In the spring of 1810, after Colter had departed, the Missouri Fur
Company fort at Three Forks was so besieged by the Blackfeet that Andrew
Henry was forced to flee with his trappers southwestward. They crossed
the Continental Divide to the north fork of Snake River, since known as
Henry’s Fork. A few log shelters built here near present St. Anthony,
Idaho, called “Henry’s Fort,” became the first American establishment on
the Pacific slope. During the rigorous winter of 1810-1811 it may be
reasoned that these men explored the country within a wide radius of the
Teton Mountains. Any belief that they touched Yellowstone Park must be
conjectural, but that they were acquainted with Jackson’s Hole is quite
evident from the testimony of the Astorians. In the spring of 1811 the
starving company disbanded. Henry and others returned down the Missouri
via Three Forks, while John Hoback, John Robinson and Jacob Reznor went
eastward via Teton Pass, Jackson’s Hole, Twogwotee Pass, and overland to
the Arikara villages on the Missouri, where they shaped a dugout and
proceeded downstream.
In 1808 John Jacob Astor secured a charter from the state of New York
creating the American Fur Company. The most ambitious of his schemes was
the establishment of a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River,
to exploit the wealth of the Northwestern wilderness. To promote this
enterprise, Astor organized the subsidiary Pacific Fur Company and sent
out two expeditions, one of which went by sea around Cape Horn, while
the other was to proceed overland along the route of Lewis and Clark.
The overland Astorians achieved fame as the first transcontinental
expedition after Lewis and Clark, but fate decreed that they should
blaze their own trail—through Jackson’s Hole.
Early in 1811 the overland party, under the command of Wilson Price Hunt
of New Jersey, left St. Louis and sailed by keelboat up the Missouri
River. On May 26, near the mouth of the Niobrara River, they met Hoback,
Robinson, and Reznor. This trio was persuaded to join the outfit as
guides and hunters, and it appears that it was their reports of hostile
Indians on the Upper Missouri that prompted Hunt to abandon his boats on
July 18 at the Arikara villages and proceed on dry land. From this point
on the expedition consisted of 82 horses, 62 men, and the squaw and two
children belonging to the interpreter Pierre Dorion.
[Illustration: Fort Astoria.]
The hopeful caravan retraced the route that Hoback and his companions
had followed across the trackless plains and the Bighorn Mountains, then
started up Wind River. Here, on September 14, according to Irving’s
Astoria, the guides
assured Mr. Hunt that, by following up Wind River, and crossing a
single mountain ridge, he would come upon the head waters of the
Columbia. The scarcity of game, however, which already had been felt
to a pinching degree, and which threatened them with famine among the
sterile heights which lay before them, admonished them to change their
course. It was determined, therefore, to make for a stream [Green
River] which, they were informed, passed the neighboring mountains to
the south and west, on the grassy banks of which it was probable they
would meet with buffalo. Accordingly about three o’clock on the
following day, meeting with a beaten Indian road which led in the
proper direction, they struck into it, turning their backs upon Wind
River.
In the course of the day they came to a height that commanded an
almost boundless prospect. Here one of the guides paused, and, after
considering the vast landscape attentively, pointed to three mountain
peaks glistening with snow [the Tetons], which rose, he said, above a
fork of Columbia River. They were hailed by the travellers with that
joy with which a beacon on a sea-shore is hailed by mariners after a
long and dangerous voyage....
After a buffalo hunt on the “Spanish” or Green River, the Astorians
crossed the dividing ridge to the head of the Hoback River (presumably
then named in honor of their guide), which they followed into Jackson’s
Hole.
The Hunt cavalcade paused at the confluence of the Hoback and the Snake
rivers, and debated. “Should they abandon their horses, cast themselves
loose in fragile barks upon this wild, doubtful, and unknown river; or
should they continue their more toilsome and tedious, but perhaps more
certain wayfaring by land?” After some tentative exploring of the Snake
River Canyon, and upon the advice of the three hunters, they wisely
decided in favor of the latter course. They forded the Snake, and on
October 5 as they crossed “the mountain [Teton Pass] ... by an easy and
well-beaten trail, snow whitened the summit....” On the 8th they arrived
at Andrew Henry’s abandoned post. Here Hoback, Robinson, Reznor, and two
others left the party on a separate exploring trip; and here it was that
Hunt yielded to the demands of his followers, which he previously had
resisted, and abandoned his horses in favor of passage by canoe flotilla
down the Snake, a tragic mistake which brought great suffering to the
Astorians before they reached their goal.
While the main body passed on, four men remained in Jackson’s Hole to
“catch beaver.” This was the first known actual trapping of that area.
Even more important, it was the first actual step in the great
commercial project of Astoria. Irving recognized the significance of
this move:
[The expedition] had now arrived at the head waters of the Columbia,
which were among the main points embraced by the enterprise of Mr.
