Fifty years elapsed from the visits of the Verendryes to the next important exploration of North Dakota. In November 1797 David Thompson, an English geographer in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, was sent out to survey the boundary and visit the company posts. It was an unusually cold winter, and the party suffered intensely during the 68-day journey. They explored along the Assiniboine and Souris Rivers and the west edge of the Turtle Mountains, then turned southwest to the Missouri, where they visited the Mandans, and Hidatsa.
Thompson in his journal has given a thorough account of the homes, manners, food, dress, and agricultural activities of these Indians. He noted that, while their villages were much alike, the Mandans were a more courteous and better behaved group. Called "the greatest practical land geographer in history," Thompson later helped survey the boundary line between Canada and the United States in accordance with the Treaty of 1818. In commemoration of his exploration of this State a monument has been erected to him, in the shape of a large masonry sphere, at Verendrye (see Tour 7).
The same year that Thompson explored central North Dakota, Charles Chaboillez, a fur trader, came to Pembina to establish the first North West Company post within the present boundaries of this State. Both the Hudson's Bay and the XY Companies established posts in the same vicinity in 1801, and with three great companies in deadly competition, life at Pembina was colorful and dangerous. Excusing their own lack of scruples on the grounds of competition, the companies bought furs with liquor, giving rum to the Indians until they agreed to sell or until they were too stupefied to know when the pelts were taken from them.
Three years after the establishment of Chaboillez's post, Alexander Henry, a partner in the North West Fur Company, built a post on the Red River near the mouth of Park River, and shortly afterward moved down to the mouth of the Pembina. He made frequent trips to the Grandes Fourches (Grand Forks) and established depots there and in the Hair Hills, or Pembina Mountains. On one occasion he made a trip to the Missouri to visit the Mandans, and his journal says of their farming methods: "The whole view was agreeable and had more the appearance of a country inhabited by a civilized nation than by a set of savages."
Liquor flowed freely at the Henry post. Traders found it profitable to deal with Indians who were in a drunken stupor. Henry's journal gives evidence that brawls were an everyday occurrence. One entry reads: "Feb. 9, 1806. Men and women have been drinking a match for three days and nights, during which it has been drink, fight—drink, fight—drink, and fight again—guns, axes, and knives their weapons—very disagreeable." Henry left Pembina in 1808 for the Saskatchewan River.
At his post were born North Dakota's first two children of other than Indian parentage. The first, the daughter of Pierre Bonza, Henry's Negro servant, who had formerly been a slave in the West Indies, was born March 12, 1802.
The first white child was born December 29, 1807, to the "Orkney Lad", a woman who had worked at the post for several years in the guise of a man, until the birth of the child betrayed her sex. Abandoned by the father of the child, John Scart, she remained at the post until a collection was taken up and she and the baby sent back to her home in the Orkney Islands.
President Jefferson for some time had been eager to have a party explore the Missouri, cross the Rockies and reach the Pacific. In 1803 the Louisiana Purchase facilitated completion of his plans, and his secretary, Capt. Meriwether Lewis, with a friend, Capt. William Clark, started out on the journey of exploration.
On October 13, 1804, the expedition came up the Missouri River into what is now North Dakota. Near the present site of Stanton, where the Knife River joins the Missouri, Lewis and Clark discovered villages of the Mandans and Hidatsa. Having been well received, they decided to establish winter quarters. Fort Mandan was built and the flag of the United States of America raised for the first time on North Dakota soil. It was here that the explorers secured the services of Charbonneau, the French interpreter, and his wife Sakakawea, the Shoshone Indian girl who guided them successfully through the Rockies to the Pacific (see Bismarck).