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Saturday, November 25, 2017

Detailed StoryMap: 1806 to 1808 Saskatchewan to Ontario

Lisette's first journey with Daniel started when she was only fourteen, given to him as a "country wife" at South Branch House. They were soon posted to Cumberland House, one of a string of NWC forts on the Saskatchewan River under Daniel's management. From there they traveled down Lake Winnipeg, up the Winnipeg River, and through today's Boundary Waters to Fort William on Lake Superior. There Daniel fell sick with a mysterious illness at a turning point in his career.

Daniel was the NWC's first choice to lead an "expedition of discovery" to the Mandans on the Missouri River to meet Lewis and Clark. Instead of meeting her counterpart Sacajawea, the young wife of interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau, Lisette would find herself in the company of the fierce-looking and formidable Doctor John McLoughlin, who took Daniel into the Nipigon District with him for a cure. The doctor would deliver her first child when she was but sixteen. George Harmon came into the world in December 1808, at a desolate post in the wilderness of North Ontario that McLoughlin and Daniel had built with their own hands earlier that summer. With a babe in arms, Lisette would retrace her steps come spring, journeying over 1500 miles back to Cumberland House for Daniel's new posting to the Athabasca District. An even longer journey lay ahead.

 

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