The Mammoth Book of the West

by Jon E. Lewis

  Even without the redoubtable John Coulter in his employ, Manuel Lisa and his Missouri Fur Company continued to make money out of furs. His partners included the explorer William Clark and two of the famous St Louis fur-trading Chouteau family, Auguste and Philippe. A ruthless and sharp competitor, Lisa knew his business well enough to cultivate good relations with the tribes of the upper Missouri. So prevailing did his influence become that he personally secured their allegiance to the United States during the War of 1812. But the company needed his firm personal hand at the helm. When Lisa died in 1820, the Missouri Fur Company sank into financial oblivion. Many other fur firms boomed (and bust) in the West, but only two others left a real mark behind them: the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and the American Fur Company of John Astor.

  The Astorians

  A squat New York merchant of German birth, John Jacob Astor made his first fortune exporting furs to China. His next, he decided, would be by monopolizing the fur trade of Louisiana. To this grandiose end, Astor planned a chain of trading posts across the far West from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. With the encouragement of Thomas Jefferson, Astor founded the American Fur Company in 1808; in 1810 he created a subsidiary, the Pacific Fur Company, which was to have its headquarters at the mouth of the Columbia. Astor named the post after himself, Astoria. There only remained the matter of building it.

  Astor sent out two expeditions to the Pacific, an overland party under Wilson Price Hunt and a maritime force in the sailing vessel, the Tonquin. Neither group fared well. The Tonquin was ruled by a petty tyrant, Jonathan Thorne, and barely escaped a mutiny en route. When the ship reached the Columbia, its leaking longboat foundered in heavy seas with the loss of eight lives. Only with luck did the Tonquin itself find a safe harbour, on 12 April 1811, and the workers staggered ashore to build Astoria.

  While the fort was being built, the Tonquin sailed north along the coast to trade with the Indians and collect furs. At Nootka Sound, on Vancouver Island, Captain Thorne slapped an Indian chief in the face. The Indians’ revenge was to seize the ship and slaughter her crew. One sailor survived by hiding, but when the Indians came back next day for another round of looting, he fired the ship’s magazine, blowing them and himself to pieces.

  The “Overland Astorians”, meanwhile, had set out from St Louis along the route pioneered by Lewis and Clark. But fearful of encountering the Blackfeet, they took numerous detours. When they reached the Snake they ignored the advice of the Indians and exchanged their horses for canoes. After two days the Snake became unnavigable. Four men drowned when their canoes capsized, and almost all the party’s provisions and equipment were lost. The Overland Astorians then separated into small groups to make the best way they could to the fort on the Columbia. Intense cold and deep snow hindered progress through the Cascades. Several men died of exposure; one went mad. Not until January 1812 did the first survivors stagger into Astoria. Hunt’s own group appeared in February; the final group did not make it until May. A number had been stripped naked by contemptuous Indians.

  It was all in vain. In June 1812, Britain and the United States went to war. Anticipating an attack from a British warship, the Astorians had little choice but to accept an offer for their holdings (at a fraction of their worth) from the North West Company.

  This inglorious saga did not prevent Astor from becoming one of the richest men in America. In 1822 he established the Western Division of his American Fur Company, which gobbled up competitors. At first “The Company”, as it became known, confined itself to the Missouri and its tributary streams, but then in 1831 turned towards the Wyoming beaver fields on the Green and Wind rivers. Here “The Company” fought a battle with its principal rival, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, almost to the extinction of the beaver east of the Rockies.

  The Rocky Mountain Fur Company

  Founded in 1822 by two St Louis fur merchants, General H. Ashley and Andrew Henry, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company employed some of the far West’s most famous trappers: the unlettered but supremely intelligent Jim “Old Gabe” Bridger, probably the first White man to see the Great Salt Lake; the Black trapper James P. Beckwourth and the half-Black half-Cherokee Edward Rose, an ex-river pirate; the Sublette brothers, William, Milton and Andrew, who all fought in the 1832 Battle of Pierre’s Hole, when a group of mountain men were besieged by Gros Ventre Indians; and, most famous of all, Jedediah Strong Smith, the pious New Hampshire Methodist who was the first White man to travel overland from the Rocky Mountains to California, and the first White man to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert. The extraordinary Bible-toting Smith also held the probable record for beaver caught in a single season (668 pelts).

