This November marks the first anniversary of the opening of the northwest leg of Anthony Henday Drive, which skirts St. Albert’s southern border. The name Henday has become synonymous with the ring road over the last several years and the road itself has significantly changed the lives of Capital region residents, most of whom likely know little about the man behind the name. Gazette reporter Susan Jones set out to answer the question, who was Anthony Henday? Here’s what she learned with the help of local historians.
In 1754 the Hudson’s Bay Company trusted a 29-year-old convicted smuggler enough that it sent him, his aboriginal girlfriend and a Cree guide on a huge diplomatic/trade mission to explore the region where a highway is now named in his honour.
That man, Anthony Henday, may not have been the first white man to reach Alberta, but he was the first to write about it and his legacy to the Hudson’s Bay Company set trade patterns with the natives in Western Canada for at least half a century.
“I doubt that he was the first white man to come to Alberta. The French may have been here first. But he was the first English speaking trader and he was the first that we know of who kept a journal,” said Dr. Susan Berry, who is curator of ethnology at the Royal Alberta Museum.
Henday’s one-year odyssey was fraught with danger as he battled against starvation, drank foul water and encountered dangerous animals, including bears that attacked him and killed two of his men.
He met with numerous native peoples and suspicious French traders. Henday came through it unharmed, and most importantly, he came through it all with diplomacy and grace and accomplished exactly what his bosses wanted.
Born on Dec. 24, 1725, on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England, Henday was convicted of smuggling in 1748 and soon afterwards signed on with the Hudson’s Bay Company to work at York Factory as a labourer and netmaker.
“He had some kind of legal issue hanging over him and his boss, Andrew Graham, said that Henday was convicted of smuggling in 1748. We don’t know what he smuggled. I assume rum,” said Berry.
On June 27 of 1754, Henday set out from York Factory, which was located on the Hudson’s Bay.
His guide on his exploratory trip was Attickosish, a Cree who had previously been to the region west of The Pas. There were also women and children in the large group.
His girlfriend is not named, but Henday often refers to her as “My Bedfellow.” He also makes numerous references to “family,” so he may have travelled with his own children.
He was armed with powder and bullets but at times, especially during the following winter when he and his fellow travelers were facing starvation, they dug those bullets back out of the flesh of whatever animals they shot.
Henday had a compass and folded sheets of hand-lined paper that were stitched together. He lugged this journal across the continent and made daily entries in it.
The journal no longer exists. Upon Henday’s return, his boss, Andrew Graham, rewrote the journal in his own words and sent it to England. Over the next 25 years Graham wrote three different versions and no doubt, edited them differently to put his own work in a favourable light. Yet in all of them Graham managed to leave in the adventurous bits that show Henday’s bravery and daring, as well as his own admiration for the explorer.
By mid-July, just two weeks into the journey, Henday was out of food.
“We have seed neither fish nor fowl. The Natives are continually smoaking, which I already experience Allays hunger,” he wrote.
The group soon abandoned the canoes because portaging was so difficult and most of Henday’s journey westward, from July until October, was made on foot. After an eight or 10-mile day, Henday often reported, “My feet are swollen.”
The crew became desperate for drinking water in parts of Saskatchewan where the weather was very hot and the lakes were salty, “and caused a purging.” Their only food for many days was berries, which Henday thought were delicious.
Henday’s main mission was to meet with members of the Blackfoot tribe so he could ask them to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. On Oct. 14, near present-day Red Deer, 40 Blackfoot ambassadors, who were on horseback, met Henday and took him to a large encampment with 200 teepees.
“It’s key that it was a formal ceremony, essentially a state visit as Henday made a diplomatic overture and was received at a formal reception,” Berry said.
They met in a teepee big enough to hold 50 men. The chief held court from atop a white buffalo skin. Henday was given 12 buffalo tongues to eat, a delicacy in Blackfoot eyes, and was presented with a bow and arrow. He in turn gave them beads and a knife.
