Map of the North-West Territory of the Province of Canada from actual Survey during the years 1792-1812. This map made for the North West Company in 1813 and 1814 and delivered to the Honorable William McGillivray then agent Embraces the Region lying between 45 and 60 degrees North Latitude and 84 and 124 degrees West Longitude comprising the Survey’s and Discoveries of 20 years namely the Discovery and Survey of the Oregon Territory to the Pacific Ocean the Survey of the Athabasca Lake Slave River and Lake from which flows Mackenzie’s River to the Arctic Sea by Mr. Philip Turner the Route of Alexander Mackenzie in 1792 down part of Fraser’s river together with the Survey of this River to the Pacific Ocean by the late John Stuart of the North-West Company by David Thompson Astronomer and Surveyor.

Surveying for the North West Company, David Thompson [1770–1857] located the headwaters of the Mississippi River, crossed the Rocky Mountains and mapped the entire length of the Columbia River.
Thompson retired from the fur trade in 1812 and moved his family to Terrebonne near Montreal. He was given a special assignment to plot all the Company’s posts on a comprehensive map of the Canadian West using the astronomical observations he had carefully recorded.

Thompson’s map is approximately 213 centimetres (84″) high by 328 centimetres (129″) long. It gave an accurate depiction of the vast territory traversed by the fur trade and location of Company posts. [1]

The Western Portion of
British North America,
Showing the route followed by Lord Milton & Dr. Cheadle, from the Saskatchewan to British Columbia, 1863-4

In lower left-hand corner: “John Dower” folllowed by illegible characters.

Milton and Cheadle travelled through the Yellowhead Pass in 1863. This map first appears in the 7th edition of Milton and Cheadle’s book North-West Passage by Land:

The Illustrations of this Work are taken almost entirely from photographs and sketches taken on the spot, and will, it is hoped, possess a certain value and interest, as depicting scenes never before drawn by any pencil, and many of which had never previously been visited by any white man, some of them not even by an Indian. Our most cordial thanks are due to Mr. E. P. Leitch, and Messrs. Cooper and Linton, for the admirable manner in which they have been executed; and to Mr. Arrowsmith, for the great care and labour he has bestowed on working out the geography of a district heretofore so imperfectly known [1].

John A. Arrowsmith [1790–1873] was a prominent British cartographer.

John James Dower [1825–1901] was a mapmaker, print seller, and publisher based in London.

A – Fraser River Division
B – Cañon Division, territory now largely occupied by the Chilcotin
C – Lake Division
D – North Thompson Division

D’ – Kinbasket
D” – Former territory of the Iroquois Band
D”’ – Shuswap, Cree, and Iroquois mixed
E – Bonaparte Division

F – Kamloops Division.
G – Shuswap Lake Division.
G’ – Arrow Lake Band.
• – Villages.
+ – Former villages

Dotted area, territory recently occupied by the Chilcotin.
Area at head of Fraser River, enclosed by broken double lines, temporarily occupied by the Sekanai.

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James Alexander Teit (1864 —1922) was an anthropologist, photographer and guide who worked with Franz Boas to study Interior Salish First Nations peoples in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Accompanying Boaz, he was a member of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, a major anthropological expedition to Siberia, Alaska, and the northwest coast of Canada. The purpose of the expedition was to investigate the relationships among the peoples at each side of the Bering Strait.