If the average student of Western American History in our schools were
asked to recall those names which loom large for him during the four
decades from the purchase of the Louisiana Territory to the coming of
the settlers, he would doubtless think of Lewis and Clark, Lieutenant
Pike, Major Long, and General Frémont, with perhaps one or two others.
That is to say, the average student of Western History is familiar with
the names of official explorers; and but for their exploits, those forty
wonderful years would seem to him little more than a lapse of empty time
in a vast region waiting for the westering white man.
It is true that the deeds of those above named were important. The
journey of Lewis and Clark from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia,
and back again, has immense significance in the story of our national
life, and it was truly a “magnificent adventure,” to use the phrase of
Emerson Hough. Pike holds and deserves a high place for his explorations
in the Southwest. Long’s contribution to the early knowledge of the West
was considerable; and Frémont’s expeditions served, at least, to awaken
the popular Eastern mind to the great possibilities of the
Trans-Missouri region. Frémont’s reputation, however, is out of all
proportion to his real accomplishment, for the trails he travelled were
well known to white men long before he ventured into the wilderness. In
this connection, Major Chittenden, one of the foremost authorities on
the subject, tells us that “there never has been a time until very
recently when the geography of the West was so thoroughly understood as
it was by the trader and trapper from 1830 to 1840.”
When Lewis and Clark were descending the Missouri River in the summer of
1806 on their return from the mouth of the Columbia, they met bands of
traders pushing on toward the country from whence the explorers had just
come. These were the vanguard of the real history makers of the Early
West. It was such men as these who, during the next generation, as
Chittenden says, “first explored and established the routes of travel
which are now and always will be the avenues of commerce in that
region.” The period that followed the return of Lewis and Clark was one
of the most enthralling in the entire story of the human race, and yet
the very names of its principal heroes are practically unknown except to
specialists in Western History. The stories of their exploits have not
yet reached our schools, and are to be found, for the most part, hidden
away in the collections of state historical societies and in
contemporary journals and books of travel long since out of print. The
Mormon Emigration, the Mexican War, the Gold Rush to California, and the
Oregon Question filled the popular imagination during the early years of
the West, and thus an important phase of our national development was
overlooked and forgotten.
Nevertheless, it remains true that the story of the West during the
first four decades of the nineteenth century is the story of the
wandering bands of trappers and traders who explored the wilderness in
search of furs from the British boundary to Mexico and from the Missouri
to the Pacific. History, as written in the past, has been too much a
chronological record of official governmental acts, too little an
intimate account of the lives of the people themselves. Doubtless, the
democratic spirit that now seems to be sweeping the world will, if it
continues to spread, revolutionize our whole conception of history,
bringing us to realize that the glory of the race is not the glory of a
chosen few, but that it radiates from the precious heroic stuff of
common human lives. And that view, I am proud to say, is quite in
keeping with our dearest national traditions.
Now the fur trade on the Missouri River dates well back into the
eighteenth century, and at the time of the Revolutionary War, parties of
trappers had already ascended as far north as the Big Bend in the
present state of South Dakota. But it was not until after the return of
Lewis and Clark from the Northwest, and of Lieutenant Pike from the
Southwest, that the great era of the fur trade began. In 1807 the
Spanish trader, Manuel Lisa, ascended the Missouri and the Yellowstone
to the mouth of the Big Horn, where he erected a trading post. Returning
to St. Louis the next year, he became the leading spirit in the “St.
Louis Missouri Fur Company,” the troubled career of which, during the
succeeding fifteen years, was rich in the stuff of which epics are made.
Major Andrew Henry, who appears in “The Song of Hugh Glass” as leader of
the westbound expedition from the mouth of the Grand River, was a member
of that company, ascending the Missouri to the Three Forks in the summer
of 1809. Driven thence by the Blackfeet, he crossed the Great Divide and
built a post on what has since been called Henry’s fork of the Snake
River, thus being the first American trader to operate on the Pacific
side of the Rockies.
In the spring of 1811, the Overland Astorians, under the command of W.
P. Hunt, left St. Louis, bound for the mouth of the Columbia where they
expected to join forces with a sea expedition that had set sail from New
York during the previous autumn for the long and hazardous voyage around
Cape Horn. This is the only widely known expedition in the whole history
of the Trans-Missouri fur trade, thanks to Washington Irving, whose
account of it is an American classic.
During the War of 1812 the fur trade on the Missouri declined; and
though in the year 1819 five companies of some importance were operating
from St. Louis, none of these was doing a profitable business. The
revival of the trade, which ushered in the great epic period of our
national development, may be dated from March 20th, 1822, when the
following advertisement appeared in the _Missouri Republican_ of St.
Louis:
To Enterprising Young Men:
The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred young men to ascend the
Missouri River to its source, there to be employed for one, two or
three years. For particulars enquire of Major Andrew Henry, near the
lead mines in the County of Washington, who will ascend with and
command the party; or of the subscriber near St. Louis.
(Signed) WILLIAM H. ASHLEY.
Major Henry has already been mentioned as a veteran trader of the upper
country. Ashley, who was at that time General of the Missouri Militia
and Lieutenant Governor of the recently admitted state, was about to
make his first trip into the wilderness.
Setting out in the spring of 1822, Major Henry, with his one hundred
“enterprising young men” (some of whom were young only in spirit),
ascended to the mouth of the Yellowstone. This was before the era of the
Missouri River steamboat, and the two keelboats, that bore the trading
stock and supplies of the party, were “cordelled,” that is to say,
pulled by tow-line. General Ashley accompanied the expedition, returning
to St. Louis in the fall. Early in the spring of 1823 he started north
again with a second band of one hundred men. Stopping to trade for
horses at the Ree villages near the mouth of the Grand, he was attacked
by that most treacherous of the Missouri River tribes, received a sound
drubbing, lost most of his horses, and was compelled to drop down stream
to await reënforcements. It was in this battle that old Hugh Glass
received his hip wound.
Jedediah Smith, who was a member of the defeated party, and who had
fought with conspicuous bravery, volunteered to carry the news of
disaster to Henry at the mouth of the Yellowstone. He was then but
twenty-four years old; yet during the next six years he was destined to
discover and explore the central and southwestern routes to the
Pacific—an achievement of equal importance with that of Lewis and Clark,
and performed under much greater difficulties. Immediately upon the
arrival of Smith at the mouth of the Yellowstone, Henry, with most of
his band, started south to the relief of Ashley.
In the meanwhile, Ashley had apprised the Indian Agent and military
authorities at Fort Atkinson of his rough treatment; and Colonel
Leavenworth started north with 220 men, intent upon chastising the Rees
and making the Missouri River safe for American traders. The campaign
that followed, in which the Whites were aided by a band of Sioux, was in
some important respects a fiasco, as the opening lines of the poem
suggest. But that does not greatly matter here.
What does matter, is the fact that the muster roll of the two parties of
Ashley and Henry, then united at the mouth of the Grand, contained
nearly all of the great names in the history of the West from the time
of Lewis and Clark to the coming of the settlers. Harrison Clifford
Dale, whose “Ashley-Smith Explorations to the Pacific” easily ranks him
as the supreme authority on this particular period, has the following to
say regarding the Ashley-Henry men: “The wanderings of this group during
the next ten or fifteen years cover the entire West.... It was the most
significant group of continental explorers ever brought together.”
After the Leavenworth campaign against the Rees, Major Henry, with
eighty men, set out for the mouth of the Big Horn by way of the Grand
River valley. Hugh Glass acted as hunter for the westbound party, and it
is at this point that the following narrative begins. Old Glass was not
himself an explorer, yet his adventures serve to illustrate the heroic
temper of the men who explored the West, as well as the nature of the
difficulties they encountered.
In building the epic cycle, of which “The Song of Hugh Glass” and “The
Song of Three Friends” are parts (each, however, being complete in
itself), I am concerned with the wanderings of that group of men who
were assembled for the last time at the mouth of the Grand. Long ago,
when I was younger than most of you who are now about to study the poem
here presented, I dreamed of making those men live again for the young
men and women of my country. The tremendous mood of heroism that was
developed in our American West during that period is properly a part of
your racial inheritance; and certainly no less important a part than the
memory of ancient heroes. Indeed, it can be shown that those
men—Kentuckians, Virginians, Pennsylvanians, Ohioans—were direct
descendants, in the epic line, of all the heroes of our Aryan race that
have been celebrated by the poets of the Past; descendants of Achilles
and Hector, of Æneas, of Roland, of Sigurd, and of the knights of
Arthur’s court. They went as torch-bearers in the van of our westering
civilization. Your Present is, in a great measure, a heritage from their
Past.
And their blood is in your veins!