David Thompson (explorer) : biography

Before returning upriver and across the mountains, Thompson hired Naukane, a Native Hawaiian laborer brought to Fort Astoria by the Pacific Fur Company’s ship Tonquin. Naukane, known as Coxe to Thompson, accompanied Thompson across the continent to Lake Superior before journeying on to England.

Thompson wintered at Saleesh House before beginning his final journey back to Montreal in 1812.

In his published journals, Thompson recorded seeing large footprints near what is now Jasper, Alberta, in 1811. It has been suggested that these prints were similar to what has since been called the sasquatch. However, Thompson noted that these tracks showed "a small Nail at the end of each [toe]", and stated that these tracks "very much resembles a large Bear’s Track".Thompson, David. Columbia Journals. Edited by Barbara Belyea. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994, p. 135

Appearance and Personality

In 1820, the English geologist, John Jeremiah Bigsby, attended a dinner party given by The Hon. William McGillivray at his home, Chateau St. Antoine, one of the early estates in Montreal’s Golden Square Mile. He describes the party and some of the guests in his entertaining book The Shoe and Canoe, giving an excellent description of David Thompson:

I was well placed at table between one of the Miss McGillivray’s and a singular-looking person of about fifty. He was plainly dressed, quiet, and observant. His figure was short and compact, and his black hair was worn long all round, and cut square, as if by one stroke of the shears, just above the eyebrows. His complexion was of the gardener’s ruddy brown, while the expression of his deeply-furrowed features was friendly and intelligent, but his cut-short nose gave him an odd look. His speech betrayed the Welshman, although he left his native hills when very young. I might have been spared this description of Mr David Thompson by saying he greatly resembled Curran the Irish Orator…

I afterwards travelled much with him, and have now only to speak of him with great respect, or, I ought to say, with admiration… No living person possesses a tithe of his information respecting the Hudson’s Bay countries… Never mind his Bunyan-like face and cropped hair; he has a very powerful mind, and a singular faculty of picture-making. He can create a wilderness and people it with warring savages, or climb the Rocky Mountains with you in a snow-storm, so clearly and palpably, that only shut your eyes and you hear the crack of the rifle, or feel the snow-flakes melt on your cheeks as he talks.

Marriage and children

On June 10, 1799 at Île-à-la-Crosse, he married Charlotte Small, a mixed-blood child of a Scottish fur trader Patrick Small and a Cree mother. Their marriage was formalized at the Scotch Presbyterian Church in Montreal on October 30, 1812. He and Charlotte had 13 children together; five of them were born before he left the fur trade. The family did not adjust easily to life in Eastern Canada and two of the children, John (aged 5) and Emma (aged 7) died of round worms, a common parasite. Their marriage lasted 58 years, the longest Canadian pre-Confederation marriage known.

Later years

Upon his arrival back in Montreal, Thompson retired with a generous pension from the North West Company. He settled in nearby Terrebonne and worked on completing his great map, a summary of his lifetime of exploring and surveying the interior of North America. The map covered the wide area stretching from Lake Superior to the Pacific, and was given by Thompson to the North West Company. Thompson’s 1814 map, his greatest achievement, was so accurate that 100 years later it was still the basis for many of the maps issued by the Canadian government. It now resides in the Archives of Ontario.]]

In 1815, Thompson moved his family to Williamstown, Upper Canada and a few years later was employed to survey the newly established borders with the United States from Lake of the Woods to the Eastern Townships of Quebec, established by Treaty of Ghent after the War of 1812. In 1843 Thompson completed his atlas of the region from Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean.