Bistcho Lake
Lake
84 M
Approximately 420 km north-west of Fort Chipewyan.
The name of this lake is Slavey in origin. The Oblate missionary and linguist, Father
Emile Petitot, who visited its shores with a Hudson's Bay Company trading party in which he translated as Lac du Gros Vente or Big Stomach Lake. A decade later, R.G. McConnell of the Geological Survey of Canada recorded Lake Bis-tcho. His translation was Big Knife. It is possible that the discrepancy between Petitot's and McConnell's translations can be explained by the similarity between the stomach (be) and knife (beeh) in contemporary Slavey. Later Dominion Land Surveyors. William Ogilvie in 1891 and J. R. Akins in 1915, both recorded the lake as Bistcho Lake. In 1946 an anthropologist, Honigmann, working with the Fort Nelson Slavey, noted a third name, "Betsu", in addition to Bistcho and es-tchonhi. Another interesting point is the Slavey name for the western end of the lake, west of the narrows, "Etthi" or the Head. This name would lend more support to Petitot's translations than that of McConnell.