Indian legends have long memories, and their oral histories often speak of strange things that are usually revealed to only a few select and privileged outsiders. One well-documented and persistent fable that was openly repeated among them was the belief that wooly mammoths still roamed freely among the high, icy landscapes of the Rocky Mountains early in the 19th century. President Thomas Jefferson considered it a distinct possibility, and he ordered Lewis and Clark to gather any information they could about mammoths while they were exploring the uncharted western regions of the continent. Needless to say, the famous duo failed to uncover any evidence of living mammoths in the Rocky Mountains, but one famous explorer may have come very close to a mammoth encounter, just a few years later.

David Thompson had been apprenticed into the Hudson’s Bay Company at the age of fourteen. Born in 1770 of Welsh descent, he came to the Canadian wilderness from the Grey Coat School of Westminster, where he had been trained in mathematics. The school was a royal foundation designed “to educate poor children in the principles of piety and virtue,” and was formerly a monastery belonging to Westminster Abbey. He and another classmate had been chosen to make the long voyage from England to Hudson’s Bay, where they would serve a seven-year apprenticeship with the fur trading company. Upon hearing this unwelcome news, Thompson’s classmate quickly fled the premises, leaving him alone as the only qualified student willing to face the untamed wilds of North America.

As the years passed by, Thompson proved his abilities not only as a shrewdly competent trader for the company, but also as a geographer, astronomer, cartographer and explorer on the same level as men like Lewis and Clark, Alexander Mackenzie, and Capt. James Cook. His maps were used freely throughout most of the 19th century, usually without his permission. In fact, Thompson was the first man to map the Columbia River from its source to the Pacific Ocean, and the first to establish a trading post in Montana west of the continental divide.

In February of 1812, he went up a high knoll in the Missoula Valley and mapped out all the surrounding mountain ranges and drainages, carefully delineating both the westbound and eastbound routes used by Lewis and Clark as they passed through the region on their historic journey. Thompson had the true mind of a scientist, observing all things in life with a steady temper and an analytical style that set him apart from most of his contemporaries. The western Indians named him Koo-Koo-Sint, which roughly translates to ‘Stargazer’ in the Salish language. They believed that his continuous viewing of the moon and stars gave him the power to see into the future, and according to his journal entries, it appears he was always watching the movements of the heavens and making his detailed calculations, no matter where he went.

In the fall of 1810, while employed by the North West Company, Thompson was ordered to travel to the mouth of the Columbia and establish a trading post, which would be in direct competition with a group of American fur traders who had set out for the Oregon country by land and sea. Unfortunately, the Piegan Indians, who were infuriated that Thompson and his partners had been providing arms and ammunition to their sworn enemies west of the mountains, intentionally delayed his crossing of the divide. Seeing that his usual passage westward had been blocked off, Thompson chose to follow another route over the Canadian Rockies at Athabasca Pass, near today’s entrance to Jasper National Park, in Alberta Canada.

The party was made up of twenty-four men led by an Iroquois guide named Thomas, who advised them that the season was now too far advanced to proceed on horseback. Thompson ordered his men to build dogsleds and snowshoes, and they also built a log cache to stow away nearly a third of the goods that they had originally brought along on horseback. At last, on the 31st of December, the expedition set out with sled-dogs pulling most of the supplies and trade goods, while the men rode on horseback as far as the weather conditions allowed them to. Their progress is best described by Thompson’s own journal entries taken from his book, ‘Travels in Western North America, 1784-1812.’

January 5, 1811, “Thermometer -60. We are now entering the defiles of the Rock Mountains by the Athabasca River. The woods of pine are stunted, full of branches to the ground, with aspen, willow, etc. Strange to say there is a strong belief that the haunt of the mammoth is about this defile. I questioned several, none could positively say they had seen him, but their belief I found firm and not to be shaken. I remarked to them that such an enormous heavy animal must leave indelible marks of his feet and his feeding. This they all acknowledged, and that they had never seen any marks of him, and therefore could show me none. All I could say did not shake their belief in its existence.”

January 7, 1811, “Continuing our journey in the afternoon, we came on the track of a large animal, the snow about six inches deep on the ice. I measured it; four large toes each of four inches in length, to each a short claw. The ball of the foot sunk three inches lower than the toes, the hinder part of the foot did not mark well. The length was fourteen inches by eight inches in breadth. It had been walking from north to south, and had passed by about six hours. We were in no humor to follow him. The men and Indians would have it to be a young mammoth, and I held it to be the track of a large old grizzled bear. Yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size was not that of a bear, otherwise than that of a very large old bear, his claws worn away. This, the Indians would not allow…”

It appears by Thompson’s own account, that he had doubts about his grizzly bear theory, rationalizing in the end that the bear had somehow managed to wear his claws down while traversing the snowy and icy terrain of a glacial wasteland! His hunters had told him of a dry lakebed where they believed mammoths would gather to feed on sphagnum moss, which has actually been found in the stomachs of some perfectly preserved mammoths uncovered more recently in the frozen arctic tundra!

Indian reports of giant animals weren’t uncommon in Thompson’s days, and in the ‘Journals of Alexander Henry and David Thompson’ Mr. Henry writes about a conversation he had with a Saulteur Indian in the summer of 1808. Alexander Henry was a partner with David Thompson while they were both employed by the North West Company, and their explorations often mirror each other through much of their career in the Canadian fur trade. Henry says that the native approached him “very ceremoniously, and having lighted and smoked his pipe, informed me that he had been hunting up a small river a few days ago, and that one evening, while in his canoe, he was surprised by the appearance of a very large animal in the water. At first he mistook it for a moose, and was about to fire at it; but on its nearer approach he perceived it to be one of the Kitche Amicks, or large beavers, which he dared not shoot, and allowed to pass near his canoe without molesting. ” Henry, like Thompson, attempted to explain the monster away as a bear or moose, but he goes on to say that the Saulteur Indians were experts at knowing the habits of, and tracking down, their prey.

Most scientists believe that both of these ice-age relics died out completely more than six thousand years ago, after the end of the Pleistocene Era. Still, legends of living mammoths persisted throughout the world well into the early part of the twentieth century. In 1918, a lone Russian hunter reportedly claimed to have tracked a pair of mammoths for several days into a dense forest of middling-sized elms. Apparently, he saw one of the behemoths quite clearly when it stopped to feed on some young saplings. He described it as having a pair of “huge white tusks, very curved, and was a dark chestnut color. It had fairly long hair on the hindquarters, but it seemed shorter on the front. It had huge legs, and moved very slowly.” Eventually, he caught a glimpse of the second mammoth, and admitted that a feeling of genuine fear crept over him as he watched them from a relatively safe distance downwind. In reality, no one really knows precisely when wooly mammoths finally became extinct, or just how close men like David Thompson might have come to witnessing one of these last living vestiges of a wondrous age when giants roamed the earth.

With all the talk about the slow real estate market in our area, it is surprising to some that people are considering refinancing. This is not an option for those looking for 100% financing or those with bad credit. Those days are gone for now. But you can get a great deal on a 30-year, fixed-rate, conforming loan if you have a good credit score, a reliable income and a manageable debt burden.

The interest rates on 30-year fixed mortgages have dropped to the lowest level since the early 1960’s and are probably going even lower in 2009. The ultimate question is whether to refinance now or wait to see where things go in the next few months. There is heavy debate on this issue, but the final decision is a personal choice. Here are some tips to helping you with your decision.

Make your loan application with a local bank with a good reputation. The days of the mortgage broker making every loan work is no longer accepted. In the past mortgage brokers kept track of the various underwriting standards available from different lenders and the legitimate brokers systematically identified the lowest standards. The unregulated mortgage industry attracted many unscrupulous characters because there was no education or licensing requirements. Now that the government is requiring lenders to buy back fraudulent loans, the broker’s mortgage paper is not favored and the mortgage companies are dropping like flies. The bank loan officers are generally salaried employees that do not have the ability to pocket your money during the loan process, so there is much less fraud and more reliability in the loan process.

Get a fixed rate if you can.

Right now all the best deals are fixed-rate loans because that’s the segment of the market that the government is attempting to promote.

Consider keeping your adjustable rate.

On the other hand, if you already have an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) and it’s nearing an interest rate reset, don’t rush into a fixed rate. ARMs indexed to the one-year Treasury bill are still paying only around 3.25 percent a year. ARMs indexed to LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate) are in the low 4 percent a year.

Know the lending criteria.

Now that Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac are under government conservatorship, you’ll need a credit score of at least 720 for the best interest rate. Fannie and Freddie will guarantee loans with FICO scores down to the mid-600s, but you may also need a down payment of 20 percent. Piggyback loans are gone and even private mortgage insurance, which used to cover some financing deficiencies, is much more difficult to obtain because of the high level of foreclosures with this insurance.

Get pre-qualified at a bank if you are thinking of buying a home.

Sellers look for pre-qualified buyers, because it demonstrates their purchase power and an ability to close the deal.

Think before you act.

More than 2.3 million American homeowners faced foreclosure proceedings in 2008. This is an 81% increase from 2007 and much more is expected due to the rising unemployment figures.

More than 860,000 properties were actually repossessed by lenders, which is more than double the 2007 figures.

Moody’s Economy.com, a research firm, predicts the number of homes lost to foreclosure is likely to rise by another 18 percent this year before tapering off slightly through 2011.

Darwin Ernst is a Montana Residential Certified Appraiser, Montana Real Estate Appraiser Board Member, Licensed Real Estate Agent, Appraisal Institute Associate Member, & President of Independent Valuation Solutions, LLC