USA > Colorado > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 71
USA > Nevada > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 71
USA > Wyoming > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 71
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Exploration by white men was begun in Wyoming in 1743-4, when Sieur de la Verendrye and his sons, of Canada, visited the Rocky mountains by the way of the great lakes and the Assiniboine, Missouri, Yel- lowstone, and Bighorn rivers. Passing up Pryor fork to the Stinkingwater, they travelled thence south as far as Wind river, being about a year on this part of their journey, and learning much about the geography of the country and the customs of the Indian tribes. They would have gone still further south had not the Shoshones told them they would be killed if they did so by parties of the Sans Arcs band of Sioux, the hereditary enemies of their nation, who were always watching about the South pass.4
This is the first we hear about the celebrated opening, and as far as it goes it is authentic, as is also that which is said about the Indians. Other expedi- tions would have followed but for the change in the ownership of trading-posts, which after the seven years' war between France and England fell into the hands of the English, who left exploration altogether to the fur companies. The war of the revolt of the colonies followed, at the termination of which many posts which had first been French, and had passed to the English, became a part of the possessions of the United States, which government, as soon as it was
3 Norris says, in his Rept National Park, 1881, p. 30, that the most abun- dant remains exist outside of the National park to the north, which would bring them into Montana. He traced them from the borders of the park, below the mouth of Gardiner river, through Bottler park, and the Gate of the Mountains, to the open plains, a distance of 60 miles. But Jones, in his Reconnaissance, found a stone circle on the right bank of Little Wind river, south of Butte springs, below Camp Brown, three by six feet in dimensions. Several others in the Wind river region are described, and the author favors the inference of religious ceremonials connected with them, but I am of the opinion they were connected with hunting.
: See Hist. Northwest Coast, this series; also Granville Stuart, in Contribu- tions to the Historical Society of Montana, 216.
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able, after the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, sent an expedition to explore a path to the Pacific, in 1804-6, which did not reach the country south of the three branches of the Missouri in Montana. The action of the government in sending out Lewis and Clarke still further stimulated private adventure, which had already begun to look toward the Rocky mountains, as I have shown in my History of Colorado. Among the first of whom there is any record were two men from Illinois, Hancock and Dickson, who hunted beaver on the Yellowstone in 1804.5 They remained in the country in 1806, and were joined by John Colter, one of the members of Lewis and Clarke's company, who was discharged on the Missouri, below the mouth of the Yellowstone, and returned up the river, wintering on the headwaters of Pryor's fork. In the spring of 1807 he went through Pryor's gap of the Bighorn mountains to Clarke fork, crossing thence by the Stinkingwater pass 6 to the Yellowstone, which he forded between the lake and the falls, neither of which he saw, as the information furnished to the government, and illustrated in the map pub- lished in 1814, goes to show. He came to Shoshone lake, which he called Lake Erastus, and believed it the source of the Yellowstone, no greater error than has been committed at a much more recent period by much more scientific explorers.1 Then he crossed the
5 Lewis and Clarke's Travels, 638. London ed., 1814.
6 The map accompanying Lewis and Clarke's narrative of their expedition, among its other faults, makes Colter go through the mountains almost directly west of the confluence of the forks of Clarke river, which is improb- able, owing to the nature of the country. The Stinking water offers a pass, although by no means a good one. It would bring him to the Yellowstone, where he crossed it, while the more southern passes would take him far from the geyser region, which he described sufficiently to make it certain that he was not only at Colter hell on the Stinking water, but in the upper geyser basin as well.
7 Hayden believed it drained into the Madison. Why should not men be just ? This lake, when seen by De Lacy, was named after himself, he having discovered that it was the source of Snake river, which properly en- titled him to the honor. Hayden changed the name, without any good reason. It might properly be called Colter lake, as he was, without ques- tion, the first white man to map this region, and probably his party was the first in
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Rocky mountains to the head of Green river, and back again to the head of Wind river, which he mis- took for the main Bighorn, and by a northeast course over mountain and valley came again to the Stinking- water,8 and back to his camp of the previous winter, in the country of the Crows. Who accompanied Colter in this journey is not known. It may have been his two comrades of the year previous, or some other or others, but there is no reason to believe he was alone. He remained many years in the moun- tains ; his death is unrecorded, and he passes out of sight in this history.9
Manuel Lisa in 1807 established a trading-post and fort at the mouth of the Bighorn river, and was prob- ably the first to erect a fort in this part of the Rocky mountains. Although in Montana, the district from which he drew his peltries was equally in Wyoming. It is said that even earlier Antonio Matéo, a Portu- guese, had a fort on the head of Powder river. There is a tradition among mountain men that this fort was once invested for sixty days by the Sioux, and the appearance of the ruins gives probability to the story.
