Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/247

Rh July 2 Tuesday A very fine day—gummed the Canoe arranged many little affairs &c.

The following day he started down the Columbia in this one canoe with seven companions of French and Indian blood on that first journey of a white man from Ilth-koy-ape, as the Indians called these Falls, to the Ocean. The night of the 5th found them encamped some distance below the mouth of the Okanogan River, and on the 9th they were a little way above the mouth of the Snake or Lewis river, and on the 15th arrived at Fort Astoria, there to be greeted by Duncan McDougall and other former associates of Mr. Thompson in the NorthWest Company, but then partners and managers in the Pacific Fur Company of John Jacob Astor. These people had arrived in the Columbia by sea during the month of April, preceding.

You ask how did David Thompson arrive at Kettle Falls in June, 1811, and whether by chance or design. He came on horseback from Spokane House, a trading post or fort then already established, erected the previous year at the junction of the little Spokane with the main Spokane river by one of his men, Jaco Finlay or Finan MacDonald. This seems a little too early to find the name Spokane written in form, but so it appears; "Skeetshoo" was the designation given by David Thompson to the Spokane river and to the lake later known as the Coeur d'Alene.

He had reached Spokane House by the "Kullyspell road" or trail from the Kullyspell (Pend d' Oreille) river and tribe. The Kullyspell river and lake were already familiar to him through several months spent in exploring and trading there during 1809-10 and the establishment of two trading posts, one near to the Thompson Falls, Montana, of the present day. To the Clark Fork or Saleesh River he had come by the "Kootenay Indian Road" from the Kootenay River, where he left the canoes used in descending the Kootenay from a point in British Co-