Mountain Men Before the Mormons

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 26, 1958, No. 4

MOUNTAIN MEN BEFORE THE MORMONS

By LeRoy R. Hafen

The early trappers and traders, who came to. be known in the West as Mountain Men, were the pioneer explorers of Utah. Their coming west was not prompted by patriotism, but by economic motives; it was beaver skins that lured them. High-topped beaver hats, worn in the style centers of the world, caused the demand and made the market.

So into the wilds went brigades of hardy men, braving winter storms, grizzlies, and hostile Indians. For months they lived on a meat diet; in good times it was buffalo hump ribs and venison; in hard times, scrawny mule steaks, Indian dog meat, or stewed moccasins.

Once wedded to the wilds and having had the thin veneer of civilization rubbed off, the typical fur gatherer was loath to return to the restrictions of town life. Opening fresh trails and discovering new lands were to him but part of the day's work, incidental to the business of trapping. Virgin territory was likely to yield the greatest return in pelts, so there was a money reward for trail blazing.

Most of the trappers were young men, strong, hardy, adventure loving. With their bronzed faces and long hair, it was difficult to distinguish one from another, or all from a band of Indians. In a beaver or coonskin cap and a fringed buckskin suit gaily decorated with dyed porcupine quills or bright glass beads, the trapper was proudly dressed. With a powder horn, shot pouch, and muzzle-loading rifle he was self supporting and independent. In his day beaver skins were money in the West, and with these hairy banknotes he could buy anything that was for sale.

At the summer rendezvous, that great fair of the wilderness, trappers, Indians, and bourgeois traders gathered in some mountain valley to exchange furs for supplies. Amidst the horse races and foot races, the wrestling bouts, Indian dances, shooting matches, fights, the gambling, and drinking, the seasoned fur trapper had his brief holiday of prodigal living.

Most fur men were without book learning, but they were educated for the life they led. They could read the tracks of moccasins, the sign of beaver, the trace of travois; they could mold their bullets from bars of lead, and strike a fire with flint and steel. A skin lodge furnished the trapper with shelter, while for summer nights a buffalo robe was spread beneath the stars. A horse to ride, one to carry his trappings, others for his squaw and children, if he had been long in the wilderness, and he could journey wherever trails led, or did not lead. He gloried in the name of Mountain Man.

The Utah region, like other areas of the West, was first thoroughly explored by the fur men. They converged upon Utah from three directions — the southeast, the northwest, and the east. American traders based in Santa Fe came in by way of the San Juan, Green, and Uinta rivers; British fur men pushed in from Fort Vancouver and the Columbia by way of the Snake and Bear rivers; and Americans from Missouri came up the Platte, over South Pass and to the Green, Bear, and Weber.

The principal leaders on these three fronts were outstanding men who have left their names etched deep on the map and in the history of Utah — Etienne Provost, Peter Skene Ogden, and Jedediah Smith. Provost was a French Canadian who removed to St. Louis and Santa Fe; Ogden, the son of a Tory of the American Revolution, became a brigade leader of the British Hudson's Bay Company; and Smith was a Yankee who responded to the lure of the West. Let us sketch briefly the careers of each.

Etienne Provost is a shadowy figure in the Rocky Mountain picture. Born in Canada about 1782, he moved to St. Louis and there, at the emporium of the Western fur trade, joined the first large trapping party to reach the front range of the central Rockies. This company, headed by Auguste Chouteau and Jules De Mun, went up the Arkansas River in 1815. After trapping two years in the mountains they were captured by the Spaniards and were taken to Santa Fe. Their goods were confiscated and they were jailed for two months, before being finally released.

After Mexico's independence from Spain was won in 1821, Americans broke wagon tracks on the Santa Fe Trail to enter the newly opened market. Provost was one of the first to go, and by 1823 he was conducting trade and trapping operations from a New Mexico base northwestward. By the fall of 1824 he had crossed the Wasatch Mountains to the Great Basin, and here had a clash that gave his name to Provo River and ultimately to the city of Provo.

