Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 26/David Thompson, Pathfinder and the Columbia River
DAVID THOMPSON, PATHFINDER AND THE COLUMBIA RIVER[1]
By T. C. Elliott
This anniversary year on the Columbia has special significance to those residing along its upper courses as well as to those at its mouth, and it is well worth while for the people of Kettle Falls and vicinity to rehearse the career and honor the name of the first man of the white races who explored and made permanent record of the sources of this magnificent stream, and was the first to traverse its entire length from source to mouth. Strangely enough the work of this really great and notable man is just coming to public prominence, particularly so an account of his achievements in the basin of the Columbia; even the historians of our river have failed to award him much more than passing notice. Brief mention only is possible within the limits of this address; and let it first be stated that one of the few geographical points to which the name of this man, David Thompson, was once attached (by himself or by some of his associates)—the only locality in fact ever so designated on the main course of the Columbia—is a stretch of rapids a few miles below these Falls and now locally known as Ricky Rapids in recognition of your pioneer settler, Mr. John Ricky. On the early maps used by the Hudson's Bay Company these rapids were noted as the Thompson Rapids, doubtless because of some incident as yet unknown to us.
Our interest in anyone is always enlivened by his likeness or some bit of writing from his hand. Something of what David Thompson wrote in his journal (now to be seen at Toronto, Canada) and thus actually recorded while here at Kettle Falls one hundred years ago this very week will serve as an introduction to him personally. His journal reads:
1811—
June 29 Saturday A very fine day—but cloudy—finished the Canoe to 1 Board in each Side &c—All the Timber of the other Canoe got burnt by neglect. Paquia & 2 Indians come from Jaco. they bring the sad news of the death of Dejarlaix. his Wife and 4 Children, also of the same of Paquia's Wife and Child by Water in a Rapid of the Saleesh River with all their Property, only Paquia and themselves escaped—the Indians speared 6 Salmon, they gave us 2 do. they carry the aversion they know the Salmon to have to the taste of the Water in which Men, & Animals, & especially the Salmon themselves have been washed to Superstition, they did (not) begin spearing 'till near Noon, as the Spearer had seen the Bones of a Dog's Head long since dead, to have speared fish with such unclean Eyes would have driven all the Salmon away, & he purified himself with a decoction of the scraped Bark of the Red Thorn, thus cleansed he proceeded to work—the Salmon are about 15 to 25 to 30 lbs. weight here, well tasted, but have lost all their fat, retaining still all their Meat, their flesh is red and extremely well made.
June 30th Sunday A fine cool, cloudy day, in the afternoon begins Rain—they speared 11 Salmon, gave us 3 do. one a very fine do. finished the Boards of the Canoe and rested the rest of the Day.
July 1 Monday A very fine day—Men went for Gum, which they gathered and made and gummed a very small part of the Canoe I Salmon, engaged Bellaire as Hunter &c—Sent Vallade to Jaco—Gave the Horses to the care of the Chief here—& killed one for Food.
July 2 Tuesday A very fine day—gummed the Canoe arranged many little affairs &c.
The following day he started down the Columbia in this one canoe with seven companions of French and Indian blood on that first journey of a white man from Ilth-koy-ape, as the Indians called these Falls, to the Ocean. The night of the 5th found them encamped some distance below the mouth of the Okanogan River, and on the 9th they were a little way above the mouth of the Snake or Lewis river, and on the 15th arrived at Fort Astoria, there to be greeted by Duncan McDougall and other former associates of Mr. Thompson in the NorthWest Company, but then partners and managers in the Pacific Fur Company of John Jacob Astor. These people had arrived in the Columbia by sea during the month of April, preceding.
You ask how did David Thompson arrive at Kettle Falls in June, 1811, and whether by chance or design. He came on horseback from Spokane House, a trading post or fort then already established, erected the previous year at the junction of the little Spokane with the main Spokane river by one of his men, Jaco Finlay or Finan MacDonald. This seems a little too early to find the name Spokane written in form, but so it appears; "Skeetshoo" was the designation given by David Thompson to the Spokane river and to the lake later known as the Coeur d'Alene.
