# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 12/David Thompson, Pathfinder, and the Columbia River

THE QUARTERLY
of the
Oregon Historical Society
Copyright, 1911, by Oregon Historical Society
The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors to its pages
DAVID THOMPSON, PATHFINDER
AND THE
COLUMBIA RIVER
By T. C. Elliott
This anniversary year on the Columbia River 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 who 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 any 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 the stretch of rapids a few miles below these Falls and now locally known as Rickey Rapids in recognition of your pioneer settler, Mr. John Rickey. 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.
​196 T. C. ELLIOTT Our interest in any one 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: "June 29th, 1811, Saturday, very fine day but cloudy. Finished the canoe to one board in each side * * . All the timbers of the other canoe got burnt by neglect.* * * . The indians speared six salmon, they gave us two. They carry the aversion they know the salmon to have to the taste of the water in which men and animals and especially salmon have been washed to superstition. They did (not) begin spearing till near noon, as the spearer had seen the bearer of a deathshead boy since dead ; to have speared fish with such unclean eyes would have driven all the salmon away and he pacified himself with a decoction of the scraped bark of the red hem (lock) ; thus cleaned he proceeded to work. The salmon are about 15 to 25 to 30 pounds weight here, well tasted, but they have cut all their feet retaining all their meat ; their flesh is red and they are extremely well made. "June 30th, Sunday, a fine cool cloudy day, in the afternoon slight rain, they speared eleven salmon, gave us three, one is a fine one. Finished the boards of the canoe, rested the rest of the day. "July 1st, Monday, a very fine day. Men went for gum which they gathered and made and gummed a very small part of the canoe. One salmon. Engaged Billaris as hunter etc. Sent off the balance to Juco. Gave the horses to the care of the Chief here and killed one for food. July 2nd, Tuesday, very fine day, gummed the canoe and arranged many little affairs." 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 ​DAVID THOMPSON AND THE COLUMBIA RIVER 197 Okanogan river, on the 9th they were a little way above the mouth of Snake or Lewis river, and on the 14th or 16th arrived at Fort Astoria, there to be greeted by Duncan McDougal 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, presumably Finan McDonald. This seems a little early to find the name Spokane in written form, but so it ap- pears; "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 "Skeetshoo road" or trail from the Kullyspell (Pend d'Oreille) river and tribe. The Kullyspell (or Saleesh) river and lake were already fa- miliar to him through several months spent in exploring and trading there during 1809-10 and the establishment of two trad- ing posts, one near to the Thompson Falls, Montana, of the present day. To the Saleesh he had come by the "Kullyspell Lake 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 Colum- bia 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 "sortie" to the mouth of the Columbia. The occasion for this "sortie" was the per- mission given to him or the instructions received from his partners of the Northwest Company at their annual meeting ​198 f . C. ELLIOTT at Fort William on Lake Superior in the summer of 1810 ; for the "Northwesters" 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 16th of July and from there visited Cape Disappointment at the mouth of the river, but at once started up river again, for his journal reads: "August 8th, 1811, Chapaton River, at noon, latitude 48 degrees 36 minutes 26 seconds north, longitude 112 degrees 22 minutes 15 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 (Aug. 18th) and thence to Kettle Falls again (Aug. 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 again to the Athabasca in October. I mention the details of the career of David Thompson in the year 1811 because these facts are not yet familiar to the residents of our Columbia river region, because they are perti- nent to our anniversary season and because their narration serves to reveal to us the traits individual to the man. At the age of forty-one years David Thompson thus traversed every reach of this magnificent river from source to mouth, a physi- cal achievement for a man even at the present day ; but much more than a mere physical achievement by him because his record gave first to the world its knowledge of the long sought for source and windings of this river, as a few years previous lie had been the first to discover and mark the real source of the mighty Mississippi river. ​DAVID THOMPSON AND THE COLUMBIA RIVER 199 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 on to 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 appoint- ment 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 endur- ance 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 Thomp- son" (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 estab- lishments on the Saskatchewan, and that owing to sudden hostility of the Piegan Indians the mountain pass used in 1807- 8 and 9 was closed to Mr. Thompson then and he was com- pelled 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 moun- tains and gloomy muskagues and nearly starving, animals be- ing 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 ​200 T. C. ELLIOTT Dec. 5th, 1810 Thompson had reached a point on Athabasca r ; which he gives as Lat. * * From this place he dispatched men to Mr. Henry at Rocky Mt. 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
On New Year's Day 1811, thermometer minus 24, the dogs were unable to move their loads, a cache was made * Thomp- son 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 r., 'the canoe road to pass to the w. side of the Mts.'. * Jan. 8th, the brook still seemingly the main stream dwindling away; Mts. about 1 mile apart, 2000 to 3000 feet high. * Thursday, Jan. 10th, crossed the Height of Land. Jan. llth, held DOWN a brook.
left there, but wolverines had destroyed everything except 5 Ibs 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 3 & ^ pieces, and abandoned every- thing not absolutely necessary, including his tent, courage of the man fast sinking. * Jan. 15th, sighted mountains on other side of the Columbia. * Jan. 21st, Down to the Co- lumbia. Jan. 22nd, Down the Columbia 1 m. to a bold brook and 1 & YT, m. to a cedar point. F. d. P. men dispirited, 'use- less 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 he 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, ​DAVID THOMPSON AND THE COLUMBIA RIVER 201 and the habits and names of the Indian tribes and localities was not so common. David Thompson kept his note-book or jour- nal 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 promi- nent 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 institution of learning, not at all. At the age of seven years and a poor boy David Thompson had been placed by his father in a charity school in London, and remained there seven years learning all that was taught, which included a little navigation; and reading all that came in his way, for he was an omniverous reader. When 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 compan- ionships 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 travel 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 competi- tor, the Northwest Company of Merchants 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 Eraser 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 Mer- chants of Canada were at all ignorant of the goings and com- ings of the Lewis and Clark party in 1805-6. Those very same years Simon Fraser (& McLeod) penetrated to the waters of ​202 T. C. ELLIOTT 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 Com- pany. The winters of 1807-8 and 1808-9 were both spent at the trading house built by him in July, 1807, on the lower of the two lakes forming the source of the main Columbia ; but explorations down the Kootenay river and a journey back 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, ex- plored 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 streams 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 na- ture 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 ob- served 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 extraordinary pronounced French three chapters out of ​DAVID THOMPSON AND THE COLUMBIA RIVER 203 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 physical- ly : "A singular looking person of about fifty. He was plain- ly 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 eye- brows. 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 per- son possesses a tithe of his information respecting the Hudson's Bay countries, which from 1793 ( ?) to 1820 he was constantly traversing. Never mind his Bunyan-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 war- ring 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 cheeks 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. Tyrrell, to whose personal research and interest the world is chiefly indebted for its growing knowledge of David Thomp- son. Hurrying down the Columbia in July, 1811, David Thomp- son landed at a large Indian encampment near to where you are now accustomed to "keep your eye on Pasco," and erected the^e 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 ad- mit that the American diplomats did exceedingly well in final- ly placing the line of the Canadian boundary at the 49th ​204 T. C. ELLIOTT 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 Sas- katchewan 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 negotiations 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 perhaps 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 Mc- Loughlin, 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 genera- tions of the present, and these two names, David Thompson and John McLoughlin, will be placed high among all 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 employees came to term ​DAVID THOMPSON AND THE COLUMBIA RIVER 205 these Falls La Chaudiere, in recollection of similar forma- tions in the rocks of the falls on the Ottawa river, and that name came in turn to be translated into the 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.