USA > Missouri > A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements Until the Admission of the state into the union, Volume III > Part 11
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" This is the story as given by Elihu Shepard in his "History of St. Louis," page 51, et seq., though Shepard states that he was obliged to rely upon "tradi- tion, his own knowledge, and the public journals of those days" for the state- ments made. Shepard says that Farnham was a native of New Hampshire, and that he was accompanied by his dog on the perilous journey on foot and alone from St. Louis to St. Petersburg. In his "Personal Recollections," page 163, John F. Darby says that Farnham was born in Massachusetts, that he went in the Tonquin from New York to Astoria, and from there by way of Bering Strait to Siberia and thence to St. Petersburg, carrying drafts to the amount of forty thousand dollars on his person. In his list of passengers on the Tonquin Franchere mentions "Russell Farnham, of Massachusetts." Captain H. M. Chittenden in his "American Fur Trade of the Far West" calls Farnham a "Green Mountain Boy." An interesting statement is made by Shepard, page 52, in regard to the evidence of Farnham's journey: "The exact date of his departure and arrival at the different points of his long journey were carefully noted by him, as well as the remarkable incidents and observa- tions on the route, in a well kept journal, prepared for publication, and was placed in the hands of a publisher in New York, who failed and died several years before Colonel Farnham, and he was never able to recover the journal or learn of its fate." It is told by members of the Bosseron family yet living that Charles Farnham, the young son, had planned to go to New York in quest of this journal, but failed to do so because of failing health.
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THE PATTIES
pointed Lieutenant of a company of Rangers and in 1813 for a short time was in command of the fort at Cap-au-Gris. While in command there he was surrounded by the Indians and the ammunition of his troop becoming exhausted, disguised as a British soldier he managed to pass through the Indians and secured relief. He was mustered out of service in 1813 and then removed to the Gasconade river, where he established a saw and grist mill, an enterprise which proved profitable. At that time the demand for lumber was large and con- stantly increasing and he rafted the product of his mill by river to St. Louis. His wife died while he lived on the Gasconade. This caused him to become despondent and dissatisfied and he was seized with the wandering and adventurous spirit inherited from his fathers, among the first who had crossed the Appalachian range and settled west of the mountains. Accordingly he resolved to engage in trading, hunting and trapping on the headwaters of the Missouri. In 1824 we find him in St. Louis purchasing an outfit for this enterprise. He embarked all his means in this expedition, enlisted five men, packed ten horses with traps, ammunition, knives, tomahawks, provisions, blankets and arms, but so dangerous did even at that time the enterprise appear to the adventurous spirits then generally congregated around and near St. Louis that he could not engage more men to go with him. His son James, although a mere youth insisted on accompanying him and reluctantly he con- sented to allow him to go. Starting from St. Louis, he went to New- port, now Dundee, on the Missouri river, where he crossed over to the north side, and reached Pilcher's fort, or Bellevue, about nine miles above the mouth of the Platte, losing one man by desertion near Chariton. When he arrived at Council Bluffs, then a military station, the commanding officer would not allow him to go up the Missouri to trade as he originally intended, because he had not secured a trading permit. He then changed his course to New Mex- ico, and the southwest. . His son James in his "Personal Narrative," edited by Rev. Timothy Flint has preserved for us the story of the long series of incidents and trials of their adventures. They had not proceeded far in a southwest direction, when near the first Paw- nee villages they fell in with the caravan of Bernard Pratte, then one of the first merchants of St. Louis, consisting of about 116 men, in charge of his son, and on the way to Santa Fe to trade, and of this caravan Sylvester Pattie on account of his experience in Indian warfare soon was made chief commander. Frequently attacked,
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
always while on the plains in peril, this caravan finally reached and crossed the mountains and descended into the valley of Taos and marched into Santa Fe. Here young Pattie says he rendered service to the Governor by rescuing his daughter from Indian captivity, and under permit from the Mexicans the Patties went to the Gila river, visiting the copper mines of Santa Rita, the first Americans that appeared in that then far away region. They returned to Santa Fe, and here the elder Pattie resolved to go to Santa Rita and engage in working the valuable copper mines. He repulsed the attacks made upon him there by the Apaches and made great profits, but his son James would not remain and again visited the Gila, and from the mouth of this river went up the Colorado, and was among the first Americans to behold the great canyons of this river. He crossed the continental divide, once more hunted buffalo on the plains, went to the