Born April 30, 1770,
London, England
Died February 10, 1857,
Montreal, Quebec
David Thompson was born on April 30, 1770, in London, England. He attended a charity school that apprenticed him at age 14 to the Hudson’s Bay Company, the largest fur-trading company in British North America, now Canada. In September 1784 Thompson arrived at the company’s post at Churchill on the coast of Hudson Bay in what is now the province of Manitoba.
During his first year with the Hudson’s Bay Company Thompson worked for Samuel Hearne, who had been the first European to travel overland to the Arctic Ocean. The next year Thompson was sent to another trading post, York Factory, which was about 150 miles to the south. He made the first of many such trips at the beginning of winter with two local guides. In 1786 he went on a trading expedition to the North Saskatchewan River, and the next year farther west to the region of the present-day city of Calgary. He spent the winter of 1787-88 with the Piegan Indians and learned their language and customs.
For the next two years Thompson traded for furs in the northern region of the present provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba; during his trips he developed his skills in surveying and keeping meteorological records. While returning to York Factory in 1790 he surveyed the 750-mile route.
In 1792 Thompson left York Factory to begin a series of trips into the far north of what is now Saskatchewan. The aim was to find a way to capture the region’s valuable fur trade, which was being exploited by the rival Northwest Company, headquartered in Montreal. In 1796 he traveled to Lake Athabaska, the northernmost point of the territory. By this time local affiliates of the Hudson’s Bay Company had decided Thompson’s surveying expeditions were too time-consuming and ordered him to stop.
Believing his accomplishments had not received the recognition they deserved, Thompson quit the Hudson’s Bay Company, walked to the nearest Northwest Company post, and offered his services to his former employer’s competitor. The Northwest Company hired Thompson as a surveyor without any trading duties—he would become a partner. In 1797 Thompson was instructed to survey the new boundary with the United States at 49° N and to travel as far west as the camps of the Mandan Indians along the Missouri River in present-day North Dakota.
During this expedition Thompson journeyed as far as the Assiniboine River before winter. Although he was still a long distance from the Missouri River, he decided to continue, often without a guide. In January 1798 he reached the Missouri River and the Mandan villages, where he stayed until January 10, 1798.
On the way back he encountered frigid winter weather followed by spring thaws which made travel even more difficult. However, on April 27 Thompson discovered Turtle Lake, one of the headwaters of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota. He then continued on to Lake Superior by way of the site of modern-day Duluth and surveyed the shores of the lake from there to Grand Portage; he then went northwest to Lake of the Woods, Lake Winnipeg, and Lake Manitoba.
Thompson spent the rest of 1798 and 1799 in the land between North Saskatchewan and Athabaska rivers in what is now Saskatchewan and Alberta. In June 1799 he married a young woman whose father was a Scottish trader and whose mother was Chippewa. After his marriage Thompson always traveled with his wife and numerous children. In 1801 he made an attempt to cross the Rocky Mountains, but could not find a passageway. He then returned to his trading operations in the Muskrat Country. In 1806 the Northwest Company sent him and his family back to the North Saskatchewan River to prepare for another attempt at crossing the mountains.
In 1807 the Thompson family traveled through the Howse Pass to the Columbia River; Thompson was subsequently credited with being the first explorer to accomplish this feat. For the next three years the Thompsons traveled back and forth across the Rocky Mountains and the Columbia River valley. Thompson founded Fort Kootenay, the first fur-trading post on the Columbia River; he also surveyed the whole area for future traders. Since the Howse Pass had become the battleground for rivalry between the Piegan and Kootenay tribes, Thompson searched for another route across the Rockies. On January 10, 1811, he discovered the Athabaska Pass farther north; it became the usual route across the mountains until the railroad was built years later. In 1811 Thompson traveled all the way down the Columbia to its mouth, but he found that American fur traders sent out by John Jacob Astor had already arrived.
In 1812 Thompson retired from the Northwest Company and went to live in Montreal. He completed a map of western Canada based on his explorations; from 1818 to 1826 he served as head of the Boundary Commission, which was charged with surveying the border between the United States and Canada. Thompson died in Montreal on February 10, 1857, at the age of 87. He was not recognized as a geographer until after his death, when his maps of North America were used in drawing subsequent maps.
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