David Thompson, the explorer

by Charles Norris Cochrane

Accordingly, on his return to Rocky Mountain House, Thompson brought with him Duncan McGillivray from down the river, in order that he might have assistance in pressing forward his explorations. Along with McGillivray, he rode across to the Red Deer river, where he found a camp of Piegans. A short stay among them was enough to lull their suspicions; and Thompson was then able to ride twenty-two miles west to the foot of the mountains, where he expected to meet a band of Kootenays. These he found, twenty-six strong. With their women and children they had crossed the divide to meet the white traders. These Kootenays were the first of the British Columbia Indians whom Thompson had encountered. He warned them of the presence of the Piegans only a few miles east, and sent them back across the mountains. In order to avoid the Piegans, they travelled by way of the North Saskatchewan and succeeded in reaching their homes unobserved.

Meanwhile, with McGillivray and four men on horseback, Thompson crossed the Red Deer river and rode still further south to the banks of the Bow, not far from Calgary. This stream he surveyed as far east as the bend and westward to Exshaw at the foot of the mountains. McGillivray then made a traverse across from the north fork of the Saskatchewan to the valley of the Athabaska, the results of which were carefully incorporated in Thompson's notes. Thompson himself spent the rest of the winter at Rocky Mountain House, trading with the natives and taking observations to fix the location of the post.

When spring opened, he resolved to attempt a journey into the mountains by land. With a party of eight men and an Indian guide, he started westward from Rocky Mountain House. In the narrow valley of the Sheep river, the horses could go no further; and as the guide knew of no other route, they returned to the post. A second attempt, this time by canoe up the Saskatchewan, was equally unsuccessful because of the floods on the river. When Thompson returned to eastern headquarters in the spring of 1802, he was not yet able to report that he had opened a practicable route to the west of the Rockies.

What was the effect of this news upon the minds of the partners? From Thompson's subsequent movements, it is possible to surmise. The attempt to pierce the mountains from the headwaters of the Saskatchewan was for the time being abandoned, and attention was once more transferred to the north. According to the surveys already made by Thompson, the west end of Lesser Slave lake could not be more than fifty or seventy-five miles from the valley of the Peace river, up which Alexander Mackenzie had travelled ten years before. Thither Thompson was sent, with instructions to explore a route across the watershed.

From the upper end of Lesser Slave lake, he pushed his way west through a wide valley until he came to the banks of the Smoky river. On the different branches of the Saskatchewan, he had noted the seams of coal exposed along the banks. At Smoky river, the coal beds, ignited by spontaneous combustion, had been burning from beyond the memory of the oldest Indians on the river, and the dark clouds of smoke which they sent forth gave the river its name. Smoky river was a tributary of the Peace. A short journey down stream brought him to the Forks where now stands Peace River Landing.

Thompson spent the winters of 1803 and 1804 developing trade from the old posts built by Mackenzie at the Forks of the river, and westward beyond the frontiers of British Columbia. Here, as at the headwaters of the Saskatchewan, he found rivals. No sooner was he settled at the Forks than a party of XY traders from Montreal landed a few yards from the post and made preparations for the erection of a house. Thompson prosecuted his work with his accustomed vigour. In the winter of 1805, when Simon Fraser set forth on the journey that was to make him famous, he found that a base for his exploration of the Fraser river had been soundly established on the Peace by his friend and colleague David Thompson. He honoured him accordingly when he gave the name of Thompson to the greatest tributary of the Fraser river.

By the summer of 1804 Thompson was once more back at headquarters, no longer at Grand Portage (for that had been surrendered to the Americans), but at Fort William on Thunder Bay, where the dépôt of the company had now been established. In that year, the trade war with the XY Company had reached an acute stage. The Hudson's Bay Company had also reorganized their enterprises, and between them these rivals had almost succeeded in wresting from the North-Westers the trade of the Muskrat country. Thompson was therefore withdrawn from the fields of his recent activity, his chance of crossing the mountains was indefinitely postponed, and he was sent into the Muskrat country to restore the trade of that region to the Canadians.

With a heavy heart he turned his back on the far west, and entered the cold and dismal forest which he knew only to loathe. But loyalty was one of the deepest instincts of his nature, and so, with indefatigable energy, he proceeded to build new posts and explore new routes in the region north-east of Lake Winnipeg. In the course of his efforts, he carried the flag of the North-Westers to a point on South Indian lake not more than two hundred and fifty miles distant from Churchill itself. In his relations with rival traders, he exhibited a friendliness and courtesy that stands in marked contrast with the cut-throat methods too frequently adopted at critical moments of competition. The surveys begun years before, when he was working under Joseph Colen, were now triumphantly finished. Of them, a member of the Canadian Geological Survey says, "After Thompson had completed his surveys of this muskrat country, no further information was obtained about it for nearly a century, and when in 1896, I travelled through it, the only map of any service which was available was that drawn by David Thompson in 1813 from surveys made at this time."

It is sometimes imagined that the Indians a century ago existed in vast numbers; and that they were universally of a warlike and bloodthirsty disposition. This is a complete mistake. It was only in especially favourable localities that conditions were such as to promote the evolution of large bands, and generally speaking the Indian was a poor and humble creature. Lacking the power of invention, he was often satisfied to make use of utensils of the most primitive character, and he was almost, if not quite, unarmed.

Throughout the whole of the Muskrat country Thompson was able to count but ninety-two widely scattered families, each of them numbering perhaps seven souls. This gave to every human being from two to three hundred square miles of hunting country. Yet so poor was the region and so great the improvidence of its inhabitants that, in unfavourable seasons, the population was often reduced to the verge of starvation, and it was only by means of the greatest efforts that they wrested a livelihood from their gloomy land of rock and forest.