Old Missoula

David Thompson’s Salish Offspring

Duncan McDonald Visits Place Where Thompson Rested

Memories

Duncan McDonald Visits Place Where Thompson Rested.

By Fred J. Ward.

Thompson Falls, Sept 5. – (Special) – The writer had gone to the train to meet Dr. Paul Phillips, who was to come to Thompson Falls to dedicate the David Thompson monument on Labor day. He was not there.

Only four or five passengers got off and all of them were strangers. Frank Foster, the assessor of Sanders county, who was taking the noon train for the west shook hands with a tall old man. He led him to the car about 20 feet from the coach.

“Shake hands with Mr. Duncan McDonald,” he said.

Duncan McDonald regarded the writer with black eyes which, for all the man’s age have lost none of their brightness. He is an old Indian almost six feet high and straight as an arrow. He was wearing a blue coat and a polka dot shirt. A necktie was pinned to his shirt front. He carried a crooked cane of polished mahogany whose handle was a short portion of slender branch set at an oblique angle. When he speaks he motions with his left hand. He is left handed.

“I am glad to meet you,” he said, with the formal dignity which is so often found among the Indians. Frank Foster is my old friend. I wish to go to the hotel. I will get in your car if you are not in a hurry. I am old. I can not get into cars very fast.” He deposited a small brown bag on the floor of the car.

Hotel Crowded.

There were no rooms in the hotel for a large crowd had come to the Thompson celebration. Mrs. Shannon promised to have a room later in the afternoon.

“I will leave my grip with you,” he told Mrs. Shannon. “If you do not have a room for me tonight it will be all right. I have been here by the falls of the river many times without shelter.”

The man had not eaten. We went into the dining room next door. Before we had sat down we met some members of the David Thompson committee. There were H. B. Armeling and James Adams. James Adams had known Duncan McDonald for 35 years.

“I wish to see Mr. Alvord,” Duncan McDonald told us. “He is my friend. Last week he wrote me a letter asking me to come to Thompson Falls. He said that a monument had been erected to David Thompson. David Thompson was a great man. He lived among my people. (The Salish Indians). They called him Koo-Koo-Sint, which means in our language, ‘The Man Who Looks at the Stars.’ He had a woman among the Salish. His descendants still live on the reservation.”

A. L. Anderson, the mayor was added to our crowd. We started east along main street, in the direction of the monument, which stands where the Clark’s Fork highway skirts the lake shore.

“I am an old man,” Duncan McDonald told us as we drove along main street. “But I see many men in your town who are as old as I am. I was here many years ago. I had a hole where I dug for gold in the side of the mountain below the falls.”

A mile east we stopped at the David Thompson monument.

Not on Site.

“This is a good monument,” he told us. “But it is not where the Salish house stood.”

When it was explained to him that we had not intended to put the monument where Salish House had stood, but along the highway where people could see it, he appeared satisfied.

We drove on east. “No,” he told us in answer to a question. “As far back as I can remember there was no mouth of Ashley creek. (Some accounts had described Salish House as standing at the mouth of Ashley creek). Ashley creek emptied in a pond below the edge of a flat. There was a cabin by this pond in 1868. I visited this cabin that fall. In front of it, sitting on a log I saw the governor of Montana. His name was Ashley. Perhaps the creek was named in his honor. I spoke to the governor. That was the summer after they killed Mickey Hunt. Mickey was buried below the trail this side of the ford across Thompson river.”

We turned in at a gate, three miles east of town, and drove along the lane to the river. The road has not been used for a long time, except recently when the committee set about to locate the ancient site of Salish house. Duncan McDonald recognized the country.

“To the left of us,” he said, “There was once a prairie. The ground was bare. And from the trail where it reached the flat this side of Bad rock you could see the chimneys of Salish house. The buildings were no longer standing but the stone chimneys remained. There were three chimneys. I have seen them when I was young.”

When we had stopped the car by the flat above the river he explained the location of a fur trading post.

“I can not remember exactly where the chimneys stood,” he said. “The fur trader would put his lodges close to the trees so as to be away out of the winter wind. The tall trees began here. The forest extended to the west.”

Located on Flat.

“They had their post on the flat above the river. They never put their buildings along the banks. There were unfriendly Indians in the mountain country. The white men would put their post at a place where they could see the approach of anyone who might intend to shoot them.”

He was shown soil with charcoal integrated with it, which the members of the committee had thought came from one of the fireplaces of the post.

“No,” he said. “I can not say that the charcoal came from the trader’s fireplace. The Indians often built fires to cure their meat. Perhaps it was an Indian fire. Perhaps it was the fire of the white man. It was a long time ago. They have cleared away the timber from the flat. The logs were dragged over the ground. The little trees that are growing here were not here 20 years ago.

“I knew Mary Suzanne. Her mother was kicked by a horse and killed. She was buried close to Salish House. The daughter did not find her grave. The daughter is now dead.

“I can not tell you men where the woman is buried. I am not sure where Salish House once stood. But I am sure that it was not far from where we are standing.”

 

The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on September 6, 1933.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/352127634

 

The Canadian explorer, David Thompson, married Charlott Small, a mixed blood Cree lady, in 1799. She often traveled with him as he journeyed to the west. If he fathered children of Salish descent, it was not widely acknowledged. It was acknowledged that several of his employs did establish relationships with Salish women.

 

Duncan McDonald was born in Montana in 1849, the son of Hudson’s Bay Trader Angus McDonald. He participated in an earlier archaeological exploration in 1923. He was invited by citizens of the Pend d’Oreille Idaho Pioneer Society to assist them in locating the nearby “Kullyspel house,” a fur trading post. McDonald asked the blind Alex Kai Too, a Kalispell Indian from Arlee, to accompany him to Idaho where they helped to establish a possible location for fur trade buildings. An article in The Missoulian on September 16, 1923 featured a photograph of the two as they led Idaho researchers to piles of stones allegedly used to build chimneys for the settlement. The article is linked below:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/352304527/?terms=%22Duncan%2BMcDonald%22

 

Also, linked below is an interesting article about Kullyspel House in Idaho:

http://www.sandpointonline.com/sandpointmag/sms09/david_thompson.html