In November 1809, British North West Company agent and explorer David Thompson built Saleesh House, a trading post about five miles east of here near the mouth of the Thompson River. Strategically located on a well-worn aboriginal trail, it was the second trading post constructed in what is now Montana. In the early nineteenth century, the fur trade was a cut-throat business in which competing companies vied to establish trade relations with Indian tribes, and the Nor’Westers beat the rival Hudson's Bay Company by being the first to build a post in Salish territory. Saleesh House consisted of three simple log buildings with mud and grass roofs that leaked in rainy weather. The Salish were the post's primary customers, bartering beaver and muskrat pelts for weapons and other trade goods. They trusted Thompson and called him Koo-Koo-Sint, Star Looker, because of his interest in astronomy. Saleesh House remained open until the 1820s after the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies merged, but Blackfeet hostility forced its abandonment, and it disappeared back into the forest until University of Montana archaeologists rediscovered it several years ago.