He had reached Spokane House by the "Kullyspell road" or trail from the Kullyspell (Pend d' Oreille) river and tribe. The Kullyspell river and lake were already familiar to him through several months spent in exploring and trading there during 1809-10 and the establishment of two trading posts, one near to the Thompson Falls, Montana, of the present day. To the Clark Fork or Saleesh River he had come by the "Kootenay Indian Road" from the Kootenay River, where he left the canoes used in descending the Kootenay from a point in British Columbia opposite to the waters of the Upper Columbia Lake and distant from that lake not more than three miles across the low divide since known as Canal Flat but to him as McGillivray's Portage. This portage he had reached by canoes up the Columbia from Canoe river at the extreme bend of the river in British Columbia, so named by himself because of his enforced encampment there from January until April of this same year 1811 in preparation for his voyage to the mouth of the Columbia. The occasion for this was the permission given him and the instructions received from his partners of the North-West Company at their annual meeting at Fort William on Lake Superior in the summer of 1810, for the North-Westers had declined to join with Mr. Astor in the enterprise to occupy the mouth of the Columbia and expected to develop the Indian trade there on their own account, as they afterward did.
But let me revert to David Thompson's own records. He was at Astoria on the 15th of July and from there visited Chinook Point near the mouth of the river, but at once started up river again, for his journal reads: "August 8th, 1811, Chapaton River, at noon, latitude 46 degrees 36 minutes 26 seconds north, longitude 118 degrees 53 minutes 47 seconds west. Laid up our canoe." The Chapaton (Shahaptin) was the Snake river and this entry shows him to have been at the mouth of the Palouse River, a well-known camping place for the Nez Perces Indians; from whence the party took to the hurricane decks of as many Nez Perces horses and followed the well established Indian trail to the Spokane (August 18th) and thence to Kettle Falls again (August 23rd). By the third of September he was again prepared with canoe and provisions and proceeded up the Columbia, through the Arrow Lakes and the Dalles des Mort to Boat Encampment on Canoe River, and from there crossed the Rocky Mountains to the Athabasca and returned in October. 
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Site of Boat Encampment.
David Thompson was a "goer." If anything further is needed to indicate this let it be said that during the last days of April, 1810, he was at Pend d'Oreille Lake of Northern Idaho, and in July of the same year was at the Rainy Lakes near Lake Superior (and probably at Fort William) and on the 6th of September of the same year was again near the head waters of the Saskatchewan preparing to cross the divide onto the Columbia to complete his journey to its mouth and establish the rights of the "Northwesters" on the entire river. He journeyed to the Rainy Lakes because he had an appointment to keep there with his partners, and he hurried back again because he had a duty to perform for his company and for his country. Those were not yet the days of fees to porters in Pullman cars or even of the Rocky Mountain stage coach, but time and distance yielded to the energy and endurance of such men as the fur traders.
David Thompson was possessed of great physical courage and ability to lead men. You or I would hesitate to cross the Rocky Mountains on foot after the winter begins, but let me quote from "The Journals of Alex, Henry and David Thompson" (including Dr. Coues' admirable notes) a resume of the story of his terrible journey across the continental divide in mid-winter; prefacing with the explanation that provisions were very low that fall of 1810 at the few fur trading establishments on the Saskatchewan and that owing to sudden hostility of Piegan Indians the mountain pass used in 1807-8 and 9 was closed to Mr. Thompson then and he was compelled to seek an entirely new and unknown one. "Nov. 7th, 1810. At 11 A. M. Pichette and Pierre arrived . . . from Mr. Thompson's camp. They left him on Panbian River, with all his property, on his way to the Columbia, cutting his road through a wretched thick, woody country, over mountains and gloomy muskagues and nearly starving, animals being very scarce in that quarter. His hunter . . . could only find a chance wood buffalo on which to subsist; when that failed they had to recourse to what flour and other douceurs Mr. Thompson had—in fact the case is pitiful. ... On Dec. 5th, 1810, Thompson had reached a point on Athabasca River which he gives as Lat. . . . From this place he dispatched men to Mr. Henry at Rocky Mountain House asking for pemmican and supplies. ... He was in dire extremities, and his men were disaffected to the verge of mutiny by the sufferings they shared with him. On the 15th the thermometer was minus 30 degrees. ... On Saturday, the 29th, thermometer 31 below he started . . . On New Years Day, 1811, thermometer minus 24 degrees, the dogs were unable to move their loads, a cache was made, . . . Thompson struggled on, with ever-increasing difficulty and danger, but there was no alternative. Jan. 4th, he came to a bold defile whence issued the main Athabasca River, 'the canoe road to pass to the west side of the mountains.' . . . Jan. 8th, the brook still seemingly the main stream dwindled away; Mountains, about 1 mile apart, 2000 to 3000 feet high . . . Thursday, Jan. 10th, crossed the Height of Land. Jan. 11th held DOWN a brook. . . . Jan. 13th, sent back to Height of Land for some things left there, but wolverines had destroyed everything except 5 lbs. of balls. Jan. 14th, dogs could no longer haul their loads owing to depth and softness of the snow; reduced all baggage to a weight of about three and one-half pieces, and abandoned everything not absolutely necessary, including his tent, courage of the men fast sinking. Jan. 15th sighted mountains on other side of the Columbia. . . . Jan. 21st, down to the Columbia. Jan. 22nd, up the Columbia 1 m. to a bold brook and 1 and ½ m. to a cedar point. F. d. P.[2] men dispirited, 'useless as old women' . . . determined to return to Canoe River and wait for men, goods and provisions and build canoes." So we see that even in these desperate circumstances he was ready to proceed, and had he been able to cross the mountains by the Howse Pass in September or October, 1810, in all probability would have pushed on down the Columbia to its mouth during the winter and anticipated the Astor party in actual occupancy. Failing in the effort he proceeded more slowly.
