Chipewyan People - Historical Chipewyan Regional Groups

Historical Chipewyan Regional Groups

The Chipewyan moved in small groups or bands, consisting of several extended families, alternating between winter and summer camps, hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering in the Taiga and around the many lakes of their territory. Later with the emerging North American fur trade they organized themselves into several major regional groups in the vicinity of the European trading posts, in order to control as middleman the carrying trade in furs and the hunting of fur-bearing animals - the new social groupings also enabled the Chipewyan to dominate their Dene neighbors and to better defend themselves against their rifle armed Cree enemies, who were advancing to the Peace River and Lake Athabasca.

• Kaí-theli-ke-hot!ínne (‘willow flat-country up they-dwell’, lived on the western shore of Lake Athabasca at Fort Chipewyan, their tribal area extended northward to Fort Smith on Slave River and south to Fort McMurray on Athabasca River)
• Kés-ye-hot!ínne (‘aspen house they-dwell’ or ‘poplar house they-dwell’, lived on the upper reaches of the Churchill River, along the Lac Île-à-la-Crosse, Methye Portage, Cold Lake, Heart Lake and Onion Lake - the tribal name is probably a description of adjacent Chipewyan groups for this major regional group and takes literally reference on at Lac Ile à la Crosse established European trading forts, which were built with Poplar or Aspen wood)
• Hoteladi (‘northern people’ lived north of the Kés-ye-hot!ínne between Cree Lake, west of Reindeer Lake on the south and on the east shore of Lake Athabasca in the north)
• Hâthél-hot!inne (‘lowland they-dwell’, lived in the Reindeer Lake-Region, witch drains south into the Churchill River)
• Etthen eldili dene (Etthén heldélü Dené, Ethen-eldeli - ‘Caribou-Eaters’), lived in the Taiga east of Lake Athabasca far east to Hudson Bay, at Reindeer Lake, Hatchet Lake (also Axe Lake), Wollaston Lake and Lac Brochet
• Kkrest‘ayle kke ottine (‘dwellers among the quaking aspens’ or ‘trembling aspen people’, lived in the boreal forests between the Great Slave Lake in the south and Great Bear Lake in the north)
• Sayisi Dene (or Saw-eessaw-dinneh - ‘people of the east’, traded at Fort Chipewyan, their hunting and tribal areas extended between Lake Athabasca and Great Slave Lake, and along the Churchill River)
• Gáne-kúnan-hot!ínne (‘jack-pine home they-dwell’, lived in the taiga east of Lake Athabasca and were particularly centered along the eastern Fond-du-Lac)
• Des-nèdhè-kkè-nadè (Desnedekenade, Desnedhé hoæé nadé hoþünö - ‘people along the great river’, were also known as Athabasca Chipewyan, lived between Great Slave Lake and Lake Athabasca along the Slave River near Fort Resolution (Deninoo Kue - 'moose Island')
• Thilanottine (Tu tthílá hoþünö - ‘those who dwell at the head of the lakes’ or ‘people of the end of the head’, lived along the lakes of the Upper Churchill River area, along the Churchill River and Athabasca River, from Great Slave Lake and Lake Athabasca in the north to Cold Lake and Lac la Biche in the southwest)
• Tandzán-hot!ínne (‘dwellers at the dirty lake’, also known as Dení-nu-eke-tówe - ‘moose island up lake-on’, lived on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake and along the Yellowknife River, and before their expulsion by the Tłı̨chǫ along Coppermine River - were often regarded as a Chipewyan group, but form as Yellowknives historically an independent First Nation and called themselves T'atsaot'ine