The Travels of David Thompson: Volume I the Hudson’S Bay Company 1784–1797, the Missouri, Mississippi, and Lake Superior, 1797–1798

By Sean T. Peake

At age 75, David Thompson began to write about his life of exploration and surveying in western North America from 1784 to 1812. At this point, how-ever, the odds of ?nishing were slim; his eyesight was failing, his body was worn out after years of strain on portages and mountain passes. For ?ve years he toiled with rewrites and revisions, never able to set the ?nal account in order. On 16 January 1851 he put his papers to right in one last attempt to ?nish his work. By 28 February 1851, no longer able to see, he gave up his pen as well as any hope of completing his Travels. Like a true surveyor, though, he left a well-blazed trail for others to follow.

Drawing from the four surviving manuscripts and Thompsons 77 notebooks ?lled with daily journals, reports, essays, and anecdotes, Sean Peake ?nished what Thompson set out to achieve: a full account that encompasses the extent of the forests, of the great Plains, the animals, birds, ?shes &c &c peculiar to each section; the various tribes of Indians which inhabit these countries, their several languages, their religious opinions, manners and mode of life, place and extent of hunting grounds, and the changes which have taken place, by the fortune of war or other causes... a curious and extensive collection of all that can fall under the observation of a traveller.

This edition of The Travels of David Thompson is a landmark publication in Canadian history, fully deserving of a place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in a ?rst-hand account of the tumultuous struggle for control of western North America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462017782

Sean T. Peake

SEAN PEAKE is a Toronto-based copywriter and a private scholar with a passion for northern exploration. Since 1976, he has researched then travelled the routes of fur traders and Arctic explorers. With his brothers in the Hide Away Canoe club, he has paddled thousands of miles of Canada’s northern rivers and coastlines, including the Morse River, which the group o?cially named after Eric Morse in 1985 to honour his contribution to the sport of canoeing and our knowledge of the fur trade. When not searching for ghosts on the portages, Sean spends much of the ice-free season at Lake Nipissing in central Ontario with his three daughters, Kaitlain, Emily and Ginny.

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Editorial Rationale & Procedures

Introduction

Maps

Part I

The Hudson’s Bay Company 1784-1797

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

PART II

The Missouri, Mississippi, and Lake Superior 1797-1798

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

Engagés

Standard of Trade at York Factory 1796-97

Itinerary by David Thompson

Thompson’s arrangement of his notebooks

EXCERPT

ESSAYS

Origin of the Indians

Endnotes

In Memory of

Beverley Anne Peake

Preface

During my varied (some say checkered) life, I have crossed paths with David Thompson many times—having surveyed in the Rockies, paddled some of the same rivers, and walked some of the same portages; the most remarkable encounter came in 1998, six years into this project. An offer of a romantic getaway in Montreal to Beverley, my now late wife, was made to atone for a prolonged string of working weekends. There was, however, a bit of self-interest in the gesture: an innocuous side trip to visit David and his wife Charlotte’s gravesite in Mount Royal Cemetery.

As we drove into the cemetery, we found it littered with downed tree branches, its roads lined with snow banks as high as our car’s windows. At the cemetery office, the receptionist said that by following the orange line on the pavement we would find David and Charlotte in Section C. Conditions that time, however, meant that the orange line was mostly obscured by ice and snow, and our progress was made mostly by assumption than observation. When we followed a trace of the line up a steep hill, near its crest, our car’s tires lost traction on the ice and we slid into the snow bank on the right. Another run up the hill got us fifteen feet farther… and into the same the snow bank. Given that we were somewhere in an old cemetery late on a Sunday afternoon and the chances of successfully describing our location in mangled French to a tow truck driver were practically non-existent, the only recourse was to back down to the bottom of the hill and do a search on foot. Thirty minutes of wading through thigh-high drifts looking for the grave marker proved futile. Until, that is, we began descending the hill and reached the exact spot where the car had hit the bank on the last aborted ascent. There, right there, was Thompson’s marker. Had the snow bank been three feet closer, the car would have knocked it over. From then on I knew I was on the right road.

That journey started in 1976, when as one of the hundreds of transient students looking for work in Banff, Alberta, a good friend, Donald Rance, helped me land a job at the town’s only bookstore, The Book and Art Den. Jean Findley, its manager, recommended I get familiar with some of the store’s inventory by reading one of the tourist season’s best-selling local history books; Victor Hopwood’s David Thompson, Travels in Western North America 1784-1812, an abridged version of the Travels written in in 1971. At the end of his introduction, Hopwood wrote of his desire to see a variorum edition of Thompson’s Travels published that included material from the earlier and unpublished versions of his manuscripts, as well as material descriptive of the fur trade, wild life, geography, history and anthropology found in Thompson’s journals. Ignorant of the scope of the project, I blindly took up Vic’s challenge—and only needed 18 years to complete it. (Sorry for the delay, Vic)

Acknowledgements

The drive to stay focused and maintain one’s stamina during such a daunting project can only come from a passion for the subject. Kerry Keenan, a teacher at North Toronto Collegiate Institute, brought Canadian history alive in the classroom and sparked that passion. To him I can say, Sir, while my marks did not reflect it, I really was paying attention.

Passion grew to obsession because of my brothers, Michael, David, and Geoffrey, and Peter Scott and Peter Brewster, all members of the Hide Away Canoe Club. Together, we have located, explored, and paddled forgotten (some for good reason) fur trade canoe routes in Canada’s north since 1976.

At the Archives of Ontario, I must thank Leon Warmsky, who led me through the finding aids and the microfilm collection, and was always there whenever I had questions. When I was unable to decipher pages of the microfilm, Corrido Santoro, in charge of the David Thompson collection, and Ian Wilson, the Chief Archivist, granted me access to the actual journals. It was a humbling experience to hold and read the originals.

At the Thomas Fisher Library, University of Toronto, where Thompson’s manuscripts are held as part of the papers of JB Tyrrell, I am grateful to Chief Librarian Richard Landon, whose office gave me access to the original materials, kindly provided me with a photo reproduction of all 700-plus pages, and granted me permission to reproduce them as well.

At the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, I must thank Patricia Kennedy, whose uncanny ability to track down previously unknown documents and references is beyond remarkable.

