Chapter IV: With the North-Westers

The chilly reception which Thompson met after his return from Lake Athabaska was enough to quench the enthusiasm of any man. He might have lain down under the blow. In that case he would no doubt have ended his days as an obscure and broken-spirited trader, embittered by his fate, but powerless so late in life to change it. Another course, however, was open to him, if he had the courage and self-reliance to take it. This was to throw up his post with the Hudson's Bay Company, and seek employment in other quarters where his talents would meet with the recognition they deserved.

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. This they could have accomplished at trifling expense, for in England there were numbers of highly-trained naval officers on half pay, who would have jumped at the chance of employment. But any explorations which they had undertaken were solely at the behest of the Colonial Office. His feelings toward the Company may not have been altogether justified. Nevertheless, he could only conclude that there was little or no future for him in the service. With Thompson to think was to act. On the 28th of May, 1797, he left his post on Reindeer lake and walked south through the bush for seventy-five miles to the nearest house of the North-Westers. After ten days spent there, he proceeded to Grand Portage, the headquarters of the Company at the west end of Lake Superior, in order that he might offer his services to the merchants from Canada.

Situated on a small bay at the mouth of Pigeon river, Grand Portage had been for several years the general dépôt for the trader of the North West Company, the lair from which those "sly wolves of the North" had sallied forth to work such havoc with the trade of the English on Hudson Bay. 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.

The fort itself was in keeping with the dignity of the Company and the magnitude of its operations. A palisade eighteen feet high enclosed the great square in which stood the various offices--storehouses, servants' quarters, and lodgings for the clerks. In the centre of the courtyard towered the main building, a stout log structure surmounted by a high balcony. This contained the apartments of the partners, and the great hall, its walls covered with portraits of the leading members of the Company in all the glory of ruffles and scarlet coats. Here took place the grave deliberations of the merchants, and here each evening they dined in solemn state. The stone powder magazine, the jail with its barred windows, and the sentry in the archway of the great gate lent a touch of grimness to the picture of this far-flung outpost of commerce.

At Grand Portage, Thompson received a warm welcome from those of the partners who were at the time present in the fort. On his way down he had met Roderick Mackenzie, cousin to the famous Sir Alexander, and Simon Fraser, soon to win distinction as the discoverer of the Fraser river. At the post he found the Honourable William McGillivray, prominent in the councils of the Company, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie himself. Sir Alexander had been the first white man to descend the Mackenzie river to its mouth, and he had blazed a trail across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. He had but recently returned from England, wearing the honour of knighthood which he had earned for his explorations. All of these gentlemen impressed Thompson as being men of enterprise and vision, and among them he found the liberal and public spirit which in his former employers he had sought in vain.

At that time, questions of serious import were agitating the minds of the partners. By the treaty which closed the American Revolutionary War, the boundary between the British dominions and the territories of the United States had been fixed as a line drawn from the northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods to the source of the Mississippi, which was then thought to lie considerably north of its true position. Nine years later, the forty-ninth parallel of latitude had been accepted as the boundary; and by the Treaty of Amity and Commerce subsequently passed, it had been agreed that all British trading posts south of this line should be withdrawn. This made it necessary for the Company to fix at once the location of their houses on the upper Red river, and incidentally if possible to discover the true source of the Mississippi. The partners were also anxious to have a route surveyed to the headwaters of the Missouri river, where there existed the villages of an Indian people who got their living from the cultivation of the soil. The scientific spirit of the merchants was shown by their further desire to search for the fossil bones of prehistoric animals and any monuments which might throw light on the earlier condition of the regions surveyed. Finally, they wished to ascertain the courses of the rivers and the situation of the lakes, in order that they might rearrange their network of trading houses so as to cover more completely the territory under their sway.

Thompson's arrival came therefore at an opportune moment. He was promptly engaged as astronomer and surveyor to the company, and the partners and agents all agreed to send orders to their various trading posts that he should be given any assistance he required. In August, the great canoes arrived from Montreal with the goods for the Indian trade. When these were unloaded, the merchandise was assorted and made up in parcels each of ninety pounds' weight, so that the boatmen might be able to shoulder them over the portages. These were then taken in charge by the various agents and their shouting crews of voyageurs. Five days of hard labour were needed for the carry over Grand Portage to the upper waters of Pigeon river. When all was ready, Thompson climbed the long trail from the lake. Armed with his precious instruments, he joined the Swan river brigade of four canoes, and embarked on what was to be the longest, fastest and most brilliant piece of survey in his whole career.

