Reindeer Lake Pottery

• Published in: American Antiquity
• Main Author: Downes, P. G.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1938
• Subjects: Museology; Archeology; Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous); History; Reindeer Lake; Athabascan; Churchill River
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/275363; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S000273160003136X

In the summer of 1936, while travelling on Reindeer Lake in northern Saskatchewan, a collection of potsherds was brought to me by a trapperprospector, William Douglas. These sherds were found in what appears to have been a well-established camp site on an island about one third up the lake. The lake itself is approximately 140 miles long and, like most lakes of the Precambrian Shield, filled with thousands of islands. The find was quite a random one but because of the high latitude would seem of particular interest. The position of the site is approximately 56°35" north latitude. To complicate the problem is the fact that both historically and in the tradition of the Crees and Chippewyans the lake has always been the almost exclusive territory of the “Idthen-eldeli,” Caribou-Eater branch of the Athabascan-speaking Chippewyan. The Churchill River, into which the outlet of Reindeer Lake flows seventy miles to the south, has traditionally and historically been the dividing line between these two peoples.