At the Hudson Bay Company Archives, this nation’s greatest treasure, I am grateful to Anne Morton, Judith Beattie, Maureen Dolyniuk and Heather Beattie (among countless others) for their patient, professional handling of my ceaseless, sometimes pointless, fishing expeditions, and for allowing me to reproduce excerpts from the journals and letters held there.

Since this project began, there have been many people who have given me advice, comments, and direction. They are, in no particular order: George Luste, Hugh Dempsey, Hugh McMillan, C. S. Houston, Ian MacLaren, Barb Belyea, Jack Nisbet, Pierre Berton, David Anderson, Merv Ahern, Peter Gzowski, Sylvia Van Kirk, Jennifer Brown, Elizabeth Small, David Malaher, Andy Korsos (for his maps), Denise Fuchs (whose keen eye helped get this manuscript completed), and Douglas Leighton.

Then, there is Vic Hopwood. Over the years we exchanged information, anecdotes, and discoveries about our research into Thompson. I am grateful for his taking my phone calls and fielding my questions. There is no one who knows more on the subject of David Thompson than he.

I must also acknowledge the support of my parents, the late Thomas and Virginia Peake, who allowed their four sons to venture off together into the wilderness to follow obscure canoe routes and for telling me about Psalm 133.

Finally, this edition would never have come into existence without the support of my late wife Beverley, who allowed David Thompson to take over our home and live there rent-free for nearly two decades. To her, this edition is dedicated.

Editorial Rationale & Procedures

Forerunners

Were it not for Joseph Bouchette, the Deputy Surveyor General for Canada East, Charles Lindsey, an Irish-born journalist and publisher living in Toronto, and Joseph Burr Tyrrell, a geologist and surveyor, our knowledge of David Thompson might now be limited to a few footnotes in obscure fur trade histories, journals, and memoirs. In a presentation to the Executive Council of the Province of Canada (similar to today’s Cabinet) on 22 July 1859, Bouchette, stressed that the importance the journals of the late David Thompson cannot be too highly estimated. The council responded by approving the acquisition of Thompson’s journals for no more than £600.[1] While it is unknown when or for how much they were purchased (the receipt and Bouchette’s report of 1859 have not been catalogued or microfilmed and are likely held by the provincial archives of Quebec), the contents were logged and described by Robert Laidlaw of the Department of Crown Lands on 21 June 1864. Shortly after, the eighty-four journals were bound (by convenience rather than chronology) into thirty-eight volumes.

Lindsey bought the manuscripts of Thompson’s memoirs, now known as "The Travels from one of Thompson’s sons in 1857 or 1858 and published portions of them in his book, An Investigation of the Unsettled Boundaries of Ontario (1873). But in 1888, after he read a paper presented to the Canadian Institute written by Tyrrell entitled, A Brief Narrative of the Journeys of David Thompson in North-Western America," he had another idea.

Lindsey wrote Tyrrell to tell him that he owned the manuscripts of Thompson’s western exploration and asked him if he would like to look them over. Tyrrell agreed. When he received the manuscripts, Lindsey had tucked in a proposal: if Tyrrell would rework and rewrite the manuscripts for publication, they could split the profits. Lindsey believed that Tyrrell was the obvious choice to edit the manuscripts; he was a seasoned and tenacious explorer, geologist, and cartographer in the employ of The Geological Survey of Canada. More important, he had a strong interest and a growing knowledge of Thompson. In June 1891 Tyrrell, no doubt after recognizing the scope of the project, returned the manuscripts and declined Lindsey’s offer.

Tyrrell’s admiration for Thompson came about as he was surveying the Kootenay, Crowsnest, Bow and Kicking Horse Passes in the main range of the Rocky Mountains in 1883, and the country between the Bow and Saskatchewan rivers east of the Rockies from 1884 to 1886. He was so struck by the accuracy and the remarkable detail of the large-scale government maps and those made by the Hector and Palliser expeditions in the 1860s, that he began to search for the source. He could find nothing about the origin of the surveys but he stated, You all know how in exploration—whether among files or defiles—you keep going, even when sometimes it looks as if there’s nowhere to go.[2]

Eventually, Tyrrell found the answer in Bancroft’s histories of the northwest. Bancroft cited David Thompson as the one who had done much of the exploratory work in the region.[3] Tyrrell was then able to find out more from the published journals of Alexander Ross, Ross Cox, and Washington Irving.[4] By 1887 Tyrrell had tracked down one of Thompson’s daughters (who provided detailed information about her father) and located most of the journals in Toronto. He presented his findings to the Canadian Institute the following year.

In 1895, hearing that Lindsey was offering the manuscripts for sale in the United States, Tyrrell had a change of heart and purchased them from Lindsey for $1,700, a price Lindsey said, would just cover the cost that had been incurred by him. In 1916 Tyrrell published David Thompson’s narrative of his exploration in Western America, 1784–1812, an edited transcription of two of the manuscripts.[5] Nearly sixty years after his death Thompson finally got the recognition he deserved.

The Travels Complete

The need for a new edition of the Travels is two-fold. First, it gives readers access to the wealth of unpublished information that Thompson wrote over his lifetime. Aside from Tyrrell’s edition, the Champlain Society produced another version in 1962. This was edited by historian Richard Glover who provided a new introduction to Tyrrell’s edition and included the unpublished pages found in the Archives of Ontario by professor of English Victor Hopwood in 1957. Both were published in limited numbers for Society members and institutions, and can still be bought… for a price; Glover’s for hundreds of dollars, Tyrrell’s for several thousands. But both these editions used only two of the four surviving manuscripts. In 2009, William Moreau published the first of two volumes of Thompson’s manuscripts for the Champlain Society.[6] But, as Moreau published the manuscripts in their entirety instead of how Thompson had intended them (see below), that edition is not considered a new edition of the Travels.

The second reason for a new edition is to end the many and persistent misconceptions and accusations some historians directed at Thompson. While historians are supposed to weigh evidence and their sources carefully and dispassionately, a few had their thumbs squarely on the scale. There are two in particular, A. S. Morton and Richard Glover, who I deem the Grassy Knoll historians. These two launched an examination into Thompson’s life with the objectivity of tabloid journalists. They hinted that gaps in the record were signs of a cover-up, that key journals were either lost or, even more sinister, deliberately destroyed to cover-up his mistakes and breaches of duty to his employers. They accused him of being cantankerous, obstinate, of making feeble efforts to do his job at pivotal times, and of deliberately suppressing facts in his memoirs to create a false impression. As I progressed with my editorial research, however, I discovered that their claims were unfounded. The evidence they said was missing or destroyed was there all the time—or it simply never existed. It became apparent that they never consulted the original manuscripts and journals; they based their opinions and views on previously published—and erroneous—articles and books. Eventually, their efforts did more to harm their own reputation than that of Thompson. And while their contributions to our knowledge of Thompson can only be called unfortunate, some of their venom persists. This new full critical edition of Thompson’s Travels, which includes new materials that shed more light on events and fills the gaps in the historical record, will put to rest any remaining mean-spirited rumours.

