carrying trade.