Some Snake Indians who had been ill-treated by British trappers, came upon the white men headed by Provost and decided to take revenge upon the unsuspecting party. What occurred is told by W. A. Ferris, a mountain trapper:

. . . [The Snake Chief, Bad Lefthander] invited the whites to smoke the calumet of peace with him, but insisted that it was contrary to his medicine to have any metallic near while smoking. Proveau, knowing the superstitious whims of the Indians, did not hesitate to set aside his arms, and allow his men to follow his example; they then formed a circle by sitting indiscriminately in a ring, and commenced the ceremony; during which, at a preconcerted signal, the Indians fell upon them, and commenced the work of slaughter with their knives, which they had concealed under their robes and blankets. Proveau, a very athletic man, with difficulty extricated himself from them, and with three or four others, alike fortunate, succeeded in making his escape; the remainder of the party of fifteen were all massacred.

The exact location of the tragedy has not been determined. Some accounts say it was on the river that flows into Utah Lake; others, on the stream that flows from the lake.

Provost and the remnant of his party retreated across the Wasatch and wintered on Green River, but next spring he was back on Weber River. There, on May 23, 1825, about six miles above the mouth of Weber Canyon, he met Peter Skene Ogden, with his big catch of fresh furs from Cache Valley and Ogden River. Then another large party of Americans came up, and a clash between them and the Britishers was narrowly averted. This story we shall tell presently in our sketch of Mr. Ogden.

On June 7, 1825, in the Uinta Basin, Provost met General W. H. Ashley, leader of the big trapping outfit from St. Louis. Soon he helped Ashley and his trade goods to the head of Provo River, across Kamas prairie, and to the Weber. Most of the trappers soon made their way east, going a little south of the route later known as the Mormon Trail, to the Green River Valley. There they were to assemble in early July at the first great rendezvous of the Rocky Mountains.

Provost was most likely there, as also he was at the second rendezvous, of 1826, held in Cache Valley. Then he returned to Missouri and took employment with a group known as the French Company, and later he was employed by the American Fur Company. He continued thereafter as a fur company employee and ceased to be a free trapper. The fugitive records occasionally show his name among the Crow Indians of Wyoming and on the Upper Missouri of Montana. In 1839 he was guide for Nicollet and John C. Fremont on their exploring tour between the upper waters of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

In 1829 he married Marie Rose Salle in St. Louis. One daughter reached maturity. Provost died in St. Louis on July 3, 1850, when the Utah city that perpetuates his name was but one year old.

Peter Skene Ogden, who has left his name and impress in Utah, was the most outstanding British mountain man who ever operated in this territory. One of my students, Ted Warner, has just finished a Master's thesis on Ogden, and from it I extract a brief account of his career.

Ogden's English ancestors came to America in 1643. His grandfather, Judge David Ogden, was a graduate of Yale; his father Isaac, graduated from King's College (Columbia). In the American Revolution the family was divided in sentiment; Isaac remained loyal to the king. He was finally forced to leave his holdings in New York and to go to England. His loyalty was rewarded by a judgeship at Quebec. It was in that city that Peter Skene Ogden was born in 1794. Peter grew up in Montreal. His parents wanted him to enter the ministry or the law, but he preferred the freer life of the frontier. He took employment with the North West Company, served it for eleven years, and won distinction by his daring and hardihood. One companion of the period refers to him as the "humorous, honest, eccentric, lawdefying Peter Ogden, the terror of the Indians, and the delight of all gay fellows."

After the North West Company was consolidated with the Hudson's Bay Company, Ogden became a chief trader for the latter company. For five years, 1824-29, he led the important Snake River brigade. He went from Fort Vancouver and the Columbia, up the Snake River of Idaho, and to die Bear River and Cache Valley of Utah, and to the Humboldt River of Nevada, and through California.

Ogden's first trip to Utah was in company with that famous American fur man and explorer, Jedediah Smith, who had come to die British Flathead post as an unwelcome guest in 1824. The two men parted on Bear River in April, 1825, Smith going up the river and Ogden down. There soon began in this region a bitter rivalry between the British and American trappers, in which literally the fur flew. Some of Ogden's men saw the Great Salt Lake on May 12 and 22, 1825.

Ogden traversed Cache Valley and in fifteen days caught one thousand beaver. On May 16, 1825, he discovered a mountain-encircled hole, or park, with a river running through it. He called them New Hole and New River. They thereafter were given his name. Ogden's Hole was the Huntsville area, and Ogden was never at the site of the city of Ogden.

