Beaver Plains

The Beaver Plains open within the upper Peace River country of the Dane-zaa, who live in both Alberta and British Columbia. European records called this Athabaskan-speaking people the Beaver, while their own names emphasize “the Real People” and those who live among beavers. The grasslands and adjacent river valleys formed part of a mobile world: people hunted across rich prairie, followed seasonal routes, and used the Peace River as a corridor for movement and meetings. Before the nineteenth century, Dane-zaa lands also stretched toward the Athabasca and Clearwater rivers and Lake Athabasca. When European-Canadian fur traders entered the upper Peace region in the late eighteenth century, they depended on local hunters. Trader journals of 1799 and 1800 identify ancestors of present Fort St John communities among the people trading at their posts, and expeditions received bison meat and grease from Dane-zaa hunting on the upper Peace prairies. Oral history describes the river as a boundary between Dane-zaa and Cree territories and as a place where groups met for trade, celebration and settling disputes. The plains consequently belong to a history of bison, trails and diplomacy before settled agriculture changed the wider region.