Howse, history and the spirit of exploration

Exploring history is a lot like exploring a strange new continent — there are lots of dead ends and false hopes, and the occasional high promontory that offers a clear view of, in one case, where we have been, and in the other, where we are going.

The earliest explorers of the Northwest provide a considerable challenge to those who followed them. Some, like Lewis and Clark, kept voluminous notes, which have allowed us to know more or less exactly where they have been. Others, however, left behind little or nothing in the way of written records that would help us to establish just where they had gone, and what they saw.

Such a one is Joseph Howse, who although an educated Englishman who in his later life wrote an acclaimed grammar of the Cree language, did little to document his travels in the Northwest as a trader on behalf of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

This weekend a Mountain Man Rendezvous was held in Kalispell to celebrate the bicentennial of Howse’s most illustrious expedition, which began at Fort Edmonton in Canada and crossed the Rocky Mountains south into Montana. It is known that Howse established a trading post somewhere on his travels in the years 1810 to 1811, but the exact location has remained, like so much else from that era, obscure.

Nonetheless, based on the research of the late Mark White, a Forest Service archaeologist from Libby, a group of dedicated history enthusiasts from the Northwest Montana Historical Society has concluded that Howse House (as the trading post was known) almost certainly was built and briefly flourished somewhere near Flathead Lake south of Kalispell.

Ron Beard, the executive coordinator for the Howse House Bicentennial Celebration, said that an exact location for the trading post may never be known, but that maps and original records from the Hudson’s Bay Company and other sources provide strong evidence that Howse House was located north of Flathead Lake.

Certainly makes sense, but a look back at earlier research on this matter provides ample evidence that every historical question is subject to doubt, dispute and debate.

Back on April 3, 1964, for instance, the Inter Lake ran a brief story that declared “Howse House Found To Be In Idaho.” It reported on the efforts of amateur historian and full-time Kalispell optometrist A.B. Braunberger to chart the movements of Howse in the 1807-1810 time frame and to locate the legendary Howse House using early journals and maps.

To quote the Inter Lake from nearly 50 years ago:

“The early Hudson Bay Co. trader was reported to have left Acton House in Saskatchewan and traveled to the Columbia River region, a journey which supposedly included wintering near Kalispell, a visit to the Jocko area, and a stay at the Kootenai House, Braunberger said.

“Braunberger told of his efforts to get information from libraries in England and of field research he and Thain White had made in search of evidence supporting the journal entries. He said the changed names given to rivers and sites made the research difficult but until someone proves them wrong, the local historians hold that their scant evidence leads to the conclusion that the Howse House was actually near Lake Pend Oreille, one time called Kullyspell Lake.”

A followup story from September 1964  about a meeting of the Flathead Historical Society, which was founded in March of that year, reported that Braunberger would read his paper on “Howe’s House” at the meeting. The paper was printed in the April-July edition of the Washington Archaeologist, and the Inter Lake promised that Braunberger’s talk would include “many interesting Indian and pioneer discoveries made by Dr. Braunberger, Thain White and Dr. Bruce Allison in the search for the old Hudson Bay trading post.”

It’s time now to stop and catch our breath. Cutting through the thickets of historical trivia is nearly as exhausting as blazing a trail over the Continental Divide, and it is wise to occasionally assess just where you are.

Braunberger and Thain White (no relation to Mark White) had been using historical documents to try to locate Howse House near Kalispell. Instead, they concluded that it was actually near Kullyspell (the old name for Lake Pend Oreille.

There is some logic to their conclusion based on what we know of Howse’s movements during that year of discovery. He was, after all, said to be on the Columbia River both before and after his time in the Flathead. But there is no way to be sure what Columbia River or even what Flathead Lake is intended by the original explorers. After all, the Columbia River was known as the Kootoonay and the Kootenai River was known as the Flat Bow. The Flathead itself was known as Saleesh or Salish, and yet the Saleesh House trading post built by Howse’s competitor was located on what is now known as the Clark Fork. To confuse matters further the Saleesh House was also known as the Flathead Post.

Heck, even the name of Howse has been juggled and jumbled throughout the past 200 years. Just as the Inter Lake changed it from Howse House in April 1964 to Howe’s House in September of the same year, there has been a plain and simple confusion about Joseph Howse almost from the beginning.

This in part seems to stem from the presence in Canada of another trader by the name of Jasper Hawes, after whose first name the town of Jasper and Jasper National Park in Alberta are named. In some sources, it is stated with absolute certainty that Howse Pass in Canada was named for Jasper Hawse, not Joseph Howse. In the online “History of Glacier National Park” on the National Park Service website, for instance, it is flatly declared that, “In 1809 Joseph Howse (not Jasper Howse for whom the pass was named) followed [David] Thompson over  the pass, and in 1810 he took a Hudson’s Bay party onto the Pacific slope.”

An article in the Inter Lake in 1958 about Alberta history again referred to Jasper Howse, and yet there is little doubt that his name was Hawes. It seems probable that the confusion stems from the fact that his trading post was changed from Rocky Mountain House to Jasper House sometime around 1814, and his name may have gotten changed in the local vernacular from Hawes to Howse as a result.

The honor for the most ambitious attempt to skirt the matter of the real name of Joseph Howse undoubtedly has to go to Sidney M. Logan, the one-time mayor of Kalispell, who in a 1926 story in the Great Falls Tribune about David Thompson and the early fur trade, wrote this:

“The Hudson’s Bay company ... trading post ... was in charge of Joe Howes (or Jasper Hawes, Howse of House, as he is variously called by David Thompson).” Logan did his best to cover all the bases, but somehow he missed the most accurate spelling of Howse’s name, and managed to get him totally confused with Jasper Hawes.