Courage and ability to endure hardships were but common attributes of the fur trader, but ability to observe intelligently and record with continual care the daily events and experiences, and the habits and names of the Indian tribes and localities was not so common. David Thompson kept his note book or journal under all conditions of weather or travel, and made record of the daily camping places in scientific terms and with such exactness that these localities can be checked today with scarce a variation. His instruments were small, only such as were held in the hand, but his observations were accurate. A prominent engineer and scholar of, Canada has had occasion to follow many of the routes of travel and gives testimony to this fact. And this ability and habit were not based upon the diploma of any school or institute of learning, not at all. At the age of seven years a poor boy David Thompson had been placed in a charity school in London, and remained there seven years learning all that was taught, which included a little of navigation, and reading all that came in his way, for he was an omniverous reader. When he was about fourteen years old (about 1783) the Hudson's Bay Company applied for a suitable boy to enter their service, and he was then apprenticed to that company for a period of seven years, and began life in the fur trade along the bleak shores of Hudson's Bay. His companionships were improved to the utmost, and a spirit of ambition inspired him to outdo his associates. His love for exploration was influenced perhaps by the travels of Samuel Hearne, who was one of the officers over him. Considering himself held back by the ultra commercialism of the Hudson's Bay Company after due time he turned to their more enterprising competitors, the NorthWest Company, fur traders of Canada, with headquarters at Montreal, and became a Northwester. As such he was chosen, after some years, to push the trade across the continental divide further south than Peace River, where Simon Fraser crossed over, and thus it fell to him to find the sources of the long looked for "river of the west" which both Alex. MacKenzie and Simon Fraser had hoped to find before him.
Let it not be supposed that the Northwest Company, of Canada, were at all ignorant of the goings and comings of Lewis and Clark in 1805–6. Those very same years Simon Fraser (and McLeod) penetrated to the waters of the river afterward named in his honor, and in the month of June of 1807 David Thompson descended the western slope of the Rocky Mountains by way of the pass at the head of the Saskatchewan River, which pass was afterward generously named in honor of a rival trader in the Hudson's Bay Company. The winters of 1807–8 and 1808–9 were both spent at the trading house built by him in July 1807, at the lower of the two lakes forming the source of the main Columbia; but explorations down the Kootenay River and a journey to Fort William to meet his partners engaged his time. In the summer of 1809 he pushed across the Indian road southward from the Kootenay to the Kullyspell (Pend d'Oreille) Lake, explored both the lake and rivers below and above it, and spent that winter (1809-10) at a trading house (already mentioned) established near the Flat Head Indians of Montana; but all the time was gathering information from the Indians as to the courses of the stream flowing to the ocean, and his men were extending their trade and acquaintance with the country during his absence.
But the entries in David Thompson's journal tell of more than courage, endurance, intelligence and care; they show that he was a devout man. His common expressions "thank God" and "thank Heaven" were sincere outbursts of a spiritual nature and not mere habitual repetitions. That season of 1811 at midsummer he had an important mission to perform and unknown miles to travel, and yet on Sunday here at Kettle Falls he rested. Five years afterward he was engaged under appointment from the British government in the important work of directing the survey and establishment of the boundary line between the United States and Canada from Maine to the Lake of the Woods. While thus engaged an associate observed and afterward remarked the following: "Mr. Thompson was a firm churchman, while most of our men were Roman Catholics. Many a time have I seen these uneducated Canadians most attentively and thankfully listen, as they sat upon some bank of shingle, to Mr. Thompson, while he read to them in most extraordinarily pronounced French three chapters out of the Old Testament and as many out of the New, adding such explanations as seemed to him suitable."
