This paper
examines how the success of the explorations of Samuel Hearne, Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser were dependent
on the experience and assistance of
natives. It looks at how tools such as canoes, snowshoes, and sledges were essential as travel would have been difficult or impossible without them and how the natives themselves were crucial to the explorers, working as navigators, pilots, translators, protectors, hunters, and advisors. It also
examines how native knowledge of local terrain was often exploited by the Canadians in the charting of the North and West.