Charles Norris Cochrane

“ Along the shore ran a line of docks, which each summer were piled high, now with the parcels of merchandise for the interior trade, now with the packs of furs which had been gathered from the distant trading posts for the market in the east. Along the bay front and up the bank of the river sprawled the village of log huts in which dwelt the half-breed families of the French voyageurs. ”

“ By the sixteenth of July, Thompson and Paddy were like skeletons, from hunger, dysentery, and cold. On that day Thompson scratched what he thought was his dying message on a scrap of birch bark which Kozdaw was to carry back with him to civilization. Late in the afternoon, as they paddled weakly and painfully along, they came upon two tents of Chepawyans. The savages pitied their condition and restored them with broth. From them Thompson procured some provisions, a flint and a few rounds of ammunition, together with a pair of shoes each for himself and his men. ”

“ The tribe, when Thompson visited them, were already acquainted with the use of iron. Their flint-tipped spears and arrows they gladly laid aside, when they could, for a long spear, headed with a flat iron bayonet nine or ten inches in length. Thus far, however, they had been visited only irregularly by traders; and so had but few guns among them. Iron was so precious for purposes of war that it had not yet come into common use for agriculture. Their ploughs were made of the shoulder blade of a deer or bison, neatly fastened by thongs to a handle. ”

“ In 1790, Peter Pangman for the North-Westers had pressed along the course of the North Saskatchewan to a point five miles above its junction with the Clearwater. There from a hill top he had gazed along the line of snow-capped Rockies, and his eyes had travelled up the winding course of the river to the gap through which it issued from the mountains. From that time the partners had never ceased to dream of the wealth that lay beyond the Great Divide. In a decade the line of their trading posts had been extended to a point but three miles short of "Pangman's Pine." ”

“ The Sioux to the south of their ancient home were their enemies, but, armed only with stone-headed spears and arrows, could do them little harm. To the north-east, in the depths of the gloomy forest, dwelt the Chippewas, who were likewise powerless to hurt them. But the day came when the Chippewas, armed by the white traders with guns, ironheaded arrows, and spears, silently collected under cover of the forest, and sallied out to harry their villages with fire, and cut off their men as they were scattered in hunting parties far and wide. ”

“ The war chief, on the other hand, was a self-made man, whose power and influence had developed from his conduct in war. Kootanae Appee, as he was called, was a magnificent giant, six feet six inches in height, and was the father of twenty-two warriors, no less tall and sinewy than himself. In after years, when Thompson was battling his way south along the Columbia river, the bond of friendship which he now forged with this old chief stood him in good stead. ”

“ Great rivers flowed from all directions to the Bay; but the courses of these rivers were still unknown to the map makers of the British Admiralty in 1784, the year in which David Thompson landed at Churchill. For Hudson Bay is encircled from Labrador on the north-east to the Arctic on the north-west by a giant horse shoe of Archaean rock, most of it clothed with the dense northern forest; and so long as the red men were willing to make the tedious journey up and down the rivers, the slumbering giant on the Bay was content to accept the annual tribute of furs which they flung at his feet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not a deer or a beaver was to be seen; all had been destroyed. The geese and ducks flew overhead in safety; for the impoverished natives could not even afford the price of guns and ammunition, and they had lost the art of making and using the bow.
Sayer supplied Thompson with a fresh canoe, which enabled him to continue his voyage. From the south of the lake, the valley of the Mississippi now lay clear before him to the south east—a wide expanse of marshy ground through which the channel meandered like a writhing snake. ”

“ The dashing of the water against the rocks, the deep roar of the torrent, the hollow sound of the fall, in the midst of the dark, high, and frowning hills, made a sight so grand and terrible that Kozdaw and Paddy were awe-struck, and offered their simple tributes to the manito of the fall—the one a bit of tobacco, the other a ring. Past this fall the travellers descended by a well-beaten native trail. A second series of rapids and a second fall brought them to the last lap of their journey, and they paddled quietly for six miles into the east end of Lake Athabaska. ”

“ Thompson was anxious to find out the origin of this interesting people, for they had not been many years on the banks of the Missouri. Their traditions, however, went back no further than the days of their great-great-grandfathers. These, they said, had dwelt to the eastward, possessing the rich flats about the upper waters of the Red river and the Mississippi. There the wild rice grew in abundance and the deer were in plenty, though the horse and the buffalo were unknown. On all these streams they had villages and cultivated the ground as at present from before the memory of man. ”

“ Throughout these years he exercised, to the full, the qualities of mind and character which made him such a unique surveyor. His bulky note books were crammed with memoranda gathered with painstaking accuracy and checked with minute care. From time to time, where a less hurried visit to one of the more comfortable trading houses made it possible, he added his newly acquired information to the map which he had in hand. With each report that he made to Headquarters, the picture of the Great West gradually took shape. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their joy was easy to understand, for they were armed merely with a few rude lances and flint-headed arrows, utterly useless in warfare against the Indians of the plains. Thompson had guns, ammunition, and iron arrow-heads for trade, but he warned them that in order to procure these advantages, they must learn to be industrious in hunting for beaver and other furs, and cease spending their days and nights in gambling—the pet vice of the savage. ”

