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77-589: The Lac La Ronge Indian Band ( Woods Cree : ᒥᐢᑕᐦᐃ ᓵᑲᐦᐃᑲᓂᕽ , romanized:  mistahi-sâkahikanihk ) is a Woodland Cree ( Sakāwithiniwak ) First Nations in northern Saskatchewan . It is one of the ten largest Cree ( Nîhithaw ) band governments in Canada, the largest First Nation in Saskatchewan, with the administrative centre located in La Ronge . La Ronge & Stanley Mission Band of Woods Cree Indians became

154-562: A fur trader and surveyor . Thompson's decision to defect to the North West Company (NWC) in 1797 without providing the customary one-year notice was not well received by his former employers. But the North West Company was more supportive of Thompson pursuing his work on surveying and mapping the interior of what was to become Canada, as they judged it in the company's interest to know the exact locations of their settlements and

231-408: A fur trader . In 1792 he completed his first significant survey, mapping a route to Lake Athabasca (where today's Alberta / Saskatchewan border is located). Between February and May 1793, Thompson made 34 observations of the longitude of Cumberland House using lunar distances . The mean of these observations was 102°12′ W, about 2' east of the modern value. The mean error of the 34 observations

308-575: A postage stamp . The David Thompson Highway in Alberta was named in his honour, along with David Thompson High School on the side of the highway near Leslieville, Alberta . There are also two David Thompson Secondary Schools, one in Vancouver, BC, and one in Invermere, BC. His prowess as a geographer is now well-recognized. He has been called "the greatest land geographer that the world has produced." There

385-555: A boy, by English author and TV presenter Ray Mears . Thompson was the subject of a 1964 National Film Board of Canada short film David Thompson: The Great Mapmaker , as well as the BBC2 programme Ray Mears' Northern Wilderness (Episode 5), broadcast in November 2009. He's also the subject of 2010 KSPS-TV film Uncharted Territory: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau . He

462-491: A clerk/secretary, copying the personal papers of the governor of Fort Churchill, Samuel Hearne . The next year he was transferred to nearby York Factory , and over the next few years spent time as a secretary at Cumberland House , and South Branch House of the Hudson's Bay Company before being transferred to Manchester House in 1787 . During those years he learned to keep accounts and other records, calculate values of furs (it

539-688: A few years later was employed to survey the newly established borders with the United States from Lake of the Woods to the Eastern Townships of Quebec , established by Treaty of Ghent after the War of 1812 . In 1843 Thompson completed his atlas of the region from Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Afterwards, Thompson returned to a life as a land owner, but soon financial misfortune would ruin him. By 1831 he

616-641: A more northerly site at Fort Okanogan . The North West Company established its post of Fort Nez Percés near the Snake River confluence several years later. Continuing down the Columbia, Thompson passed over the Celilo Falls , almost losing the canoe on the rocks, and portaged around the rapids of The Dalles and the Cascades Rapids . On 14 July 1811, Thompson reached the partially constructed Fort Astoria at

693-464: A non-specified dialect of Cree as their mother tongue, and 86,115 who said they had some knowledge of a non-specified dialect of Cree. Some of those individuals could be Woods Cree speakers. Woods Cree is not an official language of any country. Speakers of Woods Cree live in and around the northern, forested area of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Like other western Cree languages and dialects, Woods Cree only contains seventeen different phonemes . This

770-628: A possible phonological shift that is occurring in Woods Cree speech due to the influence of the English phonology on the language, however, the data is inconclusive due to the endangered status of the language. The Woods Cree morphological form follows a similar system to that of other Western Cree dialects (for example, Swampy Cree or Plains Cree). A more comprehensive examination of the Western Cree morphological system relating to Woods Cree can be found on

847-714: A signatory to the Treaty 6 on February 11, 1889, signed by Chief James Roberts. In 1900, Peter Ballantyne was allowed to separate from the La Ronge and Stanley Mission Band to form the Peter Ballantyne Band of Cree Indians, the predecessor to the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation . In 1910, the La Ronge & Stanley Mission Band split into two entities: Amos Charles Band of Cree Indians (located in Stanley Mission ) and