Progress was tedious until the party had crossed the watershed beyond which all streams flow north-westward into Lake Winnipeg and thence into Hudson Bay. They then made a rapid descent through Rainy lake and the Lake of the Woods to the Winnipeg river (the mad or foaming water of the Indians), down which they paddled and portaged to its mouth. Coasting along the south shore of Lake Winnipeg under the shelter of its low limestone cliffs, they came to the mouth of the Dauphin or Little Saskatchewan river. The ascent of this stream brought them to the waters of Lake Manitoba. They had only to paddle to the head of this lake, and from thence the length of Lake Winnipegosis, in order to find themselves at the mouth of the Swan river. Twelve miles up this stream was their objective--Swan River House.

As they approached their goal, Thompson observed that the land was rapidly improving in character; until at Swan River House he found himself in the heart of a fine varied country of hill and plain, woodland and meadow--the beaver country _par excellence_. Here on every side were to be found traces of the labours of these industrious animals; the dammed brooks, the flooded meadows, the dome-like huts in which they lived and the burrows to which they fled for refuge when attacked. All this fine country was the hunting ground of the Cree Indians, the possession of which they had from time immemorial disputed with the beaver, the bison, and the red deer.

When the early French traders arrived, they brought with them chisels, knives, and other implements of iron. The Indians, having got possession of these, were able to cut through the dams, drain the waters of the ponds, and thus expose the huts and burrows of the beaver. Then, assisted by their small half-savage dogs, they would chisel their way through the thick walls of the huts until they came to the beaver. Since there was a ready market for his skin among the French traders, they soon became rich, and for several years men, women, and children were gay with brooches, ear-rings and beads, and gaudy with scarlet coats.

But then the Nipissing and Iroquois Indians, who had exhausted their own countries, spread to the north and west. Armed with their new steel traps, they began a war of annihilation upon the beaver; and by the year 1797, when Thompson travelled through the Swan river district, almost the whole of that extensive region was denuded. The short phase of prosperity was over. The greed of the white man and the improvidence of the Indian had done their work, and while the native might still hope to gain a bare subsistence from hunting the deer and the bison, he was once more poor, thus to remain for ever.

Over this country, Thompson made a series of rapid excursions by horse and canoe, in order that he might fix the location of the various trading houses of the North West Company. In the course of five weeks, he had crossed to the basins of the Red Deer and the Assiniboine rivers, and surveyed each of these streams to its source. He then descended the Assiniboine to its confluence with the Souris, near where the city of Brandon now stands. Here toward the end of November he put up at Assiniboine House, which was at that time kept by a trader called John McDonnell.

McDonnell's house was the natural point of departure for the journey across to the Mandan Villages on the upper Missouri. The trail lay in a south-westerly direction along the south bank of the Souris river as far as the great bend, and from thence across the open plains to the heights of the Missouri. As the country was generally treeless, the custom of travellers was to move from point to point where patches of wood growing in the river bottom or at the higher levels afforded firewood and shelter for the night.

Winter had come, and three inches of snow lay upon the ground, making travel both disagreeable and dangerous. Worse still, the road passed through the hunting grounds of the Sioux Indians, those wild riders of the plains who lived by pursuit of the bison. The Sioux had lately suffered the loss of several men at the hands of the Mandan Indians; and these losses they blamed on the whites who had supplied the Mandans with guns and ammunition. They were therefore in a very menacing temper, and had determined to waylay, scalp, and plunder the next party of traders who ventured the journey to the villages.

