David Thompson, the explorer

by Charles Norris Cochrane

The peace negotiations were at that time in progress. The commissioners for great Britain were two honest, well-meaning gentlemen, who however knew nothing of the geography of the countries with which they had to deal. The maps at their disposal were wretchedly inadequate. One of them, Farren's, dated 1773, showed the country as far west as the middle of Lake Ontario. Beyond that point the interior was represented as made up of rocks and swamps, and described as uninhabitable. Such maps gave every advantage to one who was personally acquainted with the west, and the United States commissioners had at their service the expert advice of Peter Pond.

Had the British possessed the slightest idea of the value of the territories in question, and had they been disposed in the slightest degree to press their claims, they might have insisted on a line drawn due west from the middle of Lake Champlain. Such a division the Americans would have been glad to accept, for it gave them more than they could justly demand. But Pond was at the elbow of the United States commissioners. He suggested to them a line passing through the Great Lakes to the north west corner of the Lake of the Woods, and from thence westward (as he imagined from his own rough surveys) to the head of the Mississippi river. This demand, exorbitant though it was, the British commissioners accepted, and it was confirmed by both nations. Such was the hand (concludes Thompson grimly) that designated the boundary between the dominions of Great Britain and the territories of the United States.

The settlement of 1783 was in Thompson's eyes merely the first of a series of unfortunate arrangements, by which the British dominions were robbed of extensive and valuable territory. Edmund Burke had remarked that a malignant fate seemed to attend all the operations of Great Britain on the continent of North America. Thompson, who from his personal experience knew the land and the people who disputed its possession, was able to explain in a less mysterious way the failure of the British to defend their claims against American pretensions.

Accordingly, in the summer of 1840, Thompson addressed a number of letters to Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley and the Hon. W. E. Gladstone on the subject of disputed points along the border. His object was to urge a prompt and just settlement in each case. Such a settlement, he felt, was important if peace was to be maintained with "so litigious a neighbour." It was vital, if the steady encroachments of that neighbour were to be brought to an end, and Britain was not to be gradually deprived of her hold upon her last possessions in America.

Thompson therefore endeavoured to arouse the leading statesmen of the Mother Country to the significance of American policy as he saw it. The leading men of the United States, he pointed out, all held it as a maxim that no foreign power had any right to any part of North America; and that every means ought to be employed to expel this foreign power. They were well aware of the insecurity of their position. On their northern frontier a powerful foreign nation was in possession for upwards of one thousand miles. Their sea coast was open and exposed. The numerous slaves in their southern and western states were ready for revolt; while to the west were seventy thousand Indian warriors, who had been compelled by force or fraud to quit their lands, and who could readily be aroused to a war of revenge.

Accordingly, he alleged, the Americans had aimed ever since the treaty of 1783 to restrict as far as possible the territory of Great Britain and to destroy her influence over the Indians. Their method was to advance claims which, though exorbitant, would be softened and rendered familiar by the operation of time, and in each case, when the settlements came to be made, they aimed to be in possession of the areas in dispute. British subjects on the other hand had been compelled to yield ground from point to point, because they could not rely on the support of the Imperial government if they stood firm.

As he wrote, the situation was acute along the whole length of the frontier. On the Quebec border, all the way from St. Regis on the St. Lawrence to the Connecticut river, the Americans were holding fast to a line some distance north of the true parallel of 45° which had been named as the frontier in the original treaty of peace and confirmed some years later by the award of the King of the Netherlands. In the St. Mary's river, American commissioners were claiming two of the three boat channels and all but two or three hundred yards of a river bed four miles wide. If their demands at that point were granted, Great Britain would surrender the keys to her northern and western dominions, and shut herself off from communication with them except by the frozen shores of the Hudson Bay. At the head of Lake Superior, the Americans had driven the British traders from two of the three possible routes joining the Great Lakes with the Lake of the Woods, and were claiming that the treaty of 1783 implied a boundary running along the line of the third and last possible route (the Kaministiquia river), although the very existence of that route was utterly unknown until at least seventeen years after the treaty was drawn. In the present congress they were again urging the necessity of taking possession of what they called the "Oregon Territory," and demanding a line down the middle of the Columbia river to the Pacific ocean.

Thus did the old man endeavour to arm British statesmanship for the diplomatic contests which he foresaw were inevitable; but his efforts bore little or no fruit. On the part of Great Britain, conciliatory motives continued to prevail; and within a few years, Thompson had the mortification of seeing even the Oregon territory (that is, all the fine country south of 49° north latitude which he himself had discovered) lost to the Empire. It is not surprising that he fumed at British diplomats in general, and in particular at "the stupidity of that blockhead Lord Ashburton."

There is little more to record in the life of David Thompson. Presently, his eyesight failed, and he suffered the misery of a destitute old age. One by one his possessions fell into the hands of money-lenders. So poor did he become that he was forced to part with his precious instruments, and even to pawn his coat in order to buy a little food. A late entry of his diary reads, "This day borrowed 2/6 from a friend. Thank God for this relief." On the 10th of February, 1857, the long ordeal was ended and Thompson passed away in the eighty-seventh year of his age. He was buried in Mount Royal cemetery without even a stone to mark his grave.

For a long while after the death of Thompson, it seemed as though the memory of his achievements had perished with him. But of recent years his fame, so nearly eclipsed, has shone with renewed brilliance, and it is now possible to estimate in some degree the greatness of his character and the magnitude of his work.