Overview

In 1807, North West Company fur trader-explorer-surveyor David Thompson crossed the Rocky Mountains to explore the potential of expanding the Company's beaver hunting territory into uncharted lands west of the Rocky Mountains. It looked good.His first post called Kootenai House was built near the banks of the upper Columbia River in what is now British Columbia. Looking for a passable overland trail to the Pacific ocean only a few years after the Lewis and Clark expedition, in 1808 he followed the Columbia to its source, crossed the divide and followed what is now the Kootenai River as far south and west as Bonners Ferry Idaho.In 1809 Thompson finally managed to cross the divide between the Columbia River and what is now the Clark's Fork of the Columbia with headwaters along the west side of the Continental divide in Montana.In that same year he built two new trading posts along the Clark's Fork which he named the Saleesh River for the Indians he found camped along its banks. The first was Kullyspell House near the town of Hope, Idaho which operated for only two seasons. the second, called Saleesh House, was built just east of the town of Thompson Falls, Montana which was named after the fur trader.Thompson retired from the fur trade business while at Saleesh House which continued to operate well into the 1820s when it was replaced by a new post several miles up the river and called Flathead Post.This book is the story of his travels, trials and tribulations as recorded in his personal journal as well as from recollections he wrote about in his Narrative some 40 years later. Almost always on the verge of starvation, Thompson and his men were often forced to eat their own horses-and sometimes dogs-in order to survive.

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9780980227901

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