Relying on Thompson’s manuscripts and indices, his field notes, fair journals and reports, and, more important, his essays and anecdotes clearly written for inclusion into his Travels, this edition finishes what Thompson intended: a full account that encompasses, the extent of the forests, of the great plains, the animals, birds, fishes &c &c peculiar to each section; the various tribes of Indians which inhabit these countries, their several languages, their religious opinions, manners and mode of life, place and extent of hunting grounds, and the changes which have taken place, by the fortune of war or other causes… a curious and extensive collection of all that can fall under the observation of a traveller.[7]

Editorial Principles

Because Thompson’s memoirs are an unfinished work destined for publication, they require a different editorial approach than that used in previous full editions. That it was written for public consumption, not private vanity, means that all surviving documents must be considered as potential sources if the editor is to create a final text that meets Thompson’s intentions. Tyrrell’s edition was a transcription of the two manuscripts that were most complete, which is understandable as he was breaking new ground. Later historians and academics performed autopsies on those manuscripts. Their works were peppered with highlighted emendations and footnotes sometimes running longer than the text they describe, and gave it the appearance of a schoolmaster’s corrections of a student essay—certainly not what the author intended nor deserved. But restrictions inherent in that style of editing raise too many questions or require more explanation in footnotes because a single source or text seldom, if ever, reveals all the facts.

From 1847 to 1850 Thompson was actively revising his manuscript. And as he progressed, it changed from an almost scientific review and a natural history of western North America to a chronological and engaging account of his life. Whether it was because of failing eyesight or his inability to afford the paper, Thompson was never able to remove all of the repetitions he saw as he organized his Travels to be fit for publication. The challenge was to finish what he set out to do.

Removing duplications and getting each piece in its proper place is probably the most contentious aspect of this edition, especially to those who edit historical documents. But this edition is not for them. It is for those who want to hear about life on the land before roads, fences, and dams from one of the most accomplished geographers the world has ever known. To maintain the structure and direction of the Travels, changes have been made that attend to Thompson’s intentions. Fortunately, he wrote chunks of information that can easily be deleted or extracted and inserted into their proper place without having to prepare the surrounding text to receive them.

When two versions of the same story exist in different manuscripts, the one with the least detail or importance to the immediate story line has been cut. An example is the One Pine. In an early version (Ms IV: 261) Thompson had Mitchell Oman describe the history and fate of this remarkable tree. In the last revision (Ms IV: 27p), Thompson related the tree’s history himself, since he passed it on his way to the Peigan camps in 1787 and saw the Indian involved while he was there. The two stories are essentially the same but because Thompson made the story part of his journey to the Peigan camps, Oman’s earlier anecdotal version is deleted.

When two identical stories mention different dates, the one that can be verified against the historical record is used, otherwise the correct (assumed) date is inserted in brackets. An example is in Saukamappe’s account of early warfare on the plains in Chapter 8. In his first draft (Ms IV: 264) Thompson said that Saukamappe’s memory went back to 1730. In the later revision (Ms IV: 27t), he said that the old man’s memory went back as far as 1700. The key to determining which date is correct comes from the details in his account: he was about sixteen years old, firearms, and especially ammunition, were scarce, and he attacked on foot—horses were unknown at the time. If the latter version is considered correct, Saukamappe’s battle would have occurred around 1715, a time when trade goods were so scarce that the Indians hardly ever bothered going down to the Bay to trade. With the former version, Saukamappe’s battle would have taken place around 1745, when trade goods and firearms were much more plentiful, and horses were becoming a common sight. Thus, 1700 is the most likely date.

Where gaps exist in the manuscript, for example when Thompson was exploring the eastern slopes of the Rockies in 1800-01, copy is provided by his fair journals or essays and reports in his journals to maintain chronologic integrity. When these do not exist, field notes are used. In some instances these are preferred over the manuscript or fair journals because of their dramatic content, such as when he and his men were caught out in a blizzard on their return from the Mandan Villages in the winter of 1797-98. Thompson wrote only briefly about this time in his manuscripts because, if his field notes are any indication, it was a time he did not wish to remember.

I have refrained from highlighting each and every insertion of text from sources outside manuscripts III and IV, since the goal of this edition is to let Thompson tell his story with a minimum of disruption, not create a schematic diagram. To satisfy the serious reader, endnotes provide information as to the source and location of inserted material and, where relevant, why the alternate version was chosen. For those seeking to consult the original materials used in each chapter, a trail is clearly blazed showing where the material came from. For instance, for Chapter 13, The Nahathaway, the sources of this chapter are: Journals, Book 13; Book 17, essay The Interior Part of Hudson’s Bay… (numbered in reverse order): 207-203; Book 27: 9; MS III: 132, 136, 140, 141, 142, 144-46, 148-49, 179, 181-82; MS IV: 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41.

Chapter Arrangement

To create the seamless, chronologically ordered document Thompson was working towards, sections of the manuscript have been gently re-organized and broken into more manageable pieces. Instead of thirty-five chapters (Tyrrell) and thirty-six (Glover) in the previous editions, the new edition has sixty-seven (see Table 1). As well, even though Thompson proposed to publish his Travels in three volumes (each not to exceed five shillings), this new edition has two:

Volume I

Part I: Hudson Bay to Athabasca, 1785 to 1796

Part II: The Missouri, Mississippi, and Lake Superior, 1797 to 1798

Volume II

Part III: Foothills and Forests, 1798 to 1806

Part IV: To the Pacific and Return, 1807 to 1812

During the editing process, I have given voice to a number of important figures Thompson quoted directly by providing each his own chapter: Doing so removes the ambiguity and uncertainty as to whom is speaking and lets that person tell his story without distraction. These new chapters are: Mitchell Oman (Chapter 5), who provided a first-hand account of the devastation caused by the smallpox; Saukamappe (Chapter 8), who talked about the alliance between the Cree and Peigan, early warfare against the Shoshone Indians on the plains, and how his people brought smallpox into Alberta; Kootanae Appe (Chapter 9), the influential and respected war chief of the Peigan, who was ordered to protect Thompson; Finan McDonald (Chapter 49), the legendary and fearless Scot who described the 1810 battle that turned the Peigan against Thompson; and Alexander Henry Jr. with Kootanae Appe (Chapter 51), who together devised a scheme to halt an attack on Thompson and Rocky Mountain House in 1810.