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924-400: A sonorant. This analysis is challenged however by particular factors which show the likeness of / ð / as an obstruent. For example, among younger speakers the / ð / phoneme is sometimes replaced by a /t/ and voicing in word-final positions also shows that it also falls under obstruent classification. One reason for this particularly unique form of the / ð / phoneme as explained in the article is

1001-648: A summary of his lifetime of exploring and surveying the interior of North America. The map covered the wide area stretching from Lake Superior to the Pacific, and was given by Thompson to the North West Company. Thompson's 1814 map, his greatest achievement, was so accurate that 100 years later it was still the basis for many of the maps issued by the Canadian government. It now resides in the Archives of Ontario . In 1815, Thompson moved his family to Williamstown, Upper Canada , and

1078-633: A thirteen-year-old Métis daughter of Scottish fur trader Patrick Small and a Cree mother. Their marriage was formalised thirteen years later at the Scotch Presbyterian Church in Montreal on 30 October 1812 . He and Charlotte had 13 children together; five of them were born before he left the fur trade. The family did not adjust easily to life in Eastern Canada ; they lived in Montreal while he

1155-460: A very powerful mind, and a singular faculty of picture-making. He can create a wilderness and people it with warring savages, or climb the Rocky Mountains with you in a snow-storm, so clearly and palpably, that only shut your eyes and you hear the crack of the rifle, or feel the snow-flakes melt on your cheeks as he talks. On 10 June 1799 at Île-à-la-Crosse , Thompson married Charlotte Small ,

1232-403: A vowelless variation of the personal prefixes. For example, the verb aðahwi:w 'he buries him' can use the vowelless, reduced version of the personal prefix nika- recognized as n- . The verb then becomes n-aðahwi:w 'I am burying him'. Woods Cree generally uses the connective variant (as seen below) more frequently than the reduced version, however the reduced version is recognized within

1309-400: Is a fairly small phonemic inventory for a language; for example, Canadian English distinguishes thirty-eight phonemes. The following phonemes can be found in western Cree languages and dialects: /a, â, c, ê, h, i, î, k, m, n, o, ô, p, s, t, w, y/. Woods Cree differs only in merging /ê/ with /î/ (and thus decreasing the vowel inventory by one down to six distinct vowels) but adding "th" (/ ð /) as

1386-494: Is a monument dedicated to David Thompson (maintained by the state of North Dakota ) near the former town site of the ghost town Verendrye, North Dakota , located approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) north and 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Karlsruhe, North Dakota . Thompson Falls, Montana , and British Columbia's Thompson River and Thompson Falls on the Blaeberry River are also named after the explorer. The year 2007 marked

1463-557: Is also considered to be a highly inflectional language with all of its inflection being suffixation with the exception of the four personal prefixes. Woods Cree morphology follows the Western Cree system of morphology. Specific to Woods Cree is use of third person indefinite possessors than in other dialects of Cree. The Proto-Algonquian definite possessor prefix is reconstructed as *me- in Bloomfield (1946) Hamp (1976) expands on Bloomfield's analysis by finding in contrast * we- to be

1540-463: Is found in Cree, also referred to as non-configurational . For example, the sentence "the children killed some ducks" could be expressed in the following six ways: awaˑsisak children nipaheˑwak killed siˑsiˑpa ducks awaˑsisak nipaheˑwak siˑsiˑpa children killed ducks David Thompson (explorer) David Thompson (30 April 1770 – 10 February 1857)

1617-399: Is not commonly used in Woods Cree but is found in situations requiring repetition or clarification: The na- morpheme is classified as a portmanteau because it is a dental [n] and therefore it cannot be a reduced form of nika- when here the [n] assimilates with the following [k] ad becomes a velar nasal. Northern Alberta Cree (not specifically Woods Cree) has also been determined to use

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1694-463: Is referenced in the 1981 folk song "Northwest Passage" by Stan Rogers . The national park service, Parks Canada , announced in 2018 that it had named its new research vessel RV  David Thompson , to be used for underwater archaeology, including sea floor mapping, and for marine science in the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic Oceans, and the Great Lakes. It will be the main platform for research on

1771-554: Is the category of Cree languages spoken west of the Hudson Bay and in the boreal forested area across the northern provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. In 1982 SIL (Summer Institute for Languages) found that the population of Woods Cree speakers was 35,000 people. More recently the University of Regina has documented that of the approximately 75,000 speakers of Cree across in Canada, 20,000 of them live in Saskatchewan, which

