grasp the canoe, and swim to shore. He lay gasping, his body bruised and the flesh torn from the heel of his left foot, while what few provisions they had were carried off and lost in the river.
The crew later recovered the cork-lined box containing Thompson’s instruments and notebook but they could not find the fishnet and ammunition. Once Thompson’s foot was bandaged with tent canvas and the canoe was repaired with spruce gum, they struck out again for home. The men knew that with only berries for food, they would soon die. In desperation, one of the Chipewyan stole two young eaglets from a treetop nest. The fledglings put up a fearsome struggle and sank their talons deep into the young man’s arm before he could kill them. The men ate the birds’ yellow fat and saved the meat for future rations. The fat, however, was contaminated and produced severe gastroenteritis. Thompson and his men spent the night and the next few days disabled by vomiting, diarrhea, and intestinal cramps. Weak, and with no extra clothes or fire to warm them, they could not continue. Death seemed inevitable as the cold of the night closed in.
Fortunately, in the morning a passing band of Chipewyan discovered the near-lifeless men and fed them some nourishing broth. In a few days the Chipewyan moved on, but they left behind a small cache that included powder and ammunition. The men, now recovered, could hunt for food.
Some weeks later Thompson and his crew arrived at Fairford House, weak and emaciated but alive. By August, a new brigade had arrived with trade goods, and over the winter, Thompson persuaded the brigade to accompany him on his new route to the Athabasca. This time he had a party of seventeen experienced men, four canoes, and plenty of supplies. Still, the outcome was almost as disastrous as the first trip. The route, although shorter than Turnor’s route, was not practical for the fur trade. The waterways were often too shallow and the eighty-kilometre portage made the movement of heavy canoe loads overwhelming.
The expedition was forced to a standstill late in the season and had to winter in a makeshift log hut, which they named Bedford House. The winter was hard. Game was scarce, temperatures plummeted to record lows, and worse still, trade for fur was unprofitable. When word reached York Factory, Joseph Colen finally had what he wanted. Thompson’s mapping expedition had failed to produce commercially useful results, and the young surveyor was ordered to return to the business of trading full time.
David Thompson was now twenty-seven years old, and he was angry. His second term of service with the company was up, and until this point he had done everything they had asked of him. His years of hard travel had made him as lean and tough as any veteran fur trader. He was a crack shot and a fine hunter. He could speak the language of the Chipewyan, Cree, and Peigan and they respected him. He could not only read and write at a time when most men could do neither, but he had also mastered the mathematics and astronomy needed to map the wilderness. He felt that for the first time in his life he was free to choose his future, and he knew he had become a valuable commodity.
Yes, the company had offered to promote him to chief trader with the title “Master to the Northward,” but to him this was a sentence to years of mundane administrative duties. It would mean overseeing staff, reviewing budgets, and working for higher productivity. Who would care how many furs the “Master to the Northward” had traded in his career? Would it matter to anyone but a handful of wealthy London shareholders how much he increased the company’s profit? He wanted his contribution to be more substantial than that. He wanted to map the new wilderness, to contribute something that would endure and benefit many.
He had all his savings in the Hudson’s Bay Company bank set aside, with instructions to send regular payments to his mother in England. He sent a letter to Joseph Colen asking that his Nautical Almanac and survey instruments be forwarded. That done, on May 23, 1797, Thompson set out for the nearest North West Company (NWC) post at Fraser House, 120 kilometres away. The North West Company needed an explorer and surveyor. Now they would have one.
At the Portage. Over and over again. Each man packed heavy forty-kilogram loads strapped to his back as the canoes were transported over land from one waterway to the next.
7
Grand Portage
Thompson paused to rest as he completed the fourteenth and last kilometre of the long carry descending into Grand Portage. Grand Portage… David pondered the place name as he adjusted his pack a little. So this is the centre of the Northwesters’ fur trade. For good reason too, he concluded. The strenuous fourteen-kilometre portage connected the North West Company headquarters and the high point of the land. A better location could not have been chosen , he mused. David knew that from the strategic high point, three major drainages radiated outward to three distant and significant bodies of water. The Saskatchewan drains into Hudson Bay, the Mackenzie flows to the Arctic Ocean, and the St. Lawrence courses to the Atlantic. All NWC traffic to and from the vast fur regions went through Grand Portage on its way to Montreal.
There was no mistaking the headquarters of the NWC. Thompson could smell the smoke from its cooking fires over a kilometre away. As he trudged closer, he could hear singing, shouting, then a chorus of barking dogs. Finally the stench of canine and human waste greeted him. It was the largest and most unruly settlement David Thompson had ever seen. Outside the towering five-and-a-half-metre stockade, a haphazard arrangement of birchbark lodgings housed Aboriginal People from several tribes. Scattered among these were a few ramshackle log huts belonging to the independent traders. They were busy skimming what trade they could from the Chipewyan, the Cree, from incoming parties, or from anyone discontented with the Company.
Across the stream, a line of hide tents and upturned canoes formed the temporary homes of canoemen and voyageurs from Montreal. These were not the reserved Orkneymen of the HBC but brightly dressed French Canadians in blue and red. They sat drinking or singing or arguing loudly by the cooking fires. The less animated, probably recovering from the extended paddle along Lake Superior, lay about the camp.
David made his way through the crowd. Inside, he saw hundreds of men, women, and children. Some were coming to or leaving the various storehouses, lodgings, and huts that occupied the interior. Others were busy unpacking furs or loading barrels onto handcarts. The largest building was the Cantine where boisterous hommes du nord were drinking rum and gambling loudly. Next to the Cantine was the jail mockingly called the pot au beurre or buttertub, where those inclined to fight or those too drunk to walk could sleep it off.
David began to have grave doubts about his decision. What could such an unruly company want from him? Were they serious about mapping explorations? Alexander Fraser had greeted him warmly enough at Fraser House last June, he remembered. David was thankful for it too. Leaving the HBC had been a difficult choice, but Fraser had convinced him that the NWC wanted urgently to explore and map the west. “Go right t’ the top o’ the company, Laddie, and see McGillivray himself,” he had told him.
David found the paymaster’s office and asked how to find William McGillivray, the senior company partner.
“He’ll be in the main house,” said the paymaster pointing off to his right. “Can’t miss it sir, right in the middle. It’s the big log building with the balcony.”
Thompson came upon the grand log structure in the centre of the courtyard. Inside, he found a great hall adorned with portraits of the company partners in regal poses and fine garments. Doors off the great hall led to the private apartments of the company’s partners. A manservant dressed in a black
