Breaking the Wilderness—Wanderings of the Trappers and Fur
Traders—General Ashley in Green River Valley, 1824—Pattie along the
Grand Canyon, 1826—Lieut. Hardy, R.N., in a Schooner on the Lower
Colorado, 1826—Jedediah Smith, Salt Lake to San Gabriel, 1826—Pattie on
the Lower Colorado in Canoes, 1827-28.
As the “sweet Afton” of old gently flowing among its green braes
compares with the fierce Colorado, so do those earnest padres who so
faithfully tried to plant their cross in the waste places, as sketched
in the chapter just closed with the martyrdom of Garces, compare with
the new set of actors that now appear, as the development of this drama
of the wilderness continues. The former fitted well into the strange
scenery; they became apart of it; they fraternised with the various
tribes native to the land, and all things together went forward with
pictorial harmony. They were like a few mellow figures blended
skilfully into the deep tones of an ancient canvas. But now the
turbulent spirit of the raging river itself pervades the new-comers who
march imperiously upon the mighty stage with the heavy tread of the
conqueror, out of tune with the soft old melody; temporising with
nothing; with a heedless stroke, like the remorseless hand of Fate,
obliterating all obstacles to their progress. Not theirs the desire to
save natives from perdition; rather to annihilate them speedily as
useless relics of a bygone time. They are savages among savages; quite
as interesting and delightful in their way as the older occupants of
the soil. It became in reality the conflict of the old and the new, and
then was set the standard by which the native tribes have ever since
been measured and dealt with.
The inevitable was simply coming to pass: one more act in the
world-play of continental subjugation to the European. The United
States, born in privation and blood, were growing into a nation eager
for expansion, and by 1815 they had already ventured beyond the
Mississippi, having purchased from France all territory north of Red
River, the Arkansas, and the 42nd parallel, as far as the unsettled
British boundary and the disputed region of Oregon. Naturally, then,
Americans wanted to know what was to be found in this vast tract
unknown to them, and when a few bold spirits pushed out to the great
mountains it was discovered that fur-bearing animals existed in
multitude. In the trapping of these and the trading in their pelts a
huge industry sprang up. In this trade future millionaires laid their
foundations.
The beaver were then the most profitable of all, and they were the most
abundant. The pelts were estimated by “packs,” each of which consisted
of about eighty skins, weighing one hundred pounds, and worth in the
mountains from three hundred to five hundred dollars. The profits were
thus speedy and very great. In the search for the richest rewards the
trapper continually pushed farther and farther away from the “States,”
encroaching at length on the territory claimed by Spain, a claim to be
soon (1821) adopted by the new-born Mexican Republic. Trespassing on
the tribal rights of Blackfoot, Sioux, Ute, or any other did not enter
into any one’s mind as something to be considered. Thus, rough-shod the
trapper broke the wilderness, fathomed its secret places, traversed its
trails and passes, marking them with his own blood and more vividly
with that of the natives. Incidentally, by right of their discoveries
and occupation of the wilderness, much of it became by the law of
nations a part of the lands of the United States, though still
nominally claimed by Mexico. Two years after the return of the famous
Lewis-and-Clark expedition, Andrew Henry “discovered” South Pass
(1808), and led his party through it into the Green River[1] Valley.
His discovery consisted, like many others of the time, in following up
the bison trails and the highways of the natives. The latter, of
course, knew every foot of the whole country; each tribe its own
special lands and more or less into and across those of its neighbours.
[1] The name Green River was used as early as 1824, and was probably
derived from the name of the early trapper. Till about 1835 it was
usually called by the Crow name, Seedskeedee.
Map of Green River through the Uinta Mountains. Scale of this reduction
about 8 miles to 1 inch.
>Flaming Gorge, Green
River. Beginning of the Canyons. Flaming Gorge, Green River. Beginning
of the Canyons.
Picture just taken inside the entrance. Walls 1300 feet.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
Red Canyon at Low Water. Red Canyon at Low Water.
Length 25 miles. Walls 1800 to 2500 feet high. Average width of river,
250 feet.
By the time the third decade of the nineteenth century was fairly begun
the trappers were crossing in considerable numbers from the headwaters
of the Missouri and the Platte into the valley of the Colorado and the
Columbia, and as early as 1824 one of the most brilliant figures of
this epoch, General Ashley,[2] having previously organised a
fur-trading company in St. Louis, then the centre of all Western
commerce, had established himself in Green River Valley with a large
band of expert trappers which included now famous names like Henry,
Bridger, Fitzpatrick, Green, Sublet, and Beckwourth. Provo (or Provost)
was already encamped in Brown’s Hole. One of Ashley’s principal camps
was what they called the “rendezvous” (there were a great many
French-Canadians engaged in the fur business, and hence numerous French
words were in common use among the trappers of the period), just above
“The Suck,” on Green River. This Suck was at the entrance to Flaming
Gorge, as it has since been named. Beckwourth says of this: “The
current, at a small distance from our camp, became exceedingly rapid,
and drew toward the centre from each shore.” The river here narrows
suddenly and attacks a high ridge. Doubling around a point to the left
and then as suddenly to the right, the swift water or “Suck” slackens
up in the quieter reach of Flaming Gorge. In their journeys after
beaver the Ashley party had been able to go into this gorge and the two
following ones, Horseshoe and Kingfisher, and had doubtless trapped in
them. Here were many beaver, and Ashley drew the inference that as many
existed below in the deeper canyon. Though he had discovered the
dangerous character of the river he decided to build boats and set
forth on the current in order to trap the canyon, the length of which
he did not know and underestimated. A purpose of reaching St. Louis by
this route has been attributed to Ashley, but as Hunt and others some
years before understood this to be a stream on whose lower waters
Spaniards lived, Ashley doubtless had the same information, and from
that he would have known that it was no practicable route to St. Louis.
Beckwourth, who relates the story of the trip,[3] makes no suggestion
of any far-off destination, nor does he say they took their packs
along, as they would have done if going to a commercial centre. It
seems to have been purely a trapping expedition, and was probably the
very first attempt to navigate Green River. They took along few
provisions, expecting to find beaver plentiful to the end of the
canyon, but after a few miles the beaver were absent, and, having
preserved none of the meat, the party began to suffer for food. They
were six days without eating, and, the high precipitous walls running
ever on and on, they became disheartened, or, in Western phrase,
“demoralised,” and proposed to cast lots to find which should make food
for the others, a proposition which horrified Ashley, and he begged
them to hold out longer, assuring them that the walls must soon break
and enable them to escape. They had not expected so long a gorge. Red
Canyon is twenty-five miles and, with the three above, the unbroken
canyon is about thirty-five miles. Under the circumstances the canyon
seemed interminable and the cliffs insurmountable. The latter grow more
precipitous toward the lower end, and scaling would be a difficult feat
for a man well fed and strong, though well-nigh hopeless for any
weakened by lack of proper food. At last, however, an opening appeared.
Here they discovered Provo encamped with an abundance of provisions, so
their troubles were quickly over. The opening they had arrived at was
probably Brown’s Hole. There is only one other place that might be
called an opening, and this is a small park-like break on the right
side of the river, not far above Brown’s Hole, formerly called Little
Brown’s Hole and also Ashley Park. The Ashley men would have had a hard
climb to get out of this place, and it is not probable that Provo would
have climbed into it, as no beaver existed there. It seems positive,
then, that Ashley came to Provo in Brown’s Hole. Thus he did not “make
his perillous way through Brown’s Hole,” as one author says, because he
ended his journey with the beginning of that peaceful park. They lost
two of their boats and several guns in Red Canyon, and Ashley left
there a mark to identify the time of his passage. He wrote his name and
the date, 1825, on a large rock above a sharp fall, which was (later,
1869,) named in his honour. I saw this inscription in 1871 and made a
careful copy of it, which is given here. See also the illustration of
Ashley Falls on page 113. The location of it is just west of C in the
words “Red Cañon” on the map, page 109. In the canyon of Lodore, at the
foot of Disaster Falls, we found some wreckage in the sand, a
bake-oven, tin plates, knives, etc., which Powell first saw in 1869,
but these could not have belonged to Ashley’s party, for plainly Ashley
did not enter Lodore at all. It was evidently from some later
expedition which probably started from Brown’s Park, in the days of
Fort Davy Crockett.
[2] Wm. Henry Ashley, born in Virginia, 1778; went to Missouri 1802;
general of militia; elected first governor 1820; went into fur trade
1822 with Andrew Henry; elected to Congress 1831; twice re-elected;
continued in office till March 4, 1837.—Chittenden.
[3] _Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth_, edited by T. D.
Bonner. Beckwourth was always called “Beckwith” in the mountains, but
this was probably only a perversion of the original, though Chittenden
seems to think he only assumed the former spelling on publishing his
book.
Provo had plenty of horses, and Ashley and his men joined him going out
to Salt Lake, where Provo had come from.
Ashley Falls, Red Canyon, Green River. Ashley Falls, Red Canyon, Green
River.
General Ashley wrote his name on a rock about half way up the picture,
on the right, in 1825.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
The year following Ashley’s attempt to trap Green River was a most
eventful one in the history of the Colorado. Time appeared to be ripe
for great journeys. The Mexicans outside of California were more
amiably inclined, and granted privileges to trappers in New Mexico. Two
men who were among the first to push their way into New Mexico were
James O. Pattie and his father, and the narrative of their experiences
as told by the younger Pattie is one of the most thrilling and
interesting books of Western adventure ever published.[4] They had
trapped on the Gila, or “Helay,” as they called it in 1825, and the
next year they went back there with a party, trapping the Gila and its
tributaries with gratifying success.[5] Working their way down the
Gila, they eventually reached its junction with what they called Red
River, the Great Colorado. Following up the Colorado, probably the
first white men to travel here since the time of Garces, they rode
through a camp of Coco-Maricopas, who ran frightened away, and the
Pattie party, passing them by as if they were mere chaff, camped four
miles farther on, where they were visited by about one hundred, “all
painted red in token of amity.” Farther up they entered the Mohave
country. When they met some of the inhabitants they “marched directly
through their village, the women and children screaming and hiding
themselves in their huts.” Three miles above, the Patties camped, and a
number of the Mohaves soon came to see them. They did not like the
looks of the chief, who made signs that he wanted a horse as payment
for the privilege of trapping in his domain. As the trappers recognised
no rights on the part of the natives, they peremptorily refused,
whereat the chief drew himself erect with a stern and fierce air and
sent an arrow into a tree, at the same time “raising his hand to his
mouth and making their peculiar yell.” The captain of the Pattie band
replied by taking his gun and shooting the arrow in two. Driven out of
the camp the following day, the chief shot a horse as he rode past it
and was himself instantly pierced with four rifle balls.
[4] _The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, of Kentucky_, etc.,
edited by Timothy Flint. Cincinnati, E. H. Flint, 1833. There is a
copy in the Astor Library, New York.
[5] There were two classes of trappers, the free and those in the
employ of some company. The Patties belonged to the former class.
The Grand Canyon from Bright Angel Trail looking East. The Grand Canyon
from Bright Angel Trail looking East.
Point of view 1000 feet above the water. Total depth between 5000 and
6000 feet.
Photograph by ROSE.
A band of his followers, armed, of course, with only bows and arrows,
next day made a concerted attack, but were cut down by the rifles and
fine marksmanship of the Americans. As these Mohaves had been good
friends to Garces, and afterwards treated Americans well till they were
instigated by the Spaniards to fight, it is probable that a somewhat
more conciliatory approach might have avoided the trouble this party
experienced.
Entrance to Black Canyon, first seen by James O. Pattie. Entrance to
Black Canyon, first seen by James O. Pattie.
Photograph by WHEELER EXPEDITION.
Farther up they reached the “Shuenas,” who had apparently never before
heard the report of a gun, and on the 25th of March they arrived at
what we now call Bill Williams Fork. A party was sent up this stream to
trap. As they did not return next day according to the plan, scouts
were dispatched, who found the bodies cut to pieces and spitted before
a great fire.
On the 28th of March they came to a place on the river where “the
mountains shut in so close upon its shores that we were compelled to
climb a mountain and travel along the aclivity, the river still in
sight, and at an immense depth beneath us.” This was probably Black
Canyon; they are the first white men on record to reach it. They now
took a remarkable journey of fourteen days, but unfortunately little
detail is given, probably because Pattie’s editor considered a cut
across the country of little importance. They travelled, they thought,
one hundred leagues along these canyons, with the “river bluffs on the
opposite shore never more than a mile” from them.[6] Thus they
evidently did not see the Grand Canyon at its widest part. By April
10th they arrived “where the river emerges from these horrid mountains,
which so cage it up as to deprive all human beings of the ability to
descend to its banks and make use of its waters. No mortal has the
power of describing the pleasure I felt when I could once more reach
the banks of the river.” They had suffered for food on this journey,
but now they were again in a beaver country and also killed plenty of
elk, the skins of which they dressed for clothing. They had made the
first extended trip on record along the Grand Canyon and the other
canyons of the Colorado, but whether they passed up by the north or the
south I am unable to determine. My impression is that they passed by
the north, as they would otherwise have met with the Havasupai in their
Canyon, with the Little Colorado, and with the Moki. They would also
have struck the San Juan, but the first stream mentioned as coming in
is from the north, which they reached three days after arriving at the
place where they could get to the water. Three days after leaving this
they met a large body of Shoshones. They appear now to be somewhere on
Grand River. They had a brush with the Shoshones, whom they defeated,
and then compelled the women to exchange six scalps of Frenchmen whom
the Shoshones had killed on the headwaters of the Platte, for scalps of
members of their own party of whom the Patties had killed eight; They
also took from them all the stolen beaver-skins, five mules, and their
dried buffalo meat. After this interchange of civilities the trappers
went on to where the river forked again, neither fork being more than
twenty-five or thirty yards wide. The right-hand-fork pursued a
north-east course, and following it four days brought them (probably in
Middle Park) to a large village of the “Nabahoes.” Of these they
inquired as to the pass over the mountains (Continental Divide) and
were informed they must follow the left-hand fork, which they
accordingly did, and on the thirty-first day of May, 1826, came to the
gap, which they traversed, by following the buffalo trails through the
snow, in six days. Then they descended to the Platte, and went on north
to the Yellowstone, making in all a traverse of the whole Rocky
Mountain region probably never since surpassed, and certainly never
before approached.
[6] “It is perhaps this very long and formidable range of mountains,”
says Pattie, “which has caused that this country of Red River has not
been more explored,” p. 98.
A few months later a lieutenant of the British Navy, R. W. H. Hardy,
travelling in Mexico, chartered in the port of Guaymas a
twenty-five-ton schooner, the _Bruja_ or _Sea Witch_, and sailed up the
Gulf of California. Encountering a good deal of trouble in high winds
and shoals he finally reached a vein of reddish water which he surmised
came from “Red River,” and at two o’clock of the same day he saw an
opening ahead which he took to be the mouth of the river. An hour later
all doubt was dispelled, and by half-past six he came to anchor for the
night at the entrance, believing the tide to be at nearly low water.
“In the middle of the night,” he says, “I was awakened by the dew and
the noise of jackals. I took this opportunity of examining the lead
which had been left hanging alongside, to see what water we had. What
was my astonishment to find only a foot and a half. The crew was sound
asleep. Not even the sentinel was able to keep his eyes open.” They got
off without damage at the rise of the tide, but the next day misfortune
awaited the schooner. The helmsman neglecting his duty for a moment as
they were working up the stream, the vessel lost headway, and the
fierce current immediately swept her, stern foremost, into the bank and
broke the rudder. After much labour the _Bruja_ was finally again
placed in the stream, where they waited for slack water, expecting then
to ship the rudder. “But in the Rio Colorado,” he declares with
italics, “_there is no such thing as slack water_. Before the ebb has
finished running the flood commences, boiling up full eighteen inches
above the surface and roaring like the rapids of Canada.” Had he known
what we now know he might have found a simile nearer his position at
the moment. Finding he could make no further progress with the a
schooner, he took a small boat and continued his voyage in it, though
not for any great distance, as he returned to the vessel at night. Five
or six thousand Yumas were seen, but they were entirely friendly. He
thought the mouth of the Gila was below his stranded vessel, but he was
mistaken in this, for it was in reality a great many miles farther up.
What he took for the Gila was the main Colorado itself, and what he
thought was the Colorado was only a bayou or flood-water channel. It
being midsummer the river was at flood. The bayou is still called the
False or Hardy’s Colorado.
The Navajo Type. The Navajo Type.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Geol. Survey.
After eight days of waiting they at last got their rudder shipped, the
vessel on the tide, and went back down the stream, one of the Yuma
women swimming after them till taken on board. She was landed at the
first opportunity. The interpreter told Hardy his was the first vessel
that had ever visited the river, and that they took it for a large
bird. The lieutenant was evidently not posted on the history of the
region, and the Yuma was excusable for not having a memory that went
back eighty years.[7] Hardy gave some of the names that still hold on
that part of the river, like Howard’s Reach, where his _Bruja_ was
stranded, Montague and Gore Islands, etc.
[7] Fernando Consag entered the river, 1746, looking for mission
sites, and two centuries before that was Alarçon.
The same month that Hardy sailed away from the mouth of the Colorado,
August, 1826, Jedediah Smith started from Salt Lake (the 22d), passed
south by Ashley’s or Utah Lake, and, keeping down the west side of the
Wasatch and the High Plateaus, reached the Virgen River near the
south-western corner of Utah. This he called Adams River in honour of
the President of the United States. Following it south-west through the
Pai Ute country for twelve days he came to its junction with what he
called the Seedskeedee, knowing it to be the same stream so called in
the north. This was the Colorado. Proceeding down the Colorado to the
Mohaves he was kindly received by them and remained some time
recuperating his stock. It may seem strange that the Mohaves should be
so perverse, killing one set of trappers and treating another like old
friends, but the secret of the difference on this occasion, perhaps,
lay in the difference of approach. Jedediah Smith was a sort of
reincarnation of the old padres, and of all the trappers the only one
apparently who allowed piety or humanitarianism to sway his will. His
piety was universally known. It was not an affectation, but a genuine
religion which he carried about with him into the fastnesses of the
mountains. Leaving the Mohaves he crossed the desert to the Californian
coast, where he afterwards had trouble with the authorities, who seemed
to bear a grudge against all American trappers, and who seized every
opportunity to maltreat and rob them. This, however, did not prevent
Smith from returning again after a visit to the northern rendezvous.
But while crossing the Colorado, the Mohaves, who had meanwhile been
instigated to harass Americans by the Spaniards (so it is said),
attacked the expedition, killing ten men and capturing everything.
Smith escaped to be afterwards killed on the Cimarron by the Comanches.
Upper Valley of the Virgen. Upper Valley of the Virgen.
Photograph by C.R. SAVAGE.
Pattie and his father again entered the Gila country in the autumn of
1827, with permission from the governor of New Mexico to trap. After
they had gone down the Gila a considerable distance the party split up,
each band going in different directions, and after numerous adventures
the Patties and their adherents arrived at the Colorado, where their
horses were stampeded by the tribe living at the mouth of the Gila, the
“Umeas.” They were left without a single animal, a most serious
predicament in a wild country. The elder Pattie counselled pursuit on
foot to recapture the horses or die in the attempt. But the effort was
fruitless. They then made their way back to their camp, devoured their
last morsel of meat, placed their guns on a raft, and swam the river to
annihilate the village they saw on the opposite bank. The Yumas,
however, had anticipated this move, and the trappers found there only
one poor old man, whom they spared. Setting fire to every hut in the
village, except that of the old man, they had the small satisfaction of
watching them burn. There was now no hope either of regaining the
horses or of fighting the Yumas, so they devoted their attention, to
building canoes for the purpose of escaping by descending the Colorado.
For this they possessed tools, trappers often having occasion to use a
canoe in the prosecution of their work. They soon had finished eight,
dugouts undoubtedly, though Pattie does not say so, and they already
had one which Pattie had made on the Gila. Uniting these by platforms
in pairs they embarked upon them with all their furs and traps, leaving
their saddles hidden on the bank.
On the 9th of December (1827)[8] they started, probably the first
navigators of this part of the river since Alarçon, 287 years before.
That night they set forty traps and were rewarded with thirty-six
beaver. Such good luck decided them to travel slowly with the current,
about four miles an hour, “and trap the river clear.” The stream was
about two hundred to three hundred yards wide, with bottoms extending
back from six to ten miles, giving good camp-grounds all along. With
abundance of fat beaver meat and so many pelts added to their store
they forgot their misfortunes and began to count on reaching the
Spanish settlements they thought existed near the mouth of the river.
Sometimes their traps yielded as many as sixty beaver in a night, and
finally they were obliged to halt and make another canoe. So they went
slowly down, occasionally killing a couple of hostile natives, or deer,
panthers, foxes, or wild-cats. One animal is described as like an
African leopard, the first they had ever seen. At length they came to a
tribe much shorter of stature than the Yumas, and friendly. These were
probably Cocopas. Not a patch of clothing existed in the whole band,
and Pattie’s men gave the women some old shirts, intimating, as well as
they could, that they ought to wear some covering. These people were
well formed, and many of the women had exceptionally fine figures if
the judgment of the trappers can be trusted in this respect. When a gun
was fired they either fell prostrate or ran away, so little did they
know about firearms. The chief had a feast of young dog prepared for
his guests, who partook of it with reluctance. All communication was by
signs, and when the chief imitated the beating of surf and drew a cow
and a sheep in the sand, pointing west, they thought they were at last
nearing the longed-for Spanish settlements, and went on their way
joyfully. Little did they imagine that the settlements the chief
described were far off on the Californian coast.
[8] The reader may think I introduce too many year-dates but I have
found most books so lacking in this regard that I prefer to err on the
other side.
The “Navajo Church,” a Freak of Erosion near Ft. Wingate, N.M. The
“Navajo Church,” a Freak of Erosion near Ft. Wingate, N.M.
The Basin of the Colorado is full of such architectural forms. See
Dellenbaugh Butte, p. 269. Gunnison Butte, p. 271. “Hole in the Wall,”
p. 41, etc.
Photograph by BEN WITTICK.
The new year, 1828, came in and still they were going down the river,
taking many beaver. As a New Year’s greeting a shower of arrows from a
new tribe, the Pipis, fell amongst them. The trappers killed six of
them at one volley, and the rest ran away, leaving twenty-three
beautiful longbows behind. The only clothing the dead men had on was
snail-shells fastened to the ends of their long locks of hair. The
trappers now began to seek more anxiously for the mythical settlements.
“A great many times each day,” says Pattie, “we bring our crafts to the
shore and go out to see if we cannot discover the tracks of horses and
cattle.” On the 18th they thought some inundated river entering was the
cause of a slackening of the current, and finally they began to rig
oars, thinking they would now be obliged to work to get on down-stream,
but presently, to their surprise, the current doubled its rate and they
were going along at six miles an hour. None of them had ever had any
experience with tides, and they therefore failed to fathom the real
cause of these singular changes of speed. Suddenly, as they were
descending, people of the same tribe they had fired on stood on the
shore and shouted, making signs for them to land, that their boats
would be capsized, but, thinking it a scheme for robbery and murder,
they kept on, though they refrained from shooting. Late in the evening
they landed, making their camp on a low point where the canoes with
their rich cargoes were tied to some trees. Pattie’s father took the
first watch, and in the night, hearing a roaring noise that he thought
indicated a sudden storm, he roused his companions, and all was
prepared for a heavy rain, when, instead, to their great consternation,
the camp was inundated by “a high ridge of water over which came the
sea current combing down like water over a mill-dam.” The canoes were
almost capsized, but this catastrophe was averted by rapid and good
management. Even in the darkness, in the face of a danger unexpected
and unknown, the trappers never for an instant lost their coolness and
quick judgment, which was so often their salvation. Paddling the canoes
under the trees, they clung to the branches, but when the tide went out
the boats were all high and dry. At last the day dawned bright and
fair, enabling them to see what had happened, and when the tide once
more returned, they got the canoes out of the trap.
Cliffs of the Rio Virgin, about 2500 Feet High. Cliffs of the Rio
Virgin, about 2500 Feet High.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Geol. Survey.
They now proceeded with the ebb tide, stopping with the beginning of
the flood, constantly on the lookout for the Spanish settlements, and
not till the 28th, when they saw before them such a commotion of waters
that their small craft would be instantly engulfed, and wide sandy
stretches, perfectly barren, all round, did they realise what a mistake
they had made.
“The fierce billows,” says Pattie, “shut us in from below, the river
current from above, and murderous savages on either hand on the shore.
We had a rich cargo of furs, a little independence for each one of us
could we have disposed of them among the Spanish people whom we
expected to have found here. There were no such settlements. Every side
on which we looked offered an array of danger, famine, or death. In
this predicament what were furs to us.”
In order to escape they worked their way back up the river as far as
they could by rowing, poling, and towing, but on February 10th they met
a great rise which put a stop to progress. They now abandoned the
canoes, buried the furs in deep pits, and headed for the coast
settlements of California. After many vicissitudes, which I am unable
to relate here, they finally arrived, completely worn out, at the
Spanish mission of St. Catherine.
Now they believed their troubles were over, and that after recuperating
they could go back, bring in their furs, dispose of them handsomely,
and reap the reward of all their privation and toil. Not so, however.
Indeed, the worst of their trials was now to come. Before they
comprehended the intention the Spanish official had seized their rifles
and the men were locked up with only the commonest fare to relieve
their suffering. Cruelty followed cruelty, but they believed it was the
mistake of the minor officers, and appealed to the general in charge at
San Diego, expecting an order from him for release. Instead of this
they were marched under guard to San Diego, where each was confined in
a separate room, frustrating their plan to recapture their arms and
fight their way out. Pattie’s father presently became ill, and no
amount of entreaty was sufficient to gain permission for the son to see
him even for a moment. He died in his cell. After much argument and the
intercession of some of the minor officers, Pattie was permitted
liberty long enough to attend the funeral. At last the men were allowed
to go back for the furs, which no doubt the wily general intended to
confiscate, Pattie himself being retained as a hostage. But the furs
had been ruined by a rise of the river. Smallpox then began to rage on
the coast, and through this fact Pattie finally gained his freedom.
Having with him a quantity of vaccine virus, he was able to barter
skill in vaccinating the populace for liberty, though it was tardily
and grudgingly granted. He was able, at length, to get away from
California, and returned, broken in health and penniless, by way of the
City of Mexico, to his old home near Cincinnati, after six years of
extraordinary travel through the wildest portions of the Rocky Mountain
region and the extreme Southwest.
The “Colob” Country, Southern Utah. The “Colob” Country, Southern Utah.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
In the year 1826, an afterwards famous personage appeared in the valley
of the Colorado, on the Gila branch, being no less than Kit Carson,[9]
one of the greatest scouts and trappers of all. At this time he was but
seventeen years old, though in sagacity, knowledge, and skill soon the
equal of any trapper in the field. In 1827, Ewing Young, another noted
trapper, having been driven away from the Gila by the natives,
organised a company of forty men to go back and punish them, which
meant to kill all they could see, innocent or guilty. Carson was one of
this party. They succeeded in killing fifteen of the offenders, after
which slight diversion they went on down the stream, trapping it as
they went, but finally, running short of provisions, they had to eat
horses. Arriving among the Mohaves, they obtained food from them, and
proceeded across to San Gabriel Mission, to which place after trapping
up the Sacramento Valley, they again returned, in season to assist the
Spaniards to reduce the natives around the settlement to submission.
This was accomplished by the simple method of killing one-third of
them.
[9] _Life of Kit Carson_, by Charles Burdett. There are several Lives
by other biographers.
Limited space prohibits my recounting the exploits of even the smaller
part of the trappers of this period, but with what follows I believe
the reader will possess a sufficient picture of the life of the Rocky
Mountain Trapper at this time.[10] A trail from Santa Fé to California
was opened by way of what is now Gunnison Valley on Green River, and
thence west by about the same route that Jedediah Smith followed, that
is, down the Virgen River, by William Wolfskill who went out by this
route to Los Angeles, in 1830.[11] There were trappers now in every
part of the wilderness, excepting always the canyons of the Green and
Colorado, which were given a wide berth as their forbidding character
became better known; and as time went on the stories of those who had
here and there looked into the angry depths, or had essayed a tilt with
the furious rapids at one or two northern points, were enlarged upon,
and, like all unknown things, the terrors became magnified.
[10] The reader is referred for exact details to the admirable work by
H. M. Chittenden, _The American Fur Trade of the Far West_.
[11] H. H. Bancroft says 1831-2.
It was in 1832 that Captain Bonneville entered Green River Valley, but
as his exploits belong more properly to the valley of the Columbia, I
shall not attempt to mention any of them here, referring the reader to
the delightful account by Washington Irving.
In the Canyon of Lodore. In the Canyon of Lodore.
Walls about 2500 feet, width of river about 400 feet.
In May, 1839, a traveller who was a careful observer, Thomas J.
Farnham, went from New Mexico across the mountains to Brown’s Hole en
route for Oregon, and a portion of his narrative[12] is of deep
interest in this connection, because his guide, Kelly, gave him some
account of the Green and Colorado, which reflects the amount of real
knowledge then possessed concerning the canyon-river.
[12] _Travels in the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky
Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory_, by Thomas J. Farnham. There
is a copy in the library of Columbia University, New York.
“The Grand unites with the Seedskeedee or Green River to form the
Colorado of the West. From the junction of these branches the Colorado
has a general course from the north-east to the south-west of seven
hundred miles to the head of the Gulf of California. Four hundred of
this seven hundred miles is an almost unbroken chasm of kenyon, with
perpendicular sides hundreds of feet in height, at the bottom of which
the waters rush over continuous cascades. This kenyon terminates thirty
[should be three hundred] miles above the gulf. To this point the river
is navigable. The country on each side of its whole course is a rolling
desert of loose brown earth, on which the rains and the dews never
fall. A few years since, two Catholic missionaries and their servants
on their way from the mountains to California, attempted to descend the
Colorado. They have never been seen since the morning they commenced
their fatal undertaking.
“A party of trappers and others made a strong boat and manned it well
with the determination of floating down the river to take beaver that
they supposed lived along its banks. But they found themselves in such
danger after entering the kenyon that with might and main they thrust
their trembling boat ashore and succeeded in leaping upon the crags and
lightening it before it was swallowed in the dashing torrent.”
They had a difficult time in getting out of the canyon, but finally, by
means of ropes and by digging steps with their rifle barrels, they
reached the open country and made their way back to the starting-point.
This was, possibly, the expedition which was wrecked in Lodore, after
Ashley’s Red Canyon trip. I have not succeeded in finding any other
account that would fit that place. Arriving at Fort Davy Crockett, in
Brown’s Park, he describes it as “a hollow square of one-storey log
cabins, with roofs and floor of mud. Around these we found the conical
skin lodges of the squaws of the white trappers who were away on their
fall hunt, and also the lodges of a few Snake Indians who had preceded
their tribe to this their winter haunt. Here also were the lodges of
Mr. Robinson, a trader, who usually stations himself here to traffic
with the Indians and white trappers. His skin lodge was his warehouse,
and buffalo robes spread on the ground his counter, on which he
displayed his butcher knives, hatchets, powder, lead, fish-hooks, and
whiskey. In exchange for these articles he received beaver skins from
trappers, money from travellers, and horses from the Indians. Thus, as
one would believe, Mr. Robinson drives a very snug little business.
And, indeed, when all the independent trappers are driven by the
appearance of winter into this delightful retreat, and the whole Snake
village, two thousand or three thousand strong, impelled by the same
necessity, pitch their lodges around the fort and the dances and
merrymakings of a long winter are thoroughly commenced, there is no
want of customers.”
Uinta Utes, Saiar’s Home. Uinta Utes, Saiar’s Home.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Geol. Survey.
With this happy picture of frontier luxury in the trapper period I will
close the scene. Unwittingly, but no less thoroughly, the trappers had
accomplished a mission: they had opened the gates of the wilderness.
Two-thirds of these intrepid spirits had left their bones on the field,
but theirs had been the privilege of seeing the priscan glory of the
wilderness.
Note.—Near the emigrant crossing of Green River, in Wyoming, early in
1849, a party bound for California discovered an old scow ferry-boat,
twelve feet long and about six feet wide, with two oars. Deciding to
complete their journey by water they embarked. Later they built canoes.
They were: William Lewis Manly (aged 29); M. S. McMahon; Charles and
Joseph Hazelrig; Richard Field; Alfred Watson; and John Rogers. Manly’s
account appears entirely truthful. He tells of canyons, rapids, etc.,
till near the mouth of Uinta River they met the Ute chief Walker
(Wakar) who explained by signs that the fury of the river below was
worse than above, and all but two gave up. These two, McMahon and
Field, stopped with the Utes, intending to continue. The others went to
Salt Lake. Wakar (whom McMahon calls “the generous old chief”) repeated
his warnings. Field lost courage, and finally McMahon also abandoned
the desire. Manly’s story (first published in the Santa Clara Valley
Weekly) is given in his book Death Valley in ’49. The volume was edited
by the late Henry L. Brainard, head of the San Jose, California,
company which, in 1894, published it. It was Mr. Brainard who secured
the story from Manly for the Weekly. Mrs. Brainard says of Manly: “He
was one of the dearest old men; kind, loving, gentle, as one seldom
meets in this world. It was a pleasure to meet and know him. His
character was unblemished.” At one place which I identify as lower
Disaster Falls, Canyon of Lodore, they came to a deserted camp, “a
skiff and some heavy cooking utensils, with a notice posted on an alder
[box-elder] tree, saying that they had found the river route
impracticable... and were about to start overland to Salt Lake.” Manly
took down the signed names of this party but his diary was later lost
by fire. Apparently the cooking utensils, etc., were the same we saw
twenty-two years later at that place and thought were wreckage (see p.
255). Manly died February 5, 1903, and is buried at Merced, California.