Thompson, however, was not to be deterred; and he made his preparations for the dash across the plains. As guide and interpreter, he engaged a man who had resided for eight years among the Mandans, by name René Jussomme. He also picked up a light-hearted Irishman, Hugh McCrachan, who had often been to the villages for months at a time. The rest of the party was made up of French Canadians, gay and gluttonous vagabonds, who could nevertheless work as hard as they boasted, and hunt as much as they ate. All these men enlisted for the expedition as free traders; that is to say, each of them borrowed from McDonnell goods and trinkets to the value of fifty beaver skins, which he undertook to repay on his return. Thompson himself was supplied with two horses, and ammunition and tobacco for trade. Jussomme had one horse; while the men each bought two half-savage dogs from the Assiniboines. These were to haul their sled-loads of goods across the plains.

Thus equipped, the party set forth on the 28th day of November. The dogs were unaccustomed to hauling anything. Snapping and barking, they dashed hither and thither in all directions, hardly restrained by the loud _sacrés_ of the Frenchmen, reinforced by lashes freely administered with their stout rawhide whips. The motley procession crossed the Assiniboine on the ice, and camped that evening in a wood by the side of the Souris river, hardly six miles from the point from which they had set out. Meanwhile, the temperature was falling. At eight that night Thompson observed that it was 20° below zero. By the following morning it had dropped seven degrees more, and a stinging west wind had sprung up which kept them in camp. Here they remained for five days, in a temperature that sank as low as 40° below zero; while the high wind whistled through their canvas, and filled the tent with smoke from their fire. During this time, they devoured the flesh of three bison which the Frenchmen had brought into camp, while the dogs rejoiced in the offal.

The wind had by this time shifted to the north-west, and the weather turned milder with snow. When the storm was over, they renewed their journey, keeping close to the river in order that they might not lose sight of the familiar landmarks, for the men neither knew the compass nor would trust it to guide them. After making eleven miles, they came to a grove of hardwood, in which they found five tents of Assiniboine Indians. These gave them a hospitable welcome, but warned them that the Sioux were on the warpath. Nevertheless, they pressed forward, and by the following morning had reached the point where the trail led away from the river across the wind-swept plain to Turtle Mountain on the international frontier.

Jussomme now announced that they must prepare for an early start, as they faced a long journey across country before they could reach the shelter of the wooded heights. At seven the following morning they were on their way. Mile after mile they trudged over the boundless plain until one o'clock in the afternoon, and still no Turtle hill was in sight. The weather had now turned threatening, and anxiety was in every face. At this point Jussomme threw up his hands and confessed that he had lost his way.

It was a critical moment. Springing to his horse, Thompson galloped to the nearest knoll, from which with his glass he scanned the horizon on every side. Not a vestige of wood was in sight, but far to the north-west his eye caught what seemed to be the tops of a clump of trees. On this he took a bearing with his compass, and called to the party to follow him, which after some hesitation they made up their minds to do. Meanwhile the wind came on with increasing force, and the darkness closed in before they could see whether it was really a wood to which their painful and tedious march led. However, they kept in file and close together, and the dogs gave no trouble. It was black night before they finally reached the wood. Utterly wearied, the men hurriedly threw up their canvas and sought shelter from the storm.

The blizzard continued through the next day, and the men were too exhausted to proceed. They remained in camp with nothing but the meat of two tough old bulls to relieve their hunger. The day following two of the three horses went lame, their hoofs eaten away by the hard crusty snow. Luckily they encountered a small party of Assiniboines on their way to McDonnell's house to trade, and were able to send the horses back with them to the fort, purchasing dogs from the Indians in their stead. Two days later they met another party of Indians, and from them got a good meal. These Indians warned them that the Sioux were in waiting at the Dog Tent Hills; and no offer would induce anyone of them to go forward with the party as a guide.

They were now in the neighbourhood of Turtle Mountain, and Thompson had taken sole command. Another gale, another blizzard, and another march till nightfall brought them to the hill. On this occasion again the compass proved a trusty guide. In the darkness, Thompson's face brushed against the overhanging branch of a tree, and he knew that he had guided his men safely to the wood. Thus they continued as far as the Dog Tent Hills, near the elbow of the Souris. On approaching the broken country, Thompson espied a long line of horsemen descending the slope and moving off to the south. It was the Sioux, who had made up their minds that no traveller would venture forth in such tempestuous weather. Thompson signalled his men to throw themselves flat on the ground. This they did, and remained unperceived until the enemy was out of sight. They then entered the hills, and while they rested and hunted, cut tent poles and firewood for the dash across the barren plain. The fifty miles that still divided them from the waters of the Missouri were passed without adventure, and they arrived, tired but triumphant, at the upper village of the Mandans after a journey of thirty-three days.