Big Horn and the Yellowstone and striking the headwaters of the Arkansas followed this stream to the Santa Fe trail, returned to Santa Fe and thence to his father at Santa Rita. From there went to Sonora and Chihuahua. Upon his return from this trip he found that his father had lost his profits in his mining operations and both then started out again west with a number of followers to the Gila, followed that river to the Colorado and thence down the Colorado to the barren and desert waste of sand and tidal waters of the Gulf. Unable to return on account of the swift current of the Colorado they struck across the deserts lying between the mouth of the river and California and after much hardship and great suffering they and their companions arrived at the Dominican Mis- sions near San Diego, but their ragged and emaciated appearance did not inspire much confidence and they were arrested as suspects and imprisoned in San Diego and in prison the elder Pattie died after a life of ceaseless activity worn out by hardship, December 28, 1828. His son was retained in prison for sometime, but became interpreter and finally was released on parole and because it was ascertained that he knew how to vaccinate was sent along the coast to vaccinate the inhabitants. He traveled along the coast of California from mission to mission, visited San Francisco, then went to the Russian port at the Bay of Bodega, and was in Monterey in 1829 in time to participate in the Solis revolt. From there he went to the city of Mexico to secure compensation for his losses suffered by his imprisonment at San Diego. In this he was unsuccessful and returned via Vera Cruz to New Orleans. From there he went to
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WALKER
Kentucky to visit his relatives. Afterward he returned to California where it is supposed he finally died. The Patties, father and son, were among the first Missourians, by adoption, who traversed the country west of the Mississippi, scaled the Rocky mountains, explored the high plateau and followed the rivers that empty their waters into the Pacific.
Joseph Reddeford Walker, famous as trapper, hunter, guide and explorer, and whose name has thus become identified forever with the historyof the west, like many others resided for a time in territorial Missouri, became an adopted citizen and filled an official position in the state, that of sheriff, and then impelled by that resistless impulse, which seems to have taken possession of the minds of so many adven- turous spirits of the times, he sought the farther west, the mountains, the streams and passes that led to the Pacific, never ceasing in his wanderings until he reached the shores of the ocean. Walker was a native of Goochland county, Virginia. In early youth he moved to Tennessee and from that state in 1818 came to the Missouri territory. Here he remained until 1831 when he engaged in a trading and trap- JOS. R. WALKER ping expedition to the headwaters of the Missouri and thereafter his active life was spent in the plains and mountains and thus his name has become inseparably connected with the explorations across the mountains to the western ocean. "Walker river," "Walker lake" and the "Walker pass" derive their names from him. In 1833 he first crossed the Sierras and came to California, starting from Salt Lake he on this trip discovered "Walker lake" and "Walker river." In 1834, having remained during the winter in Monterey, he returned by way of "Walker's pass." In 1841 we find him at Los Angeles where he traded horses, having gone to southern California from New Mexico. In 1845 he piloted the Chiles party, consisting of 50 persons from Mis- souri to California, meeting this caravan at Fort Laramie. This was the first wagon train attempting to cross the plains and mountains to California. Chiles took with him from Missouri a complete sawmill which he expected to erect on the Sacramento, but was compelled to bury on the way and to finally abandon his wagons before he accom- plished the trip. For 20 years thereafter, Walker continued to trap and hunt in the mountains. He piloted Fremont's third expedition across the mountains to the Pacific and which gave Fremont errone-
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
ously the name of "Pathfinder." Walker finally settled down with a nephew (James T.) in Contra Costa county, California, in 1876 and died there 76 years old. His brother Joel P. Walker, almost equally as famous in the early western history, was born in 1797 and from Virginia moved to Tennessee and from there came to Missouri. At the age of 17 he was under Jackson in the Seminole war. In 1818-19 he settled in Howard county where he married Miss Mary Young. In 1820 he was engaged in the Santa Fe trade with Cooper and others. In 1840 he went with his wife and five children overland to Oregon and from Oregon in 1841 came to California. His wife was the first white woman who came overland to California and settled north of the Bay of San Francisco.68
"8 Joseph J. Monroe, a brother of President Monroe, was one of the first settlers of Howard county, arriving there in 1819. He was a widower at the time of his arrival, and in 1820 married Mrs. Hulda Davis, a daughter of one of the earliest Baptist preachers of North Missouri, Elder Hubbard. Monroe died July 6, 1824, and says the "Intelligencer," was "a man of warm heart, of undoubted integrity, of polished education and inestimable worth." The first clerk of Chariton county was his son-in-law.
