by Don Berry
Prophetically enough, RMF was born up to its ears in debt. In spite of the impressive trapping power the owners displayed, the company remained in debt throughout the whole, of its existence; financially speaking, it never got off the ground. And rather than improving, the situation simply got worse. Gradually, through means that will be discussed later, all the outstanding obligations of RMF came to be concentrated in the hands of Bill Sublette, and this was the main source of his power over the partnership.
However, at Rendezvous 1830 the red figures would not have seemed remarkably ominous. The new partners gave a note in the amount of $15,532.22 which was not to fall due until November 1, 1831. This gave them three full hunting seasons in which to get started: Fall ’30 and Spring and Fall ’3l. Considering that the $85,000 on which SJ&S were retiring constituted only a two-season return, it must have seemed quite reasonable to expect to clear this note easily in three seasons.
The actual document of the transfer of SJ&S‘s mountain business to RMF hasn’t been preserved. The money was certainly payable in beaver, but the price at which beaver was to be valued is in doubt. SJ&S had bought out Ashley in beaver at $3 a pound; but there is some indication that RMF’s note could be paid at $4.25 a pound.3
With this business out of the way, the retiring partners loaded up the wagons with fur, and departed for St. Louis on August 4. Sublette left the light Dearborns behind in the mountains. He took the ten wagons back to civilization, and four of ther oxen. The milch cow, alas, also was returned to the Missouri settlements. Had she remained, she would doubtless have provided the Indians with a good deal of wonderment, augmented by the trappers’ poker-faced explanations of how that crazy-looking buffalo got that way. It would have been good for a few wild stories.
II
Bill Sublette's timing had been perfect. He dissolved Smith Jackson & Sublette just as the pressure began to mount. At the time the transactions that resulted in RMF were under way—at Wind River—an American Fur Company party had already taken the field. The Robidoux-Fontenelle-Drips brigade of the Westem Department had gotten off from Council Bluffs in May, 1830, about a month after Sublette’s wagon train, to Rendezvous 1830.
While SJ &S was selling out to the five-man partnership, the Company brigade, somehow misdirected, was looking for the free trappers in the Green River-Cache Valley. area. By October they were on the Malade, where they were encountered by an HBC brigade under John Work.
When Rendezvous 1830 broke up the RMF men scattered for the fall hunt. Aside from a few small bands of free trappers, there were two main brigades.
One, under Old Frapp and Gervais, headed over the divide to work the Snake country. Around the mouth of the Salt River they were found by Josephs Robidoux’s Company brigade. Robidoux immediately attached his party to the RMF brigade, following them down the Snake to their proposed Fall ’30 hunt on the Raft Rver (known to them as Cassia or Casu) and the Malade. Fraeb and Gervais’s party consisted of about twenty-two whites and ten Iroquois, plus the usual number of itinerant Crows, Flatheads, and what not, who drifted in and out of camp. RMF and the Company then. trapped the same area until December, when they were separated. After this the movements of the RMF brigade become vague. (Our record of this hunt depends on a Company man, Warren Angus Ferris.4)
Milton Sublette, Jim Bridger, and Tom Fitzpatrick had combined forces for the Fall ’30 hunt. And with good reason; they went north into Blackfoot country again. This was a large brigade; according to Doc Newell—who accompanied it—there were over eighty men; enough to make Bug’s Boys
a little cautious.5
'They worked up the Bighorn and across the Yellowstone; from there, following about the same pattern Smith had set the previous year, up into the heart of the Blackfoot country around the Great Falls of the Missouri and Three Forks. This was a good hunt and—following it through Joe Meek’s eyes—a lively one. A couple of Joe’s bear stories date from this fall, including one on Milton Sublette. Joe and Milton, it seems, were out on a buffalo hunt:
at a distance apart of about fifty yards, when a large grizzly bear came out of a thicket and made after Sublette, who, when he perceived the creature, ran for the nearest cotton-wood tree. Meek in the meantime, seeing that Sublette was not likely to escape, had taken sure aim, and fired at the bear, fortunately killing him. On rtmning up to the spot where it laid, Sublette was discovered sitting at the foot of a cottonwood, with his legs and arms clasped tightly around it.