1848-543: Is the main area where Woods Cree is spoken. Not only is this finding much less than the 1982 statistic, but this estimation accounts for all types of spoken Cree, not just Woods Cree spoken in Saskatchewan - but note that the Woods Cree spoken outside of Saskatchewan is not accounted for in this statistic. According to the 2016 Canadian Census there were 1,840 individuals who identified Woods Cree as their mother tongue, and 2,665 individuals who said they had some knowledge of Woods Cree. There were also 64,050 people who identified

1925-465: Is unusual in the Cree language to be used in this manner. As found in Plains Cree, only o- initial verbs are allowed the free variation of using the -t- connective . Also the lengthening of the initial vowel is only allowed in o- initial stems, as seen below: When a verb beginning with a short vowel is used a trend can be seen in Woods Cree that elides the -i- vowel: However, when determining

2002-467: The "th" dialect of Cree spoken in the forested area north of the Canadian prairies . A more general, all-encompassing term for this dialect is " Woodland Cree ", which also refers to the cultural group living in the forested area north of the prairies. This term is used, for example, in separating the cultural groups of Cree people who live in the wooded area from the Plains Cree, who traditionally inhabited

2079-402: The -t- connective is recognized to be the more common of the two. The use of -y- is also found to be in free variation with the reduced variant of the ki- prefix: In the reduced variant (as seen above in k-ayamina:naw ) the initial short vowel is not lengthened as in the non-reduced variant (i.e. ki-y-ayamihitona:na:w ). This reduction from ni- or ki- to the form n- or k-

2156-475: The Algonquian subfamily, and the central Cree – Montagnais – Naskapi language group. Western Cree is a term used to refer to the non-palatized Cree dialects, consisting of Northern Plains Cree, Southern Plains Cree, Woods Cree, Rock Cree, Western Swampy Cree, Eastern Swampy Cree, Moose Cree, and Atikamekw. Western Woods Cree is the term used to refer to the Cree languages west of the Hudson Bay. This includes

2233-643: The Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. In June 1807 Thompson crossed the Rocky Mountains and spent the summer surveying the Columbia basin ; he continued to survey the area over the next few seasons. Thompson mapped and established trading posts in Northwestern Montana , Idaho , Washington , and Western Canada . Trading posts he founded included Kootenae House , Kullyspell House and Saleesh House ;

2310-492: The Rocky Mountains . On 10 July 1804, at the annual meeting of the North West Company in Kaministiquia , Thompson was made a full partner of the company. He became a 'wintering partner', who was based in the field rather than Montreal, and was granted two of the 92 NWC's shares worth more than £4,000. He spent the next few seasons based there managing the fur trading operations, but still finding time to expand his surveys of

2387-524: The Swampy Cree Misplaced Pages page. Cree languages are polysynthetic and can have single words that would need an entire sentence to properly be expressed in English. For example: ni-kî-nohtê-wâpam-âw-ak 1 - PST -want-see. TA - 3 - PL (note: hyphens here are present solely to demonstrate the separate morphemes )   ni-kî-nohtê-wâpam-âw-ak 1-PST-want-see. TA -3-PL "I wanted to see them." (animate) Cree

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2464-581: The Welshman , although he left his native hills when very young. I might have been spared this description of Mr David Thompson by saying he greatly resembled Curran the Irish Orator... I afterwards travelled much with him, and have now only to speak of him with great respect, or, I ought to say, with admiration... No living person possesses a tithe of his information respecting the Hudson's Bay countries... Never mind his Bunyan-like face and cropped hair; he has

2541-672: The headwaters of the Assiniboine and Mississippi rivers, as well as two sides of Lake Superior . In 1798, the company sent him to Red Deer Lake ( Lac La Biche in present-day Alberta) to establish a trading post. (The English translation of Lac la Biche: Red Deer Lake, was first recorded on the Mackenzie map of 1793.) Thompson spent the next few seasons trading based in Fort George (now in Alberta), and during this time led several expeditions into