A brother of Chief-justice Taney, named Mathew Taney, settled in Potosi, Washington county, and died there. A brother of Hugh L. White, long a dis- tinguished senator from Tennessee, lived and died in the same county.
Among those who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition, John Colter, (Coalter, or Coulter) has perhaps gained the widest and most enduring celebrity, as the discoverer of the Yellowstone Park. In 1811 Colter lived on Boeuf creek, near the house of Sullens, in St. Louis county, and here Bradbury the distinguished botanist met him, on his trip to the Rocky Mountains, and obtained a knowledge of the Yellowstone region and the incidents of his life he narrates. Colter in 1807, as he was about to return to civilization, met a brigade of the Missouri Fur Company and was persuaded to return with this company to the Yellowstone river, and in the summer following was the first white man to cross what is now the Yellowstone National Park. He was a native of Virginia and from that state moved to Kentucky, where he enlisted in 1803 in the Lewis and Clark corps. On the return of the expedition at Fort Mandan he obtained his discharge and in company with a man named Dixon, who alone had gone as far as the headwaters of the Missouri, engaged in trapping, and after a time separated from him and together with another man named Potts hunted beaver in the Blackfeet country, but afraid of the hostility of these Indians they set their traps at night. However, finally both were captured by the Blackfeet, principally because Potts would not follow the advice of Colter. In the incidents immediately following their capture, Potts was killed, but not before he shot an Indian with his rifle. After this, Bradbury says these Indians "seized Colter, stripped him naked, and began to consult on the manner in which he should be put to death. They were first inclined to set him up as a mark to shoot at; but the chief interfered, and seizing him by by the shoulder, asked if he could run fast. Colter, who had been some time amongst the Kee-kat-sa or Crow Indians, had in a considerable degree acquired the Blackfoot language, and was also well acquainted with Indian customs. He knew that he had now to run for his life, with the dreadful odds of five and six hundred against him, and those armed Indians; therefore cunningly replied that he was a very bad runner, although he was considered by the hunters as remarkably swift. The chief now commanded the party to remain stationary, and led Colter out on the prairie three or four hundred yards, and released him, bidding him to save himself if he could." In this race Colter
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THE LOST TRAPPER
But long before the Patties and Walker went westward, as early as 1807, Ezekiel Williams with a company of twenty men, left St. Louis intending to cross the Rocky mountains and go overland to the Pacific. This Ezekiel Williams afterward in 1820 lived on the Missouri five miles above Franklin and from his residence Wm. Becknell started with the first trading party to Santa Fe. The story of Williams' venture has been published under the name of "The Lost Trappers," by David H. Coyner, embellished no doubt by the fancy of the author. The party according to this narrative left St. Louis and reached the Yellowstone, and trapped and hunted along that river for beaver, but one of the hunting parties consisting of ten men fell in with the Blackfeet Indians and in an engagement five men were killed. Owing to the extreme danger, Williams concluded to turn south, where he met and was received in a friendly manner by the Crows. Here he remained for a time, and then going farther south hunted and trapped for beaver on the head- waters of the Platte in the direction of the South Pass, but one of his men named Rose remained with the Crows. While on the Platte he was attacked by the Crows, who seem to have become unfriendly, and he lost five more of his men. The remaining nine men now concluded since they had also lost their horses to cache their furs and other things too heavy to carry. Going still farther south they wandered among the headwaters of the Colorado and one by one were cut off until only Williams, Workman " and Spencer remained, and to
successfully escaped the Indians, but his situation was nevertheless dreadful, because he was completely naked, under a burning sun, and the soles of his feet were entirely filled with the thorns of the prickly pear. He was hungry, and had no means of killing game, although he saw abundance around him, and was at least seven days' journey from Lisa's fort on the Big Horn branch of the Roche Jaune river. "These were circumstances," says Bradbury, "under which almost any man but an American hunter would have despaired." But he arrived at the fort in seven days, having subsisted on a root much esteemed by the Indians of the Missouri, now known by naturalists as Psor- alea esculenta (Bradbury's Travels, p. 40). After his remarkable escape Colter remained in the upper Missouri country for some time longer, but in 1810 came down in a little canoe a distance of three thousand miles to St. Louis, having traversed this immense distance in 30 days. From St. Louis he removed to Boeuf creek in St. Louis county, where he married. His nearest neighbors were the Sullens, 'and here Bradbury met him and obtained the story of his discovery of the Yellowstone Park and the petrified woods there, and the story of his race for his life. Colter, it seems, died in St. Louis county in 1813; no doubt his death was hastened by the hardships he endured. From the Mis- souri Gazette it appears that his estate was administered in St. Louis county, and some of the papers relating to it have recently been found by Judge Douglass in the old records of the city.
