Late in 1824 General Ashley, journeying west to reap the winter’s
harvest of furs, approached the mountains by way of the little-known
South Platte route and the Colorado Rockies and explored the lower Green
River. In the summer of 1825 on Henry’s Fork of the Green (near the
Wyoming-Utah line) he inaugurated the annual rendezvous of the mountain
trappers, which provided a more flexible system of fur trading than the
“fixed fort system” which had hitherto prevailed in the Western fur
trade. The beaver catch brought in this first year was of such magnitude
that Ashley was assured of a substantial profit. With Smith and a strong
guard he took his prize by pack train to the Bighorn, by bullboats to
the mouth of the Yellowstone, and by keelboats down the Missouri River
to St. Louis.
Jedediah Smith left Flathead House in 1825 with Peter Skene Ogden of the
Hudson’s Bay Company, but left him in time to rejoin his comrades at the
rendezvous. When the reunited Americans exchanged tales of their
adventures, it is possible that Smith offered a glowing account of the
Jackson’s Hole region. Whatever the inspiration, Bridger and Fitzpatrick
are reported to have headed there to resume trapping operations, after
seeing Smith and Ashley safely down the Bighorn. This may have been the
first large-scale trapping venture in which Jackson’s Hole was a primary
objective.
The rendezvous of 1826 took place near Great Salt Lake. The turnover of
furs was immense and, having made his fortune, General Ashley sold his
interests to three of his most able employees, Jedediah Smith, David E.
Jackson, and William Sublette. Smith left the rendezvous to lead a band
southwest across the desert to the Spanish settlements of California,
being the first to make this perilous passage. Jackson and Sublette
headed for the Snake River country to trade with the Flatheads, taking a
large force of trappers.
Daniel T. Potts of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, one of Sublette’s
men on this expedition, is now identified as the long-mysterious author
of the letter which first appeared in the Philadelphia Gazette and Daily
Advertiser, September 27, 1827, reprinted in Niles’ Register of October
6, which contains the earliest known description of any portion of
present Yellowstone National Park by an American. The original document
came to light in 1947 when Mrs. Kate Nixon and Miss Anne G. Rittenhouse
of Washington, D. C., collateral descendants of Potts, made themselves
known to officials of the National Park Service. It has been fittingly
acquired for posterity by the Yellowstone Library and Museum Association
at Mammoth Hot Springs. The cover is addressed to “Mr. Robert T. Potts,
High Street, Philadelphia” and stamped “St. Louis, Missouri.” Dated July
8, 1827, at the “Sweet Lake” or Bear Lake (Utah) rendezvous, it
describes how the Potts party, no members of which are identified, went
north after the Salt Lake rendezvous of 1826:
A few dass sinci our trader arived by whom I received two letters one
from Dr. Lukens the other from yourself under date of January 1827
which gives me great congratulation to hear that you are both happy
wilst I am unhappy also to hear from my friends shortly after writing
to you last year I took my departuri for the Black-foot Country much
against my will as I could not maki a party for any other rout. We
took a northerly direction about fifty miles where we cross Snake
River or the South fork of columbia at the forks of Henrys & Lewis’s
forks at this place we was dayly harrased by the Black-feet from
thence up Henrys or North fork which bears North of East thirty miles
and crossed a large ruged Mountain which sepparates the two forks from
thence East up the other fork to its source which heads on the top of
the great chain of Rocky Mountains which sepparates the water of the
Atlantic from that of the Pacific. At or near this place heads the
Luchkadee or Calliforn Stinking fork Yellow-stone South fork of
Massuri and Henrys fork all those head at an angular point that of the
Yellow-stone has a large fresh water lake near its head on the verry
top of the Mountain which is about one hundrid by fourty miles in
diameter and as clear as crystal on the south borders of this lake is
a number of hot and boiling springs some of water and others of most
beautiful fine clay and resembles that of a mush pot and throws its
particles to the immense height of from twenty to thirty feet in
height The clay is white and of a pink and water appear fathomless as
it appears to be entirely hollow under neath. There is also a number
of places where the pure suphor is sent forth in abundance one of our
men Visited one of those wilst taking his recreation there at an
instan the earth began a tremendious trembling and he with dificulty
made his escape when an explosion took place resembling that of
thunder. During our stay in that quarter I head it every day.
