Great Slave Lake (french: Grand lac des Esclaves), known traditionally as Tıdeè in Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì (Dogrib), Tinde’e in Wıìlıìdeh Yatii / Tetsǫ́t’ıné Yatıé (Dogrib / Chipewyan), Tu Nedhé in Dëne Sųłıné Yatıé (Chipewyan), and Tucho in Dehcho Dene Zhatıé (Slavey), is the second-largest lake in the

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...

of Canada (after Great Bear Lake), the deepest lake in North America at , and the tenth-largest lake in the world by area. It is long and wide. It covers an area of in the southern part of the territory. Its given volume ranges from to and up to Great Slave
/ref> making it the 10th or 12th largest by volume. The lake shares its name with the First Nations peoples of the Dene family called Slavey by their enemies the

Cree The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations. In Canada, over 350,000 people are Cree o ...

. Towns situated on the lake include (clockwise from east) Łutselk'e, Fort Resolution,

Hay River Hay River may refer to: Places * Hay River, Northwest Territories * Hay River, Wisconsin Rivers * Hay River (Wisconsin) * Hay River (Canada), a river in Alberta and Northwest Territories, Canada * Hay River, Northern Territory, Australia * Hay R ...

, Hay River Reserve, Behchokǫ̀, Yellowknife, Ndilǫ, and Dettah. The only community in the East Arm is Łutselk'e, a hamlet of about 350 people, largely Chipewyan Indigenous peoples of the Dene Nation, and the abandoned winter camp and

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business di ...

post

Fort Reliance Fort Reliance is an abandoned trading post in the Yukon Territory of Canada. It stands on the east bank of the Yukon River, downstream of the town of Dawson City. The fort was established in 1874 by François Mercier, Jack McQuesten, and Fra ...

. Along the south shore, east of Hay River is the abandoned Pine Point Mine and the company town of Pine Point.

History

Indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

were the first settlers around the lake after the retreat of glacial ice. Archaeological evidence has revealed several different periods of cultural history, including Northern Plano Paleoindian tradition (8,000 years before present), Shield Archaic (6,500 years), Arctic small tool tradition (3,500 years), and the

Taltheilei Shale tradition The Taltheilei Shale Tradition is the archeological name of the material culture of a late prehistoric western-area subarctic people dated to the period of 750 BC to AD 1000. The Taltheilei Shale Tradition is named after the "Taltheilei Narrows" (' ...

(2,500 years before present). Each culture has left a distinct mark in the archaeological record based on type or size of lithic tools. Great Slave Lake was put on European maps during the emergence of the

fur trade The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal ecosystem, boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals h ...

towards the northwest from

Hudson Bay Hudson Bay ( crj, text=ᐐᓂᐯᒄ, translit=Wînipekw; crl, text=ᐐᓂᐹᒄ, translit=Wînipâkw; iu, text=ᑲᖏᖅᓱᐊᓗᒃ ᐃᓗᐊ, translit=Kangiqsualuk ilua or iu, text=ᑕᓯᐅᔭᕐᔪᐊᖅ, translit=Tasiujarjuaq; french: b ...

in the mid 18th century. The name 'Great Slave' came from the English language translation of the

exonym, ''Awokanek'' ( Slavey), which they called the Dene Tha. The enslaved people were Dene tribes living on the lake's southern shores at that time. As the French explorers dealt directly with the Cree traders, the large lake was referred to as "Grand lac des Esclaves" which was eventually translated into English as "Great Slave Lake". British fur trader Samuel Hearne explored Great Slave Lake in 1771 and crossed the frozen lake, which he named Lake Athapuscow. In 1897-1898, the American frontiersman

Charles "Buffalo" Jones Charles Jesse Jones, known as "Buffalo Jones" (January 31, 1844 – October 1, 1919), was an American frontiersman, farmer, rancher, hunter, and conservationist. He cofounded Garden City, Kansas. He has been cited by the National Archives as o ...

traveled to the

Arctic Circle The Arctic Circle is one of the two polar circles, and the most northerly of the five major circles of latitude as shown on maps of Earth. Its southern equivalent is the Antarctic Circle. The Arctic Circle marks the southernmost latitude at ...

, where his party wintered in a cabin that they had constructed near the Great Slave Lake. Jones's story of how he and his party shot and fended off a hungry

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...

pack near Great Slave Lake was verified in 1907 by

Ernest Thompson Seton Ernest Thompson Seton (born Ernest Evan Thompson August 14, 1860 – October 23, 1946) was an English-born Canadian-American author, wildlife artist, founder of the Woodcraft Indians in 1902 (renamed Woodcraft League of America), and one of ...

and Edward Alexander Preble when they discovered the remains of the animals near the long abandoned cabin. In the 1930s,

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...

was discovered on the North Arm of Great Slave Lake, leading to the establishment of Yellowknife which would become the capital of the NWT. In 1960, an all-season highway was built around the west side of the lake, originally an extension of the Mackenzie Highway but now known as Yellowknife Highway or Highway 3. On January 24, 1978, a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite, named Kosmos 954, built with an onboard

nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat fr ...

fell from orbit and disintegrated. Pieces of the nuclear core fell in the vicinity of Great Slave Lake. Some of the nuclear debris was recovered by a joint

Canadian Armed Forces } The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF; french: Forces armées canadiennes, ''FAC'') are the unified military forces of Canada, including sea, land, and air elements referred to as the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, and Royal Canadian Air Force. ...

and

United States Armed Forces The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is ...

military operation called Operation Morning Light.

