Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/60

{{rh|50|T. C. ELLIOTT|| The "Northwesters" were, of course, not ignorant of the movements of the Lewis and Clark party in the United States and a trader named Francois Larocque was sent to follow them up the Missouri; and that same year, 1805, Simon Fraser started toward the Pacific by way of Peace River, where Alexander Mackenzie had already explored the way. In 1806 Fraser was building trading posts along the waters of the river of his name, and David Thompson was receiving orders to cross the mountains further to the south, and in 1807 he did so from the head waters of the Saskatchewan to those of the Columbia. That year he remained at the source of the Columbia, but in 1808 extended his trade to the Indians along the Kootenai river, and in 1809 came still further south to the waters of the Pend Oreille and Clark Fork rivers. It is this really wonderful man, David Thompson, and his brief career in what is now the State of Idaho which furnishes the material for this address.

The City of Boise has been built upon one of the camping or resting places on an old Indian road passing east and west across the State of Idaho, which later became the route of travel for white families migrating to Oregon and known as the Oregon Trail. May it ever be held in honored memory as such! In northern Idaho connecting the waters of the Kootenai river at Bonners Ferry with those of Pend Oreille lake near Sand Point there was another established road or trail, known to the earliest explorers as the Lake Indian Road. This road is now, with variations, used by the swiftly moving automobile but more than one hundred years ago in September, 1809, such a use was not foreseen, and a slowly moving pack train followed it southward, in charge of David Thompson, an Englishman and partner of the North West Company already mentioned, assisted by Finan McDonald, a Scotchman; the rest of the party consisting of French-Canadian voyageurs and halfbreed hunters and servants, perhaps ten in all, and some Indians. And it may be here noted with some emphasis that