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Updated: June 28, 2025
Henry reached the Pacific coast in 1814, by way of the Kootenay, Spokane, and Columbia River route, which had been discovered by David Thompson.
The papers were full of it at the time; but after that nothing was said, and I knew they had gone back where more gold could be got from the ground. 'They had dropped out of the world, being now poor, and so I wandered from camp to camp, even north to the Kootenay country, where I picked up the cold scent.
He had undoubtedly found the River of the West, but he had learned nothing of its course to the sea. During nearly all of 1809 Thompson was exploring the Kootenay river and its branches through Idaho and Montana. Still no path had he found to the sea. In 1810 he seems to have gone east for instructions from his company. What the instructions were we may conjecture from subsequent developments.
January 28th. I'm back at the battery, sitting by a cosy fire. I might be up at Kootenay by the look of my surroundings. I'm in a shack with a really truly floor, and a window looking out on moonlit whiteness. If it wasn't for the tapping of the distant machine guns tapping that always sounds to me like the nailing up of coffins I might be here for pleasure.
But Brown, who had returned alone to the camp in the morning, now came back, packing an immense bundle of all the tinned delicacies he could find, which, truth to tell, were few. He knew some words in Kootenay, and led Catharine on to reveal the strange history that sounded like some tale from fairyland.
Now, while Thompson spent the winter of 1806-7 between the Peace and the North Saskatchewan, trading and exploring, he doubtless learned of Fraser's explorations west of the Rockies and of the vast extent of New Caledonia; and June 1807 saw him over the mountains on the Kootenay plains, where to his infinite delight he came upon a turbulent river, whose swollen current flowed towards the Pacific.
"I came from the North myself." The stranger had apparently forgotten him and was gazing steadily into the fire. Suddenly, with extraordinary energy, he sprang from the ground where he had been sitting. "Now," he cried, "en avant!" "Where to?" asked Cameron, rising to his feet. "East Kootenay, all the way, and hustle's the word." "Not me," said Cameron. "I must get back to my camp.
In the same year Herchmer calls attention to the highly pleasing fact that the introduction of the telephone would lead to an enormous saving of men and horses, and notes the able and diplomatic way in which Superintendent Steele, assisted by Inspectors Wood, Huot and Surgeon Powell, had quieted matters in the Kootenay country where Chief Isadore's attitude had discouraged settlement.
What happened in Kootenay was largely repeated ten years later in Klondike and ten years yet later in Cobalt, and it must not be forgotten that when Canadian capital refused to bond the nickel mines of Sudbury, it was American capital that dared the risk.
At the Kootenay Falls, for example, they are taken by spearing, and in huge baskets submerged in the water below the falls. The salmon, during the spring run, weigh from six to forty pounds, and are taken in the greatest abundance, three thousand a day not being an unusual number.
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