The first authentic expedition to the region whose history we are following was by a party under Ezekicl
8 It is a slander to use this non-descriptive name for an inoffensive stream. The early trappers took it from the Indians, who, in their peculiar fashion, called it 'the river that ran by the stinking water,' referring to bad-smelling hot springs on its banks.
9 Lewis and Clarke say in their narrative, pp. 643-4, that Colter was once near home, but meeting with a hunting party going to the mountains joined it, and returned without seeing his friends. There is current the story of his running the gauntlet among the Blackfoot, and escaping with life, though not without severe wounds and much suffering. Potts, another of Lowis and Clarke's company, who had returned to the mountains, was with him. The men were surprised while trapping. Being wounded, Potts shot an Indian, when he was instantly riddled with arrows. Colter was seized, stripped naked, and given a chance to run for his life. He was pursued by several hundred Indians, the ground that he had to pass over being covered with prickly pear, which lacerated his naked feet. Such exertion did he make that the blood gushed from his mouth and nostrils. Eluding his one- mies by the utmost effort, he darted into the river, and concealed himself beneath a raft of driftwood, lodged against an island. Although the Indians were upon the island and the raft during the day, he was not discovered, and escaped in the night. Seven days afterwards he arrived, famished, blistered with the sun's heat, with his feet aud legs terribly swollen, at the fort of Manuel Lisa on the Bighorn, near the Yellowstone, where he was hospitably received, and recovered.
1
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Williams, in 1807. This hardy frontiersman had been employed by the government to lead an escort of twenty men to restore to his own people a chief of the Mandans, who, with his family, had been induced to accompany Lewis and Clarke to Washington, in 1806. This duty performed, Williams and party con- tinued on to the Blackfoot country, where they began trapping, dividing their company into two detach- ments. While on the Yellowstone, near its mouth, one detachment was attacked by one hundred Black- foot, and five of their number killed, the other five escaping to camp. The company immediately moved southward into the country of the Crows, where one of their number, named Rose, a worthless character who had attached himself to the expedition in St Louis, determined to remain. Williams, with his greatly reduced party, proceeded farther south, de- signing to go to California via the South pass, of whose existence he seems to have had some informa- tion. While upon the headwaters of the North Platte, he was again attacked, this time by Crows, and lost again five men, killing, however, twenty of the enemy. Their horses having been taken before the battle, the remaining ten men were set on foot, and compelled to cache their furs and other property too heavy to be carried. Williams then moved south- ward again, wandering among the mountains until spring, when he had reached the South Platte, and his connection with this portion of my history ceases.10 The names of those of Williams' party who survived, besides himself and the renegade Rose, were Work- man and Spencer.
In 1808 the Missouri Fur company was formed in St Louis, of which Lisa was a member, as well as William Clark, Pierre Choteau, Sr, Sylvester Laba-
10 See note 12, ch. ii., of my History of Colorado and History of the North- west Coast, vol. xxviii., this series, pp. 127-8; also The Lost Trappers, by David H. Coyner.
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die, Pierre Menard, and Auguste P. Choteau. They sent Alexander Henry up the Missouri to establish posts, and endeavor to open commerce with the Ind- ians west of the Rocky mountains. Henry was un- able to obtain a footing among the Blackfoot, but crossed the divide, and erected a post on the head of that branch of Snake river which bears his name, a day's journey above its confluence with the main stream.
The Missouri Fur company followed its design with varying fortunes, and Fort Henry was abandoned in 1810, the company being dissolved two years later, to be revived a few years afterward 11 by Joshua Pilcher, M. Lisa, Thomas Hempstead, and Mr Perkins. The
J. O. R.
WAUG. 29, 1819
J. O. R. STUMP.
operations of this company were carried on chiefly in southern Montana, and along the branches of the Yellowstone which rise in and flow through Wyoming. No record was kept of the wanderings of the men who served in this or any of the fur companies, but that Powder and Bighorn rivers were thoroughly explored by them there can be no doubt. In that extreme northwest corner of the territory where the Yellow- stone heads still stands a memento of one of these rovers-a pine tree bearing the inscription here repre- sented.