Astor. These upper streams were reputed to abound in beaver, and had
as yet been unmolested by the white trapper. The numerous signs of
beaver met with during the recent search for timber gave evidence that
the neighborhood was a good ‘trapping ground.’ Here then it was proper
to begin to cast loose those leashes of hardy trappers, that are
detached from trading parties, in the very heart of the wilderness.
The men detached in the present instance were Alexander Carson, Louis
St. Michel, Pierre Detaye, and Pierre Delaunay.
[Illustration: Snake River crossing.
Photo by Author]
These men were instructed to “trap upon the upper part of Mad (Snake)
River, and upon the neighboring streams.” Whether they entered
Yellowstone Park at this time is entirely conjectural. In the spring of
1812 they were attacked by Crow Indians near the Three Forks, and Detaye
was killed.
On June 29, 1812, seven men led by Robert Stuart left Astoria carrying
dispatches overland to Astor. The party arrived at St. Louis on April
30, 1813. They were the first organized transcontinental expedition
eastbound after the return of Lewis and Clark, and the first to discover
South Pass and the great Platte or Central route which was destined to
become the main highway of the covered-wagon migrations. This journey
again took them through Jackson’s Hole.
Stuart had gone out to Astoria by sea, but his fellow travelers had all
been members of the Hunt expedition. These were John Day, Benjamin
Jones, Francois Leclerc, Andre Valle, Ramsay Crooks, and Robert
McClellan. Soon after setting out up the Columbia River John Day became
violently deranged because of his sufferings from the previous winter
and had to be sent back to Astoria. To the six remaining travelers,
however, was eventually added Joseph Miller, who had been with Hoback,
Robinson, and Reznor after they left Hunt in October 1811. The Stuart
party reached Bear River intending to go due east; but there Crow
Indians got on their trail. To elude them Stuart went north to the Snake
and thus struck Hunt’s route of the preceding year. At Snake or “Mad
River” near the present Idaho-Wyoming boundary, Crows stampeded their
horses. They built a raft and descended the Snake for over a hundred
miles, then crossed over the Snake River Range to Pierre’s Hole at the
foot of the “Pilot Knobs,” where they reached familiar territory.
Here, in order to avoid a chance encounter with a Blackfoot war party,
Stuart kept to the foothills, but the cantankerous McClellan,
complaining of sore feet, refused to detour and went his own way. He was
not to be seen again for thirteen days. Crooks, who had been ailing for
some time, fell desperately ill, and despite recourse to castor oil and
“an Indian sweat,” tied up the expedition in Pierre’s Hole for four
days. On October 5 they set out again and on the 7th crossed “the summit
of Pilot Knob Mountain [Teton Pass]” and reached the east bank of “Mad
River.” Their stock of venison was by this time depleted. On the 9th
they started up the precipitous Hoback Canyon and on the 12th reached
Green River drainage, where they found McClellan. Warding off starvation
by slaughtering an “old rundown buffalo bull,” the travelers journeyed
from here to South Pass and down the Platte, wintering in the vicinity
of Scotts Bluff.
For a few years after Stuart’s party disappeared up Hoback Canyon, the
Tetons and Jackson’s Hole were left in solitude. Due to the hostility of
the Blackfeet, the loss of Astoria in the War of 1812, and the
indifference of the Federal Government, American interest in the Western
Fur trade suffered a relapse. British interests now took the initiative.
In 1816 the Northwest Company, licensed by the Crown to trade in Oregon,
put Donald McKenzie in charge of the Snake River division. From Fort Nez
Perce at the mouth of the Walla Walla, he set forth in September of 1818
at the head of an expedition “composed of fifty-five men, of all
denominations, 195 horses and 300 beaver traps, besides a considerable
stock of merchandise.” He reported his course to Alexander Ross:
From this place [the “Skamnaugh” or Boise] we advanced, suffering
occasionally from alarms for twenty-five days, and then found
ourselves in a rich field of beaver, in the country lying between the
great south branch and the Spanish waters [Bear River?].... I left my
people at the end of four months. Then taking a circuitous route along
the foot of the Rocky Mountains, a country extremely dreary during a
winter voyage, I reached the head water of the great south branch
regretting every step I made that we had been so long deprived of the
riches of such a country....
In a description of the Snake River country, presumably furnished him by
McKenzie, Ross continues:
[Illustration: “The British Threat”—Exhibit in Fur Trade Museum, Grand
Teton National Park.]
For twelve years after the returning Astorians disappeared up the
Hoback, no Americans entered Jackson Hole. The British North West
Company, and then the Hudson’s Bay Company, with which it merged,
trapped unchallenged west of the Rockies.
The Rocky Mountains skirting this country on the East, dwindle from
stupendous heights into sloping ridges, which divide the country into
a thousand luxurious vales, watered by streams which abound in fish.
The most remarkable heights in any part of the great backbone of
America are three elevated insular mountains, or peaks, which are seen
at the distance of one hundred and fifty miles: the hunters very aptly
designate them the Pilot Knobs they are now generally known as the
Three Paps or ‘Tetons’; and the source of the Great Snake River is in
their neighborhood....
