# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 27/In the Land of the Kootenai

In the Land of the Kootenai
By T. C. ELLIOTT
We foregather at an ancient traverse in the land of the Kootenai. Twenty miles to the north lies an unguarded and almost invisible frontier, which separates two great nations. At our feet flows the beautiful river Kootenai, which rises many miles to the north -east among the glaciers of the Canadian Alps, and here, for a distance, touches elbows with the Republic before returning to the Dominion to complete its course to the Columbia. The winding of this stream typifies that international comity, which has so long permeated our history and now is happily recognized in the personnel and program of this occasion.
The story of this river is, broadly speaking, the history of this land; its discovery and exploration, its people, its early commerce, its diplomatic relations, its gold fields, its settlement and growth. In the region tributary to the river dwell the Kootenais, a people originally engaged in hunting for livelihood. These Indians have witnessed the coming of the explorer and fur-trader with his pack-horse, canoe and happy-go-lucky voyageur, of the early overland traveler and the pioneer emigrant to the Columbia, of the missionary of the Cross, of the hewer of the boundary line, of the excited prospector with his pick and shovel, of the pack-train, steam boat, locomotive and automobile. Their habitat is an extensive region of forests, streams, lakes, meadows and lofty mountains. Their eyes have been constantly on the hills from whence cometh my help ” , and their camps in the shadows thereof. We do well to pause here and review history and plant a memorial to those who long ago led the way to and through this land. A curious bit of natural geography, almost a freak of nature, features our story. The Columbia River rises in British Columbia in a chain of three lakes and flows north
2 Official spelling by U. S. Geographic Board; Kootenay according to Geographic Board of Canada.
two hundred miles before it turns south to the United States . The Kootenai River , flowing southward from its source , passes within two miles of the upper of these lakes . The watershed between lake and river is not a mountain or ridge , but a level , gravelly flat , out of which a large spring feeds the lake as its only visible tributary . The first one hundred miles of the Columbia have a fall of less than forty feet, to where the river flows through a gorge . Geologists offer the opinion that originally the waters of this first hundred mile stretch of the Columbia drained southward through this Kootenai River.4
The Kootenais are an aboriginal people , separate and distinct from the larger linguistic families of the Pacific Slope , their speech unusually soft and musical . They first emerge into the view of white men during the last years of the eighteenth century . Earlier in that century the literature of the Mississippi Valley contains references to Indians (Snakes) residing beyond the “Stoney” mountains on what was called Spanish river ; but those were mere references , not a record of actual contact . When Lewis and Clark , in 1805 , ascended the Missouri , they did not meet an Indian between the Mandan Villages and the source of Jefferson Fork. Yet , even before 1800 , the Kootenais, first of the trans-mountain tribes , had appeared on the eastern slopes of the Rocky mountains of Canada to barter with the traders of the Forts des Prairies upon the Saskatchewan . Rocky Mountain House , one of the prominent trading posts of the North West Company , was then located about one hundred miles southwest of the site of Edmonton.
3 Now called Redgrave Canyon . Discovery of the Columbia was just above this gorge , at Blaeberry Creek up which the Indian trail ran to the summit of the Rockies , and beyond . The name Kootenai was applied to this part of the Columbia , and our Kootenai was called McGillivray's River , in honor of the leading official of the North West Company then .
4 For latest discussion of this see " The Columbia Unveiled ,” page 111 , by M. J . Lorraine . A canal was once dug and used connecting Upper Columbia Lake with this Kootenai River .
5 For scientific study of this family consult “Notes on the Kootenay Indians,” by A. F. Chamberlain , in American Antiquarian for September, 1893, and September, 1894.
Among the Rockies west of that post was a beautiful mountain meadow , called Kootenai Plain , because thus far came the Kootenais from across the great divide . They usually did not go farther for fear of the Piegans or Blackfeet of the prairies , and the traders , some of them Scotchmen , gladly journeyed there to meet them .
Over the mountain trail of the Kootenais the fur traders of Canada began , as early as 1800 , to send their freeman and trappers ( Saulteux , Iroquois and Canadian French ) to spy out the road and the land . For five years or more these men penetrated the Kootenai country , and beyond among the Saleesh , Kullyspell, Skeetshoa and Spokane tribes . Their speech was French patois . They were untutored , and no written record remains , but their presence is well marked in Indian tradition and local nomenclature . The names Tete Plete , Pend d'Oreille , and Coeur d'Alene originated then . If journals kept at the trading posts of the upper Saskatchewan had been more generally preserved doubtless mention would be found of the infrequent return of these itinerant trappers , and interesting items as to the countries they had visited .'
