A Majority of Scountrels - Don Berry

by Don Berry

  By what he considered adroit management, Ross managed to sidestep this issue until June. Several of the Iroquois deserted, however, and hoping to nip that sort of thing in the bud Ross pursued them. "[0ne] in particular would neither lead nor drive, and we threatened to drag him back at one of the horse tails before he consented to go. Back however we brought them." The next day they ran into a party of Nez Perces, and a couple of the Iroquois traded off their own guns. Ross notes a solemn piece of advice for brigade leaders: "Such improvident and thoughtless beings as Iroquois should always be restricted to their hunting implements: all the rest goes in traffic amongthe natives, to no purpose."

  Finally, early in June, the harried bourgeois gave his consent, and a party of the Iroquois under Pierre Tevanitagon wandered off after being outfitted. Ross heard no more of them for four months, until October 14. He continued, and the trapping improved considerably. On the 14th, however, his journal entry reads:

  Today Pierre and band arrived pillaged and destitute .... They passed the time with the Indians and neglected their hunts, quarreled with the Indians at last, were then robbed and left naked on the plains. The loss of twelve out of twenty trappers is no small consideration. With these vagabonds arrived seven American trappers from the Big Horn River but whom I rather take to be spies than trappers .... The quarter is swarming with trappers who next season are to penetrate the Snake country with a Major Henry at their head, the same gentleman who fifteen years ago wintered on Snake River. The report of these men on the price of beaver has a very great influence on our trappers. The seven trappers have in two different caches 900 beaver. I made them several propositions but they would not accept lower than $3 a pound. I did not consider myself authorized to arrange at such prices. [Ross was paying his own freemen 60 or 70 cents a pelt (about 1 1/2 pounds) and that in merchandise at 70 per cent advance on prime cost.] The men accompanied us to the Flatheads. There is a leading person with them. They intend following us to the fort.

  That last calm line—"They intend following us to the fort"—must have caused some hair-tearing when it was read by Ross’s superiors.

  The British were acutely aware of the impending American competition along the continental divide; Because the, question of sovereignty in the Oregon country was so difficult to untangle, the governments had been obliged to defer any final decision at all. This they did by the joint occupancy provision of the Convention of 1818, which involved the territory west of the Rockies between 42° and 49° latitude. This agreement was to expire in 1828. The British, however, were apprehensive about this provision; a great many Americans regarded the area as American in all but name and took a stiffly proprietary view toward British "interlopers." South of 42° was Spanish territory, but the nationality of what is now the American Northwest was unsettled.

  The diplomatic situation was a touchy one; the commercial aspects scarcely less so. The Governor and Committee of HBC, writing from London as early as September, 1822, had expressed their alarm clearly. In a letter to the chief factors of the Columbia Department they enclosed an extract from an American paper stating that a party of 150 Americans had left the Missouri for an expedition in the direction of the Columbia. (This was the first Ashley-Henry party.) They had also heard there was some plan afoot by the Americans "to form a settlement at the Columbia," and called for information on these developments. The Governor and Committee closed with a none-too-gentle prod to the factors: "And we depend on your strenuous exertions to secure the Fur Trade to Great Britain."

  As Governor of the area which included the Columbia Department, HBC had a man to whom strenuous exertions were a favorite form of relaxation. This was George Simpson, a peppery fireball of a man who never did understand why his people weren’t as energetic as himself. Simpson had authorized the outfitting of the Snake Country Expedition under Ross, principally because he couldn’t find anybody else. ("The Snake Country Expedition has hitherto been considered a forlorn hope the management of it the most hazardous and disagreeable office in the Indian Country—no volunteer could be found for it among the Commissioned Gentlemen.") This was in 1823, and Simpson made a very specific point

  that "Ross ...should be cautioned against opening a road for the Americans."

