With the history of the Missionary Society School at Red River the writer is not familiar, but he suspects the use there of a Cree grammar, edited by one Joseph Howse, who had been in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company fifteen years earlier than 1825. A copy of this book in the library of the writer mentions the warm interest its author, when in London, took in the missionary work of his (Protestant) church. In the fall of 1810 Joseph Howse was sent from the Saskatchewan across the Rocky Mountains in charge of an exploring party into the Kootenay and Flathead countries. He spent the winter of 1810-11 near Flathead Lake and was one of the first white men the Indians of that tribe ever came in contact with. Whether he communicated to them anything about the God of the white man is entirely conjectural, but possible.
The first white man known to have had actual contact with the Indians of the Flathead tribe in their own country and camps was David Thompson, of the North West Company of fur traders. He built a trading post on what is still known as Thompson's Prairie in November, 1809, and spent the winter of 1809-10 there; also that of 1811-12. He explored and mapped Flathead Lake and the Missoula country. He had discovered the source of the Columbia River and in 1811 surveyed that river from source to mouth. David Thompson was one of the most noted men connected with the history of the Columbia, and now rated as one of the greatest land geographers the British race ever produced. He was a devout man during his entire life.
In 1817, David Thompson was employed in the International Boundary Commission as their engineer in marking the line of the boundary between the United States and Canada from the Saint Lawrence River west to the Lake of the Woods. The commission also employed a naturalist, J. J. Bigsby, and the following is what Mr. Bigsby wrote in his book, Shoe and Canoe: "Mr. Thompson was a firm churchman; while most of our men were Roman Catholic. Many a time have I seen these uneducated Canadians most attentively and thankfully listen, as they sat upon some bank of shingle, to Mr. Thompson, while he read to them in most extraordinarily pronounced French, three chapters
