deep into Peigan country. A party under Gady would take horses and enough trade goods to secure positive relations with the Peigan. David overheard his name spoken as a possible member of the party. Gady lifted the lamp to see the young recruit in better light. He looked Thompson over with a critical eye then nodded his okay to Tomison as they resumed the discussion of details. David swelled with pride and excitement. In the last two years he had gone from a pale company clerk to become a member of one the HBC’s farthest reaching explorations.
Gady took six men. Each were loaned trade goods and two horses at a discount and expected to repay their debt and make any personal profit from the furs they would sell to the Company. They rode out in the first days of September. David followed behind Gady on foot. As the newest fur trader, he had only enough borrowing power for one horse, and it was fully loaded. He was thankful Tomison had given him a new leather coat and a buffalo robe as well as ammunition and two long knives to help him on his way.
“The Peigan,” Gady told David as he jogged beside the leader’s mount, “will be different from other Indians you’ve known. They won’t be found begging for handouts around the factory walls. These are Plains Indians. Like the Blackfoot and Blood, they’re warriors. They raid other tribes and fight battles on open ground. You need not fear having your throat slit while you sleep. They’re too proud for that. If they take a mind to kill you, they’ll do it face to face. And remember, they don’t need us except for the guns and the few luxuries we trade. They can travel across these plains free and easy, following the buffalo for thousands of miles, and they find all that they need or want.”
David trotted beside Gady day and night to learn about the Peigan and their language as the fur traders entered the magnificent homeland of the Plains people.
Living with and befriending the Aboriginal Peoples of the Plains gave Thompson an advantage over other explorers like the Americans Lewis and Clark.
5
The Plains
A Peigan war chief knelt beside an earthen pit already dug atop a dry, grassy knoll, not far from Gady’s camp. His name was Kootanae Appee, meaning Kootenay Man. He had a high forehead, an aquiline nose, and dark eyes that defined a face both honest and fierce. He stood nearly six and a half feet tall. Lean and agile, he was built for fighting. But on this day his thoughts were far from fighting. He was seeking solitude to reconnect with his spirit. As was his custom, he had ridden far from his village and climbed a distant hill. Here, he would catch a hawk whose feathers would adorn his new headdress.
Using the age-old method, he lay face up in a pit dug like a shallow grave. He reached out for the stack of branches and laid them across the opening. Then he pulled dry grasses and leaves atop the branches, completely concealing his presence. Lastly, he placed a freshly killed rabbit, impaled on a stick, on top of the leaves and rested it just above his chest. When the shadow of the hawk appeared, Kotanae Appee would be very still. When the rabbit moved, he would reach out and grab the great one by both legs then beat the struggling predator against the ground until its vicious beak and talons were no threat. Meditating and softly chanting, he would lie patiently for many hours, until his feathered quarry descended.
There were few trees about, so David searched the grass for dried buffalo dung in place of firewood for their camp. He followed a trail of droppings to the base of a grassy knoll.
Above, a hawk circled excitedly in the blue sky, then descended, wings tucked, into a dive. David recognized the behaviour. He had seen these airborne predators hunting the prairie grasses for small game many times before. He waited expectantly for the hawk to sweep up again, carrying some luckless gopher or rabbit in its talons, but strangely, the bird never reappeared. David meandered back to camp, stooping occasionally to add another dried chip to his armload.
They had travelled twenty-four kilometres a day, giving the horses plenty of rest and time to graze the nutrient-rich grasses. They hunted, but game was unusually scarce and the men were hungry. Gady could not explain why there were no buffalo or elk.
Within a month the small trading party could see the glimmering white tips of the distant Rocky Mountain Range. As they trekked closer, the mountains rose into immense snow-topped masses, piercing the clouds and forming what David thought must be an impassable wall. A few kilometres beyond the Bow River they met the first Peigan people. Unknown to Gady or his men, scouts had been watching the traders for several days before they finally approached with a dozen warriors on horseback with their quivers full of arrows.
Fortunately, their welcome was friendly. They told Gady to camp where he stood and that they would return with fresh meat. “We must look a sight,” said Gady. “They know we haven’t eaten anything worth spit in weeks.” That evening the Peigan and Hudson’s Bay men feasted on fat cow buffalo and talked well into the night. The Peigan wanted news of other tribes – their numbers, was there disease? Were they at war? Gady told them all he knew, which wasn’t much.
In the following days the traders were taken to the Peigan’s main camp, where they traded ammunition and tobacco for choice fox and beaver skins. David was lodged in the tent of a grey-haired elder named Saukamappee. The old man was solemn, but mild-spoken. His tall frame was still strong and remarkably supple. Strangely, Saukamappee was pleased to hear the Hudson’s Bay men had found no game. “That means a plentiful winter,” he reasoned, “because the buffalo have stayed too long on the Missouri grass and will be hungry for new grass near our mountains.”
The old man was pleased even more when he found David could speak the language of the Cree. He asked David about his father and mother and their country. David explained he never knew his father, and that his mother had given him away to a school where he and other boys were raised to help navigate ships that crossed the great oceans, but he had instead been sent here to trade furs.
The old man nodded. “I am not a Peigan,” he said, smiling after a long silence, “but a Cree of the Pasquiaw River near what you call Cumberland House. I too, came here as a young man. I came with my people to help our friends, the Peigan, in war. My name, Saukamappee, means ‘young man.’ I have not returned to the country of my people since. It warms me to speak with you in the tongue of my mother, which I had almost forgotten.”
David told the old man what he knew about the Cree near Cumberland House. He mentioned the names of some of the elders there, but Saukamappee knew none of them. “I see I am now a stranger in the land of my father,” he said, and then began to tell David about his years with the Peigan. The old man was fond of speaking in his native language. Nearly every evening he related the events of his life to David.
“All these plains are now shared by three tribes,” he told his eager young audience. “The Peigan, the Blood, and the Blackfoot. We speak the same language and help each other in war. But it was not always so. In the past, this country belonged to the Kootenay in the north, to the Salish in the west, and to the Shoshoni and their allies in the south. They were many more than us, and they were our enemies, especially the Shoshoni, who would attack the small hunting camps of the Peigan, killing everyone. Then the Peigan sent messengers to my people asking for help, so I came with my father and twenty other Cree warriors to the Peigan. I was proud to be included in the great war tent when we feasted and made war speeches and danced. The Peigan were much pleased that we had guns from the white men.
“One day our scouts told us they had seen a large camp of the Shoshoni not far from