After catching over six hundred beaver in the Ogden's Hole area, the British company crossed south to Weber River. Here they encountered Etienne Provost, and a small company. Ogden reports:

Shortly after the arrival of the above party [Provost's] another of 25 to 30 Americans headed by one Gardner and a Spanjard [sic] with 15 of our trappers who had been absent about two days also made their appearance; they encamped within 100 yards of our Camp and hoisted the American Flag, and proclaimed to all that they were in the United States Territories and were all Free indebted or engaged, it was now night and nothing more transpired, the ensuing morning Gardner came to my tent and after a few words of no import, he questioned me as follows, do you know in whose Country you are ? to which I made answer that I did not, as it was not determined between Great Britain and America to whom it belonged, to which he made answer that it was, that it had been ceded to the latter, and I had no license to trade or trapp to return from whence I came without delay, to this I replied when we received orders from the British Government to abandon the Country we shall obey, he then said remain at your peril.

They thought they were in Oregon Territory, to which the Joint Occupation Treaty between the United States and Britain then applied. In reality this was Spanish Territory, conceded to Spain in our Treaty of 1819; but neither trapper band knew this and so both tried to bluff the other. About half of Ogden's men deserted to the Americans, taking a large portion of the furs with them. An actual fight was barely avoided. Kittson, Ogden's clerk, reports:

... A scuffle took place between Old Pierre and Mr. Ogden regarding the horses lent by that Gentleman to the old villain, who was supported by all the Americans and 13 of our scamps of Freemen. . . . Gardner with his gang of villains soon come to assist and debauch others to separate from us. . . . On seeing Mr. Ogden laying hold of the beaver, I order'd Sansfacon to call out that the beaver and horse belonged to the Company. Which he did, and we got them. Gardner immediately turns to me saying Sir I think you speak too bravely you better take care or I will soon settle your business. Well says I you seem to look for Blood do your worse and make it a point of dispute between our two Governments, . . .

Ogden, with the remnant of his party, retreated back to the Snake River country and finally back to the Columbia. But he was to return for four more expeditions. On the second he again encountered the Americans and the contest was a draw. In the third clash he came out decidedly the victor.

Joe Meek, famous Mountain Man, tells of an interesting incident. The Americans had plied the Indians and some of Ogden's men with whiskey and were thus enabled to procure some of their furs. Meek reports:

... a stampede one day occurred among the horses in Ogden's camp, and two or three of the animals ran away, and ran into the camp of the rival company. Among them was the horse of Mr. Ogden's Indian wife, which had escaped, with her babe hanging to the saddle.

Not many minutes elapsed, before the mother, following her child and horse, entered the camp, passing right through it, and catching the now halting steed by the bridle. At the same moment she espied one of her company's pack-horses, loaded with beaver, which had also run into the enemy's camp. The men had already begun to exult over the circumstance, considering this chance load of beaver as theirs, by the laws of war. But not so the Indian woman. Mounting her own horse, she fearlessly seized the pack-horse by the halter, and led it out of camp, with its costly burden.

At this undaunted action, some of the baser sort of men cried out "Shoot her, shoot her!" but a majority interfered, with opposing cries of "let her go; let her alone; she's a brave woman: I glory in her pluck"; and other like admiring expressions. While the clamor continued, the wife of Ogden had galloped away, with her baby and her pack-horse.

In November, 1828, Ogden discovered the river that flows across northern Nevada and was to become the life-line for California-bound goldseekers and homeseekers. This small but important stream was for a time called Ogden's River, and should be so known today. But unfortunately, Fremont, when he encircled and named the Great Basin, labeled this stream the Humboldt. Baron von Humboldt was a great geographer and scientist, but he was never within a thousand miles of the river that now inappropriately bears his name.

Ogden's farthest trapping tour, in 1829-30, took him south to the Colorado River and to the Gulf of California, and then up through the entire length of California. Upon returning to the Columbia he became a chief trader in the British Columbia area, and later chief factor. His last dramatic and important service was the rescue of the forty-seven captives held by the Cay use Indians following the tragedy of 1847, when Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and a number of children at their school and mission were massacred.

