Timeline Entry

July 15, 1811 Thompson reaches the mouth of the Columbia River.

On July 15th, 1811 Canadian explorer extraordinaire David Thompson and his party arrives on the shore of the Pacific Ocean adjacent to the much sought after mouth of the Columbia River. This essentially completes his vast mapping quest stretching from the Great Slave Lake in Canada, across the major rivers of the Northwest. His accomplishment served as the British counterpoint to the Corps of Discovery lead by Lewis and Clark.

Original citation: "David Thompson's map. Credit: National Geographic, May 1996."

However, it was different in several important respects. Thompson was funded by the Northwest Company. Lewis and Clark were funded by the U.S. Congress. Lewis and Clark''s success prefigured the mass migration of American settlers into the West. These settlers quickly amassed the necessary population needed for territorial governments and statehood. Thompson's success emboldened the British fur interests which would forge and control the trading economy north of the Columbia for another 30 years. But ultimately the fur trade ended and the American demographic tide prevailed over native and British interests.

Thus it is historically fitting that Thompson arrived second - after Lewis and Clark and also after the Astorians sent by John Jacob Astor, who were busily building Fort Astoria when he arrived. The Northwest Company and later the British Hudson's Bay Company bought out the American fur interests. But the American settlers won the long contest for control of the Northwest.

The HistoryLink provides some interesting detail. Also,

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council site provides good articles with images and maps. The map above is drawn from here. See our Delicious site as well.

Denish, D'Arcy. "The Great Map." Beaver, Vol. 84, Winter 2004.

Historical Images

What makes a great historical image?

When I think about historical images I'm looking for specific information. How did the city look? How did the loggers cut through the enormous trees?

I also enjoy looking for themes - Logging, Gold Rush, Homesteading. These broad economic activities defined communities and incorporate the adventures of millions of human beings, spending their life's energy to build warm homes and productive farms or move the wood from the great forests to the walls of houses and the decks of ships. Other themes include Faith, Recreation, and Education.

Here's a nice historic image which I found by Google Image Search: washington frontier homestead. It is published by the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection.

Note the structure of the house. The main frame of the house is built of logs, irregularly sized. But notice the finished lumber of the gable, the manufactured shakes of the roof, and the glass pane windows. A bordered garden surrounds the house and contains several varieties of flowers. A trellis of sorts stands at the right end of the garden, perhaps supporting bushes of some variety. The family stands in front of the house, but no obvious relations are apparent. Their demeanor is relaxed which matches the family's simple and rather somber clothing.

From the caption information we know that this was "the old homestead of Milton N. Robbins on the Duwamish River," (which flows into Seattle's Elliot Bay) "built in 1870." The caption also offers a "ca. 1880" date, meaning that the cabin is about ten years old at the time of the photo.

So we can imagine the homestead set back from the bank of the Duwamish River. It represents the labor of ten years, which makes sense given the size of the garden plants and the general prosperity of the home. Further research might uncover the exact identities of the four people in the photo, the exact location of the homestead and its size.

Thousands of pioneers built homesteads more or less like this one in western Washington from the 1840s to the early 20th century. This is an example of a prosperous, relatively large home, probably built adjacent to fertile river-bottom land. I found images of a few other homes which were smaller and more shack-like.

How different would it have been to live in this home than in the sod house in which my great grandmother was born in North Dakota around 1900? I like the information that this photo provides and the questions that it generates, pulling us into a deeper understanding of the past.

Scholarly Sources for David Thompson and early Fur Companies in the Pacific Northwest.

In this post I will describe my research about David Thompson's explorations of the Pacific Northwest. I will focus on peer-reviewed scholarly sources - journal articles and books using the search features on the EWU libraries site. 

Nisbet, Jack. Sources of the River. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1994. 

I read this book as an undergrad and loved every page. I especially remember the meeting between Thompson and the Crow Indian Saukamapee. Saukamapee remembered the coming of the horse and the first brutal wave of smallpox. The descriptions of Thompson's explorations are picturesque and reveal the reality of his adventures with vividness and detail. (3 copies available at EWU libraries)

Not knowing what else Nisbet has written, I was pleased to find a 2005 work published by (ah hem) Washington State University (my alma mater) titled The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau. Sounds like it might fit the course, no? 