Suggested renaming

In the late 2010s, many placenames within the Northwest Territories were restored to their indigenous names. It has been suggested that the lake be renamed as well, particularly because of the mention of slavery. "Great Slave Lake is actually a very terrible name, unless you're a proponent of slavery," says Dëneze Nakehk'o, a Northwest Territories educator and founding member of First Nations organization Dene Nahjo. "It's a beautiful place. It's majestic; it's huge. And I don't really think the current name on the map is fitting for that place." He has suggested Tu Nedhé, the Dene Soline name for the lake, as an alternative. Tucho, the Dehcho Dene term for the lake, has also been suggested.

Geography and natural history

The Hay, Slave, Lockhart, and

Taltson River The Taltson River is a roughly river in the Northwest Territories of Canada that drains into the Great Slave Lake. There are three hydroelectric power control structures on the river, and one power station. Name The river was formerly known as ...

s are its chief tributaries. It is drained by the Mackenzie River. Though the western shore is forested, the east shore and northern arm are tundra-like. The southern and eastern shores reach the edge of the Canadian Shield. Along with other lakes such as the Great Bear and Athabasca, it is a remnant of the vast glacial Lake McConnell. The lake has a very irregular shoreline. The East Arm of Great Slave Lake is filled with islands, and the area is within the proposed Thaidene Nene National Park Reserve. The Pethei Peninsula separates the East Arm into McLeod Bay in the north and Christie Bay in the south. The lake is at least partially frozen during an average of eight months of the year. The main western portion of the lake forms a moderately deep bowl with a surface area of and a volume of . This main portion has a maximum depth of and a mean depth of . To the east, McLeod Bay () and Christie Bay () are much deeper, with a maximum recorded depth in Christie Bay of On some of the plains surrounding Great Slave Lake,

climax Climax may refer to: Language arts * Climax (narrative), the point of highest tension in a narrative work * Climax (rhetoric), a figure of speech that lists items in order of importance Biology * Climax community, a biological community t ...

polygonal bog Raised bogs, also called ombrotrophic bogs, are acidic, wet habitats that are poor in mineral salts and are home to flora and fauna that can cope with such extreme conditions. Raised bogs, unlike fens, are exclusively fed by precipitation (ombro ...

s have formed, the early successional stage to which often consists of pioneer

black spruce ''Picea mariana'', the black spruce, is a North American species of spruce tree in the pine family. It is widespread across Canada, found in all 10 provinces and all 3 territories. It is the official tree of the province of Newfoundland and Lab ...

. South of Great Slave Lake, in a remote corner of Wood Buffalo National Park, is the

Whooping Crane Summer Range Whooping Crane Summer Range is a 16,895-km2 wetland complex in the boreal forests of northern Alberta and southwestern Northwest Territories in Canada. It is the only natural nesting habitat for the endangered whooping crane. On May 24, 1982, it ...

, a nesting site of a remnant flock of whooping cranes, discovered in 1954.

Ecology

The Slave River provides the basin with high nutrient levels; accordingly, coupled with a general absence of pollution and invasive species, the lake is rich in aquatic life relative to its biome. Fish species include lake whitefish, lake trout, inconnu,

northern pike The northern pike (''Esox lucius'') is a species of carnivorous fish of the genus ''Esox'' (the pikes). They are typical of brackish water, brackish and fresh waters of the Northern Hemisphere (''i.e.'' holarctic in distribution). They are kno ...

and

walleye The walleye (''Sander vitreus'', synonym ''Stizostedion vitreum''), also called the yellow pike or yellow pickerel, is a freshwater perciform fish native to most of Canada and to the Northern United States. It is a North American close relat ...

cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

burbot The burbot (''Lota lota'') is the only gadiform (cod-like) freshwater fish. It is also known as bubbot, mariah, loche, cusk, freshwater cod, freshwater ling, freshwater cusk, the lawyer, coney-fish, lingcod, and eelpout. The species is closely ...

, ninespine stickleback, shiner, also longnose sucker. Lake whitefish enjoy the highest levels, followed by cisco and suckers.

Climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

, specifically reduced ice coverage times, are impacting the populations of these species. Copepoda are also prevalent in the lake.

Bodies of water and tributaries

Rivers that flow into Great Slave Lake include (going clockwise from the community of Behchokǫ̀); * Emile River * Snare River * Wecho River * Stagg River *

Yellowknife River The Yellowknife River is a river in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It flows south and empties into Yellowknife Bay, part of Great Slave Lake, at the city of Yellowknife. The lake is drained by the Mackenzie River into the Arctic Ocean as par ...

* Beaulieu River * Waldron River * Hoarfrost River * Lockhart River * Snowdrift River * La Loche River * Thubun River * Terhul River *

* Slave River * Little Buffalo River * Buffalo River *

* Mosquito Creek * Duport River * Marian Lake * North Arm * Yellowknife Bay * Resolution Bay * Deep Bay * McLeod Bay * Christie Bay * Sulphur Cove * Presqu'ile Cove * Rocher River * Frank Channel

Ice road

Great Slave Lake has one ice road known as the Dettah ice road. It is a road that connects the Northwest Territories capital of Yellowknife to Dettah, a small First Nations fishing community also in the Northwest Territories. To reach the community in summer the drive is via the Ingraham Trail.

''Ice Lake Rebels''

From 2014 to 2016, Animal Planet aired a documentary series called '' Ice Lake Rebels''. It takes place on Great Slave Lake, and details the lives of houseboaters on the lake.

References

External links

*
"Perspective on the Great Slave Lake Railway" Manuscript
at Dartmouth College Library {{Authority control Lakes of the Northwest Territories Tributaries of the Mackenzie River