The same individual thus describes Mr. Thompson physically: "A singular looking person of about fifty. He was plainly dressed, quiet and observant. His figure was short and compact, and his black hair was worn long all around, and cut square, as if by one stroke of the shears just above the eyebrows. His complexion was of the gardiner's ruddy brown, while the expression of his deeply furrowed features were friendly and intelligent, but his cut short nose gave him an odd look. His speech betrayed the Welchman. No living person possesses a tithe of his information respecting the Hudson's Bay countries, which from 1783 to 1813 he was constantly traversing. Never mind his Bunyon-like face and cropped hair; he has a powerful mind and a singular faculty of picture-making. He can create a wilderness and people it with howling savages, or climb the Rocky Mountains with you in a snowstorm, so clearly and palpably, that only shut your eyes and you hear the crack of the rifle, or feel the snowflakes on your cheek as he talks." This quotation is from an address delivered recently before the Royal Geographical Society of London by the eminent engineer already mentioned, Mr. J. B. Tyrell, to whose personal research and interest the world is chiefly indebted for its growing knowledge of David Thompson.
Paddling down the Columbia in July, 1811, David Thompson landed at a large Indian encampment near to where you are now accustomed to "keep your eye on Pasco" and there erected a pole with this written notice upon it: "Know hereby that this country is claimed by Great Britain as part of its territories, and that the NorthWest Company of Merchants from Canada finding the factory of this people inconvenient to them do hereby intend to erect a factory in this place for the Commerce of the Country around."
Intelligent students of American history today candidly admit that American diplomats did exceedingly well in finally placing the line of the Canadian boundary at the 49th parallel of North Latitude, and agree that the work of David Thompson gave a considerable degree of fairness to the British demand for that boundary to follow the line of the Columbia River south from the 49th parallel, which is the most Great Britain ever seriously claimed. And we of the Republic may well be thankful that those pesky Indians of the Saskatchewan in the early fall of 1810 hindered David Thompson from crossing the "height of land" and thus from coming down the Columbia that year and actually occupying the mouth of the Columbia in advance of the Astor party.
During the final stages of the negotiation for the settlement of the international boundary with Great Britain, between 1842 and 1846, David Thompson, then about seventy-five years old, wrote several letters to the officials of his government emphasizing the extent and value of this wonderful Columbia river country and relating the services he had performed here. These letters are now on file in the Public Records Office at London and they are the plea of an old and forgotten man for recognition; for in sorrow be it said the last years of his life were spent in poverty and at times in distress. His death occurred at Longueil, near Montreal, in the year 1857 during his eighty-seventh year. The families of the Merchants of Canada who had grown wealthy through the fur trade forgot him in his failing years, and the government had no time to listen to his story.
That other grand man of the Columbia, Doctor John McLoughlin, during that same year 1857, died at Oregon City, Oregon, under similar circumstances of distress of mind. The people he had befriended became forgetful and even sought to despoil him. But during these anniversary years these men are coming to their own in the memory of the generations of the present, and these two names, David Thompson and John McLoughlin, will be placed high among others of the early history of the Columbia River.
Ilth-koy-ape is the more appropriate and musical name for this beautiful and romantic part of this magnificent river, but the French-Canadian voyageurs and servants came to terms there Falls LaChaudiere, in recollection of similar formations in the rocks of the falls on the Ottawa River, and that name came in turn to be translated into its English meaning. The first line of direct communication, trade and travel across the continent of North America (Mexico excepted) passed up and down the Columbia River and for a period of thirty years and more was used as such, with the portage at Kettle Falls affording one of the most important supply and resting stations. We do well to honor the career and name of the man who discovered, explored, made known and opened this highway of communication, David Thompson, who loved his work and did it well, and who is proclaimed by Mr. Tyrrell as the greatest land geographer the British race has ever produced.
- ↑ This paper was published in Vol. XII of the Oregon Historical Quarterly. Since then the writer has had access to photostat copy of the note books of David Thompson and has been able to correct some minor errors in words and figures of the text as then printed; also to correct a few of bis own statements of fact. The call for data concerning David Thompson has become so frequent that it seems desirable to offer the entire paper, as corrected, for republication.—T. C. Elliott.
- ↑ Fort de Prairie.