For the Hudson's Bay Company, and then as a wintering partner for the North West Company, David Thompson traveled fifty-five thousand miles. The map prepared by David Thompson filled in the blank spaces on one million, nine hundred thousand square miles of northwest Canada. But this was not his only contribution to our historical heritage. David Thompson and his men erected the first establishments west of the Continental Divide in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. He opened the first trade with the northwestern Indian tribes of the United States and Lower Canada. David Thompson made the first recorded information on Northern Plains Indian warfare, guns, and horses (Josephy, Ewers). And it should be added that he accomplished all of this, much to the chagrin of several North West partners, without trading whiskey to the Indians.

                       David Thompson Map-National Geographic, May 1996

The North West Company map prepared by David Thompson covered an area of two million three hundred and forty thousand square miles from Lake Superior and Hudson Bay to the mouth of the Columbia River. The David Thompson map was placed in the Great Hall of the North West Company headquarters at Fort William, which was located at Thunder Bay on Lake Superior. In 1814, he revised all of his surveys into a second great map that measured six and a half by ten feet long. The revised David Thompson map showed an accurate location of all the North West Company posts. 

David Thompson was born in Westminster, England, April 30, 1770. His Welch father died when he was two years old. At the age of seven, his mother enrolled him in the charitable Grey Coat School near Westminster Abbey. At the age of fourteen, he apprenticed to the Hudson's Bay Company as a clerk, arriving at Churchill Factory on Hudson Bay in September of 1784. His first two years were spent on the shores of Hudson Bay at the Churchill and York factories before being stationed at several posts on the Saskatchewan River.

Thompson spent the winter of 1787-88 on the Bow River...not far from Calgary. From a Cree Indian named Saukamapee, Thompson learned and later recorded in his narratives  the only known Plains Indian history before the arrival of white men (Josephy). During the winter, Saukamapee described two battles between the Blackfeet and the Shoshone (Ewers). The first one occurred around 1720. In that fight, Saukamapee told him that as the warriors approached each other both sides shouted, leaped, and sang. About a hundred yards apart, each group stopped and sat behind their shields. The warriors’ arrows could not penetrate the thick rawhide shields, but having smaller shields, a few Blackfeet were wounded. The fighting stopped at dusk, and the participants went home. During a battle that lasted most of the day, there were only a few minor wounds. Not a single warrior was killed. 

The second battle occurred ten years later. Saukamapee and nine other Cree were at the Blackfeet camp and offered to help. The Cree had acquired guns from Hudson's Bay or North West traders. The battle started the same, but when the Cree fired the muzzleloaders, the noise panicked the Snakes (Shoshone). When the warriors fled, several were killed with bows and lances.

Horses were not used in this battle; however, a few days later, a Snake Indian and his horse were killed. Despite the horse being dead, people from a nearby village were afraid and would not get too close. The strange animal had carried a man and his possessions, so the Blackfeet called it a Big Dog. Later, mainly because of its size, the name for a horse was changed to Elk Dog.

In December of 1788, David Thompson fell down a steep creek bank and broke his leg. The break was so severs that for sometime it was feared that he might lose his leg. After spending several months at Manchester House on the North Saskatchewan, he was sent downriver to Cumberland House, which was the first interior trading post built by the Hudson's Bay Company. It was located on the Saskatchewan River near Lake Winnipeg. It is interesting to note that from Cumberland House, men with canoes could reach the Arctic Ocean, Hudson Bay, Gulf of St. Lawrence, Gulf of Mexico, and without too much more trouble, the Pacific Ocean. There were many portages on the water routes, but none of them took more than a day (O'Meara).

Philip Turnor, the Hudson's Bay Company's astronomer, was at Cumberland House planning a surveying expedition to the Athabasca country. Over the long winter months, Turnor tutored the convalescing David in surveying and practical astronomy. During his navigational training, Thompson lost the sight in his right eye, probably from staring at the sun (Gottfred).