2618-474: The mi- prefix. In Woods Cree the mi- prefix is not applied to members of kin as well as body parts unique to animals. This difference helps demonstrate the dialect difference between Woods Cree and other types of Cree. Plains Cree, for example, does apply indefinite third person possessors when referring to kin. In Pukatawagan Woods Cree, specific usage of the future markers have been determined. Woods Cree spoken in this area, like other Cree dialects, uses

2695-463: The / ð / phoneme, the placement of the / ð / phoneme in the phonological inventory, the voicing patterns of this phoneme in non-word final positions, the usage of /l/ phoneme as a replacement for / ð / phoneme in caregiver speech, and lastly the /l/ and / ð / phoneme replacement of /r/ in English loan words. In Proto-Algonquian , the / ð / phoneme of Woods Cree has been reconstructed as *l and, thus, also demonstrates its relation to being categorized as

2772-467: The 150th year of Thompson's death and the 200th anniversary of his first crossing of the Rocky Mountains. Commemorative events and exhibits were planned across Canada and the United States from 2007 to 2011 as a celebration of his accomplishments. In 2007, a commemorative plaque was placed on a wall at the Grey Coat Hospital, the school for the disadvantaged of Westminster David Thompson attended as

2849-558: The 1890s geologist J.B. Tyrrell resurrected Thompson's notes and in 1916 published them as David Thompson's Narrative , as part of the General Series of the Champlain Society . Further editions and re-examinations of Thompson's life and works were published in 1962 by Richard Glover, in 1971 by Victor Hopwood, and in 2015 by William Moreau. Thompson's body was interred in Montreal's Mount Royal Cemetery in an unmarked grave. It

2926-616: The Grey Coat mathematical school, well known for teaching navigation and surveying. He received an education for the Royal Navy: including mathematics of trigonometry and geometry, practical navigation including using of nautical instruments, finding latitudes and longitudes and making navigational calculations from observing the sun, moon and tide, and drawing maps and charts, taking land measurements, and sketching landscapes. He later built on these skills to make his career. In 1784, when Thompson

3003-705: The James Roberts Band of Cree Indians (located in La Ronge). In 1950, the two bands amalgamated and became the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, the current legal name. Lac La Ronge Indian Band's land-base consists of eighteen Indian reserves , some containing one of six communities: The communities of Stanley Mission, Grandmother's Bay and Little Red River are self-administered. This arrangement ensures that these communities have more control over their services and programs. The First Nation elects their council under

3080-525: The Miss McGillivray's and a singular-looking person of about fifty. He was plainly dressed, quiet, and observant. His figure was short and compact, and his black hair was worn long all round, and cut square, as if by one stroke of the shears, just above the eyebrows. His complexion was of the gardener's ruddy brown, while the expression of his deeply-furrowed features was friendly and intelligent, but his cut-short nose gave him an odd look. His speech betrayed

3157-441: The North West Company was based . In his published journals, Thompson recorded seeing large footprints (“which measured fourteen inches in length by eight inches in breadth”) near what is now Jasper, Alberta , in 1811. It has been suggested that these prints were similar to what has since been called the sasquatch . However, Thompson noted that these tracks showed "a small Nail at the end of each [toe]", which led him to surmise it

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3234-419: The area in which Woods Cree was and still is spoken today. In the early 1900s, J.B. Tyrrell , a Canadian geologist and cartographer and the editor of explorer David Thompson 's work found that the people living in the area of Île-à-la-Crosse and upper Churchill River referred to themselves as Nahathaway and spoke the particular -th dialect of Woods Cre e. The Hudson's Bay Company had made record of

3311-435: The area west of James Bay being inhabited by people speaking the -th dialect of Cree. This region of Woods Cree speakers has essentially remained the same until present. Traditionally Woods Cree was often divided into western and eastern Woods Cree, reaching as far east as Quebec. However, the actual Woods Cree language is now determined to be spoken in the mid-northern part of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Western Woods Cree

3388-420: The conjunct order . In the independent order of Woods Cree the preverbs na- and nika- are used. The preverb ka- can be used in both the independent and conjunct orders. The preverb na- can be seen as a portmanteau morpheme, which expresses the first person future context. However, in the second person future context there is no kika- that correlates with the ka- morpheme. The independent order nika-

