THE RACE TO THE SEA
By the middle of October, 1810, Thompson was once more at the foot of
the Rockies en route for the Columbia with four canoe loads of
supplies. At Rainy River House, he had learned that a vessel
chartered by J. J. Astor and loaded with goods in charge of two
former North West traders was on her way around Cape Horn, bound for
the Columbia; and his orders were to anticipate this ship in reaching
the mouth of the river. He was therefore anxious to get through the
passes without delay, and at all costs to avoid a conflict with the
Piegans.
Since the 24th of September the brigade had been held up in the
neighborhood of Rocky Mountain House. The post was thronged by noisy
bands of Piegan, Sarcee, Blood, and Fall Indians, who had come
ostensibly to trade, but really to head off any movement of the white
man toward the mountains. Alexander Henry, the trader in charge,
endeavoured to get rid of these unwelcome visitors, but all in vain.
In such a crisis, the time-honoured expedient was rum. While some of
the Indians were drunk, however, others were sober, and for some
weeks it was impossible to get the canoes away without observation,
either by day or night. Finally, however, Henry got the frightened
voyageurs under way, and by the 13th of October, the brigade was
already within twenty miles of the mountains.
Thompson himself with a partner, William Henry, and two Indian
hunters had ridden ahead to the gap, scouring the country for game
and keeping a sharp watch for possible enemies. The party had killed
three red deer, made a scaffold, and placed the meat on it for safety
against wild animals. Days passed, and the canoes did not put in an
appearance. On the 17th the oldest hunter, rising as usual very
early in the morning, looked at the scaffold and remarked, "I have
had bad dreams; this meat will never be eaten." So saying, he
saddled his horse and rode away.
Thompson could no longer conceal his anxiety. He ordered Henry and
the other Indian to proceed down the river in search of the canoes;
with positive orders not to fire a shot except in self-defence. At
eight in the evening they returned, and he heard their story. Some
miles down the river, they had seen a number of Piegans encamped on
the bank. A short distance below this camp, they had descended the
slope to the river, where they found the marks of canoes and near
them in the bottom a rude rampart of stones on which there were
traces of blood. Proceeding further down stream, they had fired a
shot as a signal to the lost canoemen, but it was not returned.
Thoroughly alarmed by their rashness and folly, Thompson prepared to
fly for his life, for he knew that the Piegans would be on them in
the morning. At dawn of day, they took horse and made their way east
by a wide detour through the forest. Fallen trees and undergrowth
interrupted their progress, and their horses' hoofs made their track
easy to follow. Fortunately the afternoon brought with it a light
fall of snow, giving them some hope of shaking off their pursuers,
and late in the evening they ventured to halt and kindle a small fire.
Racked with fear for his own safety and anxiety for the fate of his
men, Thompson passed a sleepless night. His first care was to find
the brigade. Avoiding Rocky Mountain House, he continued east for
sixty miles along the river, and there, on the second afternoon, he
came upon his men, safe and sound, encamped in an abandoned
trading-post known as Boggy Hall.
All hope was now abandoned of passing in safety by the defiles of the
Saskatchewan, and Thompson determined to blaze a new trail across the
Rockies by way of the Athabaska river. The route projected lay over
an old path of the Assiniboine Indians to a point on the Athabaska
not far from the present line of the Canadian National Railways; and
from thence along the valley of the river past the mouth of
Yellowhead Pass to its headwaters some miles further south. From
this point a pass led across the height of land to the Wood river, a
small tributary of the Columbia. In later years this pass (known as
the Athabaska Pass) was the regular route for traders of the Hudson's
Bay Company on their journeys to British Columbia.
Horses and dogs were rapidly collected for the trip over land. The
men were detailed to their several duties, four to hunt, two to clear
a path through the woods, and the remainder to look after the animals
and perform the labour of the camp. By the 28th of October all was
in readiness; and the little party set off with Thomas, an Iroquois
Indian, to act as guide.
It was a full month before they had crossed the belt that lay between
them and the Athabaska. The road ran through a wretched country,
over mountains and across muskegs. Here and there the fires of the
forest had cut wide swathes through the woods, leaving in their wake
a tangled mass of fallen timber, through which they had to hack their
way. In the bogs the horses lost their footing, shifting their packs
and bruising their knees, until in a short while they were almost
useless. To complete the misery of the travellers, there was the
difficulty of securing food. Their dried provisions were soon
exhausted. Game was scarce; and the hunters often returned
empty-handed after a long day's chase.