  By the fall of 1824 it had become obvious that the Americans were steadily pushing west; the trapping parties reported in the joint-tenancy territory were only the beginning. They were, in the correct opinion of Simpson, the forerunners of settlements. If Americans should colonize the area, their claim to it would be so much the stronger and the chances were good that Great Britain would lose all rights. In an attempt to discourage American expansion across the Rockies, Simpson set forth a plan which reversed the usual HBC policy of trapping; he intended to destroy the Snake country as hunting ground. Where HBC tactics generally called for conservative trapping and employed intelligent principles of conservation, the Snake country was to be denuded of beaver. Then, if the British were evicted diplomatically, they

  would have the fur.

  Simpson sets forth this idea in explicit terms in his journal (I quote this particular entry at length, because it also gives an interesting picture of Simpson’s attitudes):

  [Referring to the employed freemen] . . . when such a worthless and motley crew are collected together laying idle for Four Months on end they are forming plots and plans quarrelling with the natives and exposing themselves and us to much trouble and danger. This band of Freemen the very scum of the country and generally outcast from the Service for misconduct are the most unruly and troublesome gang to deal with in this or perhaps any other part of the World, are under no control & feel their own independence they therefore require very superior management to make anything of them but I regret to find that Mr Ross has not that talent and that his presence among them has been attended with little good.

  [Referring to the Snake country] If properly managed no question exists that it would yield handsome profits as we have convincing proof that the country is a rich preserve of beaver and which for political reasons we should endeavour to destroy as fast as possible.

  Simpson then outlines a proposal to put the crack partisan Peter Skene Ogden in charge of the Snake Brigade, and wipe out the country as a source of fur.

  Simpson was top late, by about two weeks. As he made that entry on October 28, the Americans were being given a guided tour through the rich country on the west slope of the Rockies, courtesy of Alexander Ross.

  II

  'The seven Americans who brought Pierre Tevanitagon home were, of course, Jedediah Smith and his trappers. Encountering the "pillaged and destitute" Iroquois somewhere near present Pocatello, Idaho, Jedediah made some kind of bargain with them. (He told Ross it involved the exchange of 105 beaver for an escort back to Ross’s party.) Pierre, on the other hand, had a story of being robbed by a war party of Snakes, losing 900 beaver (!), 54 steel traps, 27 horses, 5 guns, and most of their clothing. He made no mention of paying in beaver for the escort of the Americans.

  This difference in stories eventually led Ross to conclude that Pierre and party had been seduced by promises of high prices from the American company and had left their furs en cache with those of Smith. The more likely version is that of Smith: that the Iroquois, being in hostile territory, had offered the beaver for armed protection.

  We will never know what possessed Ross to accept the company of Smith and his men on the return trip to Flathead House. It was certainly in direct contradiction to his orders. While the phrase "opening a road for the Americans" was probably intended metaphorically, Ross made a literal reality of it. On their return trip Smith got the first American look at the Snake country and the operations of HBC there. He also had ample time during his month's sojourn at Flathead House to make a thorough inspection of the British system of trading with northwest tribes.

  It was a windfall for the American trappers, the kind of good fortune one could not rightly expect.

  The Snake Country Brigade, together
with its interested American observers, arrived back at its home base on November 26, 1824. A few hours before they came in, Peter Skene Ogden had arrived to take over command of the field party for HBC. Ross, rather typically, chose to regard this as promotion for himself; at any rate his journal notes it thus: "Mr Ogden handed me a letter from the Governor appointing me in charge of this place for the winter. Mr Ogden takes my place as chief of the Snake expedition?

  That Simpson was not concerned with the promotion of Ross is fairly well established by his own journal comments on the management of the Snake operation: .

  . . . This important duty should not in my opinion be left to a self sufficient empty headed man like Ross who feels no further interest therein than in as far as it secures to him a Sal of .£ 120 p Annum and whose reports are so full of bombast and marvellous nonsense that it is impossible to get at any information that can be depended upon from him.

  Thus the judgment on the man of letters by the man of action.