3465-539: The context of the situation, the initial vowel of the verb stem can be lengthened to portray the specific context: In Woods Cree, when combining a word ending with a short vowel with a word beginning with a short vowel, the rule of external sandhi requires the final vowel of the first word to be dropped and the initial vowel of the second word to be lengthened: The independent order preverbs used in other dialects of Cree (Plains Cree and Swampy Cree) are ta-, kita-, and ka- . In Woods Cree ta- and kita- only occur in

3542-434: The continent). His contemporary, the great explorer Alexander Mackenzie , remarked that Thompson did more in ten months than he would have thought possible in two years. Despite these significant achievements, Thompson died in Montreal in near obscurity on 10 February 1857, his accomplishments almost unrecognised. He never finished the book of his 28 years in the fur trade, based on his 77 field notebooks, before he died. In

3619-573: The custom electoral system, consisting of a chief and 12 councillors. The current council consists of Chief Tammy Cook-Searson and councillors, Devin Bernatchez, Jimmy Charles, Linda Charles, John Boy Halkett, Gerald McKenzie, Robin McKenzie, Keith Mirasty, Ann Ratt, Dean Roberts, Sam Roberts, Norman Ross, and Charlene Venne. Woods Cree language The Woods Cree language belongs to the Algic family, within

3696-503: The definite human/animal possessor and * me- to be the indefinite possessor prefix. As found in other dialects of Cree, the following possessor prefixes are used in Woods Cree: In most dialects of Cree the prefix mi- is used when describing nouns regarding an undetermined body part, clothing items, and members of kin. For example, a pair of pants (noun requiring a possessor), undetermined in whom they belong to would be preceded with

3773-652: The distances between them. In 1797, Thompson was sent south by his employers to survey part of the Canada-US boundary along the water routes from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods to satisfy unresolved questions of territory arising from the Jay Treaty of 1794 between Great Britain and the United States after the American Revolutionary War. By 1798 Thompson had completed a survey of 6,750 km (4,190 mi) from Grand Portage , through Lake Winnipeg , to

3850-471: The future markers ka- as the second person future marker. It has been agreed that this is a reduction of the second person prefix ki- and the future marker ka- . The first person future marker na- however does not follow the same reduction patterns (combining ni- first person prefix and ka- future marker). It has determined instead to be a portmanteau realization of first person and tense categories. In vowel initial verb stems, Woods Cree will use

3927-411: The globe have been recorded using the / ð / phoneme and in most of these cases this phoneme is classified as an obstruent . However, the / ð / phoneme in spoken Woods Cree has resemblance to a sonorant phoneme. Most of the evidence demonstrated in the article even concludes that it would be more logical to classify this phoneme as a sonorant due to the following five factors: the sonorant realizations of

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4004-432: The lands they traverse. In 1820, the English geologist, John Jeremiah Bigsby , attended a dinner party given by The Hon. William McGillivray at his home, Chateau St. Antoine, one of the early estates in Montreal 's Golden Square Mile . He describes the party and some of the guests in his entertaining book The Shoe and Canoe , giving an excellent description of David Thompson: I was well placed at table between one of

4081-428: The language . Cree verbs that begin with a vowel use the two different connectors -y- and -t- to join the prefix with the verb: Both forms are equally acceptable. However, in Woods Cree the -y- connective is fully productive and can be used with nouns as well as verbs. This is unlike other dialects of Cree, for example, Plains Cree where the connective -t- is mainly used. In spite of using both connectives,

4158-518: The languages Rock Cree, western Swampy Cree, and Strongwoods or Bois Fort Cree. James G.E. Smith classified the linguistic nature of the languages of Woods Cree, northern Plains Cree, western Swampy Cree, and the extinct dialect of Misinipi or Rock Cree to all fall under the Western Woods Cree languages. Another name for Woods Cree is Rocky Cree, translated by Rossignol (1939) from the Cree word asiniˑskaˑwiðiniwak . Rock Cree or Misinipi Cree

4235-694: The latter two were the first trading posts west of the Rockies in Idaho and Montana, respectively. These posts established by Thompson extended North West Company fur trading territory into the Columbia Basin drainage area. The maps he made of the Columbia River basin east of the Cascade Mountains were of such high quality and detail that they continued to be useful into the 20th-century . In early 1810, Thompson