Thompson was now introduced by Jussomme to a chief who bore the name of "Big White Man." To this chief he explained that his business was not to trade, but to visit the various tribes of natives, in order to see how they could be more regularly supplied with arms, ammunition, and other articles which they much needed. Surprised and pleased at this agreeable information, the chief led the white man to his own hut, where he and his servant Boisseau were comfortably installed and entertained with all the rites of native hospitality.

In company with Jussomme and McCrachan, Thompson then paid a visit to each of the five villages in turn. These, he found, were all built alike of domelike huts constructed of mud plastered over a framework of wood, each with an aperture in the centre of the roof to carry off the smoke of the fire and admit light to the solitary chamber of the dwelling. In front of each house stood a porch made of stretched bison skins, affording an approach to a doorway large enough to admit a horse. Passing the door, one entered a circular chamber about forty feet across, and, from the earthen floor to the aperture in the roof, eighteen or twenty feet in height. To the left of the doorway, sat the master of the house on a couch covered with buffalo robes. Before him was the fire, built in a circular space hollowed out of the floor, and surrounded by vessels of native pottery containing maize and boiled meat, the food of the household. Around the walls were a series of frame bunks about three feet from the ground, each of them enclosed by hides except for the front and made comfortable by a soft buffalo robe. To the right of the entrance were the stalls for the two or three horses which belonged to the household, to which every evening they were led back after pasturing on the plains. In the smallest of these villages, Thompson counted thirty-one such huts, in the largest one hundred-and-thirteen, each hut containing a family of from eight to ten souls.

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. But the flames had no power to destroy the earthen houses; there were no straight streets down which the enemy could shoot; and, as a regular siege was beyond the power of any of their foes, the Mandans had hitherto escaped destruction.

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. For hoes, they used pointed sticks hardened in the fire. A council of old men allotted to each family its portion of ground in the rich alluvial of the river bottom. From this they were able with their rude implements to raise a sufficient quantity of the maize, pumpkins, beans, and melons which were native to America.

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.

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. Hard pressed by the attacks of an enemy whom they could not resist, they gave way from point to point until they arrived at the banks of the Missouri; and thus put the width of the great plains between them and their implacable foes.

Having made friends with the natives and taken the observations necessary to determine the position of their villages, Thompson prepared to depart. As the Mandans dwelt in the territory of the United States, and it was contrary to the treaty of 1794 for a British company to plant trading posts among them, commerce was possible only if they were willing to make the journey to McDonnell's house to trade. Accordingly a chief in the prime of life, together with four young warriors, was selected to accompany Thompson on the trip home. These were joined by an old man and his squaw, who said that they wished to see the houses of the white men before they died. But the heights of the Missouri were too much for the aged couple, and they dropped out. Fourteen days of storm and tempest on the open plain sufficed to kill the spirit of two of the warriors, and they also dropped out. With the remainder, Thompson arrived at Assiniboine House on the 3rd of February, 1798. Unfortunately, the attempt to open up trade with the Mandans turned out to be unsuccessful. The journey was long and difficult in winter; and, in summer, the Sioux were active and cut off parties who tried to make the passage across their land so that the Mandan villages proved to be beyond the reach of the merchants from Canada.

At McDonnell's house, Thompson prepared the maps and notes of his survey to be sent by the next convoy to headquarters at Grand Portage. He then took leave of his hospitable friend, and set forth on his explorations up the Red river. With three French Canadians and an Indian guide, he started down the Assiniboine, hauling his baggage and provisions by dog sleds on the ice. The tedious windings of the stream and the ever increasing depth of snow made progress difficult. Nevertheless, by the 7th of March he had reached the junction of the Assiniboine and the Red rivers, where the city of Winnipeg now stands. He then turned up the Red river, and in six days' travel came to the international boundary, beyond which it was his duty to warn all traders that they were trespassing in the territory of the United States.