  ***

  After separating from Smith in early summer, the main body of American trappers moved in the opposite direction, that is, south, following the Green River downstream. Sometime in the late summer they crossed over into the valley of the Bear River and made the principal part of their fall hunt on the Bear and its tributaries. (During this fall there occurred a minor drama, of which we know only through a curt report made several years later. In the official list of "Deaths of men caused by accidents and other causes not chargeable to Indians," Smith notes briefly: "1824 Thomas, a half breed was killed by Williams, on the waters of Bear river, west of the mountains.")

  Where Captain Weber’s party reached it, the Bear is flowing almost due north (exactly opposite to the Green, which they had just left). It flows north past Bear Lake, makes a hairpin turn around the northern end of the Bear River Range, and changes its direction of flow to south. By the time they made camp for the winter Weber’s party was on this south-flowing stretch, known as Cache Valley. (Early references sometimes call it Willow Valley, but this name quickly lost currency.) During this winter camp another man—one Marshall—was lost, "not chargeable to Indians."

  Tradition has it that the perverse flow of the Bear led to a dispute among the trappers that winter, which is quite likely. The winter camp offered time enough for arguing, and geography, after all, was in many ways the livelihood of the mountain man. In order to settle a bet, Jim Bridger with an anonymous companion was dispatched to find out where the

  river led.

  He returned from the expedition with the somewhat unlike advisement that the Bear River flowed directly into the Pacific Ocean. The water, Bridger claimed, was salt, and furthermore no end to the vast expanse could be seen. Thus, to settle a bet among the mountain men, the Great Salt Lake was discovered. In the next year or so this general area was to be thoroughly traveled, both by the Americans and the Ogden-vitalized Snake Country Brigade, but at the moment it was new, and this vast expanse of salt water must have caused some little confusion in the geographic ideas of Weber’s trappers.

  While there is no space here for a full discussion of the contemporary notions of western geography, a few major points may be mentioned.? 2

  Reports of a huge lake in the Great Basin had led to the inclusion of such a lake on maps of the period. Generally called Laguna de Timpanogos, this was (according to Morgan) a cartographers combination of Utah Lake—reported by two Franciscan friars in 1776—and the Indian rumors of Great Salt Lake. To the mapmakers it seemed reasonable and necessary that such a large body of water should have a direct outlet to the Pacific Ocean, so they gave it one. This outlet, Rio Timpanogos, theoretically emptied into San Francisco Bay.

  The Mulnomah River (present Willamette) was consistently overestimated by early cartographers. Almost invariably they show this river as giving access far into the interior of the continent, which it does not.

  One other mythical river had considerable importance, the Buenaventura. (The name was also given to the Sacramento-San Joaquin.) This ran south of Rio Timpanogos and parallel to it, having its headwaters along the continental divide with the Snake, Rio Grande; Bighorn, and Arkansas. The Buenaventura also emptied directly into the Pacific, and along its length (somewhere) was another large lake variously called Buenaventura or Salado; probably another confusion of reports of the Great Salt Lake.

  From this it may be seen what the mountain men expected to find on the west slope; any one of several rivers that emptied directly into the Pacific or, in the case of the Multnomah, into the Columbia and thence to the Pacific. The Green River, Seedskeedee, might be either the upper portion of the Rio Colorado of the West (which is correct) or the Buenaventura.

