Exploring history

If you’re new to the Northwest, chances are the name David Thompson doesn’t mean much. But believe me, that information void will be filled over the next few years.

The North American David Thompson Bicentennials will be celebrated between 2007 and 2009 in the United States and Canada to commemorate his character and accomplishments.

Thompson was a Canadian trader, explorer, naturalist, surveyor, mapmaker and diplomat extraordinaire on behalf of Europeans among Native American peoples in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Between 1784 and 1850, he explored and mapped about 1.5 million square miles of North America, including these lands on which we live, work and play in North Idaho, Western Montana and Eastern Washington.

Two of the people who are going to help ensure we learn of Thompson’s contributions are local historian Robert Singletary and retired forester Mark Weadick. Both are members of the American Mountain Men Association.

That group emulates early trappers and hunters by wearing authentic clothing and spending time in our wild lands with the tools, equipment, weapons and food used and consumed by the first white men in this part of North America.

During a recent evening program before a standing-room-only audience in North Idaho College’s Todd Lecture Hall, Singletary assumed the persona of a French-Canadian voyageur and Weadick that of a trapper as they recounted Thompson’s exploits.

An Englishman by birth, Thompson was indentured in 1784 at the age of 14 to the Hudson Bay Co. and was sent to Canada as an apprentice clerk. While recovering from a broken leg in 1788, he learned surveying and astronomy, and then surveyed much of northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

His firm wanted to promote him, but that would have required he move into an office, so, in 1797, his contract with the Hudson Bay Co. having expired, he signed on with the rival North West Co. That firm allowed him to remain in the field to establish a Western fur-trading network.

Thompson married Charlotte Small, a half-Cree Indian, in 1799. With her, he would have 13 children, and together they would map and explore most of the Northwest, in the process establishing a fur trading network that included many trading posts. Some of those establishments are near Spokane; Hope, Idaho; and Thompson Falls, Mont.

His accomplishments include mapping the Columbia River from its source to the mouth, sections of the new border between Canada and the U.S., and Canada from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific. American explorers Lewis and Clark even used some of his maps.

His vision failing, Thompson began writing his adventures in 1843, but it was a task he would never complete. In 1857 he died a pauper in Montreal, his wife following him three months later.

Singletary, who has taught art history and inland northwest history at North Idaho and Lewis and Clark Colleges, says he has become a Thompson devotee since the man played such an important part in Western history but has remained relatively obscure.

Furthermore, he recounts, “Thompson had a great relationship with the Native people he encountered. He knew and respected their cultures, treated them fairly, and refused to sell them alcohol.

“And in addition to his business, scientific and cultural achievements, David Thompson was a very moral and loyal man.”

Weadick, who is retired from the Idaho Department of Lands after a 35-year career, is now a consulting forester. A trapper himself, he has studied the Northwest fur trade for many years, “And I became intrigued with Thompson’s observations of this country and its Native peoples.

“He was a man of great integrity and perseverance. Under very tough conditions at times, he traveled thousands of miles,” he said. “Plus, I share at least one attribute with Thompson: The more you travel in the field, the more you want to see.”

Singletary and Weadick are members of the executive board of the American David Thompson Bicentennial Committee and are working with state legislators and agencies to formulate plans for the upcoming celebrations and remembrances.

Singletary says he’s also recruited Cliff Sijohn, an elder and spiritual leader of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, who is able to recount tales of David Thompson passed down through the years by members of the Sijohn family.