Posted on 04/15/2012 7:48:33 PM PDT by Rebelbase
Interesting.... but is David Thompsom any relation to Jim Thompson?? ;)
For sheer grit and determination you have to read about Hugh Glass, a trapper who was mauled by a grizzly bear and then left for dead by his companions, Jim Bridger and John Fitzgerald.
He crawled from somewhere on the headwaters of the Missouri back to Fort Kiowa, hundreds of miles distant through Indian country.
After recovering from his wounds, he went looking for the men who left him for revenge.
It’s a helluva story.
I think the two definitive books are probably Hugh Glass, Mountain Man and Lord Grizzly.
What a wonderful story. Thank you.
A good read.
Thanks. Will pursue this further as it sound interesting.
I’m embarrassed I’ve not heard of David Thompson. What an incredible man!
Nothing against Thompson but the article is cloyingly PC
“His journals are available online at this link”
Have you downloaded it all? I’d like to read it, but I hate to click a zillion links.
Start here. At the top of the page is a Navigation tab for Next Page.
http://link.library.utoronto.ca/champlain/DigObj.cfm?Idno=9_96855&lang=eng&Page=0002&Size=3&query=thompson%20AND%20david&searchtype=Author&startrow=1&Limit=All
Hardly.
Without prejudice, alcohol has done as much for American Indians as cocaine did for yuppies, only yuppies tended not to kill each other.
The women were prudent in their actions.
Thanks, but you know what? I found a full text version, which is better for me because I can adjust the text size as large as I like.
I’m really looking forward to reading it. Thanks for clueing me in.
Thanks for this. I’ve already sent it to several people.
“80,000 miles in the field is good for today, particularly for land travel.”
Based on other articles about him, that distance is hyped. Most of them have it at 55,000.
When I reckon the years and estimate the progeny, It works out that David Thompson could very well have been the great great great grandfather of our own Jim Thompson.
b4l
So were his wife’s. 13 kids???? AGH!!!!!
Two or three are work!!!
But then there were no leftist bloodsucking college professors to pay off.
Amazing what Smith accomplished in his relatively short life. A couple of years ago, I went to the approximate area of his death at the hands of the Comanches near the Cimarron River (south of Ulysses, Kansas). There is a marker placed there by the Kansas Historical Society but it's 3-4 miles off a state highway down a single-lane dirt road.
Thanks for your post. it led me to the following link where his 746 pages of writings allows one to read online or download via several venues. I am currently reading it on Kindle and finding it fascinating.
Self taught in the usage of a sextant, his celestial navigation and maps of places are either proven spot on, or very close by satellite GPS today. His contemporaneous very detailed narratives of native peoples, their life styles, dress, modes of living, villages, abodes, weapons and accouterments reveals his interest, understanding and admiration of them.
In the eyes of American historians Thompson had two irredeemable faults, he was British first and Canadian second.
http://archive.org/details/davidthompsonsna00thom
IMO Smith was a flop in most everything he undertook, He is mostly noted for always getting men in his party killed by the Indians, then the Comanches killed him.
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