Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West

Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West

Jenish, D'Arcy

Paperback

Adventurers & ExplorersHistorical FiguresCanadian History

Publisher Price: $19.95

ISBN10: 0803224524
ISBN13: 9780803224520
Publisher: Bison Books
Published: Jun 1 2009
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.95
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English

Well illustrated and served well by a thorough bibliography, this imaginative reconstruction will whet readers' appetites to seek out the copious literature on Thompson, the 'epic wanderer.' --Choice

Epic Wanderer, the first full-length biography of mapmaker David Thompson (1770-1857), is set in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries against the broad canvas of dramatic rivalries between the United States and British North America, between the Hudson's Bay Company and its Montreal-based rival, the North West Company, and among the various First Nations thrown into disarray by the advent of guns, horses, and alcohol.

Less celebrated than his contemporaries Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Thompson spent nearly three decades, beginning in 1784, surveying and mapping more than 1.2 million square miles of largely uncharted Indian territory. Traveling across the prairies, over the Rockies, and on to the Pacific, Thompson transformed the raw data of his explorations into a map of the Canadian West. Measuring ten feet by seven feet and exhibiting astonishing accuracy, the map became essential to the politicians and diplomats who would decide the future of the rich and promising lands of the West. Yet its creator worked without personal glory and died in penniless obscurity.

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