“ Here was a man who could solve Thompson's doubts and difficulties, and correct the deficiencies of his education for the work which he had in view. An eager pupil, Thompson sat at the feet of Turnor during the winter of 1790; and when, in the following spring, he returned to York factory, it was as a man with his mind made up. If a man knows clearly what he wants and has the intelligence and perseverance to pursue his aims, no obstacle, not even such as these which confronted Thompson, can keep him from attaining his goal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thompson's heart was thrilled by the thought that he had finally accomplished the journey on which for the last five years his heart had been set, and that in so doing he had blazed a trail through the wilderness over ground which the feet of white men had never trod before. ”

“ With the arrival of the annual ship in 1785, orders came that the young apprentice should proceed to York factory, the principal dépôt of the Company, situated near the mouth of the Hayes river, one hundred and fifty miles further up the Bay. South of the Churchill, the rim of granite which hems the coast recedes for some miles inland, leaving a vast waste of marshy alluvial between the hills and the water line. Trees there are none, and the monotony of the landscape is relieved only by boulders which the ice has scattered over the face of the land. ”

“ The forests with their wild life responded generously to the less rigorous climate. In the Muskrat region, the wretched traders and Indians were forced to scour the country for fish and game in quantities sufficient to keep them alive. At Lake la Biche the waters yielded an abundant supply of fish; and during the five months that he spent at the post, Thompson saw no less than forty-nine moose and several buffalo brought in, all of which had been shot within twenty miles of the house. There also all the animals, including the precious beaver, attained their full size and development. ”

“ At Lake Athabaska, ten years later, Roderick Mackenzie had built Fort Chippewyan, from which Sir Alexander had set out on his two famous voyages, the one down the Mackenzie to the Arctic, the other up the Peace to its headwaters and from thence across British Columbia to the Pacific. Apart, however, from the activity centred in Lake Athabaska, little had been done as yet to explore the possibilities of trade in what is now northern Alberta. ”

“ In the long winter evenings at Reindeer lake, he weighed the problem before him. Colen, his chief, had undoubtedly failed to appreciate the value of his work. Worse still, he had hampered it, since for the last two years he had neglected even to supply Thompson with the Nautical Almanac so necessary for his surveys. But behind Colen stood the Company. How far had they given him the sympathy and encouragement which he needed? The directors, he felt, might easily have had the northern part of the continent surveyed as far as the Pacific coast, and thus greatly extended the range of their trade. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Shouldering their canoe and baggage, they advanced along the rude corduroy road which the traders had laid across the bog. As often as they missed their step, they sank to their waists in the mire. A long day's work was needed before they had reached the other side. From thence a brook carried them to the main stream of River St. Louis. They passed into the forest country that surrounds the lake; and were soon at the trading house which the North-Westers maintained at Fond du Lac on the present site of the city of Duluth. ”

“ At that moment, indeed, the Company was seriously crippled for lack of men to keep up the few inland trading posts that then existed, for the war which was raging between England and France had drained the Orkney islands of all men who were fit for service in the army and navy. The few miserable dwarfs who could be obtained for the fur trade excited the contempt of even the Indians. ”

“ Surrounded as they were by fierce and violent enemies, the Mandans had constructed their villages with an eye to defence rather than to comfort. For this purpose a site was selected on elevated ground, so that no attack could be made from above. The houses were then built irregularly without regard for streets, and the whole village surrounded by a stockade of timbers at least twelve feet in height. On more than one occasion, Thompson learned, the Sioux had taken advantage of a dark and stormy night to approach the villages and fire the palisades. ”

“ Lawrence river points like a finger to the heart of the continent, and from the head of Lake Superior it is possible, by a comparatively easy portage, to cross the height of land and descend through Rainy lake, the Lake of the Woods, and the Winnipeg river to Lake Winnipeg. Lake Winnipeg forms a vast collecting basin for the waters of the interior, before they finally discharge through the Nelson river into Hudson Bay. Thus it affords communication south and west by way of the Red and Assiniboine rivers through the prairie country of southern Manitoba, the Dakotas, and Minnesota ”

“ With so few men it would have been madness to venture a long journey on unknown waters and in the midst of possible enemies; so he determined to make his way past his old trading posts to the Salish country. There he knew he could find plenty of free hunters to help him in accomplishing the voyage to the sea.
It was six weeks before he had reached Salish House, where he hoped to find Finan McDonald. But neither McDonald nor Jaco Finlay was at the post, and, as they had left no letter to indicate their whereabouts, Thompson prepared to descend Clark's Fork by himself. ”

“ How is it, Sir, that everyone who has once wished you well should turn to be indifferent to you, and even some to hate you, although they are constant in their other friendships?—there must be a defect somewhere. ”