Ogden remained active in the management of the fur trade until a few months before his death, which occurred at Oregon City, in the presence of his Indian wife and family. I have visited his grave in Oregon City.

Provost had come in to Utah from the southeast, Ogden rode in from the northwest; the third contingent of trappers moved in from the east. The leader, as indicated above, was Jedediah Smith, greatest of Far Western trapper-explorers. He has been called the Knight in Buckskin. Dale Morgan, notable Utah historian, has given us such an excellent full-length biography of him that here I need only to sketch his career and indicate his character.

Jed Smith came of pioneer New England stock, one of a family of fourteen children. In 1822 he responded to General Ashley's famous call for "enterprising young men" and keel-boated up the Missouri River. After the big fight with the Arikaras he led a party to the Crow country of Wyoming and crossed South Pass to the rich beaver haven of Green River.

With two other experienced fur men, Jackson and Sublette, he bought out the Ashley company in 1826, and planned an expansion of the business. He now entered upon a notable career, from which he was to emerge as the greatest single explorer of the West.

He opened the first two overland routes to California—from South Pass to Los Angeles, and from the San Joaquin back over central Nevada to the Great Salt Lake. He was first over a Pacific Coast land route from San Diego to the Columbia River. He drew the first map delineating the geography of the central Rockies and the Great Basin. In all his travels, through virgin wilderness and rugged terrain, among crude companions and hostile tribes, he remained the Christian gentleman. The rifle and the Bible were equally his reliance. His character is revealed in a letter to his brother, written from the Wind River on Christmas Eve, 1829:

It is that I may be able to help those who stand in need that I face every danger — it is for this, that I Traverse the Mountains covered with Eternal snow — it is for this that I pass over the Sandy Plains, in the heat of summer, thirsting for water where I may cool my overheated Body — it is for this that I go for days without eating, and am pretty well satisfied if I can gather a few roots, . . . pray for me My Brother — & may he, before whom not a Sparrow falls, without notice, bring us, in his own good time, Together again ... let it be the greatest pleasure we enjoy now, . . . when our Parents are in the decline of Life, to smooth the pillow of their age, & as much as in us lies, take from them all cause of Trouble.

The dangers he faced cannot be recounted here. We shall merely note that on his second trip to California the Mojave Indians pounced on him while he was crossing the Colorado River, killed ten of his eighteen men and took his goods and supplies. The survivors had to cross the torrid Mojave Desert in August on foot, but they reached California and later rejoined the trapping band he had left there the year before.

From the Sacramento River, Smith's reunited party trapped northward toward Columbia. On the Umpqua River he was again attacked by Indians, and this time only Smith and three men survived from a party of twenty.

Jed Smith retired from the mountain fur trade in 1830 and returned to St. Louis. But the spell of the West was still upon him. He launched into a new career as a wagon caravan trader over the Santa Fe Trail. Upon his first trip westward, in the summer of 1831, while ahead of the company looking for water in the Cimarron Desert cutoff, he was set upon by Comanches, and his career ended at the age of thirty-two. Thus perished one of the greatest explorers and noblest characters of the Far West.

Let us now take a sampling of other Mountain Men. First, Tom Smith, who was not related to Jed Smith and was a very different type in most respects. Tom was born in Kentucky, one of a family of thirteen. His Irish father had fought under General St. Clair in the Indian wars of the old Northwest Territory. Tom learned a bit of writing and cyphering in a little round-log schoolhouse, but he had a fight with the teacher, threw down his slate, and headed West. In 1823 he joined a caravan to Santa Fe, and the next fall began trapping in western Colorado. After many Indian scrapes on the Gila and Colorado, we find him in North Park, Colorado, in 1827. Here an Indian arrow struck his leg just above the ankle, shattering both bones. When he stepped toward a tree for his rifle the bones stuck in the ground. His companions being unwilling to cut off the leg, Smith called for the cook's butcher knife and cut off the muscles at the fracture. He objected to having the wound seared with a red-hot iron to stop the bleeding, so they wrapped the stub in an old shirt. In twenty-four hours the bleeding had stopped, leaving him almost bloodless. For several days he was carried in a litter swung between two horses.

