Thomas McKay

Thomas McKay (c. 1796–1849) was an Anglo-Métis Canadian fur trader who worked mainly in the Pacific Northwest for the Pacific Fur Company (PFC), the North West Company (NWC), and the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). He was a fur brigade leader and explorer of the Columbia District and later became a U.S. citizen and an early settler of Oregon.

Family Thomas was born in 1797 at Sault Ste. Marie, Upper Canada.

His father was the fur trader Alexander MacKay. His mother, from a marriage 'à la façon du pays' (in the style of the country), was a Métis woman named Marguerite Wadin, the daughter of a Cree woman and Swiss fur-trader Jean Etienne Wadin.

Wives and children Thomas McKay had at least three wives during his life. His first wife was Timmee T'Ikul Tchinouk, a Chinook woman, daughter of Chief Concomly and were married sometime before 1824 in the Oregon Territory. Their children were Joseph McKay, Margaret McKay, William Cameron McKay, John C. McKay, and Alexander McKay II.

Pacific Fur Company In 1811, Thomas McKay accompanied his father on the Tonquin to the mouth of the Columbia River, where the Pacific Fur Company's Fort Astoria was built. Thomas, who was about 15 years old at the time, was at Fort Astoria when his father Alexander McKay was killed in late 1811 at Clayoquot Sound as the Tonquin was destroyed off of Vancouver Island. Within two years the entire North West Company was merged into the Hudson's Bay Company.

Hudson's Bay Company After the North West Company was merged with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821 Thomas McKay became an HBC employee, despite having fought the company in the Red River Colony war. He led or accompanied several others.

From 1826 to 1828 McKay took part repeatedly in the Snake Country brigades under Peter Skene Ogden. During this time Ogden explored not only the Snake River basin, but the Deschutes River and Blue Mountains of Oregon, as well as the Klamath Lake region, and the Great Salt Lake and its tributary the Weber River.

In 1828, McKay was in the party sent from Fort Vancouver to retrieve furs and property Indians took from Jedediah Smith on the Umpqua River in southern Oregon.

George Simpson, head of the HBC, had decided to try to over-exploit the Snake Country and create a "fur desert", for the political purpose of keeping American trappers and traders away. McKay, along with other former NWC trappers such as Peter Ogden, Finan McDonald, Francois Payette, and others, "took up Simpson's orders with a fanatical zeal, declaring war on fur-bearing animals south of the Columbia," as historian Richard Mackie put it.