British fur agent, surveyor, explorer, and cartographer David Thompson was born on the outskirts of London in April 1770. His Welsh father died before Thompson turned two years old, and the boy was placed at Grey Coat Hospital, where he received an education in writing, mathematics, and vocational skills. At the age of fourteen, he entered into an apprenticeship with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and was sent to Fort Churchill. While working as a clerk, he developed a working knowledge of the Cree language and the natural history of Upper Canada.
Thompson spent the winter of 1789-1790 at Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan River, recuperating from a fractured leg. It was there that he met Philip Turnor, the HBC's most respected cartographer. Pursuing the opportunity with characteristic enthusiasm, Thompson emerged from Turnor's tutelage as a rising star in the company's surveying ranks. In the spring of 1797, he switched his allegiance to the rival North West Company in order to do more work as a cartographer. By the following June he had carried out an ambitious journey of exploration, where he produced a map with the first accurate positions of the Missouri River's bend through the Dakotas.
In 1799, Thompson married Charlotte Small, a mixed-blood Cree, and the following fall they were assigned to the North West Company's new Rocky Mountain House on the upper Saskatchewan River. Several of the company partners hoped to use this post as a staging area to develop a trade route from the Rockies to the Pacific via the Columbia River, but attempts to survey a route to the Columbia were not successful. In 1802, Thompson was posted to Peace River in northern Alberta.
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