David Thompson, the explorer

by Charles Norris Cochrane

This lake Thompson took to be the true source of the Mississippi. Twenty years later American surveyors reached the conclusion that, of all the ponds whose waters join to form the Mississippi, Lake Itaska most deserved the name. Lake Itaska lies a few miles to the south and west of Turtle lake. Yet this fact hardly suffices to rob David Thompson of the glory of being the first man to fix the point from which the Father of Waters takes its rise.

There was still a long journey ahead to the coast of Lake Superior; and the canoe was leaky from bumping about among the ice floes. Luckily two boats of Chippewas came along on their way to John Sayer's post at Red Cedar or Cass lake. With these Thompson and his party embarked. A carry of two hundred yards took them past the narrow and shallow waters of Turtle brook, to a point where the stream was enlarged by a tributary from a nearby lake. Here they launched their canoes and followed the stream through its incredible windings to the lake. This was the country of wild rice and maple sugar, and on these the poor Indians were compelled to subsist. Not a deer or a beaver was to be seen; all had been destroyed. The geese and ducks flew overhead in safety; for the impoverished natives could not even afford the price of guns and ammunition, and they had lost the art of making and using the bow.

Sayer supplied Thompson with a fresh canoe, which enabled him to continue his voyage. From the south of the lake, the valley of the Mississippi now lay clear before him to the south east—a wide expanse of marshy ground through which the channel meandered like a writhing snake. As he advanced, however, the marsh gave way to a sandy loam, heavily clothed with resinous fir. Arriving at Sand Lake river, he turned east along this to Sand lake. Before him was a great swamp, nearly five miles in width and stretching north and south as far as the eye could reach. This was the last barrier between him and the headwaters of the River St. Louis. Shouldering their canoe and baggage, they advanced along the rude corduroy road which the traders had laid across the bog. As often as they missed their step, they sank to their waists in the mire. A long day's work was needed before they had reached the other side. From thence a brook carried them to the main stream of River St. Louis. They passed into the forest country that surrounds the lake; and were soon at the trading house which the North-Westers maintained at Fond du Lac on the present site of the city of Duluth.

Here they found an old twenty-eight foot canoe, which they patched up and fitted with oars, for their slight river craft was unequal to the winds and waves of Superior; and they had still to make a survey of the lake. The weather was fine; and they made the circuit without adventure, east along the south shore to Sault Ste. Marie, and westward along the north shore to Grand Portage. Late in the evening of the 7th of June, Thompson set foot on the pier, his long journey over.

At Sault Ste. Marie he had encountered Sir Alexander Mackenzie and William McGillivray travelling east to Montreal. When they heard what he had done, they were warm in their praise, and told him that he had accomplished as much in ten months as might have been expected in two years. His reputation was thus established, and his future with the North West Company was assured.

CHAPTER V
EIGHT YEARS OF TRADING

The report which Thompson made to his employers after his return to Grand Portage was of immense value to them. They now had a clear idea of the whole stretch of country from Sault Ste. Marie to the upper waters of the Missouri river, and were in a position to rearrange their trading houses to meet the needs of the time. Similar work remained to be done in the other regions to which the interests of the Company extended. But the same haste was not required, and the surveys could be pushed forward with less difficulty and expense in connection with what was the main object of the partners, that is the prosecution of the trade in furs. Thompson was therefore requested to undertake some of the actual work of trading, with freedom to make such journeys of exploration as he saw fit.

The eight years following therefore mark a new period in his service with the North West Company, during which his activities carried him far and wide along the great waterways of the interior. Throughout these years he exercised, to the full, the qualities of mind and character which made him such a unique surveyor. His bulky note books were crammed with memoranda gathered with painstaking accuracy and checked with minute care. From time to time, where a less hurried visit to one of the more comfortable trading houses made it possible, he added his newly acquired information to the map which he had in hand. With each report that he made to Headquarters, the picture of the Great West gradually took shape. Its physical features were delineated; its wild life was noted and classified; its native populations, their numbers, their racial affinities and languages, their manners and customs were as far as possible described. This was indeed wizardry, as his ignorant French-Canadian and Indian followers imagined; but it was the wizardry of science, which, by the slow accumulation of ascertained facts, lays the whole world of nature at the feet of civilized man.

In the summer of 1798, the attention of traders was largely directed to the western forest country, which lies beyond the divide separating the waters of the upper Saskatchewan from the basin of the Peace and Athabaska rivers. Twenty years before, Peter Pond had penetrated into this region as far as Lake Athabaska, and there established a post. At Lake Athabaska, ten years later, Roderick Mackenzie had built Fort Chippewyan, from which Sir Alexander had set out on his two famous voyages, the one down the Mackenzie to the Arctic, the other up the Peace to its headwaters and from thence across British Columbia to the Pacific. Apart, however, from the activity centred in Lake Athabaska, little had been done as yet to explore the possibilities of trade in what is now northern Alberta.