Coppermine Journey: An Account of Great Adventure Selected from the Journals of Samuel Hearne is an edited and condensed version of Samuel Hearne's original exploration narrative, compiled by the Canadian author Farley Mowat. The original journals were published posthumously in 1795 under the title A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean.
Publication Details
Farley Mowat's edited version, titled Coppermine Journey: An Account of Great Adventure Selected from the Journals of Samuel Hearne, was first published in 1958 by McClelland and Stewart in Toronto, and by Little, Brown, and Company in Boston. Subsequent paperback editions, notably a mass-market version, were released around February 1990 by McClelland and Stewart.
Content
The book is a compelling, streamlined account of Samuel Hearne's three overland expeditions from the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Prince of Wales to the Coppermine River and the Arctic Ocean between 1769 and 1772.
Narrative Focus: Mowat focused on the dramatic and human elements of the journey, highlighting the adventures and relationships, particularly with the invaluable Chipewyan guide Matonabbee. He modernized the language and punctuation, making it accessible to a general readership.
Historical Significance: Hearne was the first European to reach the Arctic Ocean overland. His journey, though commercially unsuccessful for finding a valuable copper mine or a navigable Northwest Passage, provided immense geographical and ethnographic knowledge of the Canadian North.
Key Events: The narrative includes the arduous travel across the Barren Lands, encounters with various Indigenous groups, and the traumatic witnessing of the massacre of an Inuit camp at a site Hearne named "Bloody Falls".