DAVID THOMPSON AND BEGINNINGS IN IDAHO 57
June 29th, 1784. "On the 20th May David Thompson, a mathematical boy belonging to this Hosp-1 was bound to the Hudson's Bay Company & the Treas. then paid Mr. Thomas Hutchins, Corresponding Secretary to the said Company, the sum of five pounds for taking said boy apprentice for seven years."
These brief extracts sufficiently disclose a boyhood spent under conditions of poverty and with very little of personal attention by a loving mother, but under strict observation and schooling which plainly marked his future habits, and at the tender age of fourteen he is landed in September, 1784, on the bleak shores of Hudson's Bay at Fort Churchill to begin the life of a fur trader in a region where the presence of white women was unknown. His only companions are to be men and Indians.
When David Thompson began his seven years of apprentice- ship the Hudson's Bay Company had been in business for more than one hundred years, but their rivals in the field were just organizing into the well known North West Company, under the leadership of certain astute Scotchmen of Montreal. The practice had been that the Indian of the remote interior would carry his furs to the trading posts at or near Hudson's Bay but now the order had been reversed and the rival traders vied with each other in carrying their goods into the Indian country. So after two years of office and store duties at Churchill and York our hero found himself assigned to field service and in company with those who ascended the rivers and built trading posts and even lived in tents for a time near the Indian en- campments, although the winter season was usually spent at one of the established posts.
In this sort of life the next eleven years were passed, during which he very luckily found himself able to indulge his great fondness for mathematics. The trade was carried on with system and intelligence and an attempt made to map the country as the business expanded and among the officers were men
