The splendid wayfaring : the story of the exploits and adventures of Jedediah Smith and his comrades, the Ashley-Henry men, discoverers and explorers of the great central route from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean, 1822-1831

Front matter

Class Book

GoipghtN^.

COPSfRIGHT DEPOSrr.

Preface

The student of American History in our schools Is given an opportunity to become well acquainted with the early explorations of the Great Northwest and the Great Southwest; he is taught little or nothing of the real discoverers of the central route from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. This Is due to the fact that, until very recently, our historians have been concerned too much with governmental acts, too little with the activities of the people themselves. The official explorers of the Northwest and the Southwest were actually pioneers; but the official exploration of the great central region beyond the Rockies was undertaken twenty years after the actual discoverers and explorers had set out from St. Louis. Considering the fact that it was by way of the central route that the tide of migration flowed across the Rockies and possessed the Far West, it would seem that the discovery and exploration of that route might now, at last, be given some attention in our schools.

In the following pages I have told the story of that body of adventurers who, from 1822 to 1829, opened the way for the expansion of our

vii viii Preface

nation beyond the Missouri. I have made Jedediah Smith the central figure of my story, for of all explorers of the Great West he was in many ways the most remarkable, though, heretofore, our school children have not even heard his name. In order to give the student a sense of the continuity of history, I have begun my narrative with a brief account of the movement across the Alleghenies and down the Ohio River after the Revolutionary War; and I have suggested the relation of westward expansion in America to the whole race movement from the beginning.

The general mood of a given period is quite as important a part of history as are the bare facts. Therefore, by way of giving a more vivid picture of the times, I have taken the liberty to supply minor details in Chapters I, II, IV, V, VIII, IX, and X; but in every case I have done this strictly in accordance with the recorded experiences of contemporaries in similar situations. Also, as a matter of convenience in shaping the narrative, I have assumed that Smith went to St. Louis in the spring of 1822. There are good reasons for believing that this may be correct, though the year of his arrival there is unknown. In every other respect the narrative faithfully follows the chain of facts as found in the authentic sources.

Though I have drawn upon a considerable number of sources, as will be seen by consulting the

Preface ix

bibliography at the back of the book, I am especially indebted to Prof. Dale's admirable work, " The Ashley-Smith Explorations," which not only clears up some important points in the history of the period, but presents for the first time certain recently discovered documents bearing upon the expeditions of William H. Ashley and Jedediah Strong Smith. I must also acknowledge the following debts: to Mr. Doane Robinson, secretary of the Historical Society of South Dakota, who, twelve years ago, revealed to me the wonderful life-story of Jedediah Smith, and who has been most generous in furthering my work; to Miss Stella M. Drumm, librarian of the Missouri Historical Society, and to Mr. William E. Connelley, secretary of the State Historical Society of Kansas, who have kindly furnished me with copies of source material placed in their keeping; to Mr. Frederick S. Dellenbaugh for permission to use pictures from his " Canyon Voyage "; and to Mr. Enos A. Mills, Dr. George Wharton James and Prof. S. H. Knight for photographs.

John G. Neihardt.

Bancroft, Nebraska, December, 19 19.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Down the Ohio i

II At St. Louis 24

II

WHEN Jededlah Smith first walked the streets of St. Louis, the town was nearly sixty years old, and its motley population of Spanish, French and Americans numbered somewhat less than five thousand. Though its advantageous position near the central point of a vast system of waterways had made it an important settlement from the time of its founding, yet it had shown little progress until after that day in March, 1804, when, in the course of twenty-four hours, it had flown in succession the flags of Spain, France and the United States in token of the passing sovereignty of the great territory of Louisiana. Shortly thereafter Lewis and Clark had undertaken their famous exploring expedition to the mouth of the Columbia, and the influx of Americans had begun. The Yankee spirit soon transformed the general aspect of the old town. Whereas, before, most of the houses were frame structures daubed with mud and whitewashed, or built of stone in the rough and coated with mortar, brick houses had begun to appear, until in 1 8 19, as a traveller of the time informs us, *' lines of buildings containing handsome and spacious city houses " were to be seen — " houses that would not have disgraced Philadelphia." ^ In 18 1 7 the first steamboat, the Pike, arrived, and in 1 8 19 the Independence made the trip to Franklin and back — the first power boat to sail the Missouri River. During the same year, the Western Engineer, bearing the exploring party of Major Long, ascended to a point near the present city of Omaha. But, though the development of steamboat navigation continued steadily from that time on, it was not until the year 1831 that steamboats began to ascend the Missouri as far as the mouth of the Yellowstone, and all traffic on the upper reaches of the Missouri was still by keelboats and mackinaws.