  To the modem reader, with present-day maps, these points may be assessed as quaint, archaic little errors. But it should be remembered that geography and physiography were of more than academic interest to the fur traders; they were, without exaggeration, matters of life and death. With modern forms of transportation we have become more or less independent of geography; unless it happens to be of scenic interest, we virtually ignore it. But the establishment of accurate ideas of tributary systems and watersheds was of vital importance to the mountain men. Generally speaking, particularly in the thirties, and forties, the available maps were of virtually no use to a trapper; the head of any given individual contained more accurate geography than all the universities in the world. Those who survived knew the country; it was as simple as that. This is one of the reasons so many superannuated mountain men were used as guides, both by the government and by immigrant trains, in the years following the decline of the trade. Some of the men who were, in the own minds, chiefly trappers, achieved their national reputations through their strictly geographic feats as guides. Jim Bridger, for one, and Tom Fitzpatrick and Old Bill Williams; the latter two served as guides for the famous Frémont explorations. The best known, of course, was Kit Carson, another trapper whose later service as guide and scout immortalized him. Beginning with the movements of the Ashley-Henry parties, the mountain men came to have a conception of western geography that was not overtaken by the cartographers for another fifty years or so.

  But this knowledge was also one of the tools of the trade, and as such it was not bandied about lightly. If a company had a Jim Bridger on the payroll, the maps he carried in his mind were of inestimable value in plain dollars and cents. There was a good deal of understandable reluctance to provide accurate information to competing companies, and a stock of special knowledge was quite likely to be boarded as carefully as the location of a fur cache.

  ***

  Inroads into the still "semimythical" area had been made that year from three separate directions (if, as seems most probable, Etienne Provost had started from Taos).

  The HBC Snake Country Brigade worked down the west slope of the continental divide, while on the other side (though not at the same time) Major Henry’s men from the now-defunct Bighorn post examined the Bighorn basin. Both of these parties came from the north, working in a general southerly direction. Smith and Fitzpatrick reached the area from due east. From the Spanish settlement of Taos, Etienne Provost’s band came up through the Uinta Mountains.

  Since a normal corollary of trapping operations was the sending of small exploratory parties at tangents along the route, this three pronged assault on the Rockies very quickly made the general geographical features known.

  This vicinity—Western Wyoming and the adjacent regions of Idaho and Colorado—became the pivot of the trade, and so remained for two decades. From the early twenties to the early forties was the Golden Age of the American Fur Trade, and this territory was central to it.

  It was also the pivot around which revolved the sensitive relations between the United States and Great Britain, though there’s an ironic cast to the consideration of Peter Skene Ogden and Jedediah Smith as ministers without portfolio.

  III

  At the Flathead post Ogden whipped a brigade into shape in quick order; b
y the third week in December, 1824, he was ready to leave.

  Ogden was, in many ways, the epitome of the brigade leader. Tough, competent, an extremely effective leader who commanded respect from the wildest of the freemen. (And with Ogden the cliché "commanded respect" takes on a very literal signification. In a journal entry for a later year he laconically notes that a potential deserter had "for his impudence received a drubbing from me" which settled the problem neatly.)

  Ogden’s superior, George Simpson, kept a private 'Character Book," in which his opinions of his subordinates were set forth with pleasant frankness.‘ Simpson’s estimate of Ogden included:

  A keen, sharp, off hand fellow of superior abilities to most of his colleagues, very handy and active and not sparing of his personal labour. Has had the benefit of a good plain Education, both writes and speaks tolerably well, and has the address of a man who has mixed a good deal in the World. Has been very Wild & thoughtless and is still fond of coarse practical jokes, but with all this appearance of thoughtlessness he is a very cool calculating fellow who is capable of doing anything to gain his own ends. His ambition knows no bounds and his conduct and actions are not influenced or governed by any good or honorable principle. In fact, I consider him one of the most unprincipled men in the Indian Country, who would soon get into habits of dissipation if he were not restrained by the fear of their operating against his interests, and if he does indulge in that way madness to which he has a predisposition will follow as a matter of course . .. likely to be exceedingly troublesome if advanced to the lst Class as the Trade is now constituted, but his Services have been so conspicuous for several years past, that I think he has strong claims to advancement.

  (It should be remembered that Simpson now and again used the private "Character Book" to vent himself of a bit of spleen. The casual confidence with which he asserts Ogden’s predisposition to madness—in the event of dissipation only, of course—is really quite remarkable. But then Simpson was, in his own way, quite a remarkable personage.)