By the first of December they had reached the Athabaska. Four days
later they had come to a point on the river a little above Brulé
lake, where the guide informed Thompson that owing to the lateness of
the season, all thought of crossing the mountains with horses had to
be given up. The greater number of the beasts were therefore sent
back to Rocky Mountain House; four only were retained to ease the
burden of the dogs.
The thermometer now registered 32° below zero; and the party threw
themselves into the work of building a rough shelter of logs to serve
while they prepared sleds and snow shoes with which to complete their
journey. At the end of the month they made a fresh start. Urged by
the shouts and lashings of the voyageurs, the dogs with their burdens
scurried along the ice of the river. In five days they came to the
grassy ponds that marked its headwaters--the last possible pasturage
for horses. Here, therefore, the poor animals were turned loose to
survive the winter as best they could.
Four days more brought the party to the height of land. The
landscape, as far as the eye could reach, was clothed with a heavy
mantle of gleaming snow. Round about towered the lofty peaks, their
sides scarred by avalanches which had swept the slopes bare of trees
and rocks in their descent. To the right lay an enormous glacier, a
mass of blue-green ice, the eastern face of which was not less than
two thousand feet in height. The night was fine, and the stars shone
with such brilliance that one of the men told Thompson that he felt
he could almost touch them with his hands.
Early next morning they began the descent to the valley of the
Columbia. On the eastern face of the mountains, the approach to the
height of land had been a long and steady climb. To the west, the
ground fell away in a series of abrupt slopes, so steep in places
that it required sure footing to avoid a tumble. A short advance
therefore was enough to produce an amazing difference in the climate.
The snow which to the east of the mountains was thin and dry, here
lay heavy and wet upon the ground; and they entered a forest of clean
grown pine of gigantic height and girth. So heavy were the loads and
so steep the slope that the dogs were unable to guide the sleds, and
from time to time they came against the base of a pine tree with
considerable force, dog on one side, sled on the other, so that they
were disentangled with difficulty. To relieve the animals, Thompson
had a portion of the loads removed from the sleds. The men grumbled
as they were forced to lug these packs forward through the heavy
snow. Finally after fifteen days' travel they arrived at the banks
of the Columbia.
Mutterings of discontent were now openly heard among the French
Canadians. They had had enough, and would follow the madman no
further. Four of them suited the action to the word and deserted.
Two of the others Thompson despatched with letters to William Henry,
describing the route he had discovered, and ordering Henry to follow
him along it with an additional supply of goods. With the remainder,
Thompson set forth on the journey up the Columbia. They had gone but
one day when they, too, balked at the restless energy of their
leader. Faced with incipient mutiny, Thompson had no choice except
to return to the mouth of the Wood river, and there pass the rest of
the winter.
The place of his enforced residence was the famous "Boat Encampment"
of later days. At this point, the Columbia, after having pursued a
north-westerly course for upwards of two hundred miles from its
sources, bent sharply around the head of the Selkirk Mountains, and
flowed off to the south. At the bend, the stream was joined by two
tributaries, the Wood and Canoe rivers, coming in from the north, and
forming at their mouths a wide meadow of rich alluvial soil. There
in the midst of a forest of giant pine and larch, the party cleared a
site, and built themselves a rough cabin. Thompson, never idle,
spent his time exploring the neighbourhood, and constructing a boat
for the remainder of the journey. As there was no birch bark
available, he built it clinker-fashion of cedar boards split thin;
and these, in default of nails, he sewed together with the fine roots
of the pine.
The snow was not yet off the ground when he was once more on his way.
He had counted on reaching the mouth of the Columbia not later than
the first of August, and would gladly have made the descent by way of
the river itself, which here lay clear before him. Of his canoemen,
however, three only had the courage to risk the chances of the
voyage. 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.
The river presented an appearance vastly different from that of the
autumn of 1809, when he had passed down it before. The spring floods
were now at their height, and the water was rising at the rate of two
feet each day, inundating the meadows to the foot of the hills, and
dashing along with such violence that every island became a
water-fall, with a strong eddy at the lower end. Down this raging
torrent they paddled, keeping in midstream, and thankful as they
passed each danger spot in safety. The antelopes had retired to the
hills, and they lived on the meat of horses which they traded from
the Indians.