After the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, the fur trade, which had been the chief industry of the town from the beginning, had soon increased in volume as a result of American enterprise. On March 12th, 181 1, the Overland Astorians, under the command of W. P. Hunt, had left St. Louis, bound for the mouth of the Columbia, where they expected to join forces with a sea expedition that had left New York harbor on the ship Tonquin early in September of the previous year for the long and hazardous voyage around the Horn. The tale of the Astorians, as

1 Flint. "Recollections," etc.

told by Washington Irving, Is one of the masterpieces of American Literature.

During the war of 1812 the fur trade had declined, and though in the year 18 19 five companies of some importance were operating from St. Louis, the chief of these being the Missouri Fur Company, headed by the veteran Spanish trader, Manuel Lisa, yet none of these was doing a profitable business.

However, Jed had arrived at a most auspicious time — just when the tide, having reached its lowest ebb, had begun to turn. The great Manuel Lisa, who had for many years operated on the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone, had died two years before and had been succeeded by Joshua Pilcher as head of the Missouri Fur Company, which, however, was then nearing the end of its history. In 1821 Pilcher had established a new trading post at the mouth of the Bighorn; and but a few weeks before Smith's arrival, the Company had sent out a party of 180 trappers under Jones and Immel, bound for the Upper Missouri country. Though successful at the start, this expedition was doomed to meet disaster at the hands of the Blackfeet near the Forks of the Missouri, and its two leaders were never to return.

It is not in keeping with our purpose to follow here the falHng fortunes of the old Missouri Fur Company, though the bare factual story of that organization Is packed with the precious stuff of which great epics are made. What does concern our purpose is a brief paragraph that had appeared in the Missouri Republican for March 20th, 1822, less than two months before the arrival of our hero. It ran as follows:

TO ENTERPRISING YOUNG MEN

The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri River to its source, there to be employed for one, two or three years. For particulars enquire of Major Andrew Henry, near the lead mines in the County of Washington, who will ascend with, and command, the party; or of the subscriber near St. Louis. (Signed) William H. Ashley.

The names there given could not but inspire the greatest confidence among the adventurous young spirits of that time and place. Major Henry, born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, during the early part of the Revolutionary War, had descended the Ohio in his middle twenties. He was one of the incorporators of the Missouri Fur Company in 1809, and in the spring and summer of that year had led an expedition up the Missouri to the Three Forks, where a trading post had been established. Driven thence by the terrible Blackfeet, he had crossed the Continental Divide and built a fort on what has since been called Henry's Fork of the Snake River, thus being the first American trader to operate west of the Rockies. Having spent there the winter of

1810-11, Henry, finding this position also extremely difficult, If not Impossible, to hold against the Indians, had returned to St. Louis during the following summer. For ten years now he had been engaged in lead mining, and had come to be known as "Andrew Henry of the Mines"; but the stories of his adventures beyond the Great Divide still passed from mouth to mouth, and we may be sure that they had lost nothing of wonder in the passing.

Though William Henry Ashley had not yet ventured into the wilderness, yet his name had become one to conjure with. Born in Powhatan County, Virginia, in 1778, he had settled in St. Louis in 1802, where he seems very soon to have won prominence. He was made Captain of the Missouri Militia in 18 13, Colonel in 18 19, and was now General. Tw^o years before, he had been elected Lieutenant Governor of the State, but recently admitted to the Union.

It is not surprising that these illustrious names, together with the new spirit of adventure that was in the air, should have brought a ready response to the advertisement above quoted. Within a fortnight the one hundred young men had been enrolled, " many of whom," as a local paper remarked at the time, " had relinquished the most respectable employments and circles of society " for the dangers and hardships of wilderness life. And what men they were! Fate seems just then to have been in a specially artistic mood, bent upon plotting their story on an epic scale; to this end choosing the most heroic spirits of an heroic region, dooming them to wanderings that should make those of Odysseus and i^neas seem mere pleasure jaunts, preparing amazing adventures for them to encounter, mighty deeds that they should do, and, for many, strange and tragic ends.

On April 15th, 1822, some three weeks before Jed Smith, their future comrade and leader, had set foot upon the St. Louis landing, these hundred men with two keelboats loaded with trapping supplies and goods for the Indian trade, had begun the long ascent of the Missouri under the leadership of Major Henry. General Ashley had accompanied them. Intending to ascend to the mouth of the Yellowstone and to return to the States in the fall. The first objective of the expedition was the Three Forks of the Missouri, where, as Rumor had it, " existed a wealth of furs not surpassed by the mines of Peru." From thence trapping parties would work the creeks and rivers on both sides of the Great Divide; and, if circumstances should prove favorable, the party would later move on down the trail of Lewis and Clark even to the mouth of the Columbia.

