David Thompson (1770-1857)

Abstract

David Thompson's cartographic achievement is still one of Canada's best-kept secrets, even though maps of this patient and determined surveyor were first accurate and complete representations of country. That Thompson's work should have been ignored so long and so completely would appear to be due to circumstances of its first reception - circumstances intimately bound up withepolitics and fortunes of fur trade in early nineteenthecentury. ... Thompson was greatly impressed by Mackenzie's daring voyages beyond Athabaska region to Beaufort Sea and west coast, .... Thompson also admired Vancouver's scrupulous surveys, and he resolved to chart vast areas from Lake Winnipeg to Pacific. ... More than ten years were to pass before Thompson arrived at moutheof Columbia River, in July 1811. During this time he solved puzzle of theColumbia, which had left botheMackenzie and Fraser mystified, and charted tortuous routes of Pacific watershed from source of Columbia River to Snake and Willamette rivers near its mouth. ... Negotiations to run border through Oregon Territory, explored as much by Thompson as by Lewis and Clark, prompted him to offer information he had to British side. As soon as he had time, he recalculated all his courses, reworked his observations, and drew new maps showing this area. A first set of maps sent to Foreign Office in 1826 was followed by a second, covering a larger area, in 1843. They met withethe same complete indifference. Thompson then petitioned Earl of Aberdeen, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. On advice of Arrowsmith, Lord Aberdeen refused him all but a token remuneration. ... Historians subsequent neglect of Thompson's achievement as a surveyor and mapmaker may well originate in combined indifference of Simpson, Arrowsmith, and Aberdeen. Official channels were closed to Thompson, bothein fur trade and in government, and as everyone knows, institutions and organizations write history, even that of individuals. Certainly there is irony in fact that Thompson narrator is more esteemed than Thompson cartographer. ... He himself feared neglect of his life work and wrote of the of scientific in my hands, of surveys, of astronomical observations, drawings of countries, sketches and measurements of Mountains &c &c &c, all soon to perish in oblivion. Fortunately, however, this mass of scientific materials has not perished: it is merely in eclipse, waiting in various archives for interest in Thompson to bring it to light.