His trade overtures were unsuccessful. The Blackfoot chief told Henday they wouldn’t leave their home. They were horsemen and didn’t know how to paddle canoes. They had heard that the journey to York Factory was dangerous and men often starved on the way, an assessment that Henday well understood.
Despite the pleasantries, Henday noted the military precision of the Blackfoot encampment and wrote that the Blackfoot had customs, “like the rest of the Natives murthering one another slyly; seed several pretty girls that had been taken in war and many dryed scalps with long black hair displayed on long poles round the Leaders tent.”
Dismissed peaceably by the Blackfoot, Henday likely spent much of the winter near present-day Innisfail, where he reported the weather was milder with less snow than he previously encountered near York Factory.
His journal outlines his dwindling supplies and the shortage of game to be hunted. Throughout the winter he had to hold tough against his native travelling companions, who squabbled with each other and with him, demanding a share of his gunpowder, which he hid from them.
More than once they left him to go “warring” against other tribal groups and at least seven of his travelling companions were killed. After one warring event, his men returned with five scalps and four captives. Henday was offered one of the captives, who was about 17 years old. He refused. The girl was hit over the head and killed by the wife of the man who took her to his teepee.
Henday’s winter notes make frequent references to, “My Bedfellow, who slyly gives me information.”
Henday’s bosses wanted him to bring back fur pelts but he had trouble getting the natives to leave the warmth of their teepees to go trapping. Bedfellow told him he would get his furs when they met up with Cree trading partners in the spring. She also told him to lay off with his demands lest the men turn on them.
“She begged me to take no notice, otherwise they would kill her, so for ye woman’s sake shall take no notice but be quiet,” he wrote on Jan. 4, 1755.
Tempers seem to have cooled somewhat after the men killed elk for food and Henday and Bedfellow partied with the rest of the families.
“All night we had a grand feast with dancing, drumming and conjuring. Myself hath been out of order with a Head-ack,” Henday wrote.
Throughout the spring, Henday and his men built canoes as they listened to the roaring of the ice breaking up on the Saskatchewan River. At the time, he was likely near present-day Fort Saskatchewan, near the mouth of the Sturgeon River.
As game became even more scarce, his companions began eating their dogs.
“I am not yet so much of an Indian to relish Dogs flesh,” he wrote on April 20.
On April 27 the group set out on the Saskatchewan River to head for home.
“This day sailed 20 Canoes and I embarked on board a new ship to sail to York Fort. All in Starving Condition,” he wrote.
On May 1 he reported, “No buffaloe this way nor moose, so that we are obliged to kill our dogs and think them a very Good Shift.”
He stopped to visit French traders at The Pas, where Henday was nervous and on his guard. He found the visit discouraging because though the French gave him a meal, they only gave him “half a biscuit”. Worst of all was the loss of more than 1,000 of the best furs, which the natives he travelled with traded to the French in exchange for liquor.
On June 23, one year after he began his perilous journey, Henday arrived back at York Factory. His diary entry for the day is remarkable because it is so understated: “23 Mond fine weather, wind SE. paddled down the River and got to York Fort at 10 o’clock A.M. at the head of 65 canoes. There were 70 but five were broke to pieces on the falls of Steel River and the Goods put into other Canoes.”
Henday made two more trips westward. The first was aborted because his HBC travelling companion became ill. No notes remain from his third and last trip and in 1762 Henday left the employ of the HBC and returned to England. He was apparently miffed because he felt he had not received the recognition he deserved for his exploratory mission and he wanted a raise of 15-pounds.
Graham wrote that Henday was “bold, enterprising and honest,” yet 250 years later we can only speculate whether the explorer might feel honoured if he heard that every day, people travel on “the Henday.”
Would perhaps the explorer say once again as he did so many times throughout the winter of 1755, “So much conjuring hath given me a Head-ack!”
Naming the ring road was a City of Edmonton decision made prior to 2000 but no city staffers were available to explain the city chose to honour Anthony Henday.