The party moved westward and went into winter quarters on Green River, where they were joined by a band of Utes. These Indians were grieved at their old friend's loss. They wailed, chanted, chewed up certain roots and spit the juice on the wound. This, Smith later told an interviewer, they "kept up for several days, while the stump gradually healed under the treatment." A wooden leg was now fashioned for his use, and he was thereafter known as Pegleg Smith. He was not especially handicapped by the loss; in fact, the peg leg frequently became an effective weapon in a fight.

Pegleg Smith continued his trapping and trading and became especially famous as a raider of the horseherds of the missions and ranches of California. On Bear River in eastern Utah he had a ranch of his own in 1849. A letter of his, written to Brigham Young on June 15, 1849, is in the L.D.S. Church Historian's Office. In it he offers to sell to the Mormons skins and furs, and also some small coin for change.

His fine horses were available for trade to overland emigrants who came by the ranch during the gold rush. Horace Bell, one such emigrant, asked Pegleg how he came to have so many horses.

"Oh I went down into the Spanish country and got them." "What did they cost you," we inquired. "They cost me very dearly," he said. "Three of my squaws lost brothers, and one of them a father on that trip, and I came near going under myself. ..." "How many did you get?" we again queried. "Only about 3000; the rascals got about half of what we started with away from us, d - - m them."

Pegleg later turned to prospecting in Arizona. The famous, but still lost Pegleg Mine, is still being searched for by credulous tenderfeet. Smith's last days were spent near a grogshop in San Francisco, where he died in 1866.

William Wolfskill and George Yount won a place in Utah history by being the first to traverse the entire route of the Old Spanish Trail, which ran from Santa Fe through Utah and to Los Angeles. Wolfskill and Yount, from Kentucky and North Carolina respectively, first operated as fur traders in the 1820's from a New Mexico base. In the winter of 1830-31 they conducted a trapping and trading expedition into Utah. Wolfskill's account book recently came to light. It records the wages of hired trappers at $7.00 and $8.00 per month. Supplies carried on pack horses were charged at New Mexico prices: tobacco and gun powder each $1.50 per pound; lead 50 cents per pound; gun flints 3 cents each; knives generally at $1.00; combs at 50 cents, and jew's-harps at 25 cents. Beaver skins were credited at $5.00 each.

On the Sevier River they encountered the Utes who, after being given presents of knives, tobacco, beads, awls, and vermilion, gave the white men permission to hunt and trap in all the territory of the Ute nation. Yount, who was known to the Indians from previous visits, harangued the natives in pompous words. He spoke of the Great Father at Washington and his mighty guns, big cabins, and many braves. He was, said Yount (as related by Yount to his biographer, Rev. Orange Clark),

. . . vice regent and son of the Great Spirit who rolls the sun, and whose pipe when smoking makes the clouds. Whose big gun makes the thunder. And whose rifle bullets and glittering arrows make the red lightning. Of these he could discourse till they fell flat on their faces, take the earth from under his mockasins and sprinkle it on their heads; and as he closed would rise upon their knees and worship him. Majestically would he raise them, or order Wolfskill to raise them upon their feet, bid them kiss his rifle, in token of respect for the Great Father at Washington and be seated at his side. The presents, which were the chief object of regard after all, and to obtain which they would worship anything, were distributed, and Yount permitted them to taste a morsel from his dish.

The traders continued to California, where several members of the party became prominent pioneer citizens. Wolfskill developed a farm near the old Los Angeles plaza, at the site of the present big railroad station. Yount settled in the Napa Valley of northern California, where he was the outstanding pioneer.

Jim Bridger is too well known for me to sketch him here. But of his associate I might say a word. Louis Vasquez was the partner of Bridger at the trading post of Fort Bridger, and is the one who sold the fort to the Mormons.

Vasquez was born in St. Louis in 1798. He was the youngest of twelve children, with a Spanish father and French mother. One of his brothers was guide to Captain Zebulon Pike on his famous exploration tour into the Southwest in 1806-7.

