Cumberland House is the oldest community in Saskatchewan. Known in Swampy Cree as Wāskahikanihk, it sits on the Saskatchewan River, and most of its people are Cree and Métis. Samuel Hearne founded the permanent Hudson's Bay Company post here in 1774, the first built when the company adopted its inland policy. A private trader, Joseph Frobisher, had already set up a temporary post on Cumberland Lake in 1772, and Louis-Joseph Gaultier de La Vérendrye is the first European known to have passed the site, in 1749.
The location made it one of the most important fur trade depots in Canada. The Saskatchewan River led east to Lake Winnipeg, Montreal and Hudson Bay, and west toward the Rocky Mountains. The Sturgeon-Weir River led north toward the Churchill River and the Athabasca country. Furs went east and trade goods went west through the post, and it also supplied pemmican to the voyageurs headed for Lake Athabasca.
From 1778 to 1804 Cumberland House was the administrative centre of the western posts. The North West Company built a competing post nearby in 1793, and the Hudson's Bay Company moved its fort to a site across from it. The two merged in 1821, when about 30 men and roughly as many women and children lived at the post. It declined after about 1830 but revived somewhat when steamboats arrived on the river in 1874.
Today the Northern Village of Cumberland House sits beside Cumberland House Cree Nation. Nearby, Cumberland House Provincial Park offers tours of an 1890s Hudson's Bay Company powder house. A bridge built in 1996 replaced the summer ferry and winter ice crossing to the mainland.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Cumberland House, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.