A trend Thompson developed early in his writing was to break his Travels into regions (The Stony and Musk Rat, Great Plains, the Mountains, etc.) and describe all aspects of it, from the geology to the flora and fauna and, most important to Thompson, the people who lived there. Material from his journals has been added or manuscript text has been re-organized, or both, to create new chapters and bolster existing ones so that within each region all of Thompson’s stories on the respective Native population are represented.

Punctuation, spelling, omissions, etc.

The manuscript has been subjected to a few rules any author would expect to obey if he submitted his work for publishing. Variant spelling and capitalizations, transpositions, and grammatical errors have been silently emended. All proper names, Indian and European, and contractions (tho’, thro’), remain as Thompson spelled them. In the manuscripts, variations of proper names (e.g. Peagan, Pikanow, Peegan) have been changed to his most commonly used form, i.e. Peagan (Note: the official spelling of this tribe’s name in Canada is Peigan; in the United States it is Piegan. Peigan is used in the endnotes). Missing words, such as conjunctions, have also been silently added; but where more than one word is missing, suggested insertions appear in square brackets.

Also, it is highly unlikely that any publisher would print a manuscript that has few page breaks and practically no full stops or paragraphs throughout its 700-plus pages. Many times, Thompson would indicate breaks and stops through the spacing of words. To ensure context is maintained in each sentence, punctuation has been changed. Colons, semi-colons, and commas have removed or added, based upon the editor’s understanding of their proper place.

Original sources used in this edition

Thomas Fisher Library, University of Toronto

The bulk of original material used here comes from the papers of JB Tyrrell, held by the Thomas Fisher Library, University of Toronto. The manuscript was divided into four parts (likely by Tyrrell) for an obvious reason: there is no single manuscript that provides a full account of Thompson’s life:

• Ms I—Arrival at Hudson Bay, Churchill and York Factory: an early draft of fourteen pages, with many deletions, revisions, marginalia, and additions.

• Ms II—Athabaska Pass to the Pacific and return: numbered pages 233 to 262, and appears to be an early version of crossing Athabasca Pass in 1811. These pages are only mentioned as a note (but not described) in the Ms IV index held by the Archives of Ontario (Journals, Book 70: 84) as 233 to 286 Columbia.

• Ms III: Appears to be an early draft of the Travels. The index for this manuscript lists 374 pages, but ninety-three are missing, fifty-two of which were moved into Ms IV (1-8, 10-33k). Pages 194 to 324 were used in Part Two of Tyrrell’s Narrative.

• Ms IV: This document contains 312 pages (with two pages missing) and a nineteen-page appendix. Its index is held by the Archives of Ontario (see below).

Tyrrell used this Ms for Part One of the Narrative with the exception of the last known pages Thompson wrote (27a-27zd), which were found (along with two indexes) by Victor Hopwood in 1957 among Thompson’s journals at the Archives of Ontario

• Essay on mountains of nine pages, with one page of miscellaneous notes

• Essay, Origin of The Indians, that argues their origin, range, and movement across North America

Archives of Ontario (AO)

• Eighty-four Journals of David Thompson first bound by convenience in 1864 into thirty-eight volumes but recently separated into individual volumes. These are daily journals, weather logs, sketches, reports, essays, and notes that were written between 10 October 1789, and 28 February 1851. Many pages bear the wax crayon markings made by Elliot Coues, who consulted the journals for his edition on Alexander Henry Jr. published in 1897.

• Pages 27a-27zd of Ms V. These are the last known pages Thompson wrote (27a-27 zd) and were found (along with two indexes) in 1957 among Thompson’s journals at the Archives of Ontario by Victor Hopwood.

• Index for Ms IV. The penultimate version of the Travels, this index reflects the direction Thompson was taking as he reorganized his manuscripts. (He would revise his manuscripts again as is shown in the index for Ms V.) This index lists the content for pages 1-312 (only two pages missing) and the appendices of nineteen pages.

• "Index as corrected" for Ms V—while Ms V does not exist as a document, Thompson wrote this index in 1850 or 1851 during his final attempt to put his papers in order. It lists the content of pages 1-40, as well as pages 27a–27zd—the last ones Thompson wrote. The index was never completed, the manuscript was never compiled

Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

• Journal to the Rocky Mountain 1801. This journal belongs to the Ontario Archives but in 1948 a clerk found it in the records of the Department of Crown Lands and unwittingly sent it to Ottawa. It is unlikely Ottawa will release its illegitimate grip on this document anytime soon.

Royal Commonwealth Society

• Narrative of the Expedition to the Kootanae and Flat Bow Indian Countries, on the scources of the Columbia River, Pacific Ocean by D Thompson on behalf of the NW Company 1807. This document appears to have been written for Duncan McGillivray and may have been included with his journal of 1794-95 and his essay, Some account of the trade carried on by the North West Company, which are also in possession of the Society.

TABLE 1: THE TRAVELS OF DAVID THOMPSON 1784–1812 SOURCES

PART I

HUDSON’S BAY TO ATHABASCA 1785-1797

T.pdfT.pdf

PART II

THE MISSOURI, MISSISSIPPI, AND LAKE SUPERIOR 1797-1798

T.pdfT.pdf

PART III

FOOTHILLS AND FORESTS 1798-1806

T.pdf

PART IV

TO THE PACIFIC AND RETURN 1807- 1812

T.pdfT.pdf

Introduction

The Travels Begin

David Thompson, a boy of fourteen, landed on the barren shores of Hudson Bay at Churchill in September 1784, apprenticed to the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) for seven years. Though trained in mathematics and navigation at Grey Coat School in Westminster for a career in the Royal Navy, the outbreak of peace between Britain and her neighbours and the United States in 1783 set the young man’s life on a different course. His school had placed its students with the HBC since 1680, and when the company came calling in 1783 looking for four apprentices, only two students were found qualified: David Thompson and Samuel John McPherson. While McPherson chose to flee rather than end up on Hudson Bay, Thompson embraced his destiny and boarded the Prince Rupert in London on 20 May 1784, never to return home again.