Next over this trail ( later known as Howse Pass ) came the white man , and his coming marks an event of real importance in the history of the United States and Canada . This was the discovery of the source of the Columbia . The long search for a mysterious " River of the West ” is a theme of itself , but soon after 1800 the fur traders of the Saskatchewan must have known that one or two large rivers existed in the Kootenai country . Whether these connected with the Tacouche Tesse ( Fraser ) of Alexander Mackenzie , or with the Columbia of Robert Gray , was not known , and an answer to that question was awaited with impatience by the traders . Rivalries with the X. Y . Company until 1804 . delayed this answer , but following the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the advent of Simon Fraser in the Fraser River 6Possibly here was an early application of Pope's phrase " Lo ! the poor Indian , whose untutored mind ” , etc.
6 The journals of Alexander Henry do mention these men .
country , the officials of the North West Company hastened to proceed . In the fall of 1806 Jacques Finlay , familiarly known as Jaco , a man with a mixture of English and French Indian blood in his veins , accompanied by wife and chil dren , was outfitted and sent over the trail to make it pas sable for pack animals , and to construct a canoe where the trail ended at one of the large rivers . Then , as soon as pos sible in the early spring of 1807 , came David Thompson , with telescope , sextant and compass , with clerk , hunters and trading goods, to chart ad explore , and to open marts of trade in this Kootenai land .
Of David Thompson , London charity - school boy , self educated youth , God - fearing man , skilled astronomer and geographer , another will speak , and we merely pause to salute him as discoverer of the sources ( and of three - fourths the entire length ) of the Columbia , in those vivid lines of the poet laureate of Canada : ' 6 There the enormous ranges stood Forbidding against the sky, Where only the bear and bighorn climbed And the eagle's brood could fly : His was the foot must find a road For the World to enter by . Up he followed the azure thread Of a winding stream for guide , By rapid and reach and shingly beach , Then over the great divide . Then he saw a river broad and strong Swing past in silver tide . Down through a maze of canyon walls He watched the mighty stream Sweep on in conquering plentitude
8 For David Thompson's written report of this discovery see Oregon Historical Quarterly , Vol . XXVI , Number 1 .
' Bliss Carman , at Lake Windermere celebration in August , 1922 .
With arrowy flight and gleam , And knew that he had found at last The river of his dream . Since a trading post was established near Bonners Fer ry , where we now stand, the final stanza of the poem is also appropriate : And here has house was builded , Here let us stand and say , Here was a man full -sized , whose fame Shall never pass away While the stars shine and rivers run , In the land of Kootenai . Closely associated with David Thompson in exploration and trade was a remarkable Scotchman , Finnan MacDonald by name . When a boy of less than a dozen years Finnan migrated , with his parents , from one of those unpronounce able shires of Scotland to the Glengarry district of Ontario ; there a family home was established, and in a churchyard there his body lies . His older brother , John , became a trusted officer of the North West Company and Finnan fol lowed into the fur trade without waiting to obtain the usual education , a fact which annoyed his brother , and part ly accounts for there being no personal record of the many experiences of his active career.
But Finnan soon became quite a linguist. Association with trappers and voyageurs fitted his tongue to the spoken French , and nearly twenty years' continuous life ( no vacations for Finnan , if you please !) among Indian tribes west of the Rockies rendered him proficient in native dialects and Chinook jargon . Ross Cox tells us that the oaths he uttered under provocation were a diabolical mixture of Scotch , French and Indian sounds , quite wonderful to listen to. He married a daughter of a Kullyspell ( Pend d'Oreille ) chief , and his children were , as soon as possible , baptised into the Roman Catholic faith of his family . Some leading citizens of Montana and British Columbia can trace their
lineage to him . Physically he was a Samson , and his feats of strength are traditional today among the Flathead tribe . The story of his fight single -handed with a wounded buffa lo bull is classic in fur trade literature . The first trading post established west of the Rocky Mountains was Kootanae House , near Lake Windemere in British Columbia . There David Thompson spent the winters of 1807-8 and 1808-9 , trading , exploring , and gathering information as to the country . MacDonald , as his avant courier among the Indians to the south , probably was the first white man to descend the Kootenai River to Lake Kootenai , and the first to traverse the trail across the bend of the river , from Bonners Ferry to Cranbrook and Fort Steele , the present route of the Canadian Pacific.10 The winter of 1808-9 MacDonald spent in a leather lodge above Kootenai Falls in Montana ( at the mouth of Rainey Creek , probably ) , and there built a log hut to protect the trading goods and furs . That was the first building erected in Western Montana by white men . After 1809 his career carried him into all parts of Idaho , Oregon and Western Montana and into the Thompson River region of British Columbia ; and his red hair and beard were known to every Indian tribe of the Columbia .