Despite a limp and the loss of sight in his right eye, surveying and mapping became David Thompson's passion. When his apprenticeship expired, Thompson signed on for another seven years. Instead of the customary suit of clothes for reenlisting, Thompson requested that the Hudson’s Bay Company furnish him with a compass, watches, thermometers, sextant, an artificial horizon, and Nautical Almanacs. With his new instruments, he spent the next several years exploring and trading around York Factory and in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan.                                        

David Thompson was dissatisfied with the Hudson’s Bay Company’s emphasis on the fur trade, and after his term of service was up, he joined the Hudson’s Bay Company’s chief rival the North West Company. He arrived at the North West Company's headquarters at Grand Portage on Lake Superior in July of 1797.                              

Thompson’s first assignment was to determine the longitude and latitude of the North West Company posts that might be affected by the Jay Treaty of 1794. This treaty required the North West Company to respect the boundary as set by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the American Revolution. Enforcing this treaty had been difficult because the precise location of the boundary was unclear.

In November, David Thompson set out with nine men to determine the location of the Mandan villages on the Missouri River. The permanent Indian villages of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara were the site of trade fairs between the Plains Indians and the Hudson’s Bay and North West fur traders. From the Mandan villages, he proceeded eastwards to Turtle Lake, which he declared to be the headwaters of the Mississippi…the actual head was later determined to be a few miles away. Continuing on, he surveyed the south shore of Lake Superior to Sault Ste. Marie, and from there, David Thompson mapped the east shore and most of the north shore of Lake Superior before arriving at Grand Portage in June of 1798. In a ten-month period, David Thompson had mapped close to four thousand miles. Based on his survey, the North West Company headquarters at Grand Portage was moved inland to Fort Kaministiquia (Thunder Bay, Ontario). The fort was renamed Fort William in 1807.

David Thompson’s map from this survey was an important resource for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Following Albert Gallatin’s instructions, Nicholas King incorporated Thompson’s drawings of the upper portion of the Missouri onto a map for the expedition. A tracing from Thompson’s map showing the Great Bend of the Missouri is on display in the Library of Congress. A notation on the front of the map in President Jefferson’s hand reads: “Bend of the Missouri, Long. 101° 25' Lat. 47° 32' by Mr. Thomson astronomer to the N.W. Company in 1798 (Virginia.edu).”

On June 10, 1799, David Thompson married Charlotte Small. She was the daughter of a prominent North West Company partner, Patrick Small and his Indian wife. Charlotte bore him five children, accompanied him on many of his travels, and returned with him to Montreal at the end of his career of exploration where she had eight more children.

David Thompson spent the years from 1802 to 1806 traveling and trading between the Peace River and Churchill River areas. At the annual meeting of the North West Company partners at Fort Kaministiquia in 1806, Thompson was promoted to a wintering partner of the company. Since Mackenzie’s 1793 route to the Pacific was too far north to be practical for the fur trade, the partners decided to make another attempt...Thompson’s first attempt in 1801 to cross the mountains had failed. 

On May 10, 1807, the David Thompson family, Finnan McDonald, and eight voyageurs traveled up the North Saskatchewan River, past Kootenay Plains, and over what would later be known as Howse Pass. They descended the Blaeberry River to a large north flowing river. Because the river flowed north, Thompson was not sure that it was the Columbia…from its source at Columbia Lake, the Columbia River flows five hundred miles north along the base of the Canadian Rocky Mountains before it turns south and west to the Pacific Ocean. Going south up the river, they stopped at Lake Windemere and built Kootanae House.

The following spring (1808), David Thompson left Charlotte and the children at Kootanae House and crossed over to the Kootenay River. His plan was to explore the Kootenay River as well as find the Flathead Indians (Salish). He followed the Kootenay River into Montana, Idaho, and back into Canada before crossing back over to Kootanae House.

After returning the furs in 1808 to the North West depot at Rainey Lake and again in 1809 to Fort Augustus near Edmonton, David Thompson returned to winter at Kootanae House.

Accompanied by a number of men, including Jaco Finlay and his family, he went to Pend Oreille Lake in Idaho where they built Kullyspell House. Thompson spent the remainder of the fall and early winter exploring in the vicinity, and ended the year by establishing Saleesh House on the Clark Fork River near modern day Thompson Falls, Montana.

In the spring of 1810, David Thompson made a number of explorations in Saleesh and Kullyspell house areas. That May, he left to again take his furs over Howse Pass to the North West Company depot at Rainy Lake. While there, Thompson learned that John Jacob Astor had dispatched a ship and an overland party to the mouth of the Columbia River.