Louis Vasquez began his career as a fur trapper in 1823, ascending the Missouri in Ashley's famous party of that year. For two decades he was a notable Mountain Man, trapping the streams for beaver, trading with the Indians for furs. He was the founder in 1837 of Fort Vasquez on the South Platte, about forty miles north of Denver. A collection of his letters, written in good French, indicate that Louis had a fair education. Years ago I obtained photostats of these letters from the Missouri Historical Society and published a sketch of his life.

In 1842 Vasquez and Bridger joined forces and came out to the mountains to trade. At Fort Bridger they were visited by various travelers, some of whom have left accounts of the men. W. G. Johnston, who met Vasquez in June, 1849, wrote: "Mr. Vasquez was a fine portly looking gentleman of medium height, about fifty years of age, and made an impression of being intelligent and shrewd." Johnston was conducted through the fort by Vasquez's wife, a white woman from Missouri, who invited him to sit on a chair and treated him to fresh buttermilk. Vasquez opened a store in Salt Lake City in 1849. In 1855 he sold Fort Bridger, or at least his interest in it, to the Mormon Church for $8,000.00. The notorious Bill Hickman claims to have been one of the men who carried the load of gold for the purchase of the fort.

In 1930, I interviewed the stepson of Louis Vasquez. This was Hiram Vasquez, then ninety years old and living at LaVeta, Colorado. Hiram went with his mother to Fort Bridger in 1848. Hiram told me:

One day my sister and I were playing at Fort Bridger when some Indians came up and caught me. Sister got away. They gave me to Chief Washakie and I was kept by the Indians for about four years. I played with the Indian children and became expert with the bow and arrow. . . . My clothes, when with the Indians, were decorated with porcupine quills. My hair grew long and was ornamented with silver ornaments. .. .

One time, when I was nine years old, Washakie's band went to Salt Lake City and camped on a hill northeast of the city. They wouldn't let me go into town, so I decided to go alone. I went to bed early, Then in the night I got up, pulled on my leggings, put on my moccasins and buckskin shirt, picked up my buffalo-calf robe and took the trail toward the city. I went to a corral and doubled up like a jackknife in one corner. In the morning women came and began milking the cows. I climbed the fence and went to some houses and looked in at the doors. I could speak no English. An interpreter was found who had heard of my being stolen. He told me to stay in the house for ten days. That time seemed longer than my stay with the Indians had been. I strongly objected when they wanted to cut my hair. They bought me some little red boots and other clothes and I felt like a king.

They then took me back to Fort Bridger. Father (Louis Vasquez) did not know whether the Indians had taken me or not.

Hiram Vascjuez said that his father kept one room or part of a room of the fort as a safe. He remembered seeing a pile of gold in it. This was probably the money given by the Mormons for purchase of the fort.

Louis Vasquez left the mountains after selling Fort Bridger. He built himself a brick house in Westport, a suburb of Kansas City. Ten miles south of the city he had a farm, and his neighbor there was Jim Bridger.

From my sketch of Vasquez published twenty-five years ago, I read:

Vasquez and Bridger, who had trapped beaver, fought Indians and pioneered the West together for nearly half a century, spent their declining years as quiet neighbors on their Missouri farms. Before a fire on long winter evenings they must have re-fought the Blackfeet with many a hairbreadth escape, waded the streams to tend their beaver traps, or rollicked at the gay summer rendezvous on Green River. And perhaps a wind from the Rocky Mountains would on occasion blow down the chimney and lade the smoke from hickory hearth logs with an odor of pungent pine, while dimmed eyes of Mountain Men saw buffalo hump-ribs, fixed on sharp sticks, spitting at the fire.

Vasquez died in September, 1868, and is buried in the Catholic cemetery at Kansas City. Bridger was first buried under an apple tree on his farm, later to be removed to a cemetery in Kansas City. Boy Scouts hold a memorial service each year at the grave of old scout Bridger.

Miles Goodyear, a red-headed Connecticut Yankee, accompanied the Whitman-Spalding Oregon-bound party of 1836 when he was but sixteen years old. At Fort Hall on the Snake River, modern Idaho, he left the missionary party and took to the wilds. For years he was a Mountain Man, trapping beaver, trading for furs, and living with the Indians. He married an Indian girl, who bore him two children.