Another associate of Thompson in the Kootenai country was James McMillan , a clerk of the North West Company . During the winter of 1808 he crossed the Rockies on snow shoes , with dog sleds and more goods for trade , and joined MacDonald above Kootenai Falls . No written records have been found , but circumstances and later events indicate that one or both of these white men may have visited the Flat head , Kullyspel and Spokane tribes that winter or spring .
Chapter XXII of the journals kept by Alexander Henry at Rocky Mountain House in 1811 contains many ethnographic and geographic facts as to the trans -mountain tribes and regions . This information had been brought to Mr. Henry from the field , by Thompson and others . McMillan was a keen , intelligent man , capable of comprehending and report-
10 The Moyie was originally called MacDonald's River .
ing such data , and he visited the Forts des Prairies frequently . In 1810 the Hudson's Bay Company , from their trading post contiguous to Rocky Mountain House , out fitted an expedition under Joseph Howse to winter beyond the Rockies , and McMillan was sent to follow and report their movements . This errand would have taken him into the vicinity of Flathead Lake , when few , if any , white men had seen that lake . In later years McMillan was the trusted officer of the Hudson's Bay Company who , under instructions of Gov. Geo . Simpson , explored the lower Fraser River and built Fort Langley . Of his antecedents and later career nothing is yet known .
These forceful men , Thompson , MacDonald and McMillan , were the discoverers and explorers of Kootenai land , a task calling for skill , endurance , patience and fortitude of high order . Consider the economic conditions involved . The commercial base , from 1807 to 1812 , was Fort William on Lake Superior , where goods had been brought from the sea port of Montreal . From Fort William , in packages of about ninety pounds each , these goods for the Indian trade were transported , in canoes upon the streams and on the backs of men over the portages , to the headwaters of the Saskatchewan ; thence by pack animals over the Rockies to the Columbia ; thence by canoe again one hundred miles upstream to Columbia Lake ; thence across the short portage to the Kootenai and down this river to the Indian roads leading to the Flatheads ( near Jennings , Montana ) and the Kullyspell and Spokane tribes ( here at Bonners Ferry ) .
The furs gathered in trade had to be carried over the same long and weary road to Fort William . In May of 1810 Thompson arrived here ( Bonners Ferry ) with the season's furs from Kullyspell House on Pend d'Oreille Lake , and Saleesh House on Thompson's Prairie , Montana . His published narrative of that date reads : " May 17th . We got the canoes repaired and in the afternoon with forty - six packs of furs and eight bags of pemmican we went off for the Rocky Mountain defiles . Mr. James McMillan , one man and myself and sixteen horses , went by land. " These forty - six
packs of furs weighed a little more than two tons , and represented the first freight shipment from Bonners Ferry east.17
This occasion naturally directs attention to this particular locality in the land of the Kootenai ; prominent because the ancient crossing -place for the Indians in their travels , and the northerly end of the time - worn trail leading to the neighboring tribes to the southward . That trail has now become the busy highways for the locomotive and automobile of the white men . On David Thimpson's large and eloquent map , which he drew in 1813-14 immediately after retiring from field service with the North West Company , this trail is traced under the designation ,
" Lake Indian Road " ; the Indians residing around Kootenai Lake were at times called Lake Indians and it led to those residing around Kullyspell ( Pend d'Oreille ) Lake . This map also shows , at the bend in the Kootenai River here , the usual initials , "NW Co. " to indicate that a trading post was then located here — the only post so indicated on the Lower Kootenai . The starting point and meanderings of this old Indian trail , and the precise location of this trading post , are items for a later and more detailed study , but the date and circumstances of the beginning of organized and continuous trade here are pertinent and of historical interest .
Thompson first saw this crossing place , and road , in the spring of 1808 , while on an exploring voyage down the Kootenai . He first used the road in the fall of 1809 , in September and again in October , when penetrating south to ward the Spokane country with goods to establish the posts on Lake Pend d'Oreille and Thompson's Prairie ; and he again passed through here in May , 1810 , as already cited . At these times only was he here , and the entries in his journals , though quite voluminous , are silent as to any trading post here then , or as to any of his clerks or associates having
11 The Great Northern Ry . was not here to receive it , and what else could David Thompson have done ?
12 According to Indian tradition this was located at the mouth of Deep Creek , a few miles below Bonners Ferry .
been sent here previously to establish one . The whereabouts of his men and clerks during those years is very well known from those journals , and those of Alexander Henry . The year 1811 was a busy one with David Thompson ; he then surveyed the Columbia from source to mouth , and opened up for travel the famous trade route across Athabaska Pass . In September of that year he was at Boat Encampment at the western end of the pass and the following appears in his journal :
"Sept 25th .