From here, probably the West Thumb thermal area, “by a circutous rout to
the Nourth west” and after some more bloody encounters with the
Blackfeet, the trappers moved toward the Bear Lake rendezvous. In 1828
Potts left the hostile mountains and embarked from New Orleans on a
cattle ship, which sank with all hands in the Gulf of Mexico.
[Illustration: Daniel T. Potts at the Bear Lake rendezvous of 1827.]
At the 1827 rendezvous at Bear Lake Jedediah Smith appeared like a ghost
out of the Great Salt desert, reporting that the Spanish Governor of
California had expelled him from that province. He arranged with his
partners, Jackson and Sublette, to meet two years hence “at the head of
Snake River.” Then, after a rest of only ten days, he summoned
volunteers and again set his face toward the Pacific Ocean. In the
winter of 1827-28, while Sublette attended to the business of getting
supplies from St. Louis, Jackson sent fur brigades north from Bear Lake
to the Snake River and its tributaries, where they came in frequent
contact with the Hudson’s Bay Company trappers under Ogden. In 1828 the
rendezvous was again Great Salt Lake, and again the trappers dispersed
to hunting grounds on the Bear, the Snake, and the Green.
[Illustration: Keelboat up the Missouri.]
In March 1829 William Sublette left St. Louis for the mountains with a
heavily laden pack train and 60 men, including a novice of 19 named
Joseph L. Meek, whose life story, as told to Mrs. F. F. Victor, is a
prime source of information. After the general rendezvous, which that
year was held in July on the Popo Agie River northeast of South Pass,
Captain Sublette sent a brigade under his brother, Milton Sublette, to
the Bighorn Basin, then set out with the main party, including Meek,
Bridger, and Fitzpatrick, for the upper Snake River Valley at the foot
of the Tetons, the point of reunion with his partners which had been
agreed upon two years previously. The episode which followed, one of the
treasured traditions of the Western fur trade, is described in Mrs.
Victor’s River of the West:
Sublette led his company up the valley of the Wind River, across the
mountains, and on to the very headwaters of the Lewis or Snake River.
Here he fell in with Jackson, in the valley of Lewis Lake, called
Jackson’s Hole, and remained on the borders of this lake for some
time, waiting for Smith, whose non-appearance began to create a good
deal of uneasiness. At length runners were dispatched in all
directions looking for the lost Booshway.
The detachment to which Meek was assigned had the pleasure and honor
of discovering the hiding place of the missing partner, which was in
Pierre’s Hole, a mountain valley about thirty miles long and of half
that width, which subsequently was much frequented by the camps of the
various fur companies.
[Illustration: Arikara attack on Ashley Party, 1823.]
This is the core of the tradition. From this it has generally been
inferred that it was on this occasion that the lake and the valley were
named in honor of David E. Jackson, and that this was Captain Sublette’s
idea. David E. Jackson, sometimes referred to as “Davey,” is the mystery
man of the Smith-Jackson-Sublette trio. How old he was, what he looked
like, where he came from prior to 1823 is not known. He was one of the
“enterprising young men” who responded to Ashley’s call in that year.
That his “rating” with trappers was high and that he was one of the
acknowledged leaders of the Rocky Mountain fur trade is clear from the
fact of the partnership formed in 1826. He was not illiterate, for his
signature appears on documents, but like most of his associates he kept
no diary, so that our knowledge of his exact wanderings is indistinct.
It is part of the tradition that he spent the winter of 1828-29 in the
vicinity of Jackson’s Hole, and his known interest in the region prompts
us to believe that he had spent several previous years there as well. He
might well have been one of the six men who accompanied Smith on his
“discovery” of Jackson Hole in 1824. He left the mountains in 1830, went
to Santa Fe and then on to California on a trading venture in 1831, and
apparently returned to St. Louis in 1832, where he disappears, so to
speak, under a cloud. One rumor has it that he “ran off with property
belonging to the firm of Jackson, Waldo and Young,” another that “he
dissipated his large and hard-earned fortune in a few years.”