" The name of a saddler and harness maker of Franklin, in Howard county, under whom Kit Carson served as apprentice.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
add to the trouble of these survivors, they quarreled among them- selves and Williams separated from them. He found a stream which he supposed to be the Red river, but which he afterward found was the Arkansas, and going down that stream in a canoe met some Osage Indians, who gave him the direction to go to Fort Osage after having taken his skins. When he arrived at the Fort which had just been established, he fortunately found the factor Sibley about to pay the Osage Indians their annuities, and made known the robbery and they were compelled to restore the furs. Workman and Spencer, after they separated from Williams, also found the Arkansas and which they too thought was the Red river and following the river found the trail of Pike's expedition, and finally became entangled in the mountains. They saw Pike's Peak and say that it seemed to them "so high that the clouds could not pass between its top and the sky." They now endeavored to reach Santa Fe and came across a plain trail and a few days afterward met a Mexican caravan on the way to Los Angeles, which they joined and thus reached the Pacific. The following year they returned to Santa Fe and here they remained for fifteen years. Williams in 1809 organized a party in Missouri and went back to the mountains and secured the furs he had cached. Many of the details of Coyner's little volume no doubt are fictitious, but perhaps in its main features this narrative is true. At any rate, we find a part of it confirmed in a most unexpected manner. Col. John Shaw in his "Narrative" says, that in 1808 he, Peter Spear and William Miller, all names well known in Cape Girardeau county, resolved to push "into the western wilderness" as far as the Pacific ocean; that they began their march from the extreme western limits of the Cape Girardeau District on the St. François river, following a route about on the 36} parallel. He says, that they crossed the Black river, and then a . branch of White river to which he gave the name "Current" and a name "which it has since retained" and afterward crossed Spring river. Shaw and his two men then crossed the main fork of White river and continued to go westwardly until they reached the prairie country. He says they journeyed 800 or 1,000 miles from the settle- ments, that he met a number of friendly Indians and had no trouble with them, encountered vast herds of buffalo and occasionally herds of wild horses, and came in view of the spurs of the Rocky mountains. "In this region," continues Shaw, "we one day during the summer met three men, who proved to be the only survivors of a party of some fifteen trappers, who had penetrated up the Missouri, when in two
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ANDREW HENRY
savage attacks by the Indians all the others were slain, and these survivors were now directing their course to the Arkansas river, and admonished us to desist our further journey westward." Thus Shaw clearly confirms at least that part of Coyner's narrative relating to the three survivors, Williams, Workman and Spencer, then wander- ing on the plains eastward, intending to reach the settlements. Shaw and his men, however, did not carry out their purpose. Shortly after they left the three trappers, they saw some Comanche Indians chasing wild horses, just in time to conceal themselves, and this view of these Indians undoubtedly so deeply impressed them with the folly and madness to attempt to reach the Pacific that they then and there abandoned their purpose. Returning down the Arkansas, between that river and the Kansas and Missouri, they hunted and trapped beaver and bear, in the fall of 1809 and in 1810. In 1811 they concluded to return with the proceeds of their hunt, amounting to 50 beaver and otter skins, three hundred bear skins and eight hundred gal- lons of bear's oil, which they carried in sacks of bears' skins on horse- back to the White river and thence in a pirogue to New Orleans.70
Andrew Henry, "Major Henry of the Mines," also should not be forgotten as one of the earliest explorers and adventurers of the Rocky mountains. He was a native of Fayette county, Pennsylvania, born in about 1775 and came to upper Louisiana during the Spanish domination, lived first at Ste. Genevieve, and then settled in the mineral district. Here he must have acquired some property, because in 1808 he became one of the original partners of the Missouri Fur Company, his other partners being Benjamin Wilkinson, Pierre Chouteau, junior, Auguste Chouteau, junior, Reuben Lewis, a brother of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, afterward Governor of the Missouri Territory, Sylvestre Labadie, of St. Louis, Pierre Menard, afterward Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois, and William Morrison of Kaskaskia, and Dennis Fitzpatrick of Louisville, Ken- tucky. This company possessed for that time a large capital and all the partners pledged themselves to go and remain for a certain time in the Indian country. The expedition of the company started from St. Louis in 1809, with 150 men, all well armed, accompanied by all the partners. Without any serious trouble the party reached the Rocky mountains and at or near the mouth of the Three Forks, erected a fort. For a time everything looked as if the venture would prove very profitable; beaver were found in abundance and the " Wis. Hist. Collection, vol. 2, p. 199-200.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
