The chieftain, named Matonabbee, Matonabbee’s ability to adapt the expedition to the Indian manner of transportation and to the exigencies of living off the land ensured its success. In addition to being an ambassador and a guide, Matonabbee was a “leading Indian” of Churchill throughout his adult life.
A brief biography published five years Memorable Manitobans: Matonabbee (c) Interpreter, trader, “leading Indian”. Born of Chipewyan (Dene) parents at Fort Prince of Wales, he was raised by Europeans at the fort.
Matonabbee, born in 1737 Matonabbee was not only not a “slave” to those native peoples with whom he had contact, but was in fact the true leader of Hearne’s expedition and a respected figure throughout the lands to the west of Hudson’s Bay.
Matonabbee, to become the first Matonabbee (c. –) was a Chipewyan hunter and leader. He was also a trader and a Chipewyan representative at the Prince of Wales Fort. He travelled with Chief Akaitcho's older brother, Keskarrah. [1] After his father died, Matonabbee spent some time living at Prince of Wales Fort where he learned to speak English.
Samuel Hearne and the Matonabbee, Chipewyan leader (born circa in Prince of Wales Fort; died there in August ). Matonabbee was a leading hunter of caribou on the Barren Lands. Matonabbee grew up in and around Prince of Wales Fort and was an important intermediary in the fur trade between the Hudson's Bay Company and other Dene tribes farther west.
Hearne's chief guide Matonabbee Long before white men started importing Africans to their settlements in eastern America, slavery was well known among the Indians, and Matonabbee’s mother was a “slave woman” who had been traded to the Hudson’s Bay Company at Prince of Wales’s Fort at Churchill.
Suicide; Dorris, Michael, 163;
Their leader Matonabbee was a man of his word, resourceful and intelligent. He took Hearne to the mouth of the Coppermine River on the 17th of July and returned with him to Churchill on the 30th on June , after having walked 3, miles. Much of the journey was perhaps a routine one for Matonabbee for he seems to have traveled most of. Tough Dene chief Matonabbee MATONABBEE, leading Indian; b.c. of Chipewyan parents at Prince of Wales’s Fort (Churchill, Man.); d. after the destruction of the fort in August Unlike most Chipewyans, who seldom visited Hudson’s Bay Company posts and then only for a few days, Matonabbee was familiar with Europeans and the fur trade from his youth; his mother, formerly the captive of a Cree band, had married.