
* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please
check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be
under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada,
check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER
COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD
OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

Title: David Thompson, Canada's Greatest Geographer:
   An Appreciation
Author: Tyrrell, Joseph Burr (1858-1957)
Date of first publication: 1922
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   [No publisher named], 1922
   (first edition)
Date first posted: 20 September 2009
Date last updated: 20 September 2009
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #388

This ebook was produced by:
Marcia Brooks and Mark Akrigg




DAVID THOMPSON

Canada's Greatest Geographer


AN APPRECIATION

by

J. B. TYRRELL, F.R.S.C.

in connection with the opening of the David Thompson
Memorial Fort at Lake Windermere, B.C., August 30th, 1922.




DAVID THOMPSON: An Appreciation

By J. B. Tyrrell.


David Thompson was the greatest land geographer who ever lived; and,
therefore, one of the greatest scientists. He came to Fort Churchill a
14-year-old boy from a London charity school in 1784. While his greatest
work was being done during twenty-eight years, he was never within a
thousand miles of any civilized community of five hundred souls. He died
in obscure poverty sixty-five years ago and lies in a nameless grave at
Montreal. The opening of the memorial museum and hall at Lake
Windermere, B.C., is the first public recognition of the debt that
civilization owes him, for, though the Thompson River is called after
him, a few years ago not one geographical student in a thousand knew
anything about him.

With extraordinary accuracy he placed on the map the main routes of
natural travel in one million two hundred thousand square miles of
Canada and five hundred thousand square miles of the United States; he
surveyed the head waters of the Mississippi; he discovered a new route
to Lake Athabasca; he opened the first trade between what is now Canada
and the territory beyond the Great Divide; he fixed the locations of
outstanding geographical points over this vast area with the sureness of
an expert astronomer, though he had to learn how to figure with the
stars when he was a boy wintering at Cumberland House on the
Saskatchewan River.

His skill won for him the appointment of Astronomer to the Commission
which, from 1816 to 1826, delimited the frontier between British North
America and the United States. Some of his surveys are included in the
official maps now being issued. His "Narrative," published in 1916, is a
wonderful story of life in the wilderness and contains very much
information of the prehistoric existence of the Indians never given
elsewhere. So far as is known, he is the only man who has ever surveyed
the Columbia from source to mouth, 1150 miles. His locations are as
accurate as others which have been made with the most modern instruments
and the most recent almanacs that Government Departments can buy. The
record of his work is contained in forty notebooks, which have long been
in the possession of the Ontario Government. Their story, for
unremitting labor, conscientious devotion to science, and for the
unconscious evidence they give of a noble character, so far as a
somewhat extensive research enables one to judge, is not equalled by
anything that has been left by all the explorers whose names are honored
wherever our language is read.

I have called Thompson one of the greatest of scientists. His work is
open for inspection. It is the more remarkable because, not only was a
great deal of it performed literally thousands of miles from the
outskirts of civilization, but because, except for one year, it was a
side-line to his activity as a fur trader, first for the Hudson's Bay
Company and then for the North-West Company, which afterwards was united
with it. He travelled almost incessantly during spring, summer and
fall--often most hazardous travel, such as is told in the journal of his
opening of a new route to Lake Athabasca, during which he was almost
drowned, and was within a few hours of death by starvation.

Frequently the Thompson parties were in danger from hostile Indians.
Indeed, to get his furs out of the mountains after he and his people
were threatened with extermination, he was compelled to use an
undesirable route. In 1807 he came in to the Kootenay county, Idaho and
Washington by way of the Saskatchewan and Howse Pass. In 1811 he had to
abandon the Saskatchewan route and get out by way of the Athabasca, at
the cost of a journey which, for perils and escapes, surpasses anything
invented by the most romantic writers. The detour was about 400 miles.
Roughly, it meant going by the Grand Trunk Pacific instead of by C.P.R.,
with the difference that the furs had to be taken four hundred miles
down the Athabasca up to Lake la Biche, one hundred miles north of
Edmonton, and thence down the Churchill River to Cumberland House.

Several winters Thompson lived in houses he had to build when the snow
began to fall. His last winter in the service of the Hudson's Bay
Company was spent at Reindeer Lake, the ice on which, he says, did not
disappear until July 7th. The fort he built at Reindeer Lake was in the
present Province of Saskatchewan, about 300 miles from Prince Albert.
When it is prophesied that the banana belt will presently extend to
beyond the Saskatchewan, it may be well to remember that there have been
prolonged winters in that salubrious region.

