Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, 1764?–1820, Canadian fur trader and explorer, b. Scotland. His family took him to the colony of New York in 1774, and later he was sent to Canada. He entered (c.1779) a Montreal fur-trading firm and in a short time became partner of one of the firms that merged (1787) to form the North West Company 2)), was sold to the North West Company during the War of 1812 by Astor employees sympathetic to the British; however, it helped establish a U.S. claim to the Pacific Northwest.
..... Click the link for more information. . Given (1788) supervision of the important Athabasca fur district, Mackenzie set out (1789) from his headquarters at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca on the first of his two noted trips of exploration. After reaching Great Slave Lake, he followed the then unknown Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean. Disappointed because the great river that now bears his name did not prove an avenue to the Pacific and unable to relinquish his hope of discovering a route to the Pacific, Mackenzie made careful preparations for a second expedition and set out again in 1793. He and his party fought their way up the Peace River and its tributary the Parsnip River, crossed the Continental Divide, and discovered the Fraser River, down which they traveled a short distance before they struck overland for the coast. Following the course of the Blackwater River, a western tributary of the Fraser, they reached and crossed the Coast Ranges to the Bella Coola River, which they descended, in a borrowed dugout, to its mouth in a tidal inlet of the Pacific. Thus Mackenzie completed the first overland journey across North America N of Mexico. Shortly after this historic exploit, he left the West, never to return. His Voyages … to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans (1801) won him wide recognition and a knighthood in 1802. Mackenzie was elected in 1805 to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, but he soon returned (1808) to Scotland, where he lived the rest of his life.

Bibliography

See his journals and letters, ed. by W. K. Lamb (1972); biographies by P. Vail (1964) and R. Daniells (1969).

Mackenzie, Sir Alexander

(born 1755?, Stornoway, Lewis and Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scot.—died March 11, 1820, near Pitlochry, Perth) Scottish-born Canadian explorer. Immigrating to Canada as a young man, he entered a fur-trading firm in 1779. In 1788 he set up a trading post, Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabasca. From there he began an expedition (1789) that followed the Mackenzie River from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean. In 1793 he journeyed from Fort Chipewyan through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast, thereby becoming the first European to complete a transcontinental crossing north of Mexico.