David L. Nicandri 1911 Pacific Avenue Tacoma, WA 98402 (253) 798-5900 Email David

David Nicandri is director of the Washington State Historical Society and received his Masters of Arts in 19th Century American History from the University of Idaho and in May 2001, received an honorary doctorate from Gonzaga University for his work in public historical education in May 2001. His love of history has led him to be an active member on several boards and committees, including the Legislative Oral History Advisory Committee; the Building for the Arts Advisory Board for the Washington State Department of Community, Trade and Economic Departments; and the Tacoma Advisory Committee for the University of Washington,. He has also presented papers and delivered addresses regarding Washington and the Pacific Northwest at conferences and association meetings. His publications include "Isaac I. Stevens and the Expeditionary Artists of the Northern West" in the anthology Encounters with a Distant Land: Exploration and the Great Northwest, as well as numerous articles on Northwest history. Nicandri is also executive editor of Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. This is his fourth term as an Inquiring Mind speaker.

The Columbia River as Imperial Prize:
Mackenzie, Clark, and Thompson, 1793-1811
Lewis and Clark's understanding of the Columbia River based, in part, upon their reading of Canadian Fur Trader and explore Alexander Mackenzie's Voyages from Montreal. Recounting Mackenzie's two trans-continental voyages (to the Artic in 1789 and the Pacific in 1793), Voyages was veritable the call to arms for the young United States and its President, Thomas Jefferson. By all accounts, Jefferson was prompted to generate what became knows as the Lewis and Clark Expedition by the strategic flourish contained at the end of Mackenzie's tome. Therein the Nor'Wester composed a vision of how British commercial interests could dominate the North American fur trade by relying on the Columbia River to gain access to the interior of the continent in one direction, and outward to Asia in another.

The so-called "Corps of Discovery" arrived at the main fork of this same Columbia River in October 1805, William Clark's account was strangely muted in its rhetoric of discovery. The standard interpretation for this silence in the face of what nominally should have been a moment of triumph is the American party's earlier discernment of the complex geography at the Continental Divide, which pre-empted Jeffersonian dreams of a simple Missouri to Columbia commercial path. A contrary view presented in this talk suggests that the great moment of disappointment for the American expedition came not with Lewis at the Continental Divide, but rather with William Clark at the forks of the Columbia in today's eastern Washington.

Of course, Mackenzie had not been on the Columbia River but rather one that would later named by fellow Nor'Wester David Thompson for their confrere, Simon Fraser; a geographic insight that came after Lewis & Clark. By outlining the Columbian exploration of David Thompson, who fount eh true headwaters of the Great River of the West for the imperial powers, we will discern how Thompson attempted to become Mackenzie's heir in reinforcing British claims to the river's watershed in the face of the Lewis & Clark challenge. The presentation concludes with a discussion on the Oregon Boundary settlement, a debate Thompson lived long enough to witness.


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