On the 8th of June they arrived at the point where the river entered
the Box cañon and became utterly unnavigable. There Thompson found a
small camp of Kullyspell Indians, who informed him that Finan
McDonald was now at a post which he had built on the banks of the
Spokane river further south. Thompson engaged two of these Indians
to inform McDonald of his presence; while he himself waited until the
latter should join him with horses to carry his goods overland to the
new post. Four days later McDonald, with thirteen horses, arrived;
and Thompson with all his possessions was transported overland to
Spokane House, about ten miles northwest of the present city of
Spokane.
The Spokane river, like Clark's Fork, was a tributary of the
Columbia, and, like it, unnavigable toward the mouth. Thompson
therefore left a small assortment of goods with McDonald, and
proceeded northwest along a well-beaten Indian trail to a point on
the Columbia, just below Ilthkoyape or Kettle Falls. Here the stream
dropped several feet in two magnificent cataracts, the roar of which
could be heard for many miles around.
Just below the falls was an Indian village, the first of its kind
that Thompson had seen. It was composed of a number of huts, each
from thirty to sixty feet in length, roughly built of large cedar
logs which had drifted down the river, and roofed with mats of woven
fibre stout enough to withstand the rain. The Indians who dwelt here
subsisted mainly on fish. Each spring, as the spawning season drew
near, they propitiated the manito of the salmon with elaborate dances
and ceremonies. Thus purified, they took their stand just beneath
the falls and speared or netted the fish, which they smoked in
quantities sufficient to last them through the year.
Thompson enquired of these people regarding the course of the river
both up and down. From them he learned that the village at Kettle
Falls was the highest along the stream that had survived the
incursions of the Piegans. Below them there was a journey of ninety
miles of rapids, at the end of which stood another village of salmon
fishers. Beyond this they could tell him nothing. Meanwhile the
canoemen were busy preparing a boat. In this region timber was very
scarce. They had to journey seven miles from the river before they
found a clump of cedar from which they could hew the planking of a
canoe; and it was not until the third day of July that the boat was
finished.
With five French Canadians, two Iroquois Indians, and a couple of the
natives for interpreters, Thompson now embarked on the last stage of
his journey to the sea. He remembered how, following the settlement
of the international boundary west of Lake Superior, the traders of
the North West Company had been driven from a country which they had
made their own. By that settlement, the forty-ninth parallel had
been accepted as the line from the Lake of the Woods to the watershed
of the Rocky Mountains. West of the Rockies however, all was still
debatable land; and in that vast region, with its timbered mountains
and rich valleys, the wealth of fish in its rivers and of minerals
hidden in its bosom, he claimed the right of a discoverer. At the
stern of his little craft, the Union Jack floated proudly in the
breeze; and at each halting place, Thompson posted a written notice
in the name of the North West Company of merchants from Canada,
formally taking possession of the country for His Majesty, King
George the Third.
Down the river sped the canoe, the paddlers with long swinging
strokes easily keeping abreast of the stream. Most of the rapids
they were able to shoot; and before nightfall they had completed the
ninety miles to the village of which they had heard above. Tents
were pitched and Thompson summoned the chiefs to smoke with him.
In a short while the chief arrived, followed by his men in single
file. All sat down in a circle about the tent, and the chief made a
brief speech, welcoming the strangers and offering them presents of
dried salmon and native herbs. Pipes were then lighted and solemnly
passed round. Following this the chief delivered a long harangue, in
which he expressed the hope that the white men would provide his
people with guns, ammunition, axes, knives, awls, not to mention
steels and flints and many other articles of which they stood sadly
in need. They were, he said, able and willing to hunt, and would pay
for everything they got. At present, however, they had only their
hands with which to procure food and clothing.
Thompson explained that his object was to explore the course of the
river to the sea. If it proved navigable, very large canoes would
come from over the ocean with goods of all kinds, and industrious
hunters would be supplied with everything they required.
The colloquy finished, permission was given for the women of the
tribe to approach. A dance of welcome followed, at the end of which
the weary travellers were left to their repose. In this way Thompson
made friends with the natives wherever he found them along the river.
As he advanced, Thompson passed out of the forest country, and
entered the arid plain that lies about the confluence of the Snake
river with the Columbia. Occasional willows and cottonwoods were to
be seen, growing in the neighbourhood of streams; but over the
greater part of this region, the only shrub capable of finding a
lodging was the hardy sage. The natives he now encountered were of
the unhappy Snake family, who had been driven for refuge to this
barren country by the relentless pressure of their foes. Some of
them fled in terror at his approach. Others, less timid, gazed with
admiring eyes upon the guns, kettles, axes, and other paraphernalia
of his camp. Their eagerness to obtain such wonders was in
proportion to their need; for they did not appear to possess even
bows and arrows or the stone axes and knives that were common among
the Eskimos of the far north.