sent off the Goods in my wood Canoe & 9 men
Michel Kinville in charge, till he sees Mr. Finan McDonald . "
These were the first trading goods brought into Columbia district from Fort William over Athabaska Pass , and in his narrative Thompson speaks of them as “ for the supply of the lower posts on McGillivray's , the Saleesh and Spokane Rivers . "
He himself followed down the Columbia a little later , en route to the Flathead country to spend the winter . In November , while traveling by land with pack animals and in camp at the crossing of Pend d'Oreille River below Sand Point , Idaho , two of his men reported as follows :
" November 14 , Thursday , A fine day . Learning from Bercier & Methode that the Lake indians do not hunt , but only gamble & keep the men starving . I told them as the Season was fast advancing to lay up the Furrs they have , abt 4 Packs , & make the best of their way back to Kinville , & re turn to the Skeetshoo River with all the property & c . as to keep up a Post there, with so few goods , is expence to no purpose .”
The whereabouts of Kinville the following spring would indicate that these instructions were countermanded , for when coming down the Saleesh River ( our Clark Fork ) in canoes with his men and furs , Thompson wrote in his journal :
“ March 15th (1812) * * At 9-42 a m stopped 1 1-2 H to try & send some young men to Kinville on McGillivray's river " .
This visit was at the old Indian camp at
the mouth of Clark Fork, a few miles above Kullyspell House , which post this same journal entry mentions as being unoccupied .
It may be stated then , with some assurance , that Michel Kinville , an intelligent French - Canadian employee of the North West Company , carried on the first trade here at Bonners Ferry , and that Finnan MacDonald, or Kinville , located and began the construction of the post , during the year 1811.
In December , 1811 , John George MacTavish , from Fort William , arrived at Saleesh house to succeed David Thompson in the Columbia district , and proceeded on to establish his headquarters at Spokane House , which continued for twelve years to be the most important trading post in the interior country . With MacTavish , or soon after , came Nicholas Montour , who was sent to succeed Kinville here . The commercial base was soon after shifted from Fort William to the mouth of the Columbia , where the Pacific Fur Company , capitalized by John Jacob Astor of New York , in 1811 established what is now the city of Astoria . Readers of Franchere's and Ross ' accounts of the Astoria enterprise will recall an incident of the arrival there from the interior of two strange Indians , wearing deer-skin cloth ing and carrying a letter addressed to Mr. John Stuart , Fort Estacatadene , New Calidonia . Whether both of these were women masquerading in mens ' clothing is a trifle ob scure , but at least one was a Kootenai woman , playing the part of a prophetess and medicine woman. Both narrowly escaped death that summer at the Cascades , while returning up the Columbia , as noted in Thompson's journal entry of July 28th , 1811 :
"but had not Kootanaes been under our immediate care, she would have been killed for the lies she told on her way to the Sea .”
This is our record of the first quack who tried to practice at Astoria .
In July , 1812 , John Clarke , a chief trader of the Pacific Fur Company , was sent , with goods and men , from Astoria to establish a trading post ( called Fort Spokane ) adjacent to Spokane House . Competition at Spokane meant competi tion among the Kootenais also ; and we read of the arrival of Francis Benjamin Pillett at Bonners Ferry that fall to oppose Nicholas Montour , of the North West Company , and of a spectacular bloodless duel between these two men , " with pocket pistols at six paces ; both hits ; one in the collar of the coat , and the other in the leg of the trousers . Two of their men acted as seconds , and the tailor speedily healed their wounds . "
This is the animated account by Ross Cox .
Mr. Pillett did not return , for before another winter the “ Northwesters ” had succeeded to the business of the Astor Company , and Mr. Montour had this field to himself . The name longest associated with the trading post on the Kootenai ( and later called Fort Kootenai ) was that of William Kittson , who came to the Columbia in 1818 as a “ Northwester " and , after amalgamation ( 1821 ) , continued with the Hudson's Bay Company . This trader carried the title of “ Major " among his associates , because of having been a voltigeur in Canada in the War of 1812. He was a faithful and forceful man ; a brother of Norman Kittson of St. Paul , who was associated with James J. Hill in the early transportation enterprises of Minnesota . He married Nelly MacDonald , oldest daughter of Finnan MacDonald , and died at Fort Vancouver in 1841 .
