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Reviews
Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West
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By D'Arcy Jenish
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University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2004. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. 406 pages. $29.95 cloth.
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Reviewed by Arn Keeling
Montana State University, Bozeman
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| Though events to mark the North AmericanDavid Thompson bicentennial are planned for 2007–2011, they will likely only faintly echo the noisy celebrations of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In typically Canadian fashion, the bicentennial (see www.davidthompson200.ca) aims to commemorate the explorer and trader as a model of "inter-cultural cooperation" rather than "undaunted courage." But as D'Arcy Jenish's biography shows, many regard Thompson (1770–1857) as the embodiment of a nascent Canadian nationalism. Jenish, a Toronto-based author, portrays Thompson as a patriot and hero and as a skilled explorer, trader, and surveyor whose accomplishments in opening the Oregon country were betrayed by British colonial disinterest and American expansionism. |
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Though less well-known than fur trader-explorers Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser, Thompson's exploits were extraordinary. As an employee of first the Hudson's Bay Company (hbc), then the North West Company (nwc), Thompson traveled thousands of miles across North America by canoe, foot, and horse. After learning to calculate geographical location using celestial observations taken with a sextant, he surveyed a remarkable 1.2 million square miles of the continent. His 1813–1814 "Map of the Northwest Territory of the Province of Canada" provided the first largely accurate, synoptic view of the western interior and its landforms from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast. |
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Jenish recounts the life and work of Thompson from his arrival in North America as an apprentice clerk with the HBC in 1784 to his declining years, spent as a land surveyor in Williamstown and Montreal. Written for a popular audience, it draws largely from Thompson's daily journals and the narrative — drafted later in life — of his western travels. Jenish presents a lively version of the explorer's adventures, detailing the hardships of life on the trail, Thompson's interactions with aboriginal peoples, and the vast country he traversed. |
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Jenish's desire to reclaim Thompson as a Canadian hero shapes the narrative. Earlier historians have disputed Thompson's legacy and role in the extension of British (and Canadian) interests in the North American West. Though Thompson became the first European to descend the length of the Columbia River in 1811, he was preceded by Lewis and Clark's arrival at the mouth of the river and, by a matter of weeks, the establishment of the American Pacific Fur Company's Fort Astoria. Thompson has been accused of cowardice, even treachery, in his failure to win the "race to the sea." Echoing Barbara Belyea's recent reappraisal, Jenish defends Thompson as committed to advancing British interests (along with commercial ones) in the Oregon territory. |
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Key to Jenish's argument is his description of Thompson's post-exploration efforts to publish his "great map" of the West (p. 189). Against the backdrop of the War of 1812, subsequent eastern boundary surveys, and diplomatic disputes over the Oregon territory, Thompson repeatedly attempted to interest both colonial leaders and the British Foreign Office in his map and descriptions of the lands beyond the Rocky Mountains. Impoverished and in failing health, Thompson endured the ignominy of having his map ig-nored by the authorities while having his discoveries incorporated — uncredited — by London mapmakers. Jenish contends that Britain's cession to the United States of the territory north of the Columbia River up to the forty-ninth parallel occurred in spite of Thompson's efforts as a cartographer, not because of his failures as an explorer. |
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Given the crucial place of surveying and cartography in this biography, it is surprising to find so few maps reproduced or redrawn. Thompson's massive (6'9" × 10'4") map is reprinted on the endsheet in this hardcover edition but is nearly impossible to read. Details from the map are shown at the head of several chapters but do not offer the pleasure that, as Jenish notes, the nwc's William McGillivray felt upon perusing the extent of the Nor'Westers' commercial empire. To compensate, the publishers should have considered including a fold-out map, as well as maps tracing Thompson's routes across the Prairies, through the Rockies, and down the Columbia. I found myself scrambling for historical atlases and current maps to follow the twists and turns of Thompson's parties. Readers unfamiliar with the Canadian interior will find the absence of reference maps frustrating. |
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Nor does Jenish adequately assess Thomp-son as a cartographer. Thompson's contributions to nineteenth-century cartography remain obscure, perhaps because his efforts went for so long unrecognized. Geographers and historians have recently begun to examine the role that toponyms, cadastral surveys, and cartography played in extending European power and control over subject peoples and nature. Jenish hints (albeit positively) at this ideological project: "There was an idea embedded in the map, an idea found in the title: the North-West Territory of the Province of Canada" (p. 292). But the wider implications of Thompson's idea for aboriginal peoples and environments in North American remain unexamined in the rush to proclaim him a national hero. |
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