Tthets'ék'ehdéli

Tthets’ék’ehdéli lies where the Jean Marie River enters the Dehcho, or Mackenzie River, within the boreal country of the Great Slave Plain. The name recalls water flowing over clay. For its Dene people this was part of a much older homeland of rivers, lakes and hunting grounds, rather than a settlement whose history began with European arrival.

Community accounts describe earlier life through movement across the land: hunting moose and caribou, trapping beaver and fishing. These activities provide the local setting for the centuries before a permanent village developed. In the wider upper Mackenzie region, fur-trading establishments began to reshape exchange in the early nineteenth century; the North West Company established its post near the Mackenzie–Liard confluence in 1803. That regional development should be distinguished from Jean Marie River itself. Its permanent buildings belong to a later period, so a school, company store or fixed colonial town cannot be projected back into its pre-1837 landscape.