After all, how could the surveys made by a fur trader, and their record
on paper, marked with the degrees of latitude and longitude, be among
the greatest scientific contributions to human knowledge? Geography is
one of the primary sciences. It is indispensable to the most elementary
progress in many sciences--geology, for instance, to which the
prosperity of British Columbia mining is a debtor. It is only through
geography that you know where you are, and when you want to go somewhere
you can only tell how to get there through geography--the science of the
earth's surface, and the relation of one part to another, with all the
inhabitants thereof. Without the aid of geography you could neither
build a railway nor carry on a war. Christopher Columbus was a
geographer. Sir John Franklin was a geographer. The immortals who
explored this continent--Champlain, La Salle, La Verendrye, Franklin,
MacKenzie, Fraser--the men who found a way for steel through these
mountains were geographers. But, though Champlain, La Salle, La
Verendrye, MacKenzie, Franklin, told us much, they left their
information in no such useful shape as Thompson put the fruit of his
persistent journeyings. What Thompson did has been of inestimable
practical value to this continent and to the world.

A little personal testimony on this point may be permitted. When the
C.P.R. was being built across the plains and mountains, the Government
of Canada, preparatory to the Columbia Valley and others becoming safe
and agreeable for their present dwellers, found it necessary to have the
country explored. Thirty-nine years ago, Dr. Dawson, of the Geological
Survey--a child of the geography which Thompson enriched--was sent into
this region with assistants, of whom I was one. Thenceforward, for many
years, I was occupied in surveying territory from the Kootenays to
Chesterfield Inlet. From time to time the number of places of unknown
origin shown on, and the accuracy of the main features of, the existing
maps, very much impressed me, and set me to finding out how it was that
we were so much better off in the matter of fundamental geographical
information than we had any right to be, according to all the available
literature on the subject, and in comparison with the United States. The
quest put me on the trail of David Thompson. During fifteen years I owed
a personal gratitude for the way in which Thompson labored. The Canadian
people, in their great business of transforming barbarian wildernesses
into prosperous communities, have entered into his labors. It has been a
great delight to learn all that was possible about this scientist, of
whom his equals knew nothing, and of their obligation to whom the people
of Canada are too scantily aware.

I had thought to give a summary of the Thompson journeys, with what they
yielded for the advantage of succeeding generations. But to attempt it,
in anything shorter than a long volume, would be to lose the reader in
an expanse of prairie, mountain, forest, lake and river, half as big as
Europe. Study of his journals shows that on foot, by canoe, and on
horseback he covered fifty-five thousand miles. His map includes all the
territory between the 84th and 124th degrees of latitude, and the 45th
and 60th degrees of longitude from Sault Ste. Marie, at the junction of
Lakes Superior and Huron in the south-east corner, to Astoria, in the
State of Oregon on the Pacific Ocean in the south-west, and to the
northern boundaries of the Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and
Alberta on the north. How different he was from the other explorers
whose names are in all North American histories, is suggested by his
achievements as an astronomer. He was not satisfied with being a
traveller, trader and hunter by day, but was a scientist at night. He
worked out his astronomical calculations mainly during the winters. But
before astronomical calculations there must be astronomical
observations. Nobody could read the firmament in daylight. While others
slept, or idled, Thompson, on clear nights, was measuring the stars. At
Cumberland House one winter he spent thirty-five nights in the open air.
Everywhere, at every opportunity, he scrutinized the jewelled heavens.
To the Indians his wizardry became a proverb. In his "Narrative"
Thompson tells vividly of his first winter at Kootenae House when the
Piegan Chief Kootenay Appee sent spies from the plains to learn all
about his fort with a view to coming to destroy it and him. When they
reported to their Chief, he said, "What can we do with this man? Our
women cannot mend a pair of shoes but he sees them," "alluding to my
astronomical observations," simply comments Thompson. A further idea
both of Thompson's fame as an astronomer and of his patriotism--for he
never forgot his British nationality and was always thinking of
extending her renown--is given by my friend Mr. Elliott, of Walla-Walla,
a living encyclopaedia on the course and history of the Columbia River,
who is honoring the celebration at Lake Windermere with his presence.
Mr. Elliott has pointed out that Alexander Ross, one of the early
adventurers across the line, says that at the confluence of the Columbia
and Snake Rivers, near the southern boundary of the State of Washington,
he found "triumphantly waving in the air ... a British flag, hoisted in
the middle of the Indian camp, planted there by Mr. Thompson, as he
passed, with a written paper laying claim to the country north of the
forks as British territory." Ross adds that these Indians called
Thompson "Koo-Koo Saint," which, being interpreted, is "The Star Man."
The Star Man indeed, for only a true scientist with a rare and loving
capacity for astronomy could produce the accurate results to which I
have already alluded, and of which I will give two instances before
speaking of his personality.