11 In 1814 Henry was in charge of a post in the Willamette valley. He was afterward a partner in the Northwest company of Canada and Oregon. Hist. Northwest Coast, this series, vol. xxviii, p. 129, note 3.
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The first recorded expedition which entered Wyo- ming from the east was that of Wilson Price Hunt, in 1811, who conducted to Oregon the overland part of the Pacific Fur company, which founded Astoria. Accompanying him were Robert Mclellan, Ramsey Crooks, Donald McKenzie, John Day, and fifty-five others, all of whom toiled and suffered much on their rugged march. They left the Missouri at the mouth of the Big Cheyenne, and following the general course of that stream to and along the base of the Black hills, travelled westward across Powder river valley and Bighorn mountains to Wind river, where they turned south to find grass and game, coming to the upper waters of the Colorado, known to trappers as Spanish river, whence they found their way to Snake river. The following year Mclellan, Crooks, Robert Stewart, and two Frenchmen, returning to the east, met Joseph Miller, who had been robbed by the na- tives in the Arapahoe country, presumably in south- ern Wyoming. They fared no better than Miller, having all their horses stolen, and being compelled to finish their journey to the Missouri on foot.12 Avoid- ing their former route over mountains, they followed the Platte from its headwaters to its mouth,13 being the first to travel that natural highway to the Pacific afterward so generally pursued. In 1820 Major Stephen H. Long, under orders from the government, explored the Platte valley as far west as the junction of the North and South forks, when he took a south- erly course, and was therefore not in Wyoming; but the result of his expedition was to attract attention to the central overland route to the mountains, which finally made the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater valleys the great thoroughfare of Pacific travel.
In 1822, William H Ashley, a Virginian by birth, who had migrated to Missouri while it was still called
12 Long's Expedition, 465-6.
13 Id., 466. Long says the narrative of this journey was published in the Missouri Gazette, but does not give the year.
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upper Louisiana, where he was the first lieutenant- governor, and brigadier-general of militia,14 with the assistance of Henry, erected a fort on the Yellowstone. The following year, having formed with Astor the North American Fur company, he started up the Missouri for this post with twenty-eight men, but was attacked by the Rickasas, and driven back, with a loss of fourteen killed and ten wounded.15 Undaunted, he enlisted three hundred men, and in 1824 again sought the mountains, following the Platte to the South pass, exploring and naming the Sweetwater, and appointing a rendezvous with the Indians on Spanish river, which he named, after a member of his company, Green river. He pushed his explorations to Utah lake, discovered first by Escalante in 1776, but seen by no American before Ashley, who gave it his own name. Here he crected a post, and in two or three years collected $180,000 worth of furs, selling out his establishment in 1826 to the Rocky Mountain Fur company, formed that year in St Louis, with Jedediah S. Smith, William L. Sublette, and David E. Jackson at the head. They had been leaders under the North American company, and were well equipped to succeed to the business, in which they were also successful To them belongs the dis- tinction of having taken the first wagons from the Missouri to the mountains, ten of which, each drawn by five mules, and two carts, rolled the whole distance from St Louis to Wind river rendezvous, the wagons carrying eighteen hundred pounds each, and travelling from fifteen to twenty-five miles a day. Have I not said that this was the great natural highway across the continent ? Some persons have tried to make it
14 Col A. G. Brackett, in Trans. Wyom. Acad. Sciences, etc., 1882, p. 79. 15 One of those who escaped was Lindsey Applegate, a pioneer of Oregon, who made his home at Ashland in the Rogue river valley.
16 In Ashley's service was James P. Beckwourth, whose character and career have been more than once referred to in this history. He claimed to have been in the mountains as early as 1817, and to have, in company with Vaquez, discovered and explored the south Platte, but what year is not stated. Montana Post, Feb. 23, 1867.