After the reunion in Pierre’s Hole, according to Meek, the entire
company moved up Henry’s Fork of the Snake, and across the Divide to the
valleys of the Madison and Gallatin. Crossing the Gallatin Range in
early winter, the trappers reached the vicinity of Cinnabar Mountain,
three miles below Yellowstone Park’s present North Entrance. Here two
men were killed and the party was scattered by the Blackfeet. Meek
alleges that he wandered into the future Park, where he ascended a high
peak. Crossing Yellowstone River, he ran into an incredible region
smoking “like Pittsburgh on a winter morning” with the vapor from
boiling springs, haunted by the sound of whistling steam vents, dotted
with cone-shaped mounds surmounted by craters from which issued “blue
flames and molten brimstone,” and devoid of living creatures. From here,
apparently the seldom visited Mirror Plateau, Meek crossed the Absaroka
Range to the winter camp on Powder River.
About the first of April 1830, according to Meek, “Jackson, or ‘Davey,’
as he was called by his men, with about half the company, left for the
Snake country.” At the Wind River rendezvous in July, “Jackson arrived
from the Snake country with plenty of beaver....”
At Wind River, on August 4, 1830, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, having
earned a deserved fortune from their labors, decided to retire from the
mountain trade, and sold their interest to a group of their employees
who had already distinguished themselves in the service—James Bridger,
Thomas Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Henry Fraeb, and Baptiste Gervais.
The main trapper band, numbering over two hundred and including Meek,
followed Bridger and Fitzpatrick northward to the Three Forks of the
Missouri, thence south to Ogden’s Hole, a small valley in the Bear River
Mountains. In the fall of 1830, John Work, heading the annual Snake
River expedition of the Hudson’s Bay Company, got wind of the American
invasion of his domain. Among other rumors was one that Fontenelle and
his men “have been hunting on the Upper Snake. They were set upon by the
Blackfeet on the Yellowstone River and 18 men killed.”
In the spring of 1831, after wintering again at Powder River, Meek
reports on the spring hunt: “Having once more visited the Yellowstone,
they turned to the south again, crossing the mountains into Pierre’s
Hole, on to Snake river; thence to Salt river; thence to Bear river; and
thence to Green river to rendezvous.” Confirmation of this comes from
Joseph Meek’s brother Stephen, who says that this year he trapped on the
Yellowstone, Wind, and Musselshell Rivers, “going through Jackson’s Hole
to the rendezvous on Popyoisa River.”
From the Powder River encampment Fitzpatrick headed for St. Louis to
round up a supply caravan. Running into his old companions Smith,
Jackson, and Sublette en route to Santa Fe, he was persuaded to join
them, being promised an outfit when they arrived. Thus he shared the
delays and perils of that expedition in which Jedediah Smith was slain
by a Comanche spear, and when he left Santa Fe, he was far behind
schedule. Picking up young Kit Carson and other volunteers at Taos, he
followed the east slope of the Rockies into eastern Wyoming country,
sometime during September reaching the North Platte River at Laramie’s
Fork. Here he met Fraeb, who had been sent to look for him while the
others waited impatiently with parched tongues at Green River.
Fitzpatrick returned to St. Louis for supplies, while Fraeb led the
recruits westward, traveling via Green River and Jackson’s Hole to
“winter quarters on the head of Salmon River.” Thus there was no real
summer rendezvous in 1831.
At this time the shadow of the American Fur Company, the great monopoly
of the Upper Missouri region, fell across the Rocky Mountains. In
February 1830 the newly organized “Western Department” of this company,
determined to capture the lucrative mountain trade, sent out an
expedition from St. Louis under Andrew Drips, Lucien Fontenelle and one
Robidoux. Our chief source of information about this company during the
early 1830’s is the journal of Warren A. Ferris. From an encampment near
the Big Hole country of Montana, Ferris writes: “On the 8th [of October,
1831] two of our men accompanied by three or four Indians departed for
the Trois Tetons, to meet Mr. Dripps who was expected this fall from the
Council Bluffs, with an equipment of men, horses, and merchandise.”