4312-694: The mouth of the Columbia, arriving two months after the Pacific Fur Company 's ship, the Tonquin . Before returning upriver and across the mountains, Thompson hired Naukane , a Native Hawaiian Takane labourer brought to Fort Astoria by the Pacific Fur Company's ship Tonquin . Naukane, known as Coxe to Thompson, accompanied Thompson across the continent to Lake Superior before journeying on to England. Thompson wintered at Saleesh House before beginning his final journey in 1812 back to Montreal, where

4389-430: The plural suffix -waˑw- where all other Plains Cree speakers make use of the plural suffix - ik- . Cree is a highly inflected language and much of the syntactic expression happens within the noun or the verb itself. Due to the complex morphological characteristics of the Cree language, the syntactic word order is relatively free in comparison to many other languages. Free expression of discontinuous constituents

4466-446: The power of averages. In recognition of his map-making and surveying skills, the company promoted Thompson to the surveyor in 1794. He continued working for the Hudson's Bay Company until 23 May 1797 when, frustrated by an order to cease surveying and focus on the fur trade, he left . He walked 130 kilometres (80 mi) in the snow in order to enter the employ of the competition, the North West Company . There he continued to work as

4543-498: The prairies to the south. The language portal of Canada has divided all Cree languages west of Ontario up until the Rocky Mountains into four main subgroups: Plains Cree, Swampy Cree, Moose Cree and Woods Cree. However, in referring to the Woods Cree language they use the terms Woodland and Rock interchangeably. Whether these terms are interchangeable when referring to the Cree "th" dialect however has not been explicitly determined. Different sources in Canadian history texts document

4620-461: The reflex of Proto-Algonquian *r (and thus maintaining a distinct phoneme that the other Western dialects have lost). An important aspect of the Cree vowel system is that the Proto Algonquian short /e/ phoneme merged with short /i/ phoneme as shown above. In Woods Cree the long /eː/ also has merged with the long /iː/ phoneme. Phonetically, these two sounds may also alternate. This results in

4697-411: The tutelage of Hudson's Bay Company surveyor Philip Turnor . It was also during this time that he lost sight in his right eye. In 1790, with his apprenticeship nearing its end, Thompson requested a set of surveying tools in place of the typical parting gift of fine clothes offered by the company to those completing their indenture. He received both . He entered the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company as

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4774-519: The villages along the way to establish good relations, helped by copious quantities of tobacco. In 1805 Lewis and Clark had descended the Snake River, and continued down the Columbia. On reaching the junction Thompson erected a pole and a notice claiming the country for Great Britain and stating the intention of the North West Company to build a trading post at the site. This notice was found later that year by Astor company workers looking to establish an inland fur post, contributing to their selection of

4851-420: The vowel system of Woods Cree consisting of only three long vowels /iː uː aː/ and three short vowels /i u a/ in the entire language. The distinguishing feature of Woods Cree is the use of the nonpalatalized -th sound in places where other dialects of Cree would use a different sound: for example, Plains Cree is known for using the -y phoneme . This can be demonstrated by the Cree word for 'I'. In Woods Cree

4928-661: The waterways around Lake Superior . At the 1806 company meeting, officers decided to send Thompson back into the interior. Concern over the United States-backed expedition of Lewis and Clark prompted the North West Company to charge Thompson with the task of finding a route to the Pacific to open up the lucrative trading territories of the Pacific Northwest . After the general meeting in 1806, Thompson travelled to Rocky Mountain House and prepared for an expedition to follow

5005-615: The word for 'I' is nitha (IPA: [ niða ]) whereas in Plains Cree it would be pronounced niya (IPA: [ nija ], spelled ᓂᔭ in Cree orthography ). A significant distinction between Woods Cree and Plains Cree has been questioned in the analysis and history of the language. Various researchers and explorers throughout history however have concluded that there is a "loss of intelligibility between Woods Cree and Plains Cree", distinguishing them as separate languages. Cree / ð / shares features both with obstruents and sonorants. Many languages around

