[210] Known as Kootenai River Traverse, located in the neighborhood of the present Fort Steele. See Simpson’s description of its passage in his Narrative, pp. 137, 138.—Ed.
[211] De Smet is passing up the Kootenai River in its course through Montana, following the line of the present Great Northern Railway, which leaves Kootenai valley at Jennings, where the river coming from the north makes an abrupt turn to the west. A recently-built branch of this railway extends from Jennings along the upper Kootenai into British Columbia.—Ed.
[212] Probably the Yaac River, a considerable mountain tributary of the Kootenai, in northwestern Montana. De Smet may, however, refer to some small stream that enters the main river near Kootenai Falls, some ten or twelve miles above the embouchment of the Yaac. David Thompson called the Kootenai, McGillivray River, in honor of the Hon. William McGillivray, one of the North West Company partners.—Ed.
[213] De Smet was an observant traveller. The mineral wealth of Flathead County, Montana (through which he was passing), has not yet been developed; but galena ore bearing both lead and silver has been found, and considerable quantities of coal and oil are known to exist in that district. See Report of Great Northern Railway, 1902.—Ed.
[214] Tobacco Plains are situated on both sides of the international boundary, taking their name from Tobacco River, a Montana affluent of the Kootenai. This has for many years been the habitat of one division of the Upper Kutenai, known as Agkanegunik (people of the Tobacco Plains). David Thompson visited and traded there in 1808. A British Columbia branch of this tribe still has a reservation of 2,560 acres just north of the international boundary, where a band of fifty-seven was in 1902 employed in farming and cattle-raising. The Kutenai of to-day are all Roman Catholics.—Ed.
[215] For Flathead (Tête plat) Lake see De Smet’s Letters in our volume xxvii, p. 359, note 181.—Ed.
[216] From Tobacco Plains De Smet advanced up the valley of the upper Kootenai, towards the portage near the headwaters of the Columbia. This valley runs between the main range of the Rockies and the Selkirks, among some of the most majestic scenery on the North American continent.—Ed.
[217] Taken from a composition of De Smet’s on his second journey to the Rocky Mountains (1841), and then applied to the heights around the sources of the Platte. See Chittenden and Richardson, De Smet, iv, pp. 1353, 1354.—Ed.
[218] These are Upper Columbia and Windermere lakes, the former 2,700 feet above sea level, and the ultimate source of the Columbia River. The river is navigable from Lake Windermere as far as Golden, where the Canadian Pacific Railway crosses, and steamers ply the course of about 160 miles. The passage from one lake to the other is possible only for canoes. This region was first explored by David Thompson in 1807.—Ed.
[219] These are composed of gravelly flats, the great spawning beds of the Columbia salmon. At times steamboat navigation is impeded by the immense number of the fish.—Ed.