DAVID THOMPSON AND BEGINNINGS IN IDAHO 59
association with such men as Alex. Mackenzie and Simon Fraser, the MacTavishes and McGillivrays and others. His movements took him to all the lakes and rivers between Lake Superior and the Rocky mountains, to the Mandan villages on the Missouri, to the source of the Mississippi and through the marshes and lakes between that source and Lake Superior, along the south shore of that lake to the straits of Mackinaw, to Peace river and the Athabasca and into the defiles of the Rocky mountains. And when in 1806 he was given the au- thority to cross the mountains and carry the trade to the regions not yet traversed by the foot of white men he was a happy man indeed.
Of David Thompson's career west of the Rocky mountains something has already been said. He was in charge of the business of his company in this district for five years and established trade relations with all the tribes of the extensive Saleesh family in the Columbia Basin. The observations he recorded as to the habits of these Indians and their future are of absorbing interest and have become true in their later history. His prediction as to the future development of the country has also been fulfilled. Because of his scientific ob- servations he became known to the Indians as Koo-Koo-Sint or the star man. In his journey down the Columbia to its mouth in 1811 he had with him a copy of the journal of Patrick Gass, the only journal then published covering the travels of the Lewis and Clark party. He not only was the discoverer of the source of the long looked for Columbia river, but was the first traveler upon the upper three-fourths of its entire length. His contributions to the ethnology and geographic knowledge of this district exceed that of any other one person. He left the Columbia in the spring of 1812 by way of the Athabasca pass and had then opened to use the first regular line of communication across the continent (Latin America excepted) over which mail and express were carried from Montreal (and from New York and Boston for that mat-