After trapping and trading for some years he built Fort Buenaventura, a ranch near the site of Ogden, in 1845, and became the first settler in Utah. In the fall of 1846 he took some pack horse loads of buckskins to southern California, and there sold them to Fremont to help clothe his ragged soldiers. Fremont's certificate of indebtedness for $662.50 was received in payment on February 1,1847.

As Miles moved northward through California, he procured a band of horses which he drove east, along the Humboldt route, in the spring of 1847. He reached Bear River just in time to meet Brigham Young and the pioneers. Goodyear could advise the Mormons about the geography and resources of the Great Basin. Late that year Miles sold his ranch on the Weber River to the Mormons for $1,950.00, and again traveled south to Los Angeles.

With the money received for his ranch, Goodyear purchased California horses and in the spring of 1848 headed his caballada east for Missouri, where a good market for horseflesh had been developed by the Mexican War. When he arrived at the Missouri, the war was over and the horse market had collapsed. So rather than sacrifice the horses he had driven so far, he headed them back toward California where the discovery of gold had created a new demand.

Goodyear's energy and ability, coupled with his knowledge of horses, the country and the Indians, enabled him to succeed in getting his band back to California and in effecting one of the longest horse drives in American history — some 4,000 miles.

At the mines he was able to dispose of his horses at high prices, retaining a few, however, to serve as a string of pack animals to carry supplies to the mines. Overexertion and exposure brought his death on November 12, 1849, at the age of thirty-two. His brother Andrew reports Miles's last words as a wish to have inscribed on his tombstone: "The mountaineer's grave. He sleeps near the western ocean's wave." His wish was complied with. He is buried in Benecia, California.

One of the Mountain Men who early visited the Salt Lake region and gave us a good description of the area was Osborne Russell. He has left us his Journal of a Trapper, the best original book on trapper experiences written by a fur man. Russell was brought to the mountains by Nathaniel Wyeth, that Boston ice merchant who left New England to make his fortune in the Far West through catching furs in the mountains and salmon in the Columbia. In our region here, we remember Wyeth especially as the founder in 1834 of Fort Hall, trapper post and later a great emigrant way station on the Snake River, near present Pocatello.

Osborne Russell came out with Wyeth in 1834. In the party also was Jason Lee, the first missionary to Oregon. Just before they reached Snake River they met Captain B. L. E. Bonneville, who also had a trapping party in the mountains. Russell helped build Fort Hall and thus describes the operation:

. . . On the 18th [of July] we commenced the Fort which was a stockade 80 ft square built of Cotton wood trees set on end sunk 2 1/2 feet in the ground and standing about 15 feet above with two bastions 8 ft square at the opposite angles. On the 4th of August the Fort was completed. And on the 5th the "Stars and Stripes" were unfurled to the breeze at Sunrise in the center of a savage and uncivilized country over an American Trading Post.

For nine years Russell was a fur trapper in the mountains, traveling widely throughout the region. He spent Christmas, 1840, at the site of our city of Ogden. In the party were three lodges of whites and half-breeds with Indian wives and children, and fifteen lodges of Snake Indians. Russell stayed in the lodge of a Frenchman with a Flathead Indian wife and one child. The Frenchman was host at a special Christmas dinner, to which gens d'esprit (kindred spirits) were invited. The lodge was thirty-six feet in circumference, with a fire in the center. Around this the guests sat crosslegged on skins. Russell describes the dinner:

. . . The first dish that came on was a large tin pan 18 inches in diameter rounding full of Stewed Elk meat The next dish was similar to the first heaped up widi boiled Deer meat (or as the whites would call it Venison a term not used in die Mountains) The 3d and 4th dishes were equal in size to the first containing a boiled flour pudding prepared with dried fruit accompanied by 4 quarts of sauce made of die juice of sour berries and sugar Then came the cakes followed by about six gallons of strong Coffee already sweetened with tin cups and pans to drink out of large chips or pieces of Bark Supplying the places of plates, on being ready the butcher knives were drawn and the eating commenced at the word given by die landlady.

The following spring Russell went soudi along die mountains east of the lake and traded with the Ute Indians and their Chief Want-a- Sheep, on Utah Lake. He describes this fresh-water lake as being about sixty miles in circumference, with an oudet about thirty yards wide. Russell writes: "I passed the time as pleasantly at this place as ever