Anthony Henday Meets the Archithinue - Innisfail, Alberta
Posted by: 
wildwoodke
N 52° 03.561 W 113° 53.383
12U E 301902 N 5771580
This historic marker celebrates the travels of explorer Anthony Henday of the Hudson's Bay Company who travelled to this area in 1754 to meet with the First Nations people of the area, likely Blackfoot, near the town of Innisfail, Alberta.
Waymark Code: WM3MA1
Location: Alberta, Canada
Date Posted: 04/20/2008
Views: 81
From the CBC's "A People's History" website (http://history.cbc.ca/history/?MIval=EpContent.html&series_id=1&episode_id=6&chapter_id=2&page_id=2&lang=E):
Englishman Anthony Henday, was a labourer who volunteered to travel inland and trade with the Indians at their settlements. He left in June, 1754, paddling down the Hayes River, then walking with a group of natives to the site of Red Deer, Alberta. He was the first Englishman to meet with the Blackfoot and one of the first to witness the extraordinary spectacle of buffalo herds moving across the prairie like an earthquake.
He wintered with the Blackfoot and admired their hunting skills.
"I went with the young men a Buffalo hunting," Henday wrote, "all armed with Bows & Arrows: Killed seven, fine sport... So expert are the Natives, that they will take the arrows out of them when they are foaming and raging with pain, & tearing the ground up with their feet & horns until they fall down."
The Blackfoot embraced Henday as a guest, but not as a trading partner. "We have no hopes of getting them to the Fort," he wrote. "as what cloth & c. they had were French, and, by their behaviour I perceived they were strongly attached to the French interest."
Henday tried to tempt a chief with deals that could be made at Hudson Bay.
For additional information zoom in on the waymark photos or visit it at Rabbit Hill as you reach the summit of the hill between Red Deer and Innisfail...always watch out for RCMP on the otherside...drive the limit.