  There was more to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company than the luminosity of its contract roll. Ashley and Henry revolutionized the skin trade. Instead of creating permanent posts, the Rocky Mountain Company organized annual rendezvous at predesignated spots, at which furs were collected and provisions doled out, and a Bacchanalia was had by all. Their innovation was born out of painful experience. In 1822, Ashley and Henry had organized a trading expedition to build a fort and trading post at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Arikara Indians had molested the boats, and Blackfeet the hunting parties. The next year the Arikara had attacked again, and Ashley decided on a new method of tapping the beaver country. Instead of building trading posts – which the Indians hated as a symbol of White occupation – he would send his trappers overland singly or in small groups, and meet them at a rendezvous at the end of the spring hunt.

  The Life of a Mountain Man

  Ashley and Henry were thus the first merchants to rely on the free trapper or Mountain Man who, instead of trading with Indians for pelts and receiving a fixed salary, set his own traps, lived off the land, and could sell his furs to the highest bidder.

  George Frederick Ruxton, the chronicler of the far West, recorded his impressions of these free men in his Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains (1849). The equipment of the trapper comprised, as the necessary minimum:

  . . . two or three horses or mules – one for saddle, the others for packs – and six traps, which are carried in a bag of leather called a trap-sack. Ammunition, a few pounds of tobacco, dressed deer-skins for mocassins &c. are carried in a wallet of dressed buffalo-skin, called a possible-sack. [His dress consisted of] a hunting-shirt of dressed buckskin, ornamented with long fringes; pantaloons of the same material, and decorated with porcupine-quills and long fringes down the outside of the leg. A flexible felt hat and mocassins clothe his extremities. Over his left shoulder and under his right arm hang his powder-horn and bullet pouch, in which he carries his balls, flint and steel, and odds and ends of all kinds. Round the waist is a belt, in which is stuck a large butcher-knife in a sheath of buffalo-hide, made fast to the belt by a chain or guard of steel; which also supports a little buckskin case containing a whetstone. A tomahawk is also often added, a long heavy rifle is part and parcel of his equipment.

  Almost half of the American trappers bought an Indian wife to help them in their work (and ease the loneliness of the wild), paying as much as $2,000-worth of furs for a chief’s daughter. Only the entrepreneurial mountain man could afford such a price; the “hired hand” or engaged trapper, who was attached to a company, had to find someone altogether cheaper. African-American trappers were readier than Whites to marry Indian women and maintain close relationships with the tribes. The eminent Bongas, slaves of the British commandant at Fort Michilimackinac before they became fur traders, intermarried with the Chippewa. Jim Beckwourth, born in 1798 of Black-White parentage, was adopted by the Crow and rose to tribal chieftainship. Called “Morning Star”, he led them in many raids against their long-time adversary, the Blackfeet. “My faithful battle-axe was red with the blood of the enemy,” he proudly remarked. The Crow agreed, and changed his name again, to “Bloody Arm”. Having survived numerous wilderness adventures, Beckwourth died of food poisoning in 1866.

  While the trapper set his $14 metal beaver tra
ps in the water of nearby streams (to which the attractant was judiciously placed drops of oil from beaver castoreum glands) and collected the previous day’s catch, the Indian wife prepared skins and cooked food. Roast or stewed buffalo was the trapper’s delight, but his basic foodstuff was the pemmican prepared by his squaw, a mixture of buffalo meat, fat and berries which was pounded into cakes.

  In 1830 Astor scored a major coup in the fur trade war by reaching a deal with hostile Blackfeet by which they opened their pristine beaver country to him. Four years later, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company accepted the inevitable and sold out to Astor, who then astutely sold his shares in the American Fur Company and retired to enjoy his $20 million profit. As Astor had noticed, silk had begun to replace beaver on the fashionable heads of Europe and America. The price of beaver pelts dropped by 500 per cent in the 1830s. The trade was largely ended by 1840, when the American Fur Company announced it would not organize another rendezvous.