Indians appeared friendly. Fortune seemed to smile on the adven- turers. But suddenly all this changed and the Blackfeet Indians opened a relentless war, making it impossible for small parties of trappers to go out to catch beaver, and which alone made the financial success of the enterprise possible. A number of trappers going out in small parties were cut off and killed, among them George Drouil- lard,71 who had been interpreter and hunter with Lewis and Clark and was the best hunter, woodsman, and shot of that expedition. The difficulties daily increasing, the other partners and many of the men returned to the settlements and Henry was left in command to bear the brunt of the terrible struggle with these Blackfeet Indians. He successfully held the fort and repelled repeated attacks, but it was impossible to trap or hunt with any safety and Henry lost thirty men of his party during the winter. In 1810 he abandoned the fort at Three Forks and moved south across the Continental divide, and established a small stockade on the north fork of Snake river, still known as Henry Fork, and in making this change lost a part of his horses and men by an attack of the Crow Indians. This stockade fort was the first American trading post erected in the valley of the Columbia west of the Continental divide. In 1811, unable to hold out any longer, Henry and his little band separated, all endeavoring to reach as best they could the frontier settlements. Henry himself recrossed the mountains, going probably down the Yellowstone to the Missouri. On the Missouri he met Lisa who had gone up the river to meet him. After this ill-fated enterprise, Henry returned to Potosi and there doubtless became acquainted with Ashley. At any rate we find that in 1822 he and Ashley obtained a license to trade on the upper Missouri and accordingly advertised for 100 young men "to ascend the Missouri river to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years." Persons desiring to know particulars, were referred to "Major Andrew Henry, near the lead mines in the county of Washington, who will ascend with and command the party." Their plan was to ascend to Three Forks and exploit the fur business there. The expedition started in April but again bad luck seemed to follow Henry in his footsteps, because near Fort
11 He was master "of the common language of gesticulation." On one of his trips to the mountains with a trading expedition of Lisa, when an engage named Antoine Bissonette deserted, Lisa ordered him to bring him back dead or alive. Drouillard overtook the deserter and shot and wounded him severely. In the following year on their return, he and Lisa were both tried for murder before Judge Lucas. But the jury found them not guilty. Evidently a man who took things seriously, this Drouillard.
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DISCOVERY OF SOUTHWEST PASS
Osage one of his keel-boats with a cargo estimated to be worth $10,000 sank by striking a snag, and all the goods on board were lost, the men only being saved with difficulty. But this disaster did not stop the progress of the party and Henry reached the mouth of the Yellowstone, where he built a fort and passed the winter. In the following spring he started out for the Blackfoot country, but was attacked by these Indians near the Great Falls and forced to return. In the meantime, Ashley had ascended the river with more goods and stopping at a village of the Aricaras was treacherously attacked by them and barely escaped destruction. He sent for Henry, who had fortunately returned to the mouth of the Yellowstone, and at once with his force he came to his relief. An army force now came up the river under Leavenworth, and after the close of this campaign against these Indians, Ashley dispatched Henry with 80 men back to the Yellowstone, but here he was again attacked and harassed by the Indians. In the fall of 1823, he dispatched a party under Provost to the southwest. This party discovered the South pass. In 1824 Henry took a large consignment of beaver furs that had been collected in spite of these adverse circumstances, to St. Louis, and so promising did the venture then appear, that he immediately returned up the river equipped with new goods. But this is the last mention of Henry's name in connection with the fur trade.
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