One can easily imagine what must have been Jed's regret upon hearing everywhere the eager talk about the two great expeditions that had so recently started for the mountains. If he had only come a month earlier, he might even now be far up the river In pursuit of his dream. But perhaps It was just as well after all. With his experience as a clerk on the lake boats of the British fur traders, he found no difficulty In getting employment In an office of one of the St. Louis companies, where he might have the opportunity of becoming familiar with American methods of business. Nor was his great dream Idle during the long summer that followed. In any tavern of the town one might meet old Spanish and French veterans of the wilderness, some of whom, no doubt, had been with Lisa at the Three Forks; some with Henry beyond the Rockies; and some must have known the Spanish country and been to Santa Fe. Many were the tales of Indian fights, hairbreadth escapes, and well nigh Incredible sufferings from hunger and thirst that these would tell, providing they were first well warmed with the liquor of their liking.

Little by little Jed was able to pick up much of what seemed to be fairly dependable geographical Information regarding the Great Northwest and the Great Southwest, all of which he carefully noted on a crude map of the period. But there was a vast triangular space, with its apex somewhere In the Upper Platte region, one leg extending to the Columbia's mouth and the other reaching out toward the Gulf of California, that remalned white In spite of his Inquiries. Now and then some old-timer, whose creative faculty had been somewhat overstimulated, would remember that he had once met a man whose name he did not recall, who had heard from someone much about that interior country. Nevertheless, no information was forthcoming that Jed might record within that immense blank triangle — the country of his dream. And so, during the summer of 1822, the dream was nurtured with mystery and grew mighty.

Nor was Jed the only dreamer in St. Louis. It was an era of dreaming, for the lure of easy wealth was in the air and had fastened like an enchantment upon all men. One had only to get far enough away from the States to find, in inexhaustible quantities and with all the circumstances of romance, the means for realizing one's wildest dream. Somewhere out yonder all the streams swarmed with beaver, the price of which was rising rapidly. The fur-fever was raging now, just as the gold-fever would rage a little over a quarter of a century later, and after that the homestead-fever. In its issue for September 17th, the Intelligencer of St. Louis published an article in which the following paragraph occurred: '' Those formerly engaged in the trade have increased their capital and extended their enterprises; many new firms have engaged in it and others are preparing to do so. It is computed that a thousand men, chiefly from this place, are now employed on the waters of the Missouri and half that number on the upper Mississippi."

Men were in a mood for hearing big stories that summer and fall. In the absence of reports from the upper country. Rumor worked overtime; and it seemed that nearly every able-bodied man Jed met had set his heart upon " going to the mountains " next year. Then one day during mid-October came what seemed to be unqualified corroboration of the wildest rumors. In the golden autumn doze a fleet of rude mackinaws, under the command of Captain Perkins of the Missouri Fur Company, came drifting down from the mouth of the Missouri, and tied up at the St. Louis landing. They had made the dangerous trip from the upper waters of the far off Yellowstone, and they were laden with costly beaver packs. Twenty-four thousand dollars' worth of fur! The news of their coming had travelled across country from St. Charles on the Missouri, and all St. Louis, it seemed, was crowded along the water front to welcome this Jason and his crew returning with the Golden Fleece. Gaunt with toil and privations, long-haired and bewhiskered, bronzed with the sun and wind of the wilderness, and clad in savage garb, these men were received as conquerors are received. Bells rang in all the steeples, guns roared up and down the river front, dogs barked, men shouted and

Photo by L. T. Walter A Scene on Weber River, which Ashley Mistook for the Buenaventura

Shoshone Falls, Snake River

Photo by Kopac sang. Far into the night the celebration continued. Bonfires flared. Liquor flowed freely. For this was more than a triumph (alas, the last!) of the old Missouri Fur Company. It was, in a sense, the first, though vicarious, triumph of many a dreamer's dream.