Three months later, he arrived at Churchill. The original post, called Fort Prince of Wales, was a grey stone edifice at the mouth of the Churchill River, but had been abandoned after the French had sacked it two years previously. When Thompson arrived, a new post was being built under the direction of Samuel Hearne (the celebrated explorer, who in 1771 became the first European to reach the Arctic Ocean on foot). Hearne had chosen a more favourable location about five miles upstream, and in 1783 pre-fabricated wooden pieces were shipped from England to speed its construction. The early onset of winter that year, however, prevented the buildings from being finished and Hearne and his men were only able to clad the structures with half-inch boards instead of brick—which acted more of a windbreak than as insulation. Thompson described his new residence:

The buildings consisted of a very plain dwelling house, partly of wood and partly of brick, eighty feet in length and two stories high, partitioned into small rooms after the form of cabins on board a ship. Opposite was a range of buildings, 110 feet long and one story high, containing, in separate apartments, the stores, provisions and merchandise for the trade of the factory with a carpenter’s, blacksmith’s shops, and 2 for cooking, baking, &c. The whole, with the dwelling house, were covered with sheet lead. A small room was allotted to me without the least stick of furniture except a hard bed. My companions, the clerks of the Hudson’s Bay Company were in the same situation: not comfortable. They, like me, became resigned to their lot.[8]

The HBC, sensible of the need to look out for the young man’s well-being, instructed Hearne that Thompson be kept from the common men and employed in the writing, accounts & warehouse duty, and occasionally making observations so that he may by degrees be made capable of business & become useful in our service.[9] Despite those instructions, Thompson recalled that his only business was to amuse myself, in winter growling at the cold and in the open season shooting gulls, ducks, plover, and curlew and quarreling with musketoes and sand flies.[10]

The next year, on 21 August, the annual supply ship arrived at Churchill. On board was George Charles, one of Thompson’s classmates from Grey Coat School, who would be his rival trader some twenty years later in the Musk Rat Country. So, too, was an order for Thompson to proceed to York Factory, 150 miles to the south. On 28 August Hearne replied to London saying that, David Thompson shall be sent to York Factory by the first proper conveyance.[11]

About a week later, Thompson, along with two Packet Indians—messengers who carried letters and orders between posts—was ferried across the Churchill River opposite the old fort:

… without any provisions and only one blanket to cover me at night for we had to carry everything. It was a fine day, but unfortunately a gallon of very strong grog was given to these Indians who, as usual, as soon as they landed, began drinking, and were soon drunk and the day lost, leaving me to amuse myself the best way I could. We slept on the ground, each in his single blanket; the dew was heavy.[12]

After ten days of marching past lounging polar bears, wading through marshes, and fording countless streams, Thompson arrived tired and hungry at York Factory, much to the chagrin of chief Humphrey Marten, who had no place to put his new charge in a fort he described as a number of persons being huddled together like prisoners in a ship’s hold.[13] By November Thompson was writing the York Factory post journal and venturing out on occasion to cut firewood and hunt and fish—Marten juggled his limited accommodations by rotating groups to and from the woods upriver every few weeks. On 19 February 1786, however, after a prolonged cold spell Marten ordered Thompson to bring his things, he being much frost bitten in the Face.[14]

A New World

In July William Tomison, chief of the Saskatchewan and York departments, took Thompson inland to help build a new post to be called South Branch House, and be the writer for that post’s master Mitchell Oman. The decision to take Thompson inflamed the already tense relationship between Marten and Tomison. Marten took offense that Tomison dared speak to the young boy, let alone advise Thompson that he, need not take notice [of Marten]. But when you get to the house you had better go and ask advice from George Hudson how to behave yourself.’ I shall make no comment on the above speech but as David Thompson copies my journal, the truth of it cannot be doubted.[15] It was just one of many conflicts the quarrelsome Tomison had with his fellow officers—a trait that bolstered Thompson’s decision to leave the HBC for the North West Company eleven years later.

Marten also took offense at the dubious choice of George Hudson as Thompson’s role model—as Thompson would come to realize in the summer of 1787:

When arrived at Cumberland House Mr. Tomison left three men and myself to pass the summer under the command of Mr. Hudson, who had been educated in the same mathematical school in which I was, and like myself, bound apprentice to the Hudson’s Bay Company.[16] He had been here about thirteen years, and had lost all his education except reading and writing, and the little of this, for the accounts of the trade appeared a labour to him. He appeared in a state of apathy, always smoking tobacco mixed with weed,[17] had no conversation with any person; the little business he had was done with few words and took no exercise. I was sadly disappointed in him.[18]

By September 1786, he had paddled and tracked his way up the Saskatchewan River past Cumberland House and Hudson House then up the South Saskatchewan River, and entered a world much different from the bleak shores of Hudson Bay. He was on the eastern edge of the Great Plains: the frontier where jealousies, petty rivalries, and vengeance, fueled by alcohol, were often settled with brute force and weapons.

On 29 September 1786 Robert Longmoor, in charge of Hudson House, sent a letter of advice to Mitchell Oman on how to build the post and how act around the Montreal-based traders there: The house you build, let it be long, the stockades close to the backside and wide in the front for taking in the Natives, for I suppose that will be the Canadian’s way. As they proceed in that respect (so do you). Give no insult nor take any.[19] Thompson and Oman, with five canoes of trade goods and thirteen men, arrived at their chosen site and began clearing the land on 2 October. After struggling to find suitable timber because the two competing posts nearby had already taken the best, their house wasn’t finished until 21 December. It measured thirty-six by twenty-four feet; the Master’s room at the east end measured twelve by twenty-four feet, the guard room the same, and the three men’s rooms at the west end were twelve by eight feet.[20]

That season, Mitchell Oman told Thompson about the smallpox that swept across the country during the winter of 1781-82. In the fall of 1781 Hudson House chief William Walker sent Oman and four other men upstream to pass winter with the Indians who lived around the Eagle Hills.[21] But as they got close to their destination, Oman noticed that something was not right:

… we saw the first camp and some people sitting on the beach to cool themselves. When we came to them, to our surprise they had the marks of the smallpox, were weak and just recovering, and I could not help saying, thank Heaven, we shall now get relief, for none of us had the least idea of the desolation this dreadful disease had done until we went up the bank to the camp and looked into the tents, in many of which they were all dead, and their stench was horrid. Those that remained had pitched their tents about 200 yards from them and were too weak to move away entirely, which they soon intended to do. They were in such a state of despair and despondence that they could hardly converse with us, a few of them had gained enough strength to hunt which kept them alive. From what we could learn, three-fifths of them had died under this disease.[22]

The smallpox spread with the swiftness of a prairie wildfire. It took its victims just as fast. On 29 October, an Indian man who arrived at Hudson House that morning was dead by afternoon; and the trickle of victims grew to a flood. By the time the scourge has passed in mid-December, William Walker had buried thirteen more, including two young men, nine women and two children—a mere fraction, however, of those who lay unburied on the plains and in the forests.

The following spring, Thompson and Oman collected their season’s trade of 1,800 pounds of furs and headed for Cumberland House. Tomison chose to leave Thompson there for the summer as he is a promising youth and very desirous to stay inland to learn to be serviceable, and as such persons will soon be wanted, I thought proper to leave him.[23] On 5 September Tomison arrived back at Cumberland House to collect Thompson (as a replacement for an injured man) and take him to Manchester House, about 240 miles upstream, where they arrived on 2 October.

On 15 October, to ease the pressure of having extra mouths to feed, Tomison sent fourteen men to pass the winter and to trade with the frontier tribes, the Peigan and Blood, along the eastern slopes of the Rockies. Six men went to the Blood Indians, while James Gaddy, the only HBC employee fluent in the Blackfoot and Blood, went to the Peigan camps with eight men including Thompson, who was sent to learn the language. Each man acquired two horses at his own expense and was given credit worth sixty to eighty Made Beaver[24] with which to trade. Thompson commented on the outfit Tomison gave him for this journey:

Mr. Tomison on examining the clothes I had on, which was a cotton shirt, a blue cloth jacket and leather trowsers, thought they ought to last seven months, the time to my return, and added another shirt, a leather coat, a blanket and bison robe, 40 rounds of ammunition, two long knives, six flints, a few awls, needles &c, with a few pounds of tobacco, and a horse to carry myself and baggage, which obliged me to walk the greatest part of the journey.[25]

Thompson passed the winter in the tent of Saukamappe, a Cree man who had lived with the Peigan for nearly forty years. Saukamappe told Thompson about life on the edge of the prairies nearly ninety years before, and how the increasing flow of firearms, combined with the arrival of the horse, called misstutim (big dogs) by the Cree, changed the way by which wars were fought and forever altered the political boundaries between Indian tribes. Saukamappe also explained why, following the devastation of the smallpox, the Peigan spared the lives of their enemies’ women and children when they attacked their camps:

The young women must all be saved, and if any has a babe at the breast, it must not be taken from her, nor hurt; all the boys and lads that have no weapons must not be killed, but brought to our camps, and be adopted amongst us, to be our people and make us more numerous and stronger than we are.[26]

More important was Saukamappe’s order to Kootanae Appe, the Peigan war chief, that he protect Thompson. That act proved vital for in 1810 Thompson would need the war chief’s support.

Through Saukamappe, Thompson also gained a greater understanding of the culture of Aboriginals, which made him a defender of their rights as a free people. That belief is clearly evident in his compassionate and dignified representations of the tribes he encountered. Thompson’s commentary stands apart from the stereotypical depictions in published accounts of the fur trade of his day. There were times, however, when Thompson looked down on some groups, especially those who lived around the trading posts. Yet he knew that the traders, who freely distributed alcohol, and the very nature of the trade itself, were to blame for their misery. When he wrote about the devastation the trade would have on the country west of Lake Winnipeg, Thompson predicted:

Every intelligent man saw poverty that would follow the destruction of the beaver, but there were no chiefs to control it; all was perfect liberty and equality. Four years afterwards (1801) almost the whole of these extensive countries were denuded of beaver, the Natives became poor, and with difficulty procured the first necessaries of life, and in this state they remain, and probably for ever. A worn out field may be manured, and again made fertile, but the beaver once destroyed, cannot be replaced; they were once the gold coin of the country, with which all the necessaries of life were purchased.[27]

While Thompson felt the Indians would benefit by converting to Christianity, he never forced his views upon them, and instead tried to learn as much as possible of their religious beliefs—that is, when they trusted Thompson enough to reveal them:

They know of nothing by which the pardon of sins can be obtained and although many of us spoke their language sufficiently fluent for trade and the common business yet we found ourselves very deficient if we attempted to impress upon them any doctrine of Christianity beyond the unity of God, his creation and preservation of mankind and of everything else; to all which they readily assented as consonant to truth and their own ideas. The Natives that live in villages may profit by the labours of a prudent missionary, but the wandering Indians that live wholly by hunting and are rarely more than a few days in place, and in this only by families, cannot hope for the labours of a Missionary. The little they can learn must come from the traders, and if they cannot learn morality from them, they can teach them to leave off the worship and sacrificing a dog to the Meeche Manito (the Devil) and leave off prayers to the inferior manitos, and direct all their prayers and thanksgiving to the Great Spirit alone, the Master of Life.[28]

Despite Thompson’s belief that the arrival of civilization and missionaries in the West would benefit the Indians, the opposite happened and they became, and remain, second-class citizens in their own land.

Revitalization

Thompson returned to Manchester House in the spring of 1788 and passed the summer at Hudson House, where he wrote the post journal, repaired the house and stockades, tended the garden, hunted and protected the horses from the Assiniboine horse thieves. From his writing, it appears that it was one of the most carefree summers he ever spent. On 19 September Tomison returned to take Thompson up to Manchester House. There, on 23 December, Thompson received the break of a lifetime. When taking a sled loaded with firewood down the banks of the river, he slipped and the sled slammed against his leg, snapping his femur and crushing his ankle. Tomison made several entries in the post journal that showed a deep concern for the young man’s health. On the day of the accident Tomison wrote: I set it and put splinters around it with bandages in the best manner I could but such accidents would require a more skillful person than I am.[29] Thompson remained bedridden until 29 March 1789, when he tried walking for the first time, but had not set long before his foot and ancle swelled a good deal so that he was obliged to lie down again.[30] With his recovery proceeding too slowly, Tomison decided to take Thompson down to Cumberland House to pass the summer in the care of the post’s summer master Malcolm Ross, as he was too weak to make the journey down to York Factory. Thompson was finally able to move around on 11 August, when Ross got him to sit in a chair for three hours. By 25 August he was moving about on crutches and was able to leave the warehouse where he had been since his arrival.