A quick EWU Library Title search of "David Thompson" yielded an additional three biographies, all dated. These are in Special Collections. 

Now let's check America: History and Life, a wonderful scholarly resource for American history.  I went to the library homepage, clicked on the "Find Articles" link then "Databases A-Z" and then "America: History and Life." After doing an advanced search for "David Thompson" in quotes I got five hits the first was a review for 

Jenish, Eric. Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West. Toronto: Anchor/Random House, 2004. 

So that's a useful lead. 

There are four more scholarly articles available in full text. When I removed the "Links to Full Text" search option I got 37 hits, many of them book reviews. I went back and limited them to just articles (under "Document Type," in advanced search) and got 26 hits. 

Taking five minutes to go through the articles, I found that the Alberta Historical Review and Alberta History have taken a keen interest in Thompson and so has the journal Beaver, which I have never heard of, but which probably is a journal specializing in the fur trade. One of the articles from Beaver, "The Great Map" is available in Full Text. I checked to see if I could find Beaver in Full text, so I clicked on the "Check for Full Text" link below one of the hits and then clicked on "Electronic Journals A-Z" And there it was, in full text 1990-present. For the articles before 1990 I'll need to request a copy from Interlibrary Loan (ILL). But wait, I forgot to check EWU's Library Journals collection and, sure enough, there it is in hard copy - all the way back to 1923. 

I feel like I have plenty of scholarly sources available to delve deeply into a topic which I will call "Explorations of the Fur Trappers." I skimmed the article "The Great Map" and it seems to have a lot of interesting background information about Thompson's explorations, including several dates for a timeline. 

Fur trappers on the Spokane River

I'm reading through the articles on HistoryLink for our period and my current focus is the early fur trappers/explorers who arrived just a few years after Lewis and Clark. Jaco Finley arrived on the Columbia less than three years after Lewis and Clark and built Spokane House in 1810.

Another interesting detail is the wide variety of men involved in the fur business. In David Thompson's party, which explored and mapped the Columbia in 1811, included a native Hawaiian ("Sandwich Islander"), an Englishman (Thompson), French Canadians, and Iroquois Indians. Now picture all of them  wintering at the Spokane House, whiling away the time, smoking Indian pipes and talking about their adventures. "Coxe," the Hawaiian member of the expedition must have told the others of his tropical home as they listened to the howling east wind outside. 

Here's a link to the Spokane House Interpretive Center at Riverside State Park. The site includes a historical overview of the "House" and the "Fort" built by the friendly rivals in the Northwest and Pacific Fur Companies respectively. Unfortunately, their reenactment was back on June 20-21, but maybe I can get involved next year. Of note for History 300 is the informative article on Spokane House, although no citations are included. 

Here is a portion of David Thompson's map of North America, located at WSU's Historical Timeline which is bookmarked on our class Delicious page. 

Here is a Frederick Remington print located at artknowledgenews.com. "The Gathering of the Trappers," 1904. Although trappers in the Northwest primarily travelled by water (after all they were after beaver pelts) they did have access to horses from the Indian peoples. I do like the adventurous and free spirit portrayed in this painting. It contrasts with the very hard work of portage and paddling and the specific goals of the exploration missions. But it would have been impossible to travel the wild lands of the North American West without a sense of adventure and possibility. 

First Class - Frontier Washington - East

Well, our groups have weighed in on the important dates from the early history of Washington. We broke them down into five categories: Geology, Explorers, "Politics," Settlement, and Indians. 

Some of the interesting dates include early geologic events such as the retreating glaciers, the c. 1450 Columbia River landslide, and the c. 1700 earthquake. I think these are interesting and I could add another: Rainier's massive eruption 5,000 years ago which created the Osceola Mudflow. Here is a map of areas which were covered by the lahars from that eruption. 

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Imgs/Gif/Rainier/OFR95-642/rainier_mudflows.gif