Oh well, that does not diminish Logan’s many other accomplishments, including a significant role in locating the site of Howse House for posterity, which we shall look at momentarily.

Logan’s 1926 article was his record of a visit to the Flathead by two esteemed authorities on David Thompson to establish the exact location from which Thompson had been the first white man to supposedly view Flathead Lake. At that time, and probably still to this day, there was some dispute about whether or not Thompson had actually seen the lake, but Logan was the chauffeur for T.C. Elliott and J.B. Tyrrell when they visited the hills south of Flathead Lake, and in his mind:

“There is and can be no doubt that on the day noted above, Mr. Tyrrell and Mr. Elliott definitely located the spot mentioned by Thompson as the one from which he obtained a good view of the lake.”  

With those words — in particular “no doubt” and “definitely” —  Logan established himself as an eternal optimist when it comes to the capabilities of historians to do more than “come close” to the truth. Such a view was no doubt the opposite of that held by Dr. Braunberger and Thain White, who only asserted that what they knew about Howse House was the truth “until someone proved them wrong.”

That being said, let’s take a look at some final facts that do indeed seem to prove wrong the theory that Howse House was located on Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho.

First of all, Sidney Logan took a stab at locating Howse House in his reporting for the Great Falls Tribune, and he actually provided the most specific location I have been able to find. In that paragraph about “Joe Howes” cited above, Logan had written that “six miles to the north of [Flathead] lake, at the mouth of Ashley Creek, the Hudson’s Bay company established a trading post in Thompson’s day” — namely the Howse House.

This would put the trading post in the general location of where historic Demersville was later settled, and then abandoned, and quite near the location suggested by the research of archaeologist Mark White.

That general location, rather than Lake Pend Oreille also seems to be confirmed by one of the few extant accounts by Joseph Howse himself on his adventures as a fur trader.

As reported by H. Christoph Wolfart in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, Howse in his later years gave a brief rundown of his journey to Montana in a letter to the governor of the Hudson’s Bay Co., Sir George Simpson, in 1843. There he wrote that he had “...crossed the Rocky Mounts in the Summer and Autumn of 1810” and described that he had “ascended the Kootoonay [Columbia] River — carried into the Flat-Bow [Kootenay] River — descended by the most Southly Bight of it — crossed (Portage Poil de Custer) to Flathead River... where we built.”

This is a strong confirmation for the accuracy of Sidney Logan’s reporting, and a “vote of confidence” in his confident view of history, for the “mouth of Ashley Creek” where Logan located the camp of “Joe Howes” is indeed on a loop of the Flathead River.

It should be noted also that according to Wolfart’s reporting, James McMillan of the North West Company, which also employed David Thompson, had been assigned the task of keeping an eye on their competitor Howse, and McMillan kept a contemporaneous record of where Howse was reported to be. When McMillan left to return to Canada on Dec. 12, “Howse was reported to be wintering on or near Flathead Lake.”

McMillan’s account, in turn, is confirmed by the journal of James Bird, a colleague of Howse with the Hudson’s Bay Co., who wrote in his journal:   

“Two Canadians arrived at our neighbors who brought us letters from Acton House. From these letters and from the information of our neighbour, I am acquainted that two of the North West Company clerks. Arrived at Acton House on January 23, from the plasce at whixh Joseph Howse is wintering which they left on December 12, they have brought no letters from Joseph Howse; but we have the satisfaction of knowing that he reached the place of his destination in safety, and that they left him and his party in good health.”

Two more pieces of evidence seem to cement the deal.

One is contained in a story about Flathead Lake in a 1975 historical supplement published by The Daily Inter Lake. The author, Olga Johnson, concluded along with Dr. Braunberger and Thain White, that “it seems evident from further study of Howse’s notes that the ‘Flathead Lake’ of his report was in reality Pend d’Oreille Lake.”

As we noted earlier, the naming conventions for geographical landmarks were not yet well-established in the early 1800s, and Johnson claims that Flathead Lake “was one of four or five different name by which Thompson referred to what we now know as Pend d’Oreille Lake.”

But consider what Johnson chooses to ignore. As she herself states, “An Arrowsmith map (Canadian) of 1814 marked ‘Howse House’ at the head of what is now known as Flathead Lake.”

The Arrowsmith map is in fact English not Canadian, and probably not from 1814, but more likely from 1821 after the Arrowsmith company had obtained the maps of none other than David Thompson from the Hudson’s Bay Company after it had merged with the North West Company. Thompson was noted for his accurate mapping abilities, and it is almost impossible that he should have misplaced Howse House by a degree of several hundred miles. Thompson knew and respected Joseph Howse, and even named Howse Pass after him, so there is no likelihood he would have been unsure about where his competitor had put his fur trading post.

Finally, in an article in the Butte Montana Standard of Dec. 25, 1936, comes this unexpected Christmas story told by Dr. Kroeze, president of Jamestown College in North Dakota, to a noontime meeting of the Butte Rotarians on Christmas Eve.

As reported by the Standard, “The most thrilling of the early day Christmas celebrations [in Montana] was that of Joseph Howse in 1810, the speaker said. Howse was a scout for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the district between Flathead Lake and Kalispell whose record was recently found in London. According to this record Howse spent Christmas day evading a pursuing party of Blackfeet Indians. He managed to reach the Salish Indians who protected him from his pursuers ‘and contrived to get back to his camp in time to eat a bite and take a drink in honor of Christmas.’”

Exactly how President Kroeze had come by his information about Joseph Howse’s Christmas of 1810, I am not at all sure, but what I do know for certain is this — it proves that both exploration and history are sometimes a cause of great danger and yet, if handled well, always a matter of great celebration.