A week later another and smaller party arrived in a mackinaw. It was General Ashley with a handful of men returning from the mouth of the Yellowstone. Once again St. Louis thronged the water front, but the manner of his reception, though hearty enough, no doubt, lacked something of the fervor that the arrival of Captain Perkins had aroused; for Ashley's party came with empty hands, and the story they had to tell must have seemed like an anticlimax. The hundred " enterprising young men," led by Major Henry, had made their way in good time to the mouth of the Yellowstone over two thousand miles away, and there, on the tongue of land between the two rivers, they had begun to build a fort, from whence, as a base, trapping parties might operate. But ill fortune had not been lacking. While still in the State of Missouri, some two days below the mouth of the Kansas River, one of the keelboats, heavily laden with valuable goods, had become unmanageable while crossing the turbulent stream and, drifting against a snag, had been staved and sunk. No lives had been lost, but the cargo, valued at $10,000, had gone to the bottom. Nevertheless, the party had forged ahead without much delay. For weeks thereafter Fate seemed to have been propitiated by that one sacrifice below the Kansas. At the villages of the Ree Indians near the mouth of the Grand River In what Is now South Dakota, Major Henry had spent several days in successful trade for horses, and had met no difficulty there, though the Rees had earned a reputation for treachery among the earlier traders. But In the month of August, when the party had passed the Mandan towns, a band of Asslnlbolnes that had, no doubt, been spying upon the Americans for days, had swooped down upon the Impotent horse-guards at a time when the main body with the keelboat had crossed with the channel to the opposite shore. Fifty horses, that had but recently been purchased from the Rees, were driven away, while nearly a hundred men, well armed but out of range, gazed across the waste of sand and water and raged to no purpose.

But in spite of these initial disasters, Ashley was not discouraged. With a hundred men already in the fur country, he pointed out that success was only a matter of persistence, and announced his intention of leading a second party up river early in the spring. Among those who enlisted for the great adventure was Jedediah Smith.

Ill

IT was on the loth of March, 1823, that General Ashley started again for the Upper Missouri with a hundred men and two keelboats, Yellowstone Packet and The Rocky Mountains. And with him went Jedediah Smith in pursuit of a dream grown mighty.

The new grass was like a pale green flame burning slowly up the sloughs, and the young leafage of the cottonwoods was a thin smoke against the sky that day when they started north with the robins. Singing they went, for these hundred men were young with the spirit of adventure, and that is still the youngest thing in the world, though it was already ancient when history began. The rattle of musketry and the shouting along the levee grew dim, and many a youngster, looking back, saw for the last time the smoke of the homefires pluming skyward. Some were to disappear like yonder hearth-reek, leaving no hint of the manner of their passing; and others, bewitched by the wild life and the vast free spaces of the wilderness, would shed, as an uncomfortable coat, the inheritance of ages, lapsing into the primitive, never again to long for the snug comforts and predetermined ways of civilized man.

A day and a night passed, and their boats, swinging westward, had crossed the agitated line that, like a tide rip, marks the thrust of the impetuous Mlwouri against the slower might of the Mississippi. At St. Charles farewells were said once more; and* then, day by day, signs of civilization became less frequent. From the mouth of the Kansas, where the western boundary of the States then ran, the spring, still young as at St. Louis, led them north. Or did their advance progressively awaken the spring? For weeks, it seemed, the wonder work made no progress. As it had been at the Kansas, so it was at the Platte and at the Sioux; for the young men and the young sun and the warm southwinds were travelling together.

Though these adventurers were now well beyond the frontiers of civilization, yet it must not be inferred that they were the only white men in that portion of the great Missouri Valley. Here and there along the river from Its mouth to the Three Forks were scattered many trading posts of varying Importance. Above the Kansas they had passed a considerable number of such establishments. There was one at the Blacksnake Hills, founded by old Joseph Roubidoux near the site of the present St. Joseph. There was the old trading house of the Choteaus at the mouth of the

Nishnabotna. In the region of the Platte's mouth they had seen the post built during the previous year by Joshua Pilcher of the Missouri Fur Company. Some fifteen miles farther up was old Fort Lisa, then about to be abandoned. Five miles beyond that, near the point where Lewis and Clark held their famous council with the Otoe and Missouri Indians, stood Fort Atkinson, then the northermost military post of the United States on the Missouri River. It was commanded at that time by Colonel Leavenworth who was soon to win doubtful laurels as leader of the " Missouri Legion " in the Ree Campaign. There were American traders at Blackbird Hill near the old mud village of the Omaha Indians; and at the mouth of the Big Sioux, where Sioux City now stands, the American Fur Company maintained a house. At most of these points Ashley's men had rested long enough to exchange gossip fresh from the States for news from the great upper country.

On into the North they forged with pole and oar and sail and cordelle; but now it was May, and the pale green spring somehow began to outpace them at last, though they could not say just when they had dropped behind. The grass in the sloughs seemed suddenly to have deepened and darkened, and the full-leafed cottonwoods were ready for the heavy heat of the summer, as yet withheld. Past the mouth of the Vermillion they tolled; past the Riviere a Jacques; past Ponca Post where the fleet Niobrara assails the Missouri with a roar and hurls It back despite Its greater mass. They were now In the country of the powerful Sioux tribe, which, though destined to make the last great stand of all the prairie peoples against the westering Aryan forty years later, was still friendly to the whites.