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appear extremely difficult, and to steal the glory from the creator and the Rocky Mountain Fur con- pany; but here are the facts. They reported to the government that there was no obstacle to crossing to the west side of the Rocky mountains with wagons, had they desired to do so. The next year they brought out fourteen wagons, and the use of wheeled vehicles became common on this route. In the mean- time the Missouri Fur company had been revived, as I have said, under the leadership of Pilcher, Lisa, Hempstead, and Perkins, and had its trappers in the country about the South pass, although its principal territory was among the Sioux, Ricaras, and other Missouri river tribes. About 1830 the Rocky Moun- tain company was reorganized, with Milton Sublette, James Bridger, and Fitzpatrick at the head, with several other partners. They had, together with the other fur companies, men enough in the mountains about the headwaters of the Platte, Green, and Snake rivers, and on the Yellowstone branches, to constitute a regiment. 17
In 1832 Captain E. L. Bonneville, an army officer on leave, led a company of 110 trappers to the mount- ains in search of profit and adventure. He was assisted by I. R. Walker and M. Serré, leaders. They travelled the Platte route, with a caravan of twenty wagons-some drawn by oxen, which were the first "bull teams" on this line-laden with Indian goods, provisions, and ammunition, which were
17 It would be gratifying to be able to give a list of all the hunters and trappers in Wyoming previous to the period of emigration; but these men had no individual importance in the eyes of their leaders, who recruited their rapidly thinning ranks yearly, with little attention to the personality of the victims of hardship, accident, vice, or Indian hostility, whose bones often received no burial, but bleached under sun and snow until they crum- bled to dust. Names that have been preserved of the more prominent, dar- ing, or fortunate explorers of this territory during the great fur-hunting period are comparatively few. Among them are Blackwell, Fonteneble, Frapp, La Jeunesse, Robert Campbell, Kit Carson, Godin, Newell, Meek, Ebberts, Gantt, Gervais, Brown, Craig, Sinclair, Vanderburgh, Dripps, Gale, Hawkins, Liggitt, Anderson, Ward, Wade, Parmalee, Head, Robinson, Rider Larison, Russell, Guthrie, Walker, Doty, Claymore, Legarde, Reese, Nelson, Maloney, Tullock, Harris, Black, Matthieu, Kiplin, Boudeau, Bissonette, Adams, Sabille, Kellogg, Galpin,
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all taken through the South pass into Green river, being the first wagons to roll down the western slope of the Rocky mountains. Here he erected a fortified camp, and remained in the mountains hunting furs, fighting Indians, and exploring for three years. He wintered in 1832 in Salmon river, but spent the sum- mer of 1833 east of the Rocky range, on the Bighorn and Powder rivers, on the latter visiting a " burning mountain," where the earth was hot and cracked in many places, emitting smoke and sulphurous vapors, and "abounding with anthracite coal." He also vis- ited Colter hell, which he found a region similar to that on Powder river.18
Another adventurer in these parts was Nathaniel J. Wyeth, who, in 1832 brought out a party of twenty-two men, which by desertion and loss was reduced to half that number while he was at Pierre hole on the head of Henry branch of Snake river.19 In 1834 he returned with fifty men, but had no bet- ter fortune than before, competition with the Hud- son's Bay company on one hand, and the American company on the other; desertion and the Indians leaving him little or nothing of his investments.20
It does not seem that it was the custom of the fur companies to erect forts, except in case of necessity, where the Indians were of a predatory and hostile disposition, which was not the character of those on
18 Irving's Bonneville Adven., 199. It is remarkable that we hear nothing about the geyser basins from the various fur-hunting adventurers. The only mention of this region, except that which I have given, is in Victor's River of the West. Meek heard the whistling and saw the steam from the geysers one cold morning in Nov. 1829, and likened it aptly to the city of Pittsburg on a winter morning.
19 The names of some of Wyeth's party were John B. Wyeth, Solomon H. Smith, John Ball, Calvin Tibbetts, Abbott, Breck, Burditt, St Clair, Trumbull, and Whittier. On his second visit, besides his hired men, he es- corted Nuttall and Townsend, naturalists; Jason and Daniel Lee, mission- aries to Oregon; Cyrus Shepard, and C. M. Walker. Two Englishmen, Stewart and Ashworth, also visited the mountains this year with the fur companies, travelling a part of the time with Wyeth. Stewart seems to have been in the mountains even earlier, and to have come and gone year after year. He resided in New Orleans. See Hist. Oregon and Hist. Northwest Coast, this series.