By the 25th of March he had worked his way south as far as the post of Baptiste Cadotte, which was situated on a tributary of the Red river, near the present site of the town of Red Lake Falls. From this point he purposed to cross the height of land to the western end of Lake Superior. Could he do it before the break-up of winter, and while the mantle of snow still lay on the ground to give passage to his dogs? He had, it will be remembered, no experience of southern latitudes. His last winter had been spent by the shore of Reindeer lake, where the ice stood firm till a windstorm broke it up on the fifth day of July. Cadotte warned him that the season was too far advanced; but he took the risk.

On the 27th of March he began his his journey eastward up the Clearwater river into Minnesota, picking up a guide from some Chippewas whom he found on the way. As the day wore on, the rays of the sun increased in power, and walking became difficult in the thawing snow. The night was mild, and the following morning the guide took care to break his snow-shoes that he might have an excuse for returning to camp. The day was wasted, while Thompson waited impatiently for another guide to be sent to take the place of the first. At sundown a storm came on with thunder, lightning, and rain, which continued the night through and far into the next day. The snow was now so heavy that progress was impossible. The continuous rains had soaked the clothes and the baggage of the party through and through. The fourth day opened with gusts of hail and sleet. The country before them was like a lake, and Thompson was compelled to admit himself beaten. Splashing and stumbling through the bush and along the treacherous ice of the river, the party struggled to make their way back to the protecting shelter of Cadotte's roof. But their baggage was too much for them, and they had to give in. Finally Thompson with one man, travelling light, pressed forward to the post for help; and by the afternoon of the second day the weary travellers were brought safely into camp.

When the rivers were finally clear of ice, Thompson, with his three Canadians and a native woman, made a fresh start, this time by canoe and with dried provisions to last for twelve days. They had first to battle their way against the current of Clearwater river, to the portage which brought them to Red lake. The country was everywhere soaked with water, so that at night they were forced to cut down trees and sleep on the branches. Red lake, they found, was still covered with patches of broken ice. Hauling and paddling their canoe in turn they crossed the lake, and entered an immense area of pond and marsh to the south. Everywhere stretched beds of wild rice, the haunt of innumerable geese, duck, and loon. With infinite toil they made their way from lake to lake and brook to brook, until after five days in the marsh they arrived at Turtle lake.

This lake Thompson took to be the true source of the Mississippi. Twenty years later American surveyors reached the conclusion that, of all the ponds whose waters join to form the Mississippi, Lake Itaska most deserved the name. Lake Itaska lies a few miles to the south and west of Turtle lake. Yet this fact hardly suffices to rob David Thompson of the glory of being the first man to fix the point from which the Father of Waters takes its rise.

There was still a long journey ahead to the coast of Lake Superior; and the canoe was leaky from bumping about among the ice floes. Luckily two boats of Chippewas came along on their way to John Sayer's post at Red Cedar or Cass lake. With these Thompson and his party embarked. A carry of two hundred yards took them past the narrow and shallow waters of Turtle brook, to a point where the stream was enlarged by a tributary from a nearby lake. Here they launched their canoes and followed the stream through its incredible windings to the lake. This was the country of wild rice and maple sugar, and on these the poor Indians were compelled to subsist. 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. As he advanced, however, the marsh gave way to a sandy loam, heavily clothed with resinous fir. Arriving at Sand Lake river, he turned east along this to Sand lake. Before him was a great swamp, nearly five miles in width and stretching north and south as far as the eye could reach. This was the last barrier between him and the headwaters of the River St. Louis. 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.

Here they found an old twenty-eight foot canoe, which they patched up and fitted with oars, for their slight river craft was unequal to the winds and waves of Superior; and they had still to make a survey of the lake. The weather was fine; and they made the circuit without adventure, east along the south shore to Sault Ste. Marie, and westward along the north shore to Grand Portage. Late in the evening of the 7th of June, Thompson set foot on the pier, his long journey over.

At Sault Ste. Marie he had encountered Sir Alexander Mackenzie and William McGillivray travelling east to Montreal. When they heard what he had done, they were warm in their praise, and told him that he had accomplished as much in ten months as might have been expected in two years. His reputation was thus established, and his future with the North West Company was assured.