The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia PlateauBetween 1807 and 1812, North West Company fur trader, explorer, and cartographer David Thompson established two viable trade routes across the Rocky Mountains in Canada and systematically surveyed the entire 1,250-mile course of the Columbia River. In succeeding years he distilled his mathematical notations from dozens of journal notebooks into the first accurate maps of the entire northwest quadrant of North America. The writings in those same journals reveal a complex man who was headstrong, curious, and resourceful in ways that reflected both his London education and his fur trade apprenticeship on the Canadian Shield. In The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau, Jack Nisbet utilizes fresh research to convey how Thompson experienced the sweep of human and natural history etched across the Columbia drainage. He places Thompson's movements within the larger contexts of the European Enlightenment, the British fur trade economy, and American expansion as represented by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Nisbet courses through journal notebooks to assemble and comment on Thompson's bird and mammal lists, the explorer's surprisingly detailed Salish vocabulary, the music Thompson and his crew listened to on a barrel organ, and the woodcraft techniques they used to maintain themselves under shelter or while on the move. Visual elements bring Thompson's written daybooks to life. Watercolor landscapes and tribal portraits drawn by the first artists to travel along his trade routes illuminate what the explorer actually saw. Tribal and fur trade artifacts reveal intimate details of two cultures at the moment of contact. The Mapmaker's Eye also depicts the surveying instruments that Thompson used, and displays the series of remarkable maps that grew out of his patient, persistent years of work. In addition to these visual aspects of Thomson's journeys through the Columbia country, Nisbet taps into oral memories kept by the Kootenai and Salish bands who guided the agent and his party along their way. |
Contents
A MATHEMATICAL | 1 |
ACROSS THE DIVIDE | 35 |
AMONG THE KOOTENAI AND SALISH | 55 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
American Archives of Ontario arrived Athabasca Bay Company Archives Beaulieu beaver birch Blackfeet Boat Encampment Boulard British Brusstar buffalo camp canoe cedar Chevruil Clark Fork Columbia River Colville Cree crossed Dalles David Thompson deer downstream dried exploration feet Finan McDonald fish Flat Bow Flathead furmen Grey Coat Henry James Warre horses Howse Hudson's Bay Company hunt hunters Ibid Indians Iroquois Jaco Finlay James McMillan journal July June Kalispel Kettle Falls Kootanae House Kootenai River Ktunaxa Lake later London longitude McGillivray Meadows meat miles Montreal mouth Nor'Westers North West Company Old Chief Pacific packs paddled party passed Paul Kane Pend Oreille Piegans pine Plateau portage Rock Rocky Mountain House route Saleesh House Salish salmon Saskatchewan snow Spokane House Spokane River spring summer surveyor Thomas Bewick Thomp tion Tobacco trade house trail Travels tribal tribes Ugly Head upstream voyageurs winter wood