The location of the trading post was not permanent here . Later it was moved to the mouth of Rainey Creek above the falls , still later to a site opposite Tobacco Plains , and finally to the boundary at Gateway , Montana . The dates of these removals are obscure . The Kootenais traded often in company with their neighbors , the Flatheads , at Flathead post . The bloodless duel in 1812 may be called the first chapter in another contest of wits , equally bloodless and continuing for many years , namely : the diplomatic struggle over the location of the international boundary . The fact that trade was actually carried on here at the Kootenai River by the Astor people was not made an item of loud discussion in
the negotiations ; nevertheless , under certain official pro posals this river would have been the boundary instead of that unguarded line twenty miles away .
In 1823-25 , while George Canning was foreign secretary of England and John Quincy Adams President of the United States, the boundary negotiations were acute . Removal of the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company from Astoria to Vancouver on the northern side of the Columbia, just then at Canning's own suggestion , indicates the intent of that astute statesman . His offer , through plenipotentiaries , was that the line extend west from the summit of the Rockies along the forty - ninth parallel of north latitude to the most northeastern branch of the Columbia , which is the Kootenai , then down that river to the Columbia , and down the Columbia to ocean . When , in 1842 , Lord Ashburton came to Washington to negotiate with Daniel Webster , he carried authority to renew the proposal , and in the final conferences in 1844-6 the same offer was considered . Mitchell's map , in general use by the emigrants to Oregon during those years , emphasizes this line , and it is now generally conceded by historians that the English secretaries never seriously contended for a line south of the Kootenai and the Columbia . This suggests that , to Canning at least , the influence of the Astor enterprise may have been farther reaching than has been commonly supposed .
Mention has been made of the trail across the elbow , from Bonners Ferry to the river again . This trail continued northward to Lake Windermere , and was the artery of travel between the Upper and the Lower Kootenais ; now between the East and West Kootenay , political divisions of British Columbia . In later years it became the much traveled road of settlers and miners and merchants from the south into the Kootenai Country . How long the first Kootanae House was maintained as a trading post is not known , but the traders of the Saskatchewan soon discovered a more direct road to and from it , by Bow River and Simpson or Vermillion Pass , to the Columbia a few miles below Lake Windermere . These
stretches of ancient Indian trails now constitute the wonder ful scenic highway for tourist travel by automobile between Bonners Ferry and Lake Louise , Banff and Calgary . In fur -trade days this was the shorter and quicker land route to Oregon , as compared with the canoe route by the Athabaska and Columbia rivers.
Time does not permit extended mention of the early use of this route ; by Sir George Simpson on his journey around the world and by the first organized company of emigrants to the Columbia , ( from Red River 1841 ) ; by Warre and Vavasour , two officers of the British army , traveling incognito to take possession of Cape Disappointment at the mouth of the Columbia , for use in event of war ; and by Peter Skene Ogden , their escort and companion ( 1844 ) ; by Pierre Jean De Smet , the Jesuit missionary to the Indian tribes of the Rocky Mountains ( 1844 ) ; by the bands of hurrying miners and packers to the Kootenai gold fields during the sixties ; and by others . But are not these written in the books of the chronicles , journals , documents and the printed pages of those early days , when Bonners Ferry was the gate way for trade and travel to and from this Kootenai land? Graven on the monument we dedicate today are names of the sturdy white men , who first saw and used this ancient thoroughfare of the Indians ; names which rank high in the history of the Columbia . With these , and drawn from the more distant past , are two place - names : IDAHO , of Shoshonean origin , 7 literally spelled EE - DAH - How , meaning the light and shadow racing down the mountain side , when the sun's rays burst around the peaks and over the ridges at break of day , sun - up and good morning ; KOOTENAI, of obscure meaning , but bringing to us visions of quiet valleys , noble rivers , lofty mountains and God's clear air . Notable and beautiful names — may posterity continue to honor them !!!
* ↑ Address at Bonners Ferry, Idaho, July 19th, 1926, at dedication of monument there by Columbia River Historical Expedition.
* ↑ This has been interpreted as referring to Kullyspell House, which Thompson passed within two miles the following day without stopping or mentioning it ; and possibly so . More careful analysis seems , however , to connect it with the trading post on Kootenai River.
* ↑ MacDonald and McMillan were both with Thompson among the Flatheads during the winter of 1811-12, and no one seems to have been trading at Kullyspell House on Pend d'Oreille Lake .
* ↑ See David Thompson's Narrative , page 512.
* ↑ See Oregon Historical Quarterly , volume XX , pages 25-34
* ↑ See Oregon Hist. Quarterly , Vol. XVIII, p. 83, for discussion by John E. Rees on Idaho; Its Meaning, Origin and Application.