From spring camping grounds on the Bear and Snake River tributaries, the
brigades of the rival companies converged on Pierre’s Hole, where the
Rocky Mountain Fur Company partners had scheduled their rendezvous for
1832. Although they welcomed peaceful Indians and “free” trappers, they
expressly did not invite their competitors of the American Fur Company
who, nevertheless decided to attend. Rumors of the impending conclave of
the “mountain men” also reached the scattered bands of independent
trappers, among whom was George Nidever. In the spring Nidever’s band
trapped up the Green River until May, intending to continue on to “the
head waters of the Columbia,” but turned back when they learned that
“the place we intended going was already being trapped by other
companies.” (This strongly suggests that somebody, probably Rocky
Mountain men, were trapping in Jackson’s Hole prior to the rendezvous.)
Returning to the Platte River, they met “O’Felon” and Moses “Black”
Harris, two other independent traders, with whom they proceeded by way
of Teton Pass to the rendezvous, where they arrived on July 4.
The experienced William Sublette, one-time partner, had contracted with
the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to supply trade goods, and to take out
the beaver hides. With Robert Campbell he set out for St. Louis in May
1832 with over 100 men. At Independence he picked up a band of eighteen
green New Englanders under Nathaniel J. Wyeth, an ambitious young man
who had hopes of succeeding, where John Jacob Astor had failed, in
establishing a fur-trading empire in Oregon. At Laramie’s Fork he
recruited some twenty trappers under Alfred K. Stephens, and other
trappers were picked up farther on. Not the least remarkable feature of
this expedition was that at least five of its members kept notes—William
Sublette, the methodical Nathaniel Wyeth, his brother John B. Wyeth,
another of his followers named John Ball, and Zenas Leonard, one of the
“free” trappers with Stephens.
Sublette’s account is contained in a letter to General Ashley, dated
Lexington, Missouri, September 21, 1832. He indicates that he arrived at
the head of the “Colorado of the West” (Green River) on July 2, being
attacked that night by Blackfoot Indians; arrived “on the waters of the
Columbia” July 4 “and at the rendezvous of the Rocky Mountain Hunters,
on the Columbia river, west of the Three Teton Mountains,” on July 8.
Nathaniel Wyeth’s diary agrees substantially with Sublette on
chronology, but is much more illuminating. He clearly depicts the
dangerous descent of the Hoback, the fording of “Lewis River” on July 6,
and the climb up Teton Pass, “a gap of the mountains due south of the
Trois Tetons.” The disillusioned brother, John Wyeth, gives us a
dramatic picture:
On the 4th [6th?] of July, 1832, we arrived at Lewis’s fork [Snake
River], one of the largest rivers in these rocky mountains. It took us
all day to cross it. It is half a mile wide, deep and rapid. The way
we managed was this: one man unloaded his horse, and swam across with
him, leading two loaded ones, and unloading the two, brought them
back, for two more, and as Sublet’s company and our own made over a
hundred and fifty, we were all day in passing the river. In returning,
my mule, by treading on a round stone, stumbled and threw me off, and
the current was so strong, that a bush which I caught hold of only
saved me from drowning.
“Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick became “White Hair” Fitzpatrick as a result of
events which befell him in 1832. Zenas Leonard states that in June 1832
while he was encamped at Laramie’s Fork:
Mr. Fitzpatrick and a company of 115 men came to our camp. He was on
his way [from St. Louis] to join his company on the west side of the
mountains, on the Columbia River, and to supply them with merchandise,
ammunition, horses, etc....
Having made this arrangement with Mr. F., our camp [on the Laramie]
was all confusion at an early hour this morning, preparing to depart
for the Columbia river. Mr. F. took one of the fleetest and most hardy
horses in his train, and set out in advance of the main body, in order
to discover the disposition of the various Indian tribes through whose
dominions we were to travel, and to meet us at a designated point on
the head of the Columbia river.
While en route to Pierre’s Hole, probably in the valley of Green River,
Fitzpatrick was ambushed by or stumbled upon the hostile Gros Ventres,
probably the same who later raided Sublette’s camp. By sacrificing his
horse and secreting himself in a hole in the rocks, he managed to elude
these savages, but nearly starved while wandering through the
wilderness. Fitzpatrick’s whereabouts during his ordeal are not
recorded, and in most accounts he merely turns up (on July 8, according
to Ferris) in Pierre’s Hole in a pitiful state. Meek relates that “he
made his appearance in camp in company with two Iroquois half-breeds,
belonging to the camp, who had been out on a hunt,” which is also the
way that Irving got it from Bonneville. George Nidever claims to have
been one of these hunters, and, if his story is straight, Fitzpatrick
was found in Jackson’s Hole: “A week or so after the arrival of the
company a trapper by the name of Poe and I went out for a short hunt,
and met Fitzpatrick crossing the Lewis Fork.... We piloted him back to
camp.”
By the 17th of July the whiskey kegs were all empty, and the wild
celebration which invariably climaxed every rendezvous of the fur
traders perforce came to an end in Pierre’s Hole. On this day the
combined companies of Nathaniel Wyeth and Milton Sublette set out for
the lower Snake River. On the morning of the 18th they described a
column of Gros Ventre tribesmen descending a hillside, “fantastically
painted and arrayed, with scarlet blankets fluttering in the wind.” The
ensuing conflict was a victory for the trappers. Some of the Indians
escaped from their improvised fort into Jackson’s Hole, leaving perhaps
twenty-six of their number dead, while their trail of blood suggested
other heavy casualties. This battle upset the general time-table and
delayed the various departures from the rendezvous. On the 24th of July,
Wyeth and Milton Sublette resumed their journey which had before been so
rudely interrupted, Wyeth eventually continuing on to visit the British
establishments on the Pacific Coast. Captain Sublette was compelled to
linger because of his injuries, and, on the 25th, seven who planned to
accompany him to St. Louis became impatient and started out by
themselves. These were Joseph More of Boston, one of Wyeth’s deserters,
a Mr. Foy of Mississippi, Alfred K. Stephens, “two grandsons of the
celebrated Daniel Boone,” and two others unidentified. In Jackson’s
Hole, apparently near the mouth of the Hoback, they were ambushed by a
band of Gros Ventres. More and Foy were killed instantly, while Stephens
died from his wounds after he and the four survivors retreated with
tiding of disaster to Sublette’s camp.
On July 30 Bridger and Fitzpatrick led the Rocky Mountain Fur Company
brigades northward from Pierre’s Hole toward the headwaters of the
Missouri, while William Sublette found himself sufficiently recovered to
assist Campbell in organizing the homeward-bound caravan, composed of
sixty men and a beaver-laden packtrain. According to Irving, “they chose
a different route through the mountains, out of the way, as they hoped,
of the lurking bands of Blackfeet. They succeeded in making the frontier
in safety.” It seems evident that the Sublette caravan turned north
after crossing the Snake and then ascended the Gros Ventre River and
crossed over to Wind River by way of Union Pass. While the Sublette
caravan was leaving the valley, they were shadowed by a “large body of
the Blackfoot tribe,” doubtless the murderers of More and Foy, who
showed a healthy respect for the heavily armed trappers. Thus it would
seem that, while he did not entirely elude the Blackfeet, Sublette
managed to bluff his way past them and avoid what might well have become
the “Battle of Jackson’s Hole.”
At the Pierre’s Hole rendezvous, Drips and Vanderburgh, the American Fur
Company partisans, were frustrated in their competitive effort by the
fact that their supply train under Fontenelle had failed to arrive. It
was now too late to bid for the furs taken out by Sublette, but they
might follow Bridger and Fitzpatrick with profit if they only had trade
goods. Accordingly, they resolved to hasten to Green River to see if
they could find the belated caravan. The clerk, Warren A. Ferris, gives
a detailed account of the passage through “Jackson’s Big Hole,” in early
August:
In the evening we halted on a spring, four miles east of Lewis River,
after marching twenty-two miles. On the 5th we passed six or eight
miles southeast, and halted on the margin of the stream [Hoback],
flowing from that direction. During our march, some of the hunters saw
the bones of two men, supposed to be those killed from a party of
seven, in the latter part of July....
After losing one horse in precipitous Hoback Canyon, the party reached
Jackson’s Little Hole, where they killed several buffalo, and
successfully by-passed a large village of Indians. They crossed over to
Green River, and on the 8th fell in with Fontenelle, “who had passed
from St. Louis to the mouth of the Yellowstone in a steamboat, and
thence with pack horses to this place.” Ferris accompanied Vanderburgh
and Drips on the return trip in pursuit of Bridger. He writes:
On the 14th we passed through the Narrows, between Jackson’s Holes;
and avoided some of the difficulties we met on our previous passage,
by crossing the river, several times. In the evening we halted for the
night near the remains of two men, who were killed in July last. These
we collected, and deposited in a small stream, that discharged itself
into a fork of the Lewis river; that flows from Jackson’s Little Hole.
[Illustration: Rendezvous scene.]
Captain Benjamin L. E. Bonneville, a Frenchman of distinguished
antecedents, applied in 1831 for a leave of absence from the U.S. Army
for the joint purpose of exploration and trade. With funds provided by
hopeful New York capitalists he organized an impressive company,
including 110 men and twenty ox-drawn wagons, and on May 1, 1832, he set
out from Fort Osage. Bonneville’s wagon train was the second to ascend
the traditional overland route along the Platte and the Sweetwater, and
the first to cross South Pass. In the Green River Valley on July 26 the
Captain was overtaken by Fontenelle’s company. On the west side of the
Green, five miles above Horse Creek, he started the erection of Fort
Bonneville, while his rival encamped farther upstream, for his jaded
horses and mules would budge no further. After Fontenelle’s departure,
above noted, the Captain decided upon the advice of “free trappers,” to
head for Salmon River for the winter. Leaving his cumbersome wagons at
the fort, he cached most of his baggage and then packed the rest on
mules and horses. The expedition set forth on August 22, reaching Teton
Pass on September 3. Instead of taking the standard route via the
Hoback, where hostile Indians waited in ambush, Captain Bonneville
elected to take a long circuitous route to the headwaters of Green
River, entering Jackson’s Hole via the Gros Ventre River.
[Illustration: “Weapons of the Pierre’s Hole Fight”—Exhibit in Fur
Trade Museum, Grand Teton National Park.]
Following the rendezvous in Pierre’s Hole, the Rocky Mountain men
conducted their fall hunt in the dangerous Blackfoot country around the
Three Forks of the Missouri. In attempting to follow them, Vanderburgh
of the American Fur Company was slain by the Blackfeet. During the
winter of 1832-33 the various rival bands holed up along tributaries of
the Snake and Salmon rivers; and at the first melting of the snow they
resumed their feverish scramble for the prime hunting grounds.
Most of the other trapping bands remained west of the Continental Divide
to make their spring hunt, and approached the Green River rendezvous
through Jackson’s Hole. The first to stir in this direction was the
American Fur Company partisan Drips, who led the bulk of his forces,
probably about sixty men, up Snake River, hunting and trapping as they
went. At the junction of Salt River, they were compelled to leave the
Snake to make the toilsome detour over the Snake River Range and Teton
Pass, which they reached on May 31. Ferris vividly describes their
journey through the “immense banks of snow on the mountain,” the fording
of “Lewis River,” and the ascent of “Gros Vent’s Fork” to the head of
Green River. He notes, “We found a large herd of buffalo in the valley,
and killed several; also a large bear, which paid with his life the
temerity of awaiting our approach.”
Wyeth’s enterprise on the Columbia River was balked by the shipwreck of
the vessel which was to supply him, and, after a fruitless winter at
Fort Vancouver, he set out eastward with Francis Ermatinger of the
Hudson’s Bay Company. Below the forks of the Snake they came up with
Captain Bonneville. The Wyeth journal tells the story of their Jackson’s
Hole passage via Teton Pass and the Hoback. He found “horse flies on the
mountains ... buffalo in the bottom also mosquitoes.” Evidence of the
recent trail of the “men of Dripps and Fontenelle” was observed, also
the place where More and Foy were killed the year before. Of this
passage Irving reports,
No accident of a disastrous kind occurred, excepting the loss of a
horse, which, in passing along the giddy edge of a precipice, called
the Cornice, a dangerous pass between Jackson’s and Pierre’s Hole,
fell over the brink, and was dashed to pieces.
On the 13th of July [1833], Captain Bonneville arrived at Green
River....
[Illustration: Fort Bonneville site, on Horse Creek near its junction
with Green River.
Photo by Author]
[Illustration: Section of “Map of the Rocky Mountains” by Washington
Hood, Corps of Topographical Engineers, 1839. Data by William Sublette
and others. Records of the War Department, National Archives.]
[Illustration: Trapper type—American.]
[Illustration: BULLET MOLD]