Sanders County Ledger - Your Best Source For Sanders County News

90 YEARS AGO • SEPTEMBER, 1933

THOMPSON FALLS WILL CELEBRATE

Monument to David Thompson, Explorer, Will Be unveiled Today.

Taken from the September 4, 1933 issue of the Spokesman Review, continued from last week:

There were no rooms in the hotel (now the Black Bear) for a large crowd had come to the Thompson celebration (the unveiling of the David Thompson monument east of town by the high school turn off). 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 alright. 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. They 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 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 on the side of the mountain below the falls."

A mile east we stopped at the David Thompson monument.

"This is a good monument," he told us. "But it is not where 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. (James Ashley is the man who named Montana; he proposed the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime; and he was the man who authored the motion to impeach President Andrew Johnson. President Grant appointed him governor of Montana territory in 1868 and served until 1870.) 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 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 cannot 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.

"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 at 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 cannot say that the charcoal came from the traders' 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 cannot 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."