Boiling fountains, having different degrees of temperatures, were very
numerous; one or two were so very hot as to boil meat. In other parts,
among the rocks, hot and cold springs might alternately be seen within
a hundred yards of each other, differing in their temperature.
McKenzie’s exact route can only be conjectural, but the context suggests
passage through Jackson’s Hole into a corner, at least, of Yellowstone
Park. It was apparently on this occasion that the “Trois Tetons” and
“Pierre’s Hole” were given their names by Iroquois or French-Canadians
who accompanied McKenzie.
Chittenden reports the discovery in 1880 by Colonel P. W. Norris of a
tree near the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone with the inscription “JOR
Aug 19 1819.” Although of course the initials prove nothing as to
identity, Chittenden accepts this as proof of white men in the Park at
that time.
Stimulated by McKenzie’s success in acquiring peltries, the Northwest
Company followed up with other Snake River expeditions. The threat of
British domination of Oregon was aggravated when, in 1821, the Northwest
Company was absorbed by the powerful Hudson’s Bay Company.
Shortly after the consolidation of the British companies, the prospects
for a revival of American interest in the mountain fur trade were
awakened in the frontier town of St. Louis by the formation of a
partnership that would evolve into the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. In
1822 General William H. Ashley and the veteran Major Andrew Henry
enlisted the aid of “one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri River
to its source” on a trapping expedition. Among those who joined the
enterprise, then or subsequently, were men destined to make history in
the West—James Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Jedediah Smith, William
Sublette and David E. Jackson. They were green boys, hardly fit material
for an epic invasion of the uncharted Rocky Mountains; yet they were
destined to become continental explorers.
Henry took his young men in keelboats up the Missouri to the mouth of
the Yellowstone, where they spent the winter. In the spring of 1823 he
set out for the Blackfoot country to the west. Again, as in 1810, these
Indians proved to be most inhospitable, scalping four of his recruits
and driving him back to his fort. Meanwhile General Ashley organized
another expedition and proceeded upriver without incident until he
arrived at the villages of the Arikara. There his plans were upset by a
treacherous attack in which thirteen of his men were killed and many
others were wounded. Colonel Leavenworth hastened to the rescue, but his
campaign against the Indians was something of a fiasco. Soon afterward
Ashley returned to St. Louis, Henry returned to his post on the
Yellowstone, and a third contingent started overland under the command
of Jedediah Smith. In February 1824 this last group made the first
crossing of South Pass from east to west, their discovery of rich beaver
fields in Green River Basin opening a new era in fur trade history. In
June they split into four parties. Fitzpatrick, heading east for Fort
Atkinson to report the situation to Ashley, rediscovered the Platte
route of the returning Astorians; Sublette, Bridger, and others went
southwest to explore the Bear River country and lay claim to the
discovery of Great Salt Lake; and Smith, with six unidentified
companions, went north. The details of their course are given in
Washington Hood’s Original draft of a report of a practicable route for
wheeled vehicles across the mountains, written at Independence, August
12, 1839.
After striking the Colorado, or Green river, make up the stream toward
its headwaters, as far as Horse creek, one of its tributaries, follow
out this last mentioned stream to its source by a westerly course,
across the main ridge in order to attain Jackson’s Little Hole, at the
headwaters of Jackson’s fork [Hoback River]. Follow down Jackson’s
fork to its mouth and decline to the northward along Lewis’s fork
[Snake River], passing through Jackson’s Big Hole to about twelve
miles beyond the Yellowstone pass [sic], crossing on the route a
nameless beaver stream. Here the route passes due west over another
prong of the ridge [Conant Pass], a fraction worse than the former,
followed until it has attained the headwaters of Pierre’s Hole,
crossing the Big Teton, the battleground of the Blacksmith’s fork;
ford Pierre’s fork eastward of the butte at its mouth and Lewis fork
also, thence pass to the mouth of Lewis fork.
Subsequently the Smith party encountered a Hudson’s Bay Company brigade
under Alexander Ross, giving first notice that Americans would actively
contest British claims to Oregon. This expedition to the Jackson’s Hole
country was also significant as the first in an amazing series which has
established Jedediah Smith as perhaps the foremost explorer of Western
America.
We have noted the visit of McKenzie’s brigade of British-Canadians to
the Upper Snake and a region of boiling fountains, in 1818-1819, as
reported by Ross. Now, in 1824, Ross himself conducted the second
British invasion of Yellowstone Park, while crossing from Okanagon to
the headwaters of the Missouri. In the foolscap folios which make up his
official report, the entry for April 24 reads: “We crossed beyond the
Boiling Fountains. The snow is knee-deep half the people are snow-blind
from sun glare.” So British traders have supplied the first clear record
of Yellowstone thermal wonders to follow the hazy notations along
Colter’s route on The Clark Map of 1810.
[Illustration: TRADE BEADS AND HAWK BELLS]