In the sheer length of his journeys, few western explorers have equalled the record of Thompson, for he travelled in all not less than fifty thousand miles. Much of this was through country untrodden by the feet of white men; nearly all of it was in regions as yet unsurveyed. The unvarying exactitude with which Thompson mapped this vast area excited the surprise and admiration of members of the Canadian Geological Survey who with infinitely better equipment traced his progresses nearly a century later. There are certain districts which since his day have never been re-surveyed; some of his work therefore still appears on the published maps of Canada.
Throughout his life Thompson was inspired by a restless impulse to push forward the exploration and mapping of the west until not a corner of it remained unknown. The greatest satisfaction of his career was undoubtedly the discovering of the Columbia valley. West of the Rockies, he was not merely a surveyor and explorer, but in a real sense an Empire builder, for he added a region of vast and varied resources to the territories of the Crown.
It is difficult for Europeans to associate with savages without misunderstandings more or less serious. The savage governs his life by an elaborate ritual which he has inherited from his ancestors. His code is sufficient to cover his dealings with his fellows; but it fails to guide him in his relations with the strange new beings who burst in upon him from what is in truth a different world. The white man, unless he is gifted with unusual tact and sympathy, treats with contempt and scorn the customs of the natives and seldom attempts to understand their ways. Worse still, he feels himself freed from the restraints which bind him in civilized life, and frequently gives rein to the basest passions of his nature. Thus mutual misunderstanding too often breeds hatred, and results in the shedding of blood.
To a surprising degree, the traders of the Hudson's Bay and North West Companies were able to overcome the difficulties and dangers of dealing with the Indians, and their relations with them were correspondingly successful. Yet even successful traders often lacked the imaginative sympathy which would have enabled them to submit with patience to the complicated ritual of Indian life; and standing aloof as they did from the Indians, they were involved in constant broils and, not infrequently, in danger at their hands.
Moreover, in the fierceness of their competition, the traders were too often willing to play sharp tricks on one another, and these practices taught the Indians evil ways. To drug the natives with liquor and steal furs destined for rival firms was a habit only too common. It sometimes happened also that small independent traders had their supplies taken from them, their canoes destroyed and themselves beaten senseless, so that they were driven from the fur countries, ruined men. Individuals like Peter Pond were guilty of offences more serious still. Their hands were stained with the blood of their competitors, and in the rough and tumble of life in the wilds, their crimes were hard to detect and harder still to punish. The Indians had learned that the Great Spirit hates to see the ground reddened with blood. But when they saw thuggery and murder flourish, how could they preserve their simple faith?
Throughout his career in the west, Thompson was one of those whose influence among the Indians was almost wholly for good, and whose activities shed lustre on the history of the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company, whom they served. His travels carried him into the rocky belt south-west of the Bay, over the prairies, through the western forest, and across the mountains of the Pacific slope. Wherever he came in contact with the natives, he easily won their admiration and respect. This was due to the insight with which he studied their customs and to the sympathy with which he regarded their way of life. For Thompson was infinitely more than a trader: he had the mind of a scientist and the soul of a poet.
Love of country springs from many roots; but perhaps the deepest patriotism is that which comes from an intimate knowledge of the face of the land itself. Thompson loved the great North West with the love of a man who knew it in all its moods; for he had journeyed through it and studied it carefully over a long period of years. He foresaw the day when the rolling prairies would be covered with smiling farms, and the Columbia valley would be the seat of a rich and vigorous civilization. In one respect, his vision of the future fell short of reality. Living in an age prior to the development of railways, he failed to see that these regions were destined to be linked by steel bands with the Canadas in a Dominion stretching from sea to sea. He thought of them rather as isolated communities, the middle west looking mainly for its outlet to Hudson Bay, the Pacific coast joined to civilization by the paths of ocean.
Characters such as David Thompson are all too rare in the annals of a nation. So long as honour is due to great men, his memory deserves to be enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen; and his high qualities should be a model to those who inherit the Dominion which he did so much to make.