(In this true story of adventure, author Jack Nisbet re-cr...)
In this true story of adventure, author Jack Nisbet re-creates the life and times of David Thompson—fur trader, explorer, surveyor, and mapmaker. From 1784 to 1812, Thompson explored western North America, and his field journals provide the earliest written accounts of the natural history and indigenous cultures of the what is now British Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Thompson was the first person to chart the entire route of the Columbia river, and his wilderness expeditions have become the stuff of legend. Jack Nisbet tracks the explorer across the content, interweaving his own observations with Thompson’s historical writings. The result is a fascinating story of two men discovering the Northwest territory almost two hundred years apart.
https://www.amazon.com/Sources-River-2nd-Tracking-Thompson/dp/1570615225?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1570615225
(David Thompson (1770-1857) is considered by many to have ...)
David Thompson (1770-1857) is considered by many to have been the most important surveyor of North America. His achievements -- mapping the Saskatchewan River, the great bend of the Missouri River, the Great Lakes and the headwaters of the Mississippi as well as the Columbia watershed -- are the stuff of legend. Late in life Thompson wrote a retrospective memoir of his explorations, but the best way to understand his years in the fur trade is by reading his journals. In her new Preface to the Bicentennial Edition of Columbia Journals, Barbara Belyea considers the fur-trade context of journals, reports, and memoirs that shaped both Thompson’s perception of contemporary people, places, and events and our own perception of Thompson’s historical importance. In Columbia Journals, the fur trader, explorer, and cartographer records his exploration of the Columbia River basin and his efforts on behalf of the North West Company to establish good trade routes across the Rocky Mountains. The journals provide a detailed picture of the fur business during its period of greatest expansion, offer a glimpse of Native culture at the moment of contact with Europeans, and describe landscapes that have since been transformed by settlement and industry. Thompson’s hand-drawn maps preserve a contemporary image of the country he explored.
https://www.amazon.com/Columbia-Journals-Thompson/dp/0295987480?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0295987480
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
https://www.amazon.com/Thompsons-Narrative-Explorations-Western-America/dp/1146386311?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1146386311
( David Thompson's Travels is one of the finest early exp...)
David Thompson's Travels is one of the finest early expressions of the Canadian experience. The work is not only the account of a remarkable life in the fur trade but an extended meditation on the land and Native peoples of western North America. The tale spans the years 1784 to 1807 and extends from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, from Athabasca to Missouri. A distinguished literary work, the Travels alternates between the expository prose of the scientist and the vivid language of the storyteller, animated throughout by a restless spirit of inquiry and sense of wonder. In the first volume of an ambitious three-volume project that will finally bring all of Thompson's writings together, editor William Moreau presents the Travels narrative as it existed in 1850, when the author was forced to abandon his work. Accompanying Moreau's transcription is an introductory essay and a textual introduction, extensive critical annotations, historical and modern maps, and a biographical appendix. The definitive collection of Thompson's works, The Writings of David Thompson will bring one of North American's most important early travellers and surveyors and his world to a whole new generation of readers.
https://www.amazon.com/Writings-David-Thompson-Travels-Version/dp/0773535586?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0773535586
explorer fur-trader geographer
David Thompson was born in Westminster, Middlesex, in 1770. He was the son of David and Ann Thompson. His family was of obscure Welsh lineage and, before moving to London, used the name ApThomas. When David was three years of age his father died, leaving the mother and several children in abject poverty.
The Grey Coat School, then a charity school for boys, admitted the lad when he was seven years of age and he spent the next seven years under strict religious discipline and tutelage. When he was fourteen he was apprenticed to the Hudson's Bay Company for seven years of service in the fur-trade in North America, and was landed at Fort Churchill on the inhospitable west shore of Hudson Bay to begin his career.
As far as it is known, he never returned to England. He received his first training under Samuel Hearne, the explorer, and Philip Turnor, surveyor for the Company, who guided the young man in his passionate study of mathematics and instructed him in the use of the sextant, compass, and astronomical instruments.
His field service began in 1789, and for twenty-five years, first with the Hudson's Bay Company and later with the North West Company, he kept daily journals and field notes of his travels, which took him more than 50, 000 miles and covered almost every lake and stream in western Canada. Thompson's work was practically unrecognized until about 1900, and only after the publication of some of his documents in 1916 under the title David Thompson's Narrative of his Explorations in Western America, volume XII of the Champlain Society Publications was he generally recognized as one of the greatest land geographers of the English race.
Because of Thompson's groundwork on the Peace River district, Fraser named the largest tributary of the Fraser River for him. Thompson discovered a new route to Lake Athabasca; located by survey the Mandan Indian villages on the Missouri River in the winter of 1797-98; marked the crossing of the forty-ninth parallel by the Red River; and during conditions of almost impossible travel in the spring of 1798, surveyed the most northerly source of the Mississippi, and the course of the St. Louis River to Lake Superior. In 1807 he crossed the Canadian Rockies and discovered the source of the Columbia River. In 1808-10, he penetrated the Kootenai, Pend Oreille, and Clark Fork (Flathead) country of Washington, Idaho, and Montana. In 1811 he surveyed the Columbia River from source to mouth; he placed on the map main routes of travel within 1, 200, 000 square miles of Canadian territory and 500, 000 square miles of the United States. The trading posts he established on the Kootenai, Pend Oreille, and Spokane rivers in the United States antedated the establishment of Astoria by John Jacob Astor, 1763-1848, by several years.
After his retirement from field service in 1812, he devoted two years to drawing a large map, five and a half by ten and a half feet, of the northern part of the United States and Canada, using his own surveys and those of other explorers including Lewis and Clark. It is still preserved in the archives of Ontario, and is remarkable for its accuracy, detail, and extent.
From 1816 to 1826 he was in charge of the British commission for establishing and marking the boundary between Canada and the United States from its crossing of the St. Lawrence River west to the angle of Lake of the Woods. After ten more years of public and private surveying, he retired to live in Williamstown, county of Glengarry, and then in Longueuil.
Financial reverses reduced him to extreme poverty in his old age and he was forced finally to sell the precious instruments that had served him so well. He was buried in the Mt. Royal Cemetery in Montreal. Washington Irving is said to have offered to buy Thompson's journals but the old man refused to sell, and probably thus denied to the world a sequel to Irving's Astoria.
David Thompson has been listed as a noteworthy explorer, geographer, fur trader by Marquis Who's Who.
(In this true story of adventure, author Jack Nisbet re-cr...)
(David Thompson (1770-1857) is considered by many to have ...)
( David Thompson's Travels is one of the finest early exp...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
In June 1799 he was married to Charlotte Small, the half-breed daughter of Patrick Small, who bore him seven sons and six daughters.
1785–1857