The remains of his Fort Kootenae are just outside the town of Athalmere.
The degrees of latitude are located as from Greenwich. Thompson's log
house here was six thousand miles from Greenwich, to communicate with
which, in his day, required several months of travel. Thompson's
location of this place by his observations of the stars was within four
miles of its precise spot on the earth's surface. His location of
Cumberland House is within one mile of exactitude--nearer than the
Capitol at Washington was placed by the foremost scientists up to the
time when the Atlantic cable brought Washington into instantaneous
communication with Greenwich Observatory.

What manner of man was David Thompson? No picture of him was ever taken,
but his daughter, Mrs. Shaw, thirty years ago showed me a picture of
John Bunyan, and said it might be that of her father, so striking was
the similarity.

Dr. Bigsby, the naturalist, of the International Boundary Commission,
for which Thompson was the astronomer, says that at fifty years of age
he was a short compact figure, with black hair, long all round, and cut
square just above the eyebrows. He was very like Curran, the famous
Irish orator, and--listen to this confirmation of his daughter's
description--"Never mind his Bunyan-like face and short cropped hair: he
has a very powerful mind and a singular faculty of picture-making." And
then making more complete the comparison with the author of "The
Pilgrim's Progress," Dr. Bigsby continues:--"He can create a wilderness
and people it with warring savages, or climb the Rocky Mountains with
you in a snowstorm, so clearly and palpably that, only shut your eyes
and you hear the crack of the rifle or feel the snowflakes on your
cheeks as he talks."

From his last surviving son-in-law, Mr. Scott, then living in
Evansville, Indiana, I obtained, a few years ago, some account of
Thompson in his age. He let his beard grow and was white-headed; talked
little, read much, and had few callers besides the rector. His wife was
his chief companion. He would stay out at nights observing the stars,
which were his continual delight. Mr. Scott said he abhorred the sight
of liquor, but he occasionally bought rum for his friends, as his
journals show.

There is nothing new under the sun, not even bootlegging. Thompson
begins his "Narrative" with an account of a Dutch lugger hailing the
ship in which he had just started for Hudson Bay, allowing some liquor
to be sampled, selling a case for a guinea, and hurrying off, for fear
of the revenue officers. The sampled bottle was all right. Every other
bottle in the case was filled with sea-water. I allude to liquor because
that is all we can do with it now. Thompson was the first prohibitionist
of British Columbia. He refused to sell fire-water to the Indians. After
his first winter at Kootenae House he took his furs to Rainy River
House, and returned with two canoe-loads of goods, 1800 lbs. each, for
trade. This is what he says about one aspect of that journey:--

"I was obliged to take two kegs of alcohol, overruled by my partners,
for I had made it a law to myself that no alcohol should pass the
mountains in my company, and thus be clear of the sad sight of
drunkenness, and its many evils: but these gentlemen insisted upon
alcohol being the most profitable article that could be taken for the
Indian trade. In this I knew they had miscalculated: accordingly, when
we came to the defiles of the mountains, I placed the two kegs of
alcohol on a vicious horse; and by noon the kegs were empty, and in
pieces, the horse rubbing his load against the rocks to get rid of it. I
wrote to my partners what I had done, and that I would do the same to
every keg of alcohol, and for the next six years I had charge of the fur
trade on the west side of the mountains, no further attempt was made to
introduce spirituous liquors."

Thompson refused to debauch the Indians, not only because it was bad for
trade, but because it was morally bad. He was a deeply religious man.
Throughout his journals, when he records an escape from perils, the
expression constantly recurs, "Thank good Providence." His relations
with the Indians were marked by kindly courtesy. His inquiries into
their manners always touched their religious beliefs. He was as
different from the prevailing type of fur trader as a man could well be.
Like most of them, he married a native girl, daughter of Patrick Small,
a trader at Isle  la Crosse. He carried his young family with him on
many journeys, and when he left the West, in 1812, never to return, he
took them to the East. He lived at Terrebonne, in Quebec, and at
Williamstown, in Glengarry County, Ontario, where his children increased
to a total of thirteen. Other traders and travellers, including some who
received titles and scientific honors, abandoned their native wives and
families. Mrs. Thompson was a model housewife, scrupulously neat, and
devoted to him, as he was to her. He died at Longueuil, in his
eighty-seventh year, after fifty-eight years of wedded life, and his
wife, fifteen years younger than himself, survived him only three
months.

Thompson toiled in the wilderness without thought of the public
distinctions that usually incite scientific men. He never learned to
advertise. He suffered privation in his old age without a murmur. With a
noble humility he exemplified the Christian virtues during nearly thirty
years in the wilderness, where not a single missionary had ever been.
For what he did and what he was he deserves to be held in everlasting
homage.



[End of _David Thompson, Canada's Greatest Geographer:
An Appreciation_ by J. B. Tyrrell]
