[From James G. Scrugham, Nevada: The Narrative of the Conquest of a Frontier Land (1935), vol. I, pp. 20-24]

III

THE TRAPPERS AND FUR TRADERS IN THE NORTH

1812-1826

For a clear understanding of the immediate causes which led to the occupancy of the Great Basin and the subsequent settlement of Nevada by white people it is necessary to consider the position of the whites in the adjacent territory in the early years of the nineteenth century. It should be remembered that from the discovery of America in 1492 down to the discovery of gold in California in 1848 practically the only commerce in the vast stretch of country between the Mississippi and the Sacramento valleys was the fur trade. In all this period, out of the boundless resources of an undeveloped continent the one article of commerce that would stand the cost of transportation to the marts of trade was the dried skins of the wild animals which had their habitat along with the human savages who occupied the land. The story of the fur trade is among the most romantic chapters of American history; we glance but briefly at those aspects of the trade which have a bearing on our present purpose.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the fur trade ex-tended throughout the north from the Great Lakes to the Pacific ocean, and it was for the most part in the hands of two great English companies, soon to be absorbed into the oldest and most powerful, the Hudson's Bay Company. The Louisiana purchase in 1803 had added to the United States a vast extent of territory in which trapping was the chief pursuit; and the growing strength of the robust young nation promised protection to American traders from the almost imperial sway of the English companies in the Northwest. To explore this newly acquired territory and to re-port upon its possibilities for trade the Lewis and Clark expedition crossed the continent in 1804-1806, going up the Missouri to its sources, crossing the Rocky Mountain divide to the headwaters of the Columbia and down this river to the Pacific ocean. The information gathered by Lewis and Clark and presented to Congress disclosed among other important material that there existed along the streams tributary to the Missouri and the Columbia long stretches of territory rich in furs and not yet invaded by the fur -trade. The brilliant opportunities offered in this; virgin field attracted the attention of a young fur trader named John Jacob Astor, who coming to America a few years before as a poor emigrant boy had learned while on shipboard of the possibilities of the fur trade, had embarked in it without capital, and had become through his energy and native shrewdness a factor in the business. His experience in the trade, with the Indians and the trappers, and, above all, with the all powerful monopoly of the English companies, had taught him that the new fields opened by Lewis and Clark could be occupied and held only by a strongly financed company sustained and protected by the authority and aid of the

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Federal Government. With characteristic energy Mr. Astor set about putting into practical effect these far-seeing plans. That they ended in final disaster was due not to any inherent weakness in the plans but partly to the weakness and possible duplicity of his

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MAP OF THE WEST PUBLISHED IN 1826

own agents, and partly because the war between England and the United States rendered impractical an American post at the mouth of the Columbia at this time. The remarkable story of his attempt to found such a post has been eloquently told by Washington Irving in his Astoria. In the furtherance of his plans Astor sent out two expeditions, one by sea in the ship Tonquin sailing from New York, and the other by land, going up the Missouri and down the Columbia, to meet at the mouth of the latter stream and there to found a trading post.

Five members of the overland party left the expedition some-where on the upper waters of the Snake River and proceeded to explore the country to the south. They crossed the divide and went down into the valley of the Bear River, chief tributary of Great Salt Lake, and were thus the first white men so far as known to enter the Great Basin in its northern portion. From descriptions given to them by the Indians they concluded that Great Salt Lake was an arm of the sea.

The disasters which overtook the trading post of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia resulted in its transfer to the North West Fur Company in 1814, which was later combined with the Hudson's Bay Fur Company. From that time practically all the territory drained by the Columbia and its tributaries was principally occupied by the trappers of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, which established trading posts at strategic points along the main

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streams with headquarters first at Astoria and later at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia opposite the mouth of the Willamette River. Occasionally its trappers crossed the Columbia divide on the upper waters of the Snake River and trapped on the streams flowing south, which they called "the Spanish waters."

