TAHOE • STORIES
Adventures
of the Mountain Men:
JEDEDIAH STRONG SMITH
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early 200 years ago in 1824, a small contingent of American mountain men blazed a trail across the Continental Divide, through the formidable Rocky Mountains. Most importantly, unlike Donner Pass on the yet to be established California Trail, the route posed no great physical or technical challenge for families encumbered with loaded farm wagons. In the following decades, South Pass (Wyoming) became the portal for more than 500,000 emigrants as they migrated west to the Pacific Coast. Continues on next page
It certainly wasn’t the first time that humans had crossed this high-elevation saddle on the Continental Divide that splits major drainages between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. This key portal through the rugged Rockies had already been utilized by American Indians for thousands of years. In fact, in October 1812, six European-descent white men led by trapper Robert Stuart may have previously “discovered” the pass going east to St. Louis, Missouri, from Fort Astoria on the Columbia River (Oregon). Word of Stuart’s important discovery, however, was muted by the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. Virtually all of the trails “blazed” by trappers and explorers had existed as animal and Indian footpaths for millennia. One of the great achievements of the mountain men was linking the most direct of these trails into single roads that would ultimately span the West. Historians have long held that 19th-century beaver trappers and fur traders – the “mountain men” — contributed little significant geographical knowledge or cartography of the Rocky Mountains and western North America during the early decades of the 1800s. This incorrect assumption is based on the idea that the majority of trappers, most of whom were poorly educated, made few maps, kept no journals, and thus only minimal geographic intelligence reached government institutions back East. Another supposition is that these men wanted to maintain control and protect their financial security by withholding information about their prime hunting
grounds. Little formal knowledge may have reached government officials, but the fur trappers’ insight was published in frontier newspapers and shared in conversations at riverfront taverns in St. Louis. Valuable information about the landscape, climate and Indian danger along westbound trails was no secret to early settlers on the western American frontier. Among those legendary fur trappers who identified South Pass in 1824 was leader Jedediah Strong Smith, who was the first to notice that water in the nearby creek was flowing west, not east, representing the continental divide. Smith was accompanied by Thomas “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick, Joseph Walker, and James Clyman, some of the most famous names in western lore. After surveying the route, Smith reported that the pass was the crucial missing link in opening a feasible wagon road from the Missouri River to the Oregon Country. Just eight years later, Captain Benjamin Bonneville would lead 110 men with 20 wagons over the pass, thereby establishing a route that would become the Oregon, California and Mormon trails. Jedediah Strong Smith Very few of the hundreds of trappers and fur traders that roamed the west during the 1820s and early 1830s kept a journal of their experiences. But those that did, men like Zenas Leonard, James Clyman and Jedediah Smith, provided riveting firsthand accounts of the challenges, privations and close calls that accompanied their adventures. Jedediah Strong Smith was the most intrepid and fearless of all the mountain men. And although exploration was not a primary purpose with him, his trapping and trading business led him to see more of the west than any man of his time. In fact, when it comes to the early exploration of the American West, only Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s famed “Corps of Discovery” journey to the Pacific Ocean eclipsed Smith’s achievements. Lewis and Clark were outfitted and funded by the United States government, and a force of men and equipment were provided for them. In contrast, Smith had to pay his own way with beaver pelts, and while information from the Lewis and Clark expedition was published and widely disseminated, Smith’s untimely death left gaps in his journals and his unfinished map. Between the years 1822 and 1831 Smith surmounted vast deserts, towering mountain ranges and hostile Indian attacks to probe the expansive wilderness as he searched for beaver and other fur-bearing animals. During it all, he kept notes, sketched maps and gained a unique knowledge of the unexplored western landscape. Among Jedediah Smith’s impressive accomplishments was his effective discovery of the South Pass. He was also the first to reach California overland from the American frontier, which makes him the first white man to
Jedediah Strong Smith
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cross what would become the states of Utah and Nevada. Smith was also the first Anglo to cross the Sierra Nevada, the first to travel the length and width of the Great Basin, and the first to journey up the California coast to Oregon. And he did it all from age 23 to 32. Born in New York in 1799, his family soon moved west to Erie County, Pennsylvania. Later a close family friend of the Smiths gave young Jedediah a copy of the Lewis and Clark expedition journal that had been published to wide acclaim. The book introduced the impressionable teenager to a love of nature and adventure. Legend has it that Smith carried that journal with him on all of his travels in the American West. As an adult, Smith was tall and lean with blue eyes. A practicing Methodist who carried a Bible with him, he was mild-mannered, quiet and unassuming. He was the rare trapper who never used profanity or tobacco, and partook of wine or brandy only sparingly on formal occasions. On the other hand, he endured the privations of trapping with an indifference that elevated him above his colleagues, all capable men. Smith could handle personal suffering and exhibited endurance beyond the point when other men died. He displayed a rare coolness and courage under attack and gunfire, which encouraged naturally independent trappers to respect his decisions and leadership. It was said that he had the energy and drive of three men. Jedediah Smith was just 22 years old when he first joined pioneering fur trader William Ashley as a raw recruit on an excursion up the Missouri River to trap beavers for their valuable pelts. Indicative of his exceptional abilities, within a year Jedediah was promoted to captain of an Ashley trapping party. Two years later he was Ashley’s partner, and in one more year he was a senior partner in the firm that dominated the mountain fur trade.
Lessons in survival came fast and furious for these early frontiersmen. In 1824, Jedediah Smith was nearly killed by a grizzly bear near the Powder River, south of Yellowstone country. The grizzly mauled Smith’s head, ripping his scalp, breaking six ribs and tearing off one ear. The attack was brief but vicious. After stitching the wounds as best he could, fellow trapper Jim Clyman told Smith that there was nothing he could do for his severed ear. Smith insisted Clyman sew it back on. In his journal, Clyman wrote, “I put my needle through and through and over and over, laying the lacerated parts together as nice as I could with my hands.” From then on, Smith wore his hair long to hide the scars and disfigurement to his head. Jedediah Smith also survived the three worst Indian attacks of the American fur trade. He was there for the devastating Mojave Desert clash of 1827; the 1828 battle against the Arikara where 13 of his men died; and the Umpqua massacre of 1828 in Oregon, where at least 40 men were killed around him. Tragically, Smith died a lonely death at the age of 32 on the Santa Fe trail under the lances of the Comanches. The life of a nineteenth-century mountain man was exciting but violent and usually brief. One fur-trading partnership led by Jedediah Smith reported that over a six-year period his company employed about 180 men. Of those hired, 94 were killed by Indians. That doesn’t include the men who died from grizzly bear attacks, blizzards, hypothermia or drowning. For these bold frontiersmen, death lurked behind every hill, tree, and boulder. Tahoe historian Mark McLaughlin is a nationally published author and professional speaker. His award-winning books are available at local stores or at thestormking.com. You can reach him at mark@thestormking.com. Check out Mark’s blog:
tahoenuggets.com.
Artist rendering of fur trappers and Indians in battle