20 Hist. Northwest Coast, this series, i. 491, 517, 520; ii. 576-8, 585-7.
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the west side of the mountains to any serious degree. On account of the Blackfoot and Crow nations, whose habits were more warlike, a number of forts were established on the Missouri and the main Yellowstone, as I have mentioned in my History of Montana, but within the territory which now constitutes Wyoming Bonneville erected the first fortification, at the junction of Lead creek with Green river, in 1832 the remains of which may still be seen. The Indians becoming more troublesome as they became better acquainted with white men and the temptations offered by their wealth, the necessity for forts increased. Rivalry in trade was another incentive to building posts.
The first permanent post erected in Wyoming was by William Sublette and Robert Campbell in 1834, and was established with the design of monopolizing the trade of those tribes who roamed over the coun- try, from the Missouri on the northeast to the Sweet- water on the west of the Black hills, namely, Arapa- hoes, Cheyennes, and Sioux. Being strong and warlike nations, it was necessary, while inviting their commerce to guard against their attacks.
The fort was situated on Laramie fork, an affluent of the Platte, a clear and beautiful stream, winding through meadows where grew the wild currant and gooseberry, and which was dotted here and there with groups of larger trees. It consisted of a palisade eighteen feet high, with bastions in two diagonally opposite corners, and a few small adobe houses inside. It was called Fort William, after Sublette. In 1835 the establishment was sold to Milton Sublette, James Bridger, and three other fur hunters, who had united with the American Fur company, after an active rivalry of several years, during which these two pow- erful associations, had driven all the other American
fur traders out of Wyoming.21 21 The fort was rebuilt
21 These several leaders then put out with detachments of trappers to hunt in every direction-Sublette, Fitzpatrick, Fontenelle, Basil La Jeneusse, W. M. Anderson, Jack Robinso and James Bridger. Carlin, Hist. Fort Bridger. MS., 1.
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in 1836 by the new owners, at an outlay of $10,000, and was called by a part of the company Fort John, but the name never could be made acceptable to the majority. The clerks in the eastern office settled the difference unintentionally by making out their bills for Fort Laramie, the name of the river on which it was situated,22 and much more likely to be understood than William or John, which might be anywhere. It continued to be a fort of the American Fur com- pany until 1849, when it was sold to the government. It had many commanders in its time, the last of whom was Bruce Husband.
No other permanent establishment was made before 1842, when Fort Bridger was erected on a delta formed by several branches of Black fork of Green river. It was a log fort, or block house, and was occupied by Bridger during the interesting period of the earliest migration of settlers to the Pacific coast. He abandoned it in 1853, being warned by the Mor- mons, who did not desire a hostile fort in the neigh- borhood of their settlements. 23 About the same time
22 Laramie was a French trapper, who in the earliest fur-hunting times was killed by the Arapahoes on this stream. H. S. Schell, History of Fort Larimie, MS., 2. This complete account of a famous fort was furnished me by the war department, and contains extracts from military correspondence, and such documents as bear upon the subject. I have another History of Fort Larimie by Charles H. Cochran, Ist lieut 7th infantry at that post. It is taken from the files of the post, and enlarged with references to books of travel. Concurrent accounts are found in Trans. Wyom. Acad. Sciences, etc., 81, 84. Carlin (William P., col. 4th inf.) Experiences in Wyoming, MS., 5-11, being an account of certain military operations, which I shall refer to in their proper place, written by his own hand. Carlin was at Laramie as early as 1855.
23 I am aware that in Chamber's Hist. Fort Bridger, MS., and also in the Trans. Wyom. Acad. Sciences, 81-2, it is said that Bridger sold a Spanish grant to the Mormons, Lewis Robinson being named as the purchaser, and $8,000 as the price. In the Utah Hand-Book of Reference, 73, it is recorded that President Young purchased of James Bridger a Mexican grant for thirty square miles of land and some cabins, afterwards known as Fort Bridger. This is a mistake, as there were no Spanish grants in that region. R. B. Marcy, in his Thirty Years of Army Life, 401, relates that he fell in with Bridger at Fort Laramie in 1857, as he was returning from Washing- ton, where he had been to lay his case before the authorities. Marcy tells us that Bridger was an illiterate man, 'tall, thin, wiry, with a complexion well bronzed by toil and exposure, with an independent, generous, open cast of countenance, indicative of brave and noble impulses.' I have a letter from P. W. McAdow of Billings, Montana, who knew Bridger well. He says that Bridger was born in Washington in 1807, and joined Ashley's fur
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