François Beaulieu II

As a young man, requested for his knowledge of the region, Beaulieu accompanied Sir Alexander Mackenzie on his overland trek to the Pacific in 1793.

Beaulieu was the guide and interpreter on the second expedition from 1825–27 which was based at Fort Franklin on the west shore of Great Bear Lake.

In his book En route pour la mer Glaciale,[2] Emile Petitot recounts his visit with Francois Beaulieu in 1862 at Salt River (near Fort Smith).

This river belongs to its discoverer, a French Metis called Beaulieu, who has worked a piece of land into a nice farm where he lives with several of his children.

His son, our hero, who he had from a Chipewyan wife, saw arrive, in 1780, the first explorer of Great Slave Lake, Peter Pond; then in 1789, Sir Alexander Mackenzie.

Chosen by the Yellowknife tribe as their chief, Beaulieu became the terror of the Dogribs, the Slaveys and the Sekanis of whom he killed a dozen, around Fort Halkett.

The salt, the crops from his fields, milk from his cows, fish "coregone" from the Slave River, and the hunt, was ample enough to assure him and his dependents an easy life.

(translation of pages 312 to 314) In 1848, 'Old Man Beaulieu' was baptized by Father Alexandre-Antonin Taché, O.M.I., at Portage La Loche and became an active adherent to the Roman Catholic religion, as a result of which, at the age of 80, he dismissed two of his wives.