Koo-Koo-Sint, Stargazer

Born This Day Series, Social Media Content

David Thompson, also known as Koo-Koo-Sint, or ‘The Stargazer’, began life in Westminster, at a school for destitute children. He was good at math and was trained for the Royal Navy. Instead, he became a servant of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which shipped him to Canada. He worked as a clerk, learned the fur trade, and refined his surveying skills. When he had completed his indenture, instead of accepting the set of clothing that all other clerks got, he asked for a set of surveying tools (they gave him both).  Still in the employ of The Company, he became a fur trader, but he also had integrity. Fed up with HBC’s promotion of alcohol to the native peoples, he walked 80 miles in the snow and asked The North West Company for a job.

By then, he was well-known for his map-making skills. The North West Company sent him south, to map Lake Superior and the headwaters of the Mississippi, then west to open a trading post in Alberta, where he began leading expeditions into the Rockies. In 1804, he became a partner in the North West Company; two years later, in answer to the Lewis and Clark expedition, he was sent to find a route to the Pacific. Along the way, he lost an eye and gained a nickname.

In 1814, Thompson completed his Great Map, which covered the area stretching from Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean. It was so accurate, the Canadian government used it for the next 100 years. He then finished his Hudson Bay-Pacific Ocean atlas; it was published in 1843. He tried to write his field notes into a book but, by then, he had lost the vision in his remaining eye. He died in 1857; his death ended his marriage of 57 years, the longest marriage recorded in pre-Confederation Canada.

David Thompson traveled 56,000 North American miles, mapping 1.9 million square miles along the way. That’s one-fifth of the continent. If there’s something near you, like a river, a lake, a peak or a glacier, and the name ‘Thompson’ is on it, you can think of him.  He is known as the greatest land geographer the world has ever known.