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Authors: Jon E. Lewis
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pioneered by Lewis and Clark. But fearful of encountering the Blackfeet, they took numerous detours. When they reached the Snake they ignored the advice of the Indians and exchanged their horses for canoes. After two days the Snake became unnavigable. Four men drowned when their canoes capsized, and almost all the party’s provisions and equipment were lost. The Overland Astorians then separated into small groups to make the best way they could to the fort on the Columbia. Intense cold and deep snow hindered progress through the Cascades. Several men died of exposure; one went mad. Not until January 1812 did the first survivors stagger into Astoria. Hunt’s own group appeared in February; the final group did not make it until May. A number had been stripped naked by contemptuous Indians.
It was all in vain. In June 1812, Britain and the United States went to war. Anticipating an attack from a British warship, the Astorians had little choice but to accept an offer for their holdings (at a fraction of their worth) from the North West Company.
This inglorious saga did not prevent Astor from becoming one of the richest men in America. In 1822 he established the Western Division of his American Fur Company, which gobbled up competitors. At first “TheCompany”, as it became known, confined itself to the Missouri and its tributary streams, but then in 1831 turned towards the Wyoming beaver fields on the Green and Wind rivers. Here “The Company” fought a battle with its principal rival, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, almost to the extinction of the beaver east of the Rockies.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company
Founded in 1822 by two St Louis fur merchants, General H. Ashley and Andrew Henry, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company employed some of the far West’s most famous trappers: the unlettered but supremely intelligent Jim “Old Gabe” Bridger, probably the first White man to see the Great Salt Lake; the Black trapper James P. Beckwourth and the half-Black half-Cherokee Edward Rose, an ex-river pirate; the Sublette brothers, William, Milton and Andrew, who all fought in the 1832 Battle of Pierre’s Hole, when a group of mountain men were besieged by Gros Ventre Indians; and, most famous of all, Jedediah Strong Smith, the pious New Hampshire Methodist who was the first White man to travel overland from the Rocky Mountains to California, and the first White man to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert. The extraordinary Bible-toting Smith also held the probable record for beaver caught in a single season (668 pelts).
There was more to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company than the luminosity of its contract roll. Ashley and Henry revolutionized the skin trade. Instead of creating permanent posts, the Rocky Mountain Company organized annual rendezvous at predesignated spots, at which furs were collected and provisions doled out, and a Bacchanalia was had by all. Their innovation was born out of painful experience. In 1822, Ashley and Henry had organized a trading expedition to build a fort and trading post at themouth of the Yellowstone. Arikara Indians had molested the boats, and Blackfeet the hunting parties. The next year the Arikara had attacked again, and Ashley decided on a new method of tapping the beaver country. Instead of building trading posts – which the Indians hated as a symbol of White occupation – he would send his trappers overland singly or in small groups, and meet them at a rendezvous at the end of the spring hunt.
The Life of a Mountain Man
Ashley and Henry were thus the first merchants to rely on the free trapper or Mountain Man who, instead of trading with Indians for pelts and receiving a fixed salary, set his own traps, lived off the land, and could sell his furs to the highest bidder.
George Frederick Ruxton, the chronicler of the far West, recorded his impressions of these free men in his
Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains
(1849). The equipment of the trapper comprised, as the necessary
It was all in vain. In June 1812, Britain and the United States went to war. Anticipating an attack from a British warship, the Astorians had little choice but to accept an offer for their holdings (at a fraction of their worth) from the North West Company.
This inglorious saga did not prevent Astor from becoming one of the richest men in America. In 1822 he established the Western Division of his American Fur Company, which gobbled up competitors. At first “TheCompany”, as it became known, confined itself to the Missouri and its tributary streams, but then in 1831 turned towards the Wyoming beaver fields on the Green and Wind rivers. Here “The Company” fought a battle with its principal rival, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, almost to the extinction of the beaver east of the Rockies.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company
Founded in 1822 by two St Louis fur merchants, General H. Ashley and Andrew Henry, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company employed some of the far West’s most famous trappers: the unlettered but supremely intelligent Jim “Old Gabe” Bridger, probably the first White man to see the Great Salt Lake; the Black trapper James P. Beckwourth and the half-Black half-Cherokee Edward Rose, an ex-river pirate; the Sublette brothers, William, Milton and Andrew, who all fought in the 1832 Battle of Pierre’s Hole, when a group of mountain men were besieged by Gros Ventre Indians; and, most famous of all, Jedediah Strong Smith, the pious New Hampshire Methodist who was the first White man to travel overland from the Rocky Mountains to California, and the first White man to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert. The extraordinary Bible-toting Smith also held the probable record for beaver caught in a single season (668 pelts).
There was more to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company than the luminosity of its contract roll. Ashley and Henry revolutionized the skin trade. Instead of creating permanent posts, the Rocky Mountain Company organized annual rendezvous at predesignated spots, at which furs were collected and provisions doled out, and a Bacchanalia was had by all. Their innovation was born out of painful experience. In 1822, Ashley and Henry had organized a trading expedition to build a fort and trading post at themouth of the Yellowstone. Arikara Indians had molested the boats, and Blackfeet the hunting parties. The next year the Arikara had attacked again, and Ashley decided on a new method of tapping the beaver country. Instead of building trading posts – which the Indians hated as a symbol of White occupation – he would send his trappers overland singly or in small groups, and meet them at a rendezvous at the end of the spring hunt.
The Life of a Mountain Man
Ashley and Henry were thus the first merchants to rely on the free trapper or Mountain Man who, instead of trading with Indians for pelts and receiving a fixed salary, set his own traps, lived off the land, and could sell his furs to the highest bidder.
George Frederick Ruxton, the chronicler of the far West, recorded his impressions of these free men in his
Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains
(1849). The equipment of the trapper comprised, as the necessary
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