The river now turned to the west; and far ahead on his left Thompson
discerned the snow-capped cone of Mount Hood, which marked the line
of the Cascade Mountains near the coast. Fifty miles short of this,
he came to a village at which, as usual, he put ashore. Here the
natives warned him of the treacherous Dalles or rapids just ahead,
where the river for a distance of two miles glides noiselessly
through a cañon never more than two hundred yards wide, and the
ledges of basalt, projecting into the stream, create whirlpools and
eddies in which the traveller is sucked to his death. At the same
time, the natives informed him that at the mouth of the river, a
party of white men who had come in a great canoe from the ocean, were
busy erecting a house. Thus he learned that the Astorian party had
anticipated him in reaching the mouth of the Columbia.
A guide from the village carried him safely through the Dalles, was
paid, and returned to the village. Fifty miles further down stream,
Thompson approached "the Cascades," where the river cuts through the
deep lava beds of the Cascade mountains and makes a descent of about
three hundred feet. Here the cañon was no less than six miles long,
and nearly a mile in depth. Trying in vain to secure a guide,
Thompson entered the rapids alone. For three miles he "ran" the
rapids; a portage of one mile followed, taking him past the worst
stretch of the river; he then re-embarked, and emerged in safety to
the quiet water below.
There was still one hundred and fifty miles to the mouth of the
river; but the magnificent forests of Douglas fir, cedar, and hemlock
which now clothed the country told them that they had come within the
beneficient influence of the sea. Two days' paddle brought them to
Tongue point, beyond which they had a full view of the ocean. To the
left, not more than a couple of miles distant, they beheld four low
log huts, constructed of timbers newly cut--in the words of Thompson,
"the famous Fort Astoria of John Jacob Astor and the United States".
At Fort Astoria, Thompson was welcomed by Duncan McDougall and David
Stuart, old colleagues in the service of the North West Company. As
their guest, he spent a week at the post taking observations for its
position and preparing for the return voyage. Toward the mouth of
the river, the natives had been demoralized by their association with
wandering traders from the sea; and remembering their surly behaviour
and menacing looks, Thompson saw to it that his men had their arms in
readiness. On the 22nd of July, he embarked. At the Cascades, he
was forced to appeal to the natives for assistance in climbing the
rapids. The scoundrels were importunate in their demands. With
knives in their hands and poisoned arrows in their bows, they were
ready to kill and plunder the travellers. But the courage and
resolution of Thompson warded off the crisis; and once above the
Cascades he was again among the poor but friendly savages of the
interior. Thompson was anxious to avoid the ninety miles of rapids
below Kettle Falls. When he came to the mouth of the Snake river, he
turned up this stream and ascended it as far as the present Lyon's
Ferry. From thence, having borrowed horses of the natives, he
journeyed overland across the sterile, sandy plain as far as Spokane
House; and from Spokane House, with the assistance of Jaco Finlay, he
once more reached the Columbia above Kettle Falls. There, building a
fresh canoe, he re-embarked and made his way through the Arrow lakes
to the Boat Encampment, thus completing his survey of the Columbia
from its source to its mouth.
The following winter Thompson spent inspecting his various posts, and
distributing among them additional supplies of goods which he had
received from beyond the mountains. From Salish House, he rode east
along Clark's Fork to a hill top within the limits of the present
city of Missoula; and from thence he was able to trace the route of
Lewis and Clark through the Bitter Root Mountains to the banks of
Snake river.
In the spring he was once more back at Kettle Falls, where the furs
from the winter's hunt were being collected. The results were
excellent; six canoes had to be made ready to accommodate the packs.
By the 22nd of April, his preparations were complete. The brigade
set off by way of the Columbia, Athabaska pass, and Churchill river
route to Fort William.
In the summer of 1812, when Thompson arrived at Fort William after
his last journey from beyond the Rockies, he was in the forty-third
year of his life. It was twenty-eight years since he had landed as
an apprentice on the shores of Hudson Bay; and twenty-three years
since he had actively embarked on his career as a surveyor. During
all this time he had been constantly accumulating materials for his
great map of the North West. His work was now complete; so that
instead of returning to the interior, he joined the annual brigade of
great canoes bound for Montreal. Thus did David Thompson bid adieu
forever to the Great North West.