Somewhere between Howse’s Pass and the Blaeberry, Thompson had wintered, following his old custom of making the explorations pay by having his men trap and hunt and trade with the Sarcees and Kootenay Indians as he traveled. Advancing in this slow way, it was June of 1807 before he had launched his raft on the Blaeberry. Spring thaw has set the torrents roaring. The river is a swollen flood that sweeps the voyageurs through the forests, past the glaciers, on down to a great river, which Thompson does not recognize but which is the Columbia just where it takes a great bend northward at the modern railway stations of Moberly and Golden.
But the question is—which way to go? The river is flowing north, not south to the sea, as Alexander MacKenzie thought. Thompson does not guess this is not the river, which MacKenzie saw. “May God in His mercy give me to see where the waters of this river flow to the western ocean,” records Thompson in his journal of June 22nd; but if he goes north, that will lead to a great detour—that much he can guess from what the Indians tell him—the Big Bend of the Columbia. He is facing the Rockies on the east. On the west are the Selkirks. He does not know that after a great circle about the north end of the Selkirks, the Columbia will come down south again through West Kootenay between the Selkirks and the Gold Range. To Thompson, it seems that he will reach the Pacific soonest, where American traders are heading, by ascending the river; so he follows through East Kootenay southward through Windermere Lake and Columbia Lake to the sources of the Columbia east of Nelson Mountain. There, where the Windermere of to-day exists, he builds a fort with Montour, the Frenchman, in charge—the Upper Kootenay House. Then he discovers that beyond the sources of the Columbia, a short portage of two miles, is another great river flowing south—the Kootenay. The portage he names after the Northwest partner—McGillivray, also the river, which we now know as Kootenay, and which Thompson follows, surveying as he goes, south of the Boundary into what are now known as Idaho and Montana, past what is now the town of Jennings and westerly as far as what is now Bonner’s Ferry—the roaring camp of old construction days when the Great Northern Railroad passed this way. Here Thompson is utterly confused, for the Kootenay River turns north to British Columbia again, not west to the Pacific, and he has no time to follow its winding course. His year is up. He must hasten eastward with his report. Leaving the fort well manned, Thompson goes back the way he has come, by Howse Pass down the Saskatchewan to Fort William.
While Thompson is East, the Hudson’s Bay Company of Edmonton is not idle. Mr. Howse, who found the pass, follows Thompson’s tracks over the mountains and sets hunters ranging the forests of the Big Bend and south to Kootenay Lake.
When he returns to the mountains In 1808, Thompson joins Henry’s brigade coming west from Pembina. It is September when they reach Edmonton, and both companies have by this time built fur posts at Howse’s Pass, known as Rocky Mountain House, of which Henry takes charge for the Nor’Westers. Sixteen days on horseback bring Thompson to the mountains. There horses are exchanged for dogs, and the explorer sleds south through East Kootenay to Kootenay House on Windermere Lake, where provisions and furs are stored. Thompson winters at Windermere. In April of 1809 he sets out for the modern Idaho and Montana and establishes trading posts on the Flathead Lake southeast, and the Pend d’Oreille Lakes southwest, leaving Firman McDonald, the Highlander, as commander of the Flathead Department, with McMillan and Methode and Forcier and a dozen others as traders. He is back in Edmonton by June, 1810—“thank God”—he ejaculates in his diary, and at once proceeds East, where he learns astounding news at Fort William. John Jacob Astor, the New York merchant, who bought Nor’Westers’ furs at Montreal, has organized a Pacific Fur Company, and into its ranks he has lured by promise of partnership, friends of Thompson, such good old Nor’Westers as John Clarke—“fighting Clarke,” he was called—and Duncan McDougall of the Athabasca, and that Alex. McKay, who had gone to the Pacific with Sir Alexander MacKenzie, and Donald MacKenzie, a relative of Sir Alexander’s, and the two Stuarts—David and Robert—kin of the Stuart who was with Simon Fraser on his trip to the sea. These Nor’Westers, who have joined Astor, know the mountain country well, and they have engaged old Nor’West voyageurs as servants. Half the partners are to go round the Horn to the Pacific, half overland from the Missouri to the Columbia. If the Nor’Westers are to capture the transmontane field first, there is not a moment to lose.