5082-539: The world has produced". David Thompson was born in Westminster , Middlesex, to recent Welsh migrants David and Ann Thompson. When Thompson was two, his father died. Due to his widowed mother not having financial resources, she placed Thompson, 29 April 1777, the day before his seventh birthday, and his older brother in the Grey Coat Hospital , a school for the disadvantaged of Westminster. Thompson graduated to

5159-551: Was 14, the Grey Coat treasurer paid the Hudson's Bay Company the sum of five pounds, upon which the youth became an apprentice employee of the company, contracted for a period of seven years to be trained as a clerk. He set sail on a ship to North America on 28 May of that year, leaving England. On 2 September 1784, Thompson arrived in Churchill (now in Manitoba ) and was put to work as

5236-412: Was a "r" dialect of Cree but now have merged with Woods Cree, together as the "th" dialect of Cree spoken by the group of people geographically located at the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains. In Alberta, Woods Cree is also known as Bush Cree. Precise classification of the Woods Cree language has not been sufficiently documented. Many different names and terms have been used in the description of

5313-402: Was a bear, but he had doubts, saying, "I held it to be the track of a large old grizzled bear; yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not that of a Bear". The years 1807-1812 are the most carefully scrutinized in his career and comprise his most enduring historical legacy, due to his development of the commercial routes across the Rockies, and his mapping of

5390-450: Was about 15' of longitude. Broughton (2009) notes that the precision of the type of sextant used by Thompson was 15" of arc, corresponding to 7.5' of longitude giving an absolute limit to the precision of an individual observation. The error in Thompson's mean was several times less than this. The time he took on these observations, about 3 hours of calculation each, indicates that he understood

5467-491: Was an Anglo-Canadian fur trader , surveyor , and cartographer , known to some native people as "Koo-Koo-Sint" or "the Stargazer". Over Thompson's career, he travelled 90,000 kilometres (56,000 mi) across North America , mapping 4.9 million square kilometres (1.9 million square miles) of the continent along the way. For this historic feat, Thompson has been described as the "greatest practical land geographer that

5544-584: Was delayed by an angry group of Peigan natives at Howse Pass . He was ultimately forced to seek a new route across the Rocky Mountains and found one through the Athabasca Pass . David Thompson was the first European to navigate the full length of the Columbia River . Between Kettle Falls (3 July 1811) and the Junction of the Columbia and Snake Rivers (9 July), he was travelling through country that had never been visited by Europeans, and took time to visit

5621-629: Was not until 1926 that efforts by J.B. Tyrrell and the Canadian Historical Society resulted in the placing of a tombstone to mark his grave. The next year, Thompson was named a National Historic Person by the federal government, one of the earliest such designations. A federal plaque reflecting that status is at Jasper National Park , Alberta. Meantime, Thompson's achievements are central reasons for other national historic designations: In 1957, one hundred years after his death, Canada's post office department honoured him with his image on

5698-424: Was noted that he also had several expensive beaver pelts at that time even when a secretary's job would not pay terribly well), track supplies and other duties. On 23 December 1788, Thompson seriously fractured his tibia , forcing him to spend the next two winters at Cumberland House convalescing. It was during this time that he greatly refined and expanded his mathematical, astronomical, and surveying skills under

5775-524: Was returning eastward toward Montreal but, while en route at Rainy Lake , received orders to return to the Rocky Mountains and establish a route to the mouth of the Columbia. The North West Company was responding to the plans of American entrepreneur John Jacob Astor to send a ship around the Americas to establish a fur trading post of the Pacific Fur Company on the Pacific Coast. During his return, Thompson

5852-613: Was so deeply in debt he was forced to take up a position as a surveyor for the British American Land Company to provide for his family. His luck continued to worsen and he was forced to move in with his daughter and son-in-law in 1845. He began work on a manuscript chronicling his life exploring the continent, but this project was left unfinished when his sight failed him completely in 1851. The land mass mapped by Thompson amounted to 3.9 million square kilometres (1.5 million square miles) of wilderness (one-fifth of

5929-423: Was travelling. Two of the children, John (aged 5) and Emma (aged 7), died of round worms , a common parasite. By the time of Thompson's death, the couple had been married 57 years, the longest marriage known in Canada pre- Confederation . Upon his arrival back in Montreal, Thompson retired with a generous pension from the North West Company. He settled in nearby Terrebonne and worked on completing his great map,

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