Hitherto, the northward march of Ashley's party had seemed little more than a pleasure jaunt, for though the labor at the cordelle was no child's play. It was divided among a hundred men, and no unforeseen obstacles had been encountered. But soon they were to hear that which should put a new face upon the whole adventure, shatter the Illusions of the attenuated pussy-willow spring. At noon one day they toiled past the White River coming In on their left; and when the sun was level with the bluffs, they swung around a right hand bend, and paused to shout. There, a little way ahead of them, was American Island, green with cedars, and at Its lower point stood Fort Recovery, the Sioux trading post of the Missouri Fur Company — a cluster of log cabins surrounded by a wall of sharpened pickets.

Many of Ashley's party and the men at the fort had known each other since boyhood, and It Is easy to Imagine how the evening was spent. But the news that the newcomers received in return for the latest gossip from home was hardly reassuring. The Rees, it appeared, were in a bad mood. Two months before, a band of over a hundred had boldly entered the Sioux country, robbed a party of white traders and, encouraged by this initial success, had attacked the fort. In the brisk battle that followed, several of the Indians had been wounded and two had been killed, one of the latter being the son of a chief. Since that time, persistent rumors had been coming down stream to the effect that the tribe intended to leave its villages near the mouth of the Grand, join forces with the Mandans near the mouth of the Knife, and resist any attempt on the part of the traders to pass that point.

The assembled parties at Fort Recovery could not know that this apparently unwarranted flare-up of the Rees was not merely a matter of whim on the part of that particular people. It was, in fact, symptomatic of a widespread spirit of opposition among the tribes of a vast region, due to the large number of traders that were entering the country with the revival of the fur trade. It could not be known that, far away at the Three Forks, Jones and Immel, who had gone out with one hundred eighty men during the previous spring, were even then approaching death and disaster at the hands of the Blackfeet; and that bad news was already on the way from Henry on the upper river.

But even considering the affair solely as a matter of Ree caprice, and assuming that the Mandans had no notion of joining forces with their neighbors to the south, Ashley was confronted with a dilemma. The Ree villages were strongly fortified and commanded the river. It appeared that a wedge was about to be driven between the ascending party and Henry at the Yellowstone's mouth; for the overland trip was, of course, impossible without many pack horses, and only among the Rees themselves, it was thought, could a number sufficient for such an undertaking be found. The only course possible was to run the gauntlet of the Indian villages with the boats. After all, the mood of the Rees might have changed by now; and there was much in the history of the tribe to justify such a hope, for no trader ever knew which way the wind of their whim might blow.

Accordingly, the early dawn saw Ashley's hundred moving northward again. Four days passed by without any noteworthy incident; and then at noon of the fifth day, when they were nearing the mouth of the Cheyenne, an express arrived with news from their comrades in the upper country. Things had not been going well with Major Henry. Having left his new post in charge of a small band, he had pushed on up the Missouri early in the spring. Near the Great Falls he had encountered a hostile party of Blackfeet. Defeated and forced to retreat, he was now waiting for reinforcements at the mouth of the Yellowstone. He had lost most of his horses, and asked that at least fifty should be purchased by Ashley from the Rees, for none could be procured In his vicinity. He inclined to the opinion that the treachery of the Assiniboines during the previous fall and the recent resistance of the Blackfeet might be traced to the Influence of the British traders who naturally looked with disfavor upon the advance of American trappers toward the rich fur country of the Columbia and its tributaries.

Plainly enough, the key to success for both parties was held by the Rees ! They had the needed horses and they held the river.

Clinging to the hope that all might still be well, Ashley pushed on up stream. At sunset on the 29th of May the party camped at the mouth of the Grand some five or six miles below the Ree towns. In mid-afternoon of the next day they rounded a bend where the river, flowing for some distance from east to west, turns abruptly south, and saw along the north bank, not more than half a mile ahead, a clutter of mud lodges and a portion of a newly built stockade that apparently surrounded the settlement.

The cordelle crews were now taken aboard, rifles were placed in easy reach of the men, and the boats, proceeding with oars and poles to a point in front of the lower village, were anchored in mid-stream. The two towns, set upon the flat lands in two convex bends that joined at the mouth of a little creek flowing from the north, were now visible to the men on the keelboats; and each of the one hundred forty-one lodges was like a hornet's nest boiling forth its swarm. The guttural voices of men, the high pitched, querulous cries of the squaws, and the barking of the dogs ran over the settlement. Many a youth who was making his first trip into the wilds thought wistfully of home in those tense moments, wondering why he had ever wished to leave.