Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West [Paperback]

I first saw this book in a store in Banff, at the tail end of a 10-day hiking trip through the Canadian Rockies. I didn't want to lug a book home, so I ordered through Amazon. Perhaps I like this book because I hiked a bit of the area it describes, but more important to me is the astonishing story of David Thompson by itself. To get from the east coast to the west, we get an airline ticket. Thompson routinely traveled thousands of miles each year in the late 1700's and early 1800's - mostly in canoes, hauling thousands of pounds of goods to trade for thousands of pounds of pelts and furs. Most astonishing is that armed with only a compass and sextant, Thompson and his little teams found their way across a continent to trade with native tribes. They did 100 miles in a day with nary a thought. What engages me the most is Jenish's ability to weave multiple sources including Thompson's diaries into a compelling you-are-there story of the crossing and mapping of the Canadian west. My highest compliments to the author.

If you like adventure and the tingle of learning how men and women (Thompson had his wife and kids with him) did things we'd never attempt today, you'll love this book. It'll make you want to get up and go do something outdoors. It'll make you realize we have fallen behind in 200 years. We are lazy, and we are missing the adventures of our world.

David Thompson first crossed the Continental Divide in 1807 and devoted the next five years to the fur trade and exploration in the Columbia River drainage. He was the first person of European descent to explore the entire length of the Columbia River. His journals and maps laid the foundation for European resource exploitation and subsequent settlement of Washington State, western Montana, and southeastern British Columbia. In fact, all exploration in the Columbia River drainage was largely British rather than American during the first half of the nineteenth century. Writings and symposia on David Thompson are predictably increasing in both Canada and the United States as we enter the bicentennial period of that exploration.

Parts of David Thompson's long life are enigmatic and seemingly contradictory. "Epic Wanderer" is a journalistic account of the known facts. It is not as insightful as "Sources of the River," the book that has emerged as the definitive account of Thompson's northwest explorations. However, "Epic Wanderer" does provide a more complete account of David Thompson's life after he left the active fur trade and settled in the vicinity of Montreal. Since Thompson died in 1857, this eastern experience represents more than half his life. During that time, Thompson experienced considerable success in several endeavors, but a financial collapse left him and his wife to die in poverty.

David Thompson was a skilled surveyor. His maps were more accurate than those of his contemporaries. Overlooked by those who focus on his contributions to western expansion is the fact that before and after his time in the Northwest, he made important surveys on the eastern border between British Canada and the United States. The first period was as an employee of the North West Fur Company. The second was an official survey conducted jointly by the two countries.

Because David Thompson was a contemporary of Lewis and Clark, today's writers often compare them. This is only partially valid. The latter was a military expedition of exploration that spent only a few months west of the Continental Divide. David Thompson was a fur trader working for a commercial company and spent five years criss-crossing the area. He had the desire and talent to explore, but trading had to come first. As he advanced his trading territory, his journals recorded an expanding knowledge of the territory and its inhabitants, plants, and animals. Thompson's maps are much more accurate than those developed by Lewis and Clark, partially because he had more time to refine them.

As intriguing as Thompson himself, is the fur trade itself and the native peoples involved. Thompson was very dependent on the local natives who guided him, aided him in establishing trading posts, and helped him expand his trade. Charlotte Small, Thompson's wife for 57 years, was half Cree. Together they bridged a period of European-Indigenous relationship that is the subject of intensive research today.

D'Arcy Jenish's "Epic Wanderer" is a life of David Thompson, a British fur trader who spent nearly three decades exploring and mapping the Canadian West from Hudson's Bay to the Pacific Coast.

Thompson was apprenticed to the Hudson's Bay Company out of a boy's school in London in 1784, at the tender age of 14. He grew up in various trading posts around Hudson's Bay, followed the fur trade across the Canadian Prairies, helped open up routes across the Canadian Rockies, and was the first European to explore the entire length of the Columbia River from its source to the Pacific Ocean. More importantly for the history books, Thompson had a gift for astronomy and surveying that he used to provide accurate mapping data for huge swaths of North America.

The heart of this book is the narrative of Thompson's travels across the interior of the continent, on trips that often took years to complete, accompanied by fur company employees, French voyageurs, and Indian guides. Jenish does a good job of providing the context for Thompson's travels: the competition between rival trading companies for access to new sources of fur; the rising tensions between the young United States and British Canada over the North American continent, and the inevitable frictions between European intruders and Native American tribes.

The last third of the book is Thompson's return to civilization in Eastern Canada after 1812 and a slow spiral into poverty for a man never quite able to adjust to life away from the wilderness. Thompson today is remembered primarily as a footnote in Canadian history. Jenish's history goes far to rectify Thompson's undeserved obscurity.

Jenish wrote primarily from Thompson's journals and other contemporary sources; it is sometimes difficult to tell from the narrative where Thompson leaves off and Jenish has filled in the story with supposition. Examples of Thompson's maps are provided in the text; what is lacking is a modern map, and one big enough to read, so that the reader may follow Thompson's travels.

This book is recommended to those interested in an early and largely forgotten explorer of the interior of the North American continent, crossing a landscape now almost unimaginable outside of a few major Canadian parks.

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