Henry Kelsey

The Kelsey Papers, with a New Introduction by John Warkentin. (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1994).

Often called the Boy Kelsey, or the boy Kelsey, this remarkable explorer is known to those interested in the earliest discoveries of the continental interior of North America — from the North. Born about 1667 (he died in 1724) he extended the Hudson's Bay Company's trade to the Saskatchewan River. He is famed for having discovered the Canadian prairies. At a time the Cree were attempting to monopolize the trade of the Canadian prairies, Kelsey was quietly sent from Hudson Bay to make contact with them, and to convince their rivals the Gros Ventres and Assiniboine to enter the trade. Kelsey, a good linguist and robust traveller, loved travel with native peoples. He respected the Indians and was benign and humane in his relations with all native peoples. He made two expeditions: one, 1688-1690, to the "northern Indians," north of Churchill River; the other, 1690-92, to the prairies. On the latter he was accompanied by an Assiniboine leader. The journal he left is both unscientific and not detailed. He seems to have travelled up the Hayes River to the Fox, thence to the Saskatchewan, perhaps near present-day Battleford, Sask. He returned to York Factory in 1692, and had thereafter a long career in the Hudson's Bay Company. To his death, he claimed that he had never been given due credit for his discoveries. His journal, eventually discovered in 1926, tells of his wanderings, viewing musk-ox and North American buffalo. This book prints the known documentation on him, including a fine poem by Kelsey, and has illustrations, maps and an introduction by John Warkentin, expert on western travel literature and geography.

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