Ancient Portage Route
The whitewater canoeists who descend the swift currents, rapids and falls of the Moisie River can only marvel at the skill and endurance of the Innu (known to the Europeans as Montagnais-Naskapi), who ascended the difficult waterway each autumn, en route to their winter hunting grounds.
Typically travelling north from the coast in family groups, the aboriginal hunters fought their way against the currents of the Moisie, the Nipissis, and the Kakatiak. The trip took up to 2 months and required several long portages, via small lakes and rivers such as Mistamoué, Matinipi and Caopacho. Stops were made along the way to fish, smoke salmon and hunt.

Some Innu journeyed all the way to Ashuanipi Lake, where small family hunting bands split off in all directions before gathering once again for the down-river return to the St. Lawrence. The return trip on the Moisie was a swift one for the accomplished Innu canoeists, sometimes taking less than a week to complete.
In 1950, about 100 Innu in family groups made the traditional trip to the northern hunting grounds for the last time before the opening of the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway.

The Two Worlds of the Innu
At the river’s mouth, billowing sails, clamouring foreigners, exotic trade goods. Deep in the interior, dark forests, abundant salmon, plentiful moose. Although the First Nations tribes who travelled the corridor of the Moisie River were among the very first North Americans to engage in trade with the Europeans, they were also among the last to see their traditional way of life absorbed by the modern world.

Unlike many other aboriginal cultures that quickly became completely dependent on the early fur trade, the Innu (Montagnais and Naskapi, as they were known to the French), were selective in their adoption of European ways. While they gathered on the shores of the St. Lawrence River to trade beaver pelts for copper kettles, clothes, dried fruits and flour, they did not abandon their traditional northern hunt for caribou and moose. Trapping remained a secondary occupation to hunting, and for over 400 years, the dense forests of their winter hunting grounds served as a cultural shield. For the most part, the Europeans stayed away, discouraged by the harshness of the forbidding interior.

The contrast between the 2 worlds of the Innu was enormous: in the late 1500’s, up to 1,000 European ships were trading and fishing along the north Atlantic coasts and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. At its peak in the late 16th century, Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, was a jewel in the crown of the Montagnais trading empire, the culmination of trading routes that extended to James Bay and the Great Lakes. But just a few kilometers up the rugged rivers of the interior, time moved slowly. Until the late 19th century, only a few European traders, surveyors, adventurers and missionaries penetrated the traditional lands of eastern Quebec and Labrador.

It was not until the early 20th century that modern life genuinely intruded. The Innu began to feel the effects of increased competition from non-indigenous fur trappers, the spread of European diseases, and the imposition of government regulation. In the Moisie River basin, expanded mining operations in the interior, massive hydroelectric projects, and the construction of the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway brought swift change to the cultural and economic life of the Innu.

Detail H.Y.Hind Expedition 1857-58 photo:NA C-004572 The Hind Brothers Head North The winter ice has just left the bay on June 10, 1861, when noted University of Toronto chemistry and geology professor, Henry Youle Hind, left Sept-Îles to begin his journey up the Moisie River. Accompanying him on his expedition were 2 surveyors from the Crown Lands Department of the Canadian government, 5 French-Canadian voyageurs, 2 First Nations guides and his accomplished artist brother, William Georges Richardson Hind. The party struggled upstream in 3 birchbark canoes for nearly a month, following the traditional portage route of native hunters to Nipissis River and Lake Nipissis, to the dividing ridge below the watershed of the Ashuanipi River. They turned downstream on July 2, reaching the mouth of the Moisie in 6 days. Following their expedition, the Hind brothers collaborated on a well-illustrated 2-volume report, Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula the Country of the Montagnais and Nasquapee Indians. The book detailed the area’s topography, First Nations culture, religious missions, and political and commercial importance. Henry Hind’s text was enhanced by colour plates of W.G.R. Hind’s vivid watercolour paintings. Despite his academic background, Henry Youle Hind was no stranger to rugged river travel. From 1857 -1858, on behalf of the Geological Survey of Canada, he had already completed an extensive survey of the Red, Assiniboine, Souris, Qu’appelle, and South Saskatchewan rivers. His classic work, Narrative of the Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition of 1857, was published in 1860.

The Infamous Moisie Mining Company
The story reads like a movie script: in 1865, 4 American bank robbers are arrested and imprisoned in Montreal. Threatened with deportation, they offer to share their stolen money with the city’s Chief of Police, in exchange for their escape. The Chief confides in the Lt. Governor of Quebec, who concludes that the crime had been committed for political reasons. He finds the confederate “soldiers” a hiding place on a St. Lawrence River schooner. En route downriver, one of the fugitives, a mineralogist, recognizes the mineral potential of the magnetic sand at the mouth of the Moisie River.

When tests at a Quebec laboratory and American forges confirm the high percentage – and high quality - of iron ore in the sand, the Police Chief, the Lt. Governor and the schooner captain gather investors and incorporate the “Moisie Mining Company.” After obtaining land concessions for the construction of a mine on the east side of the Moisie River, they sell their interest to the William Molson group, and the fledgling business becomes known as the “Moisie Iron Company.”

At its height, the iron-making operation employs 400 people. The limestone required for the process is mined from one of the islands of Sept-Îles Bay, and charcoal, the other key ingredient, is made on the premises. Each of 12 blast furnaces produces almost a tonne of iron a day. But the company is too successful; it’s low-cost, high-quality product eventually attracts protective tariffs from the United States. When the customs barrier jumps by 500%, the Moisie Iron Company closes its kilns and furnaces, and “Les Forges de Moisie” disappears. It is not until 1947 that Hollinger Consolidated Gold Mines begins to exploit the iron ore fields to the north.

North Shore Notes
• Cartier’s Confusion –There are only 6 rocky islands across from the harbour of the present-day iron-ore port of Sept-Îles (Seven Islands), Quebec. The city’s misnomer is attributed to explorer Jacques Cartier, who mistakenly counted the Pointe Noire peninsula as a separate land mass during his second voyage up the St. Lawrence River in 1535. Cartier also referred to the bay as the “Round Islands.”

• Dequen’s Duty – In 1651, Father Jean Dequen, a Jesuit explorer and missionary, left the trading post of Tadoussac to establish the “Mission of the Guardian Angel” among aboriginals who summered near the present-day city of Sept-Îles.

• Jolliete’s Jurisdiction – The Moisie and Sept-Îles areas once fell under the ownership of the famous Mississippi River explorer Louis Joliette. In 1680, as the son-in-law of François Bissot, first European inhabitant of Sept-Îles, Joliette was granted a landholding along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River that extended to the Mingan archipelago and Anticosti Island. In 1693, his buildings at Mingan and Sept-Îles were burned by the English. In 1696, Joliette established an inland post at Ashuanipi Lake.

• Moisie Memory – The remnants of the original fishing village of Moisie, established at the mouth of the Moisie River in the early 18th century, disappeared forever in the 1970’s, when the community was endangered by erosion of its protective bluffs and breakwaters. Buildings were bulldozed, the cemetery was moved to nearby Sept-Îles, and the entire community of 130 people was abandoned. The current residential village of Moisie, population 1,000, is located on the former site of the area’s Canadian Armed Forces radar base, which was closed in 1987.