It was at Cumberland House that Thompson regained his mathematical and navigational training from Philip Turnor, the HBC’s official surveyor. Turnor had been working for the company since 1778 surveying from York Factory to Cumberland House and Hudson House, as well as the areas around Lake Superior, James Bay, and Hudson Bay. He arrived at Cumberland in October 1789 to prepare for his survey of a route to Athabasca, the richest fur area in the country that the newly formed North West Company jealously guarded against any HBC intruder. Under Turnor, Thompson and HBC labourer Peter Fidler learned the theory and practice of practical astronomy. Fidler, though, would be the first to put these new skills into service, as he was chosen over Thompson to accompany Turnor and Malcolm Ross (who replaced the late George Hudson) to Athabasca in September 1790. Historian A.S. Morton, inferred that Thompson held a grudge against Fidler because he was chosen to go with Turnor and was the reason why Thompson did not speak to Fidler when they passed each other in canoes on the Churchill River in 1805. Historian Richard Glover interpreted this incident as evidence of one of the unattractive facets of Thompson’s character.[31] Thompson’s journals, however, reveal that they did, indeed, speak to each other when they were close enough or had time enough, and that over the years they exchanged letters and observations to fill in the gaps in their own maps.[32] As well, Thompson’s letter to the London Committee in September 1791 (see below) made it clear that, even one year after the Athabasca expedition had departed, he was still in no condition to travel any great distance. And considering the hardships Turnor’s group endured, Thompson would have been a hindrance more than a help to the party.

When writing about this time, Thompson made a seemingly innocuous statement when he said he lost the sight in his right eye because he had been studying too hard by candlelight. The Cumberland House journals indicate, however, that the loss of vision was caused by an illness. On 10 May 1790 Malcolm Ross wrote, David Thompson taken ill. On 19 May he noted, David Thompson’s right eye very bad, and on 22 and 26 May, David Thompson still bad with his eye.[33] Historian Victor Hopwood followed up on a brief paragraph in Thompson’s 1848 journal[34] and learned the depth of Thompson’s passing comment: Thompson had been blind in that eye ever since 1790. Hopwood tracked down an obscure book written by Thompson’s physician, Dr. Henry Howard, who wrote in 1848 that he removed a cataract in Thompson’s left eye and also treated his right. Dr. Howard believed that Thompson might have contracted what today is called scleritis, an inflammatory disease that affects the white of the eye and that can be a side effect of another disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis.[35] After three months of treatment, Howard wrote that his patient told him that, on a previous evening he had seen a particular star with his right eye for the first time since he was 19.[36]

By October 1789 Thompson had regained his health sufficiently to act with purpose. On 10 October, three days after Turnor’s arrival, Thompson began his first weather journal at Cumberland House, and on 9 June 1790 he wrote his first survey journal, Journey from Cumberland House to York Factory. He kept up the routine of recording observations, weather conditions, daily occurrences and making mathematical calculations almost continuously until 1851. So impressed was Turnor with Thompson’s skills that he wrote to the London Committee of the HBC shortly before leaving for Athabasca to say that Thompson’s observations were genuine and if he should recover his strength enough to undertake any expedition, your Honors may rely on his reports of the situation &c of any place he may visit.[37] He added that if Thompson was not capable of traveling, he has the skill to instruct anyone of moderate abilities to make observations better than any have yet proved that your Honors have sent out from England.[38]

At York Factory, Thompson’s duties were to prepare the books and accounts of the inland posts, sort and bale the goods for the next year’s trade, and to record inventory. In May 1791, with his apprenticeship over, Thompson wrote to the London Committee and asked that a brass sextant and other surveying equipment be sent out in lieu of the usual allotment of two outfits of clothing.[39] The following year, the HBC gave Thompson the instruments he requested at no charge, and offered him a three-year contract at £15 per year. Before the ship left for England in September 1791, Thompson quickly wrote a note of thanks to the Committee for the gifts and said that, while he had recovered from his injury but was limited to traveling no more than ten to twelve miles each day, he was ready to survey those places inland where little walking was required. He brazenly added that having a brass compass and thermometer would be worthwhile instruments to carry.[40] Enclosed with this letter was Thompson’s first map (now lost) from his survey in June 1790 between Cumberland House and York Factory. To bolster Thompson’s credibility, Joseph Colen, the new chief at York Factory, included a letter of his own praising Thompson’s abilities:

He is a deserving young man, and in morals and behaviour is worthy of imitation, for I never have yet heard him use an indecent expression, drink a glass of liquor, or smoke a pipe—he is in my humble opinion the most correct observer I have seen in this country—and in the taking of an altitude for time or the distance to the heavenly bodies to ascertain the Longitude—has few equals.[41]

The Athabasca War

Thompson’s request to survey was granted on 30 August 1792, when Colen ordered him to find what was called the northern track into Athabasca. This opportunity, however, put Thompson in the middle of a three-way bureaucratic turf war. Colen, while openly setting aside men and trade goods to expand his trade into Athabasca, would also find ways to make sure these men would never reach the area and force them to overwinter and trade in territory bordering on Churchill’s—a delaying tactic that made reaching the Athabasca difficult if not dangerous. Countering Colen was Thomas Stayner, chief at Churchill, who claimed the Athabasca region historically belonged to his department and that only his men should go there. Highlighting Colen’s desire to poach trade from another department was Stayner’s complaint to London that Colen’s men were taking furs owed to his traders. The biggest obstacle, to establishing a permanent HBC post in Athabasca—and the reason why it would not succeed for another nineteen years—was William Tomison. He was locked in a battle with the North West Company (NWC) on the Saskatchewan River, which stretched his short supply of men and goods to the limit, and would sabotage any effort that reduced the pool of men and resources he could use against the NWC. Tomison kept canoes upstream so that none were available down at York Factory, he held back or hired the more capable canoe men for his own use, and he refused to authorize the bonuses offered to anyone who volunteered to go to Athabasca; tactics similar to those he used to try and derail Turnor’s Athabasca expedition.