  Probably the last great rendezvous was in June 1837, at Wyoming’s Green River, which was attended by a motley crowd of fur company agents, over 1,500 Shoshoni, and more than a hundred trappers. Jim Bridger was there; so too were the independents, Joe Meek and Christopher Houston “Kit” Carson, who worked the Southern Rockies. Recording the scene was the Baltimore artist Alfred Jacob Miller, who penned a vivid eye-witness sketch of the major social date in the “Mountain Man” calendar:

  At certain specified times . . . the American Fur Company appoint a “Rendezvous” . . . for . . . trading with Indian and Trappers, and here they congregate from all quarters. The first day is devoted to “High Jinks”, in which feasting, drinking, and gambling form prominent parts. Sometimes an Indian becomes so excited with “Fire Water” that he commences “running a muck” – he is pursued . . . and secured . . . “Affairs of honour” are adjusted between rival Trappers – one . . . of course, receiving a complete drubbing; – all caused evidently from mixing too much Alcohol with water. Night closes this scene of revelry and confusion. The following days exhibit the strongest contrast . . . The Company’s great tent is raised; the Indians erect their picturesque white lodges; – the accumulated furs . . . are brought forth, and the Company’s tent is a besieged and busy place. Now the women come in for their share of ornaments and finery. (Alfred Jacob Miller, The West of Alfred Jacob Miller)

  With the decline of the beaver trade, most trappers took up other occupations. Tom “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick and Kit Carson became wilderness scouts, both helping the flamboyant government explorer John Charles Frémont on his much fanfared journey through the far West in the 1840s. Jim Bridger scouted for the army, and would appear numerous times in the future history of the frontier. Caleb Greenwood led the first wagon train through the Sierras, at the age of 81. A number of beaver trappers turned to hunting another fur-bearer doomed to wholesale butchery, the buffalo. Some trappers retired east, but found their Indian wives aroused loathing.

  Few mountain men, when they looked in their buckskin pouches, had made any money; the profits in the fur trade were made by the John Jacob Astors, not the trappers. But no one had done more to open up the West.

  Only one other group of men made even a comparable contribution. These were the traders who blazed the trail to Santa Fe and the Spanish-speaking Southwest. For years American traders had tried to reach the thriving New Mexico town of Santa Fe, but had been turned back – even imprisoned – by isolationist Spanish officials. In 1820, however, the Mexicans threw off Spanish rule and became eager for commercial contact with the US. The first to benefit from this changed situation was a Missouri Indian trader called William Becknell. In September 1821, as Becknell laboured his way along the Arkansas River towards the Rockies, he encountered in the rugged Raton Pass a party of Mexican soldiers, who told him that he would be welcome in Santa Fe. Hardly able to believe his luck, Becknell hastened to the New Mexican capital, where the commodity-lacking citizenry gave him a warm – and profitable – welcome. Becknell, “The Father of the Santa Fe Trade,” returned to Franklin, Missouri, his saddlebags heavy with silver.

  The following spring, Becknell led another expedition to Santa Fe, this time with three heavily loaded wagons. To avoid the precipitous Raton Pass, Becknell pioneered a short cut through the searing Cimarron Desert, once becoming so low on water that he and his men were reduced to drinking the stomach contents of a buffalo they had shot. They were also dogged by Indian attacks. Yet they made it to Santa Fe, and their route would become the famed Santa Fe Trail.

  By 1824 the Santa Fe trade was thoroughly established. That spring, for their better protection, traders travelled together in a mighty, lumbering caravan of 25 wagons. They took goods worth $35,000; they returned with $190,000 in gold, silver and furs.

  The style of the Santa Fe trade was thus set. A decade later, up to a hundred caravans undertook the gruelling but lucrative annual journey to New Mexico, typically returning with profits of between 10 and 40 per cent.