Thompson had not been given a deadline on getting to the Pacific, but he realized the supply route from the Columbia River Basin to the North West Company depots was too long. Horses and canoes were used to transport the furs from Saleesh House, Kullyspell House, and Kootanae House over the mountains, down the Saskatchewan and on to Fort William, and from there to Montreal. From the locations of his Columbia River Basin posts and the surveys of Lewis & Clark, David Thompson knew it was not far to the mouth of the Columbia River. With a post there, ships could be used to transport the furs and trade goods, and thus eliminate the long North West supply route.

David Thompson and several men headed back toward the Columbia River Basin in four canoes. At Rocky Mountain House, he learned that a hunting party of Flatheads along with some of his men had gone to the Montana plains to hunt buffalo, and in a fight with a party of Piegans (Blackfeet), seven Piegans were killed and thirteen wounded (Josephy). The Blackfeet were determined to block Howse Pass and not to let the white traders into the Kootenay country again. The Piegans did not want guns being traded to their enemies. Thompson and his men had been trading guns to the Kutenai, Flathead, and Nez Perce.

With Howse Pass blocked, David Thompson retraced his steps to Boggy Hall. After pausing to make dog sleds and snowshoes, Thompson’s party, with an Iroquois named Thomas as a guide, set out for the Athabasca Valley.  It is interesting to note what Thompson's party took with them.

"Gave the Men their Loads for the Sleds--each Sled that has 2 Dogs, B. D'Eau, Coté, Francois, & L'Amoureux have 120 lbs of Goods & Necessaries for the Journey, & Vallade, Battoche, Pareil & Du Nord each 1 Dog & Sled have 70 lbs per Sled.  4 Horses loaded with Meat, havg 208 lbs of Pemmican, 35 lbs of Grease & 60 lbs of Flour also accompany us to ease the Dogs". On January 6th, they left the horses because of the poor trail and lack of feed, and on January 24th, Thompson cached some of his trade goods. "Part of the Things in the Hoard are 3 fine Capots, 4 do Shirts, 12 lbs of Beads, Garden Seeds, 8 groce of Rings, 3 Rolls of Ribbon, 6 groce of Bells, 3 Jockey Caps, 4 Cotton Shirts, 1 pr of Cloth Trowsers DT, 3 doz Glasses, 6 Bott[les] of Turlington, 1 Roll of Gartg, 2 Bott[les] of Peppermint, 6 Worms, 6 Steels (Baylea)."

David Thompson crossed the mountains through Athabasca Pass (near today's Jasper, Alberta). At the forks of the Canoe River and the Columbia River, his men refused to go on, and he was forced to spend the winter.

                                                Indian Trade Axe - 1700s

In the spring of 1811, David Thompson's party constructed clinker-built (overlapping boards) canoes out of cedar. He went up the Columbia to Kootanae House and then, portaged to the Kootenay River and floated down it. Saleesh House and Kullyspell had both been abandoned because of the Piegan threat (Josephy). Leaving the river, Thompson went to Spokane House, which had been built the year before by Jaco Finlay. Going on to Kettle Falls, he and five voyageurs, two Iroquois and two Sanpoil interpreters started down the Columbia.

At the junction on the Columbia and Snake rivers, David Thompson stopped and planted a pole with a note on it: “Know hereby that this country is claimed by Great Britain as part of its territories and that the N.W. Company of Merchants from Canada do hereby intend to erect a factory." The party reached the mouth of the Columbia on July 15, 1811, three months after the arrival of the Tonquin. It is interesting to note that Thompson told the Astorians, "the wintering partners had resolved to abandon their trading posts west of the mountains and enter into an agreement with us on the condition that we promise not to meddle in their trade to the east (Franchère)." Thompson showed them a letter addressed to William McGillivray, chief of the North West Company in Canada to that effect. If this was the case why did he post the sign at the junction of the Columbia and Snake Rivers?

After a week of being wined and dined at Fort Astoria by Duncan McDougall, Thompson went back up the Columbia with David Stuart, Alexander Ross, and seven other Astorians. Leaving the Astorians on the last day of July, Thompson and his men continued up the Columbia to their winter camp on the Canoe River. When he reached his previous winter camp, David Thompson had travel the entire course of the Columbia River.