Thompson is forthwith dispatched back to the mountains in 1810, given a crew of eighteen or twenty and urged forward to the Pacific; but the Piegans are playing the mischief with the fur trade this year. Though Henry drowns them in whiskey drugged with laudanum at Rocky Mountain House, they infest Howse’s Pass and lie in wait at the Big Bend to catch the canoes bringing up the furs from Idaho and to plunder Thompson’s goods bound south to Kootenay House. Thompson’s voyageurs scatter like lambs before wolves. He retreats under protection of Henry’s men back through Howse’s Pass to Rocky Mountain House, but he is a hard man to beat. Reach the Pacific before Astor’s men he must, Piegans or no Piegans; so he forms his plans. Look at the map! This Kootenay River flowing through Idaho does not lead to the Pacific. It turns north into Kootenay Lake of West Kootenay. The Columbia takes a great circle north. Thompson aims for the Big Bend. He hurries overland by pack horse to the Athabasca River, enters the mountains at the head of the river on December 20, 1810, at once cuts his way through the forest tangle up between Mt. Brown and Mt. Hooker, literally “swims the dogs through snowdrifts, the brute Du Nord beating a dog to death,” and finds a new trail to the Columbia—Athabasca Pass! Down on the west side of the Divide flows a river southwest, to the Big Bend of the Columbia. Thompson winters here to build canoes for the spring of 1811, naming the river that gladdens his heart—Canoe River.
Down in Idaho, his men on Flathead Lake and the Pend d’Oreille are panicky with forebodings. Thompson has not come with provisions. Their fur brigade has been driven back. The Piegans are on the ramp, and there are all sorts of wild rumors about white men—Astor’s voyageurs, of course—coming through the mountains by way of the Snake Indian’s territory to “the rivers of the setting sun.”
Up on Canoe River, Thompson and his voyageurs worked feverishly—building canoes, and getting the fur packs ready against spring. Toward spring, ten men are sent back with the furs; seven are to go on with Thompson down Columbia River for the Pacific. Their names are Bordeaux, Pariel, Coté, Bourland, Gregoire, Charles and Ignace. His men are on the verge of mutiny from starvation, but provisions come through from Henry at Howse’s Pass, and when these provisions run out, Thompson’s party kill all their horses and dogs for food. Very early in the year, the river is free of ice, for Thompson is in a warmer region than on the plains, and the canoe is launched down the Columbia through the Big Bend—a swollen, rolling, milky tide, past what is now Revelstoke, past Nakusp, through the Upper and Lower Arrow Lakes and what is now known as the Rossland mining region. It is a region of shadowy moss-grown forests, of hazy summer air resinous with the odor of pines, of mountains rising sheer on each side in walls with belts of mist marking the cloud line, the white peaks opal and shimmering and fading in a cloudland.
Each night careful camping ground was chosen ashore with unblocked way to the water in case of Piegan attack. July 3rd, Thompson reached Kettle Falls. For a week he followed the great circular sweep of the Columbia south through what is now Washington. At Spokane River, at Okanogan River, near Walla Walla where the Snake comes in, he heard rumors among the Indians that white men from the East had come to the sea, whether overland or round the world he could not tell, so on Tuesday, July 9th, Thompson judges it wise to pre-empt other claimants. Near Snake River, “I erected a small pole,” he writes, “with a half sheet of paper tied about it, with these words:
“Know hereby, this country is claimed by Great Britain and the N W Company from Canada do hereby intend to erect a factory on this place for the commerce of the country—D. Thompson.”