"Do you always climb a tree in that way?" asked Meek. "I reckon you took the wrong end of it, that time, Milton!"
"I’ll be damned, Meek, if I didn’t think I was twenty feet up that tree when you shot," answered the frightened Booshway; and from that time the men never tired of alluding to Milton’s manner of climbing a tree.
(As they were returning from Three Forks in late fall this brigade had a brush with HBC. According to some reports, this resulted in the loss of a few more of HBC’s freemen, due to the superior quantity of whiskey in the American Company’s packs. However, the British partisan John Work—though he mentions contact with Americans—says nothing of this, and it may be some confusion with the various encounters had by Americans with Peter Skene Ogden.)
This party took up winter quarters in the good buffalo country around the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Powder. (Fact is, Meek says the Powder and Newell says the Yellowstone. "Around the confluence" is a neat historical compromise intended to tidy up the contradiction.)
When spring opened up the rivers, the partners intended to work south. Fraeb and Gervais had wintered somewhere in the Snake country (Cache Valley?) and would spend their Spring ’31 hunt combing the western slope; this party would rake southward along the east slope of the Rockies, and by Rendezvous 1831 both sides of the mountain would have been trapped. This was one of the most thorough hunts ever made in the mountains, covering every good bit of beaver country, including the Blackfoot strongholds. Rocky Mountain Fur Company was starting out with a clean sweep.
Accordingly, Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, and Bridger set out in early spring. But they were in Crow country here, and the sight of all that beautiful horseflesh was too much for the happy Absaroka; they had to have some. And they got about sixty.
This was a bad situation; $3,000 bad, at mountain prices, and RMF couldn’t afford it. The horses had to be recovered. An impromptu war party was, organized under Antoine Godin, including both Meek and Doc Newell.
"This," says Newell, 'is the first time I went to war on foot."
The party trailed the Crows for three days with almost no rest. Sometime on the third day they caught up with the band, which amounted to about sixty young braves
who believed that now they had made a start in life. Alas, for the vanity of human, and especially of Crow expectations! Even then, while they were grouped around their fires, congratulating themselves on the sudden wealth which had descended upon them, as it were from the skies, an envious fate, in the shape of several roguish white trappers, was laughing at them and their hopes, from the overhanging bluff opposite them. [Meek and Mrs. Victor]
During the night Doc Newell and Antoine Godin sneaked into the Crow camp and freed the horses. They stampeded, of course, and wakened the Crows. As the Indians rushed out to the horses, they were met by a volley of rifle fire from the bluff where the rest of the trappers were enforted. It was later reported that seven Indians were killed in this initial
fire.
In the confusion the trappers rounded up the horses and started the long drive back to their own camp. This again was a forced march, and the laughing rogues were pretty damn tired when they finally got back to camp. Aside from the simple fatigue and sleeplessness, the traveling was becoming increasingly hard because of melting snow which made the ground a pulpy morass. On the other hand, RMF got its horses and Joe got a story, so it was probably worth it.
Shortly after the episode of the horse theft, Tom Fitzpatrick left the mountains for St. Louis. It is p
robable that a tentative arrangement had been made at Rendezvous 1830—similar to that between SJ&S and Ashley the year before. That is, an express would be sent from the mountains in early spring to confirm arrangements for supplies. In the spring of '31, then, Fitz departed on this mission.
Milton Sublette and Gabe Bridger each took a brigade for the interrupted Spring '3l hunt. This was a long foray down into the mountainsof Colorado; farther south than the usual range. This is the first (recorded) hunt of a mountain-based party in an area that was to play a large and colorful role in years to come: the Parks of Colorado. These grassy beautiful valleys are strung along a north-south axis thrgugh the center of the present state.
(North Park was known to the trappers as New Park; present Middle Park was called Old Park. South Park became famous in the literature of the trade as Bayou Salade; reputed to be the most beautiful place in the mountains. Trappers out of Taos—including Milton Sublette, some say—had gotten up this far, and this southern approach is the reason for designating North Park as New Park; it was the last to be discovered.)
There is no direct record of this hunt, just a casual comment by Newell as to the area worked. The two parties joined again on reaching the Parks, and as spring drew on began to drift up toward Rendezvous 1831. By summer Fraeb and Gervais were back from their Snake River foray, and all the partners were gathered together in Cache Valley, waiting for Fitzpatrick to show up with their supplies.
By now the presence of outlanders was only too thoroughly confirmed. Fraeb and Gervais’s encounter with the Robidoux bunch—working out of American’s Western Department—had an ominous ring to it. And the Company had several other parties in the mountains that spring. One was under Henry Vanderburgh, and operated out of UMO and its main base, Fort Union. Rashly, his first trip had been to the Madison. Bug’s Boys immediately resented this in their characteristic fashion, and it cost him one man and ten horses. Two men and fifty horses were wounded, and Vanderburgh scuttled back to the protection of Fort Union.6
This would have been material for chortling over, perhaps. But the partners of RMF would have been shocked had they known what the crafty Kenneth McKenzie was up to now. As they sat at Rendezvous 1831, McKenzie was in the process of performing the impossible: He was negotiating an honest-to-god treaty with the Blackfeet.
***
Through an intermediary, a brave (or possibly insane) interpreter named Berger, the Blackfeet and the Assiniboines had been persuaded to go to Fort Union for a peaceful visit. The treaty that was finally negotiated in the fall of 1831 is a kind of minor masterpiece. I quote here only the opening passage:
We send greeting to all mankind! Be it known unto all nations that the most ancient, most illustrious, and most numerous tribes of the redskins, lords of the soil from the banks of the great waters unto the tops of the mountains, upon which the heavens rest, have entered into a solemn league and covenant to make, preserve and cherish a firm and lasting peace, that so long as the water runs, or the grass grows, they may hail each other as brethren and smoke the calumet in friendship and security.
McKenzie had quite a literary flair when he got carried away. By the actual time of ratification of this flowery document the Blackfeet had gotten bored and gone home. The Assiniboines were of stronger stuff, however, and their principal chiefs duly signed:
. . . conforming to all ancient customs and ceremonies, and observing the due mystical signs enjoined by the great medicine lodges, a treaty of peace and friendship was entered into by the said high contracting parties.
Since the Blackfeet weren’t around, McKenzie signed for them himself, which was thoughtful.
As tender of his good will and sincerity McKenzie established a small trading post, Fort Piegan, at the angle between. the Marias and the Missouri. It was an enormous success, in spite of competition from the HBC posts across the border, who, until this time, had enjoyed a monopoly on the Blackfoot trade. Unfortunately, this post lasted only one season.
When the trader left to take his furs back to Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone, the Piegans burned it.
Nevertheless, McKenzie had opened trade with the Blackfeet, the first American to do so.
***
The trappers of RMF waited at Cache Valley in early summer of 1831 until it became obvious that something drastic had gone wrong. Fitzpatrick was long overdue, and the situation would be extremely serious if he didn’t make it back. Traps were short, knives were short, all the gear was worn and dwindling. There was no liquor, even, and Rendezvous 1831 was but a pale wraith that nobody would remember with pleasure.
It was apparently Old Frapp’s idea to consult. a Crow shaman about Fitzpatrick’s whereabouts. After the long ritual (some of them lasted nearly a week), which included dancing and drumming and singing that probably livened up the rendezvous considerably, the shaman went into a trance. On reviving he gave Fraeb the beneht of his Vision.
Fitzpatrick, said the Crow, was not dead. "He was on a road; but not the right one." (This, as it worked out, was entirely accurate.)
Fraeb was encouraged by the news of Fitzpatrick to send a party out after him, leading it himself. They set out in early August, Erst going over to the Wind River on the chance that Fitzpatrick had gone to the location of Rendezvous 1830 by mistake. Nobody there, so down to the wreetwater and the Laramie Hills. After being in this area for some time they finally found the missing partner. He was coming—not west from St. Louis but from the south. Up from Santa Fe, in fact, having wandered several thousand miles off the track.
III
In order to understand this unlikely occurrence we must backtrack a little better than a year, to Rendezvous 1830. When the RMF brigades set out on the fall '3O hunt, Bill Sublette, Davey Jackson, and Jedediah Smith turned back toward civilization. No longer in the mountain business, they would retum to St. Louis and look around for the next venture.
The returning heroes—and so they were received—reached St. Louis on October 10. This rich caravan was just what the people of St. Louis wanted every year; further incontrovertible proof of the enormous personal fortunes to be made in the trade. One newspaper estimated the return as about $150,000, and this exaggeration—almost double—was comparatively moderate. Spectacular success in the fur trade was a great hunger on the frontier; the spirit was optimistic in the extreme.
When Jackson, Smith, and Bill Sublette reached St. Louis they did not immediately turn their furs over to Ashley. The former partners had one fairly tenuous contact to be explored first: Robert Campbell’s brother Hugh. As Robert had done a few years earlier, Smith wrote Hugh Campbell asking him to look into prices on his own. That always-obliging gentleman did so, in spite of his deep personal hatred of the mountain life for his brother. However, by the time Hugh’s reply could be received, they had decided to market through their old friend Ashley after all. Around November 10 they tumed the catch over to him. (A possible factor involved in the decision to market through Ashley was his willingness to give the partners an advance on sales. Marketing through other channels would have cost them much in time, perhaps six months or more, before the beaver could be turned into cash. Ashley obligingly advanced them $23,000 at 6 per cent interest, giving them sufficient capital to embark on a new venture.)
In the meantime the partners had drafted their letter to the Secretary of War, proposing the feasibility of land travel across the continent; plugging, in short, for the route that later became the Oregon Trail. With its recommendation that the government do something drastic about the joint-occupancy convention of 1818, this letter provoked as much interest as the exaggerated reports of their financial success. Part of the prevailing optimistic atmosphere on the Missouri frontier was a conviction that the nation was due for a great surge of expansion westward. The proponents of this position naturally took the SJ&S letter to their hearts and, more effectively, to their presses. The letter to Secretary Eaton was widely printed in newspapers, evoking such reaction as that of the former Miss
ouri Fur Company man, Charles Keemle, in the St. Louis Beacon:
They could have crossed the mountains at the Southern Pass, which is at the head of Wind River,7 without difficulty. Messrs. Smith, Sublette & Jackson are the first that ever took wagons to the Rocky Mountains. The ease with which they did it, and could have gone on to the mouth of the Columbia, shows the folly and nonsense of those 'scientific" characters who talk of the Rocky Mountains as the barrier which is to stop the westward march of the American people
It would seem that Smith had in mind some kind of partnership with Robert Campbell. Something of the sort. is mentioned in Robert’s letters to his brother, and it is certain that the two men were close; Smith left for California he made Bob Campbell executor of his will. But Campbell was still in Ireland; worse yet? his health was bad again, according to his brother. Regretfully, Smith had to abandon the notion and cast about for some other way to invest his capital.
The Mexican trade caught his eye. By this time it was a booming business; the Snta Fe Trail was well open. This year, 1831, it would be traveled by no less than 130 wagons; 320 men under 80 different proprietors, most of them small. The merchandise for this single year would be worth $250,000.
The Santa Fe trade was organized around wagon caravans. It was a trade of goods: textiles, hardware, and what not, intended for the civilized Mexican communities of Taos and Santa Fe. Occasionally the St. Louis traders would be paid in furs from the southern-based trapping parties, but more frequently in bullion. This trade employed far fewer men per company than the mountain business; just enough to handle the large caravans of wagons. It was also a great deal less hazardous. The only Indians of menace were the Comanches (sometimes known as Hietans) and the Pawnees, with whom they were generally at war. If a white caravan encountered a war party of either of these nations, there might be trouble. However, the Santa Fe caravans generally moved in sufficient strength that Indian attack was unlikely.