With supplies that had been brought over Athabasca Pass, Thompson returned to Spokane House, and then proceeded overland to rebuild Saleesh House for the winter. A week after his party arrived there, John McTavish and James McMillan arrived with a group of fifteen men on their way to Astoria. 

Astoria was sold to the North West Company in August of 1813 for about one third the value of the fort and its contents, i.e. approximately forty thousand dollars was allowed for furs worth upwards of one hundred thousand dollars (Irving). Two months later, the British war ship, Raccoon, arrived on the Columbia and would have captured Astoria as a prize of war had it not been sold. Astoria was renamed Fort George. Astoria was returned to Astor in 1818, but he had no further interest in it. Fort George remained a North West post until the 1821 merger of the North West and Hudson’s Bay Companies. After the Hudson's Bay Company built Fort Vancouver (1825) across the Columbia from the mouth of the Willamette River, Fort George was abandoned.

David Thompson left the Columbia River Basin in the spring of 1812 and was back at Fort William by August. Retiring from the North West Company, he was allowed his share of the North West Company profits for the next three years.

Thompson and his wife, Charlotte, moved to Terrebonne, north of Montreal. Following the war of 1812, David Thompson was appointed to the commission that surveyed the boundary between Canada and the United States. Thompson's measurements were accepted by both Canada and the United States without question.

With the merger of the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821, both Thompson and his work were treated with indifference. Governor George Simpson, the head of Hudson’s Bay, supplied Thompson's survey data to mapmaker Aaron Arrowsmith of London. Thompson was not given any credit for his data that Arrowsmith used on the Arrowsmith's maps.

David Thompson retired relatively wealthy, but financial reversals left him in poverty. In 1857, with little credit for his accomplishments, David Thompson died blind, penniless, and in virtual obscurity. Charlotte followed three months later. David and Charlotte are buried side by side in Montreal's Mount Royal Cemetery.

In 1927, J. B. Tyrell, who edited Thompson's journals for the Champlain Society, erected a monument with a sextant on it over Thompson's grave. This was the first act of public recognition of the years of hard work completed a hundred and fifteen years earlier by a man now grudgingly recognized as the worlds greatest land geographer (Gottfred).

 Mountains of Stone a historical novel provides detailed information on the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the fur trade with the upper Missouri and Plains Indians, as well as, the Hudson's Bay and the North West Company traders, including a detailed account of Alexander Mackenzie's exploration to the Pacific and Alexander Henry (the younger) at Pembina.

The David Thompson article was written by O. Ned Eddins of Afton, Wyoming. Permission is given for material from this site to be used for school research papers.

Related Articles:  Astorians    Fur Trade     Oregon Trail    Oregon Country

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Mountains of Stone contains an abridged account of the important aspects of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, as well as, some of the major Hudson's Bay and North West Company explorers. The extensive bibliography for Mountains of Stone served as background information on the articles for this website.          

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References:
Belyea, Barbara (ed.),  Columbia Journals of David Thompson. McGill-Queen's : Montreal, 1994.

Ewers, John C. The Blackfeet Raiders of the Northwest Plains. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman Oklahoma. 1988.

Franchère, Gabriel. Adventures at Astoria 1810-1814. Translated and Edited by Hoyt C. Franchère. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman, Oklahoma. 1967.

Irving, Washington. Astoria or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains. Edited by Richard Dilworth Rust. Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska. 1982.

David Thompson, National Geographic, May, 1996.

O’Meara Walter, The Savage Country, Houghton Miffin Company, Boston, Mass. 1960.

Ross, Alexander. Adventure of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River, 1810‑1813. Bison Books. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln, Nebraska. 1986.

Josephy, Alvin M. David Thompson, Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West Leroy Hafen (Ed.) Vol. III, pp.309. Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale, California. 1966.

Internet Sources:
J & A Gottfred. The Life of David Thompson,  Northwest Journal
www.telusplanet.net/public/gottfred/dtnav.html  - This web site is an excellent source of information on David Thompson and his navigational skills.

www.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/lewis_clark/