Following in the Footsteps of David Thompson"One of the things that we try and do is find an area where we can have a pristine experience — one of the big requirements is just the absence of other people. And it's getting more difficult for us to find places where we can get away and have what would be an experience that would be similar to the fur trappers." Mark Weadick (Empty Horn)
"It's the sense of freedom, it's being able to touch back, time stops, it's like it would've been 200 years ago when you walked into here when David Thompson first came into this country. I can transport myself back there. It is a sense of freedom and peace and calm that I just don't feel in the modern world."
Michael Rider (Dirty Shirt) Thompson and a group of men first entered what is now Idaho, near today's Bonners Ferry in 1808. A year later the party traveled further south to Lake Pend Oreille where they built a trading post called Kullyspell House in the fall of 1809. Thompson spent that fall and winter exploring the area and ended up establishing another fur trade outpost, the Saleesh House on the Clark Fork River near modern day Thompson Falls, Montana.
In their replica birch bark canoe they ply the tranquil waters, set up a 19th century style camp on deserted shores and even trap for beaver in Priest River's upper stretches. |
David Thompson's travels through western Canada and the northwestern United States are legendary. Thompson spent 28 years in the fur trade after arriving in Canada as a 14 year old apprentice for the Hudson's Bay Company. During his nearly three decades as a fur trader he explored and mapped a vast region relatively unknown at the time. After joining the Northwest Company in 1797 he surveyed the Mississippi's headwaters, crossed the Rockies via Howse Pass to the source of the Columbia, and explored what would later become Washington, Idaho, and Montana. He was also the first white man to travel the entire length of the Columbia River.
A group of history buffs has chosen another lake in northern Idaho as the location to relive the lifestyle of fur traders like David Thompson and his associates. About thirty miles northwest of Lake Pend Oreille is Priest Lake, the most pristine of Idaho's large northern lakes. In a remote corner of the lake a small group of modern day mountain men can get a feel for what life was like for those early fur traders.