Lake Pinchi

Pinchi Lake lay within the Dakelh lake country north of Stuart Lake, where an Indigenous settlement already bore the related name Pinchi or Binche. In 1811 Daniel Harmon, a North West Company trader stationed at nearby Fort St. James, recorded the lake as Pinchy Lake. His note brought an existing local name into the written records of the fur trade.

The Stuart Lake post had been established in 1806 by Simon Fraser, John Stuart, Jean-Baptiste Boucher and their companions. It connected traders with an established Dakelh society whose knowledge and provisions sustained them. Dried salmon was a crucial food at the post during the early nineteenth century. Pinchi's first surviving trader reference therefore belongs to a period when commercial newcomers were entering an already inhabited network of lakes and communities.