FUR TRADE IN COLUMBIA BASIN PRIOR TO 1811 245
The Kootenay River, taking its rise in the main range of the Rocky Mountains, flows southward into the United States in Montana, and in its course passes within a mile and a half of the lake out of which as its real source the waters of the Columbia River flow northward for 200 miles before turning to the south. The divide between Columbia Lake and the Kootenay River is not a ridge or a mountain, but a level flat of gravelly soil not at all heavily timbered, which affords a very easy portage for canoes. Across this portage in November, 1808, went Finan McDonald, Mr. Thompson's clerk, with a load of trading goods, and descended the Kootenay River to a point on the north bank, just above Kootenay Falls, and nearly opposite to the town of Libby, which is the county seat of Lincoln County, Montana, and there set up two leather lodges for himself and his men, and built a log house to protect the goods and furs and spent the winter, being joined later by James McMillan, already mentioned. Here, during the winter of 1808–9, were carried on the first commercial transactions of white men south of the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, and in that part of the Old Oregon Country which afterward became a part of the United States.
News travels rapidly among the Indians and later events indicate that furs must have been brought to this winter camp from the Saleesh or Flathead country to the southeast, and from the region of Pend d'Oreille Lake to the southwest. About three years later, at a point a few miles further up the Kootenay River, but on the same side (nearly opposite Jennings, Montana), the North-West Company erected a more permanent trading post, known as Fort Kootenay, in opposition to which, in 1812, the Pacific Fur Company built another fort near by. At Fort Kootenay took place the bloodless duel between Nicholas Montour and Francis Pillet "with pocket pistols at six paces; both hits; one in the collar of the coat, and the other in the leg of the trousers. Two of their men acted as seconds, and the tailor speedily healed their wounds." This is the story told by the facile pen of Ross Cox.