The Athabasca region was the main source of furs, first for the HBC at Churchill then later for the NWC, long before either company knew exactly where Athabasca was. From 1670 to 1770 the HBC was content to have its customers make the long and dangerous trek from this mysterious region down to the Bay posts, and made only an occasional foray to the interior. But during the mid-1760s the number of furs brought to their posts began to dwindle. Fewer Indians were coming down to trade and, when they did, the best furs were already taken. The reason for the decline was that, following the Fall of Quebec in 1759, traders based in Montreal (mostly English, Scottish, and French Canadians) began to retrace the abandoned routes used by the French explorers and traders in the early 1700s. By 1768 these Pedlars from Quebec as they were derisively labeled, had reached the Saskatchewan River and were intercepting most of the furs headed to the Bay. The noticeable drop in returns forced the HBC to send Samuel Hearne inland in 1773 to build a post at a favourable spot along the Saskatchewan that would become Cumberland House. When Hearne arrived to construct his new post, he found himself surrounded on all sides by Montreal traders.

What little was known of the Athabasca at that time was that the Indians used three routes to get there. The southern track started at a trail that ran from the Saskatchewan to the Beaver River, where the route then went one of two ways: either upstream to the portage that led to Lac la Biche (Alberta) and the Red Deer River, which flows into the Athabasca, or downstream to Ile à la Crosse (a lake expansion of the Churchill River) then northwest to the headwater lake (Lake La Loche), across the twelve-mile Portage la Loche (today known as the Methye Portage) and down the Clearwater River into the Athabasca. The middle track went up the Sturgeon Weir River, near Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan River, to the Churchill River. Once across the watershed portage between the Sturgeon Weir and the Churchill, the route went upstream to the headwater lake then across the same portage leading to the Clearwater and Athabasca rivers. The northern track was unknown except for two named lakes, Black and Hatchet, that lay somewhere between Lake Athabasca and Reindeer Lake. The only thing in common with all three routes was that they were long, arduous, and nearly barren of game for provisions.

While both companies were interested in getting into the Athabasca region, the Montreal traders (who would later form the NWC) were most determined. The first to get close were Joseph Frobisher and Louis Primeau. In the spring of 1774 they moved from their post on the Sturgeon Weir River near Cumberland House to the watershed portage, which they named Trade Portage separating the Churchill and Saskatchewan River basins. There, they intercepted the Cree and Dene who were using the middle and northern tracks to take their winter hunt down to the Bay. Happy not to continue, the Indians sold all the furs they had to Frobisher and Primeau. After capturing this windfall, Primeau returned to spend the next winter on the Churchill River, presumably at what is now called Primeau Lake; Joseph Frobisher returned with his brother Thomas the following year to winter at Trade Portage. Frobisher’s decision was a big mistake. The portage may have been an excellent location to intercept furs in the spring but it was a disastrous place to overwinter. According to Samuel Hearne, the Frobishers lost two men to starvation and another was shot by the Indians for cannibalism.[42] Still, spurred on by increasing profits, the Montreal traders continued to push up the Churchill towards Athabasca.

In 1777 Thomas Frobisher and Louis Primeau were within forty miles of the region when they built a post at Ile à la Crosse. Even though Frobisher was on the doorstep to Athabasca, Peter Pond, an intrepid and vitriolic American trader, would be the first to penetrate the region. Hoping to cash in on the success of the Frobishers and Primeau, Pond took five canoes of goods pooled from five other traders in 1778 and followed the route up the Churchill from Cumberland House to Ile à la Crosse, crossed the twelve-mile Portage la Loche and, by late summer or early fall, became the first white trader to build a post in the Athabasca; his post was about forty miles upstream from Lake Athabasca. The following spring, Pond left the region, his canoes heavily loaded with furs. Stopping at Cumberland House on his way out to Grand Portage, he told William Walker, the post’s master, that he had traded 140 packs of furs of 90 lbs. weight (about 8,400 skins) but had to leave most behind because he did not have enough canoes.[43]

The earliest known written description of the northern route comes from Philip Turnor. On 20 August 1791, while at the mouth of the Fond du Lac River that falls into the eastern end of Lake Athabasca, Turnor wrote in his journal:

The Indians say their is a near way to the Churchill water by proceeding up this river and through a chain of small Lakes to the Deer Lake and the Canadians have been at that Lake and wintered in it some years back and mean to winter there again next year. When they get into the Churchill water at A-thake-a-sake-a-pitch-e-con [Trade Portage] they proceed down the river to the mouth of a River called the Deer River, which runs out of the Deer Lake. I have been informed the navigation of that river is not bad.[44]

Rumour of this route had also circulated among NWC traders. On 8 May 1793 NWC partner Alexander Mackenzie wrote to his cousin Roderick that he wished a clerk named Daniel McKenzie, was able to undertake the discovery of the Route to Fort la Traite [Trade Portage][45] from Lake Athabasca via Reindeer Lake. As far as is known, Daniel never made the trip.

Colen’s orders to Thompson on 30 August 1792 were to:

take that track from the Miss a nippie [Churchill River] to the Athapiscow Lake in which the Deer Lake lies from thence if possible proceed up the river that falls from the Hatchet, where there is a river that runs into the Black Lake, and from the Black Lake a river that falls into the Athapiscow.[46]

Colen added, not surprisingly, that if Thompson could not find the route, he was to return and if possible survey the track from down to Churchill and from thence return to this place as soon as possible.[47]

Thompson left York Factory on 5 September 1792—too late to reach the Reindeer Lake—and set up his wintering post on Seepaywisk Lake (Sipiwesk Lake, Manitoba). Falling short of supplies, on 8 November he and four men left his post for Chatham House (about thirty miles north on Wintering Lake, Manitoba) to get relief. When he returned Seepaywisk on 26 November with a few provisions and the promise of more on the way from Chatham House master William Cook, he found his men in dire condition:

My unfortunate companions told me that no assistance had come from the Indians & the nets which they constantly attended had only caught fish sufficient for a single meal, that all the flour & oatmeal they had were expended except about a quart each, & that driven to despair one of them intended to leave the house to morrow & endeavor to find a way to Chatham House to solicit relief, having given us up for lost.[48]

On 28 May Thompson, John Harper, and their guide