Setting Lake Cottage Owners Association

The name “Lake Setting” appeared in Baldwin and Cradock’s ground-breaking atlas in 1834. It was a rather grand name since the word order normally applies to larger bodies of water like the five Great Lakes.

During the nineteenth century, Setting Lake became known as John Scot’s or John Scott’s Lake. Treaty 5, signed on September 24, 1875 refers to the lake by that name.  The treaty was signed on behalf of the Pimicikamak (Cross Lake) people by Chief Tapastanum (Donald  William  Sinclair  Ross), whose family wintered here.

So, who was John Scott, the man for whom the lake was named? Well, we’re not quite sure. There are at least four possibilities.

The country was young – just eight years into confederation. Stats Canada hadn’t been created and the census hadn’t been invented. So, for the first two John Scotts, we need to check baptismal records.

The first was a young man named John Scott Keslasti’iokanum. He was one of several people that were baptised at John Scott’s Lake in the summer of 1875 by a missionary from Norway House. Historian Raymond Sherritt-Beaumont speculates that he may simply have taken the name because he lived on John Scot’s Lake OR he may have been related to a second, older John Scott, a seventy-year-old man who was baptised at Cross Lake.

Although the second John Scott and his wife Mary were identified as Cross Lake residents, they may have lived at John Scott’s Lake, which was part of the Cross Lake trade area. We know there were other Scotts living here at the time, including James and Margaret Scott and their son John, possibly the elder John Scott’s grandson.

The third John Scott was a trader at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Split Lake post. In the fall of 1815, he travelled to White Owle Lake, northwest of modern-day Leaf Rapids. He spent the winter at White Owle but there’s evidence that he travelled to other lakes in the area. If Setting Lake was among them, it is possible he occupied Wegg’s House, the post abandoned by William Sinclair twenty years earlier. This story may have been passed down by local people, some of whom may even have been his descendants.

In support of the third John Scott, Achivist Researcher, Anne Lindsay writes, “Setting  Lake  had  been  an outpost of the Split Lake Post in the early 1800s when the Orkneyman John  Scott  traded  there.”

A fourth possibility exists. It may be that John Scott was actually an independent or North West Company trader. Former Wabowden resident, the late Roddy Garrick remembered his grandfather, Isaac Martin, telling him that Sandy Beach was the site of a trading post built by John Scott in the early 1800s.

Archaeologist Brian Smith says there’s evidence to support Isaac’s story. “The North West Company did, in fact, have a post on Setting Lake…Since the North West Company did not, in general, keep as accurate records as the Hudson’s Bay Company…Scott may have been an independent or an unknown Northwester”.

Throughout the 1800s “John Scott’s Lake” continued to be known by more than one name. It must have been confusing to say the least! In a letter to Archdeacon Cowley dated August 21,1873, Church of England minister, James Settee referred to the lake as  Pukatawagan or “Net Setting Lake.” At the same time, his relative, Tapastanum, who wintered here, called it John Scott’s Lake.

By the early twentieth century, Geological Survey of Canada records indicate Setting Lake had two names. In 1913 GSC geologist William McInnes wrote, “Setting lake, or as it is locally known, John Scotts lake (no apostrophe and lower case “L”), is a long and comparatively narrow body of light-brownish water”.

In 1915 geologist, explorer, and historian, Joseph Tyrell referred to the lake by its old Cree name, Pukitowa’gan Saka’higan and by the English translation – Fishing-with-a-net Lake.

Others reinforced the image of a lake where the people took fishing very seriously. In 1903, a Copp Clark map referred to it as Net-Setting Lake. Anne Lindsay says it was also called Nett Lake. And as recently as 1975 Aileen Garland referred to it as Pukitahawken.

The repeated references to fishing and the setting of nets ring true. We know that indigenous people in every part of Canada fished with nets made from natural fibres woven into cordage and twine, fitted with stone sinkers and carved wooden floats.  Nets were made from plants that Setting Lake has an abundance of – sweetgrass and other wild grasses, and spruce, willow, and other fibrous roots.