Yellowknife, a small Athabaskan-speaking North American Indian tribe who traditionally lived northeast of the Great Bear and Great Slave lakes in what is now the Northwest Territories, Can. The name Yellowknife derives from the group’s use of yellow copper in making knives and other tools. In language and culture patterns the Yellowknife were almost identical to the Chipewyan, who were given to robbing and oppressing them. The virtual destruction of the tribe came in the late 18th and early 19th centuries at the hands of the Dogrib, however, who were retaliating for earlier raids and harassments.
Early 21st-century population estimates indicated some 1,200 Yellowknife descendants.