  The Santa Fe trade had notable spin-offs. It encouraged other entrepreneurs, such as brothers Charles and William Bent and their partner Ceran St Vrain, to begin trade with the Indians of New Mexico and its borders. In 1832, the Bents and St Vrain built a massive adobe trading post, with walls 14 feet high and four feet thick, on the upper Arkansas River. The Bents married into prominent Cheyenne families and this, plus the partners’ industry and rare financial honesty, ensured that Bent’s Fort dominated the commerce of the Colorado region for nearly 15 years.

  The other consequence of the Santa Fe trade was more notable, if less tangible. The Mexicans proved incapable of enforcing their tariffs and their laws on the American traders. Along its northern borders, Mexico was weak, its land there for the taking.

  “And Remember the Alamo”

  No Land More Lovely

  There were Americans in Texas from about 1803, intruders who settled around Nacogdoches, one of the fortified outposts on the northern frontier of New Spain, which spanned a 2,000-mile arc from Texas to California. These Anglos were barely tolerated, but then in 1821 Mexico won her independence from Spain, and the new republic decided to swing open the doors of its Texas province to American immigrants, mostly to strengthen the local population base against Indian attacks.

  A sheet-lead manufacturer by the name of Moses Austin was among the first to consider settlement. Born in 1761 in Connecticut, Austin had drifted into Missouri when it was still part of Spanish Louisiana, and begun business. After a severe financial reverse, Austin decided to move on to Texas, petitioning the governor to allow him to build a colony there. His petition was granted, mostly because he was a Spanish citizen by virtue of his residency in Missouri.

  Exhausted by the journey to Texas, Moses Austin fell ill and died of pneumonia. His last request would be the inheritance and destiny of his eldest son, Stephen Fuller Austin, whom he asked “to go on with the business in the same way.” Although hardly in the classic mould of pioneer leader, the diminutive 27-year-old journalist and banker left at once for the far frontier.

  Stephen Austin began his mission by exploring the central regions of Texas, eventually hitting on the deep, alluvial land between the Brazos and the Colorado rivers for the site of the American colony. Settlers proved easy to recruit; the hard times following the financial Great Panic of 1819 made many US citizens eager for free Texan land. Austin was able to pick and choose the founding members of his father’s colony.

  As with many new settlements, the colony suffered initial hunger and hardship, also drought and Indian attacks. Much the worst setback, though, was when Austin was informed by the Mexican government that the settlement needed the authorization of the republic’s Congress. The almost destitute Austin was obliged to travel to Mexico City and plead his case. It took nearly a year to be heard, but his diplomacy eventually gained him the land grant he wanted. Under the terms of the Congressional approval, each family in the colony was allowed one labor (177 acres) of land for farming and 74 labors for stockraising.
Austin was allowed to collect 12½ cents an acre for his services, and was promised a bonus of 65,000 acres on the arrival of the 200th family. There were a number of other clauses in the contract. The settlers had to accept the Roman Catholic faith; they had to be of good moral character; and they were allowed to bring in slaves, but not to buy or sell them within the state.

  While Austin was absent in Mexico City, the colony was welcoming a steady trickle of newcomers. A town, St Felipe de Austin, began to take shape on the lower crossing of the Brazos. “It does not appear possible,” one “Texian” pioneer wrote home, “that there can be a land more lovely.” By 1823 the original 300 families (known to Texas history as the Old 300) had arrived, and Austin was permitted to recruit another 500.

  The success of the Austin colony as a bulwark against both the tribes and unofficial American landgrabbers led the Mexican government to encourage further immigration. The 1824 National Colonization Law joined Texas to its neighbouring state of Coahuila (so ensuring a Spanish-speaking majority), while allowing land-contractors or empresarios in rivalry with Austin to settle another 2,400 families. The number of US-born Texans grew dramatically. In 1827 they numbered 10,000; three years later, 20,000.

  Friction with the Mexican authorities also grew steadily. It was at its worst in the eastern part of the province, where hardscrabble farmers, squatters and fugitives from US justice were staking claims to land. Few had legal titles, fewer still were inclined to follow the laws of far-off Mexico City.