The process of trapping a stream resulted in the practical ex-termination of the beaver living on it. In consequence new and untrapped streams must constantly be sought. Thus it happened that the trappers became, often unwittingly and nearly always unintentionally, the first explorers of the new western country, and the vanguard of the American frontier.

In 1822 Ashley and Henry organized a fur-trading company at St. Louis and Henry took a party of trappers up the Missouri and established a post at the Three Forks of that river, from which parties were sent out to trap and to buy furs from the Indians. In the spring of 1824 one of these parties under Thomas Fitzpatrick crossed the divide between the headwaters of the Missouri and the Green rivers and trapped on the western tributaries of the latter stream, later going over the western divide and down into the valley of the Bear River, and so into the Great Basin. A portion of this party under William Sublette spent the winter of 1824-25 on the Bear River trapping the various streams which abounded in beaver. Another party under Etienne Provost trapped down Weber River and spent the same winter on that stream near the present site of Ogden. One of Sublette's men, James Bridger, followed the Bear River down to Great Salt Lake, and is reputed to be the first white man to visit it. The exact date of his discovery of the lake is not known, and it is possible that Provost's men may have seen the lake before Bridger did.

When Ashley and Henry's trappers had crossed the divide between the Missouri and the "Spanish waters," they went through, perhaps were the first to discover, the South Pass between the head waters of the North Platte and the Green, which was to become the great thoroughfare for travel in the years to come. This pass provided an easy and comparatively short land route from St. Louis to the Northwest trapping grounds. Ashley, seeing the advantages of this method of supplying his trading posts, organized an overland expedition in the spring of 1825 which went up the Platte and over into the valley of Green River, the first party to carry supplies by pack-train into the northwest territory. Because of the greater flexibility of this means of transportation,

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trading posts, lasting for a few weeks in the summer months, could be established at points convenient to the trapping grounds. To these temporary posts, known as rendezvous, the trappers came to exchange their furs for the next year's needed supplies and to indulge in such dissipation as the camps with their luxuries of unusual food and diluted alcohol made possible. Ashley's first rendezvous on Green River was most successful. After arranging for the rendezvous of 1826 to be held on the Weber River, Ashley

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JAMES BRIDGER

returned to St. Louis with the largest supply of furs brought to that place in a single season, up to that time.

During the winter of 1825-26 four of Ashley's trappers on the Weber River made skin canoes and in them circumnavigated Great Salt Lake expecting to find fur-bearing streams leading into it on its western shore, or possibly, a stream leading out of the lake to the west; for a tradition had existed since Escalante's day, that a river known as the Buenaventura connected Great Salt Lake with the Pacific. The trappers found neither outlet nor fur-bearing streams.

Ashley returned to the rendezvous on Weber River in the spring of 1826 with a train of fifty men and one hundred horses, follow-

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ing the overland route up the Platte, through South Pass, across the Green, and down the Bear River to Great Salt Lake. At this rendezvous he sold his trapping business to Smith, Jackson and Sublette, who had been his representatives in the West, and there-after gave his attention to the transportation and sale of supplies, and the purchase of furs. His train to the rendezvous of 1827 is distinguished for having brought the first wheeled vehicle across the Rocky Mountains into the Great Basin. It consisted of a small cannon drawn by four mules. Later Ashley became an honored and useful member of the United States Senate from the young and growing State of Missouri.

Other fur-traders and trappers had followed Ashley and Henry into the Great Basin country, and a fierce rivalry developed which soon led to the practical extinction of the beaver on the streams flowing into Great Salt Lake. Meanwhile the Hudson's Bay men had extensively trapped the streams to the north tributary to the Snake and the Columbia. The only portion of the "Northern Mystery" remaining unexplored when Smith, Jackson and Sublette purchased Ashley's trapping business in 1826 was that lying in the central and western part of the Great Basin consisting of a small portion of Utah and nearly all of Nevada; and this was almost as much a mystery to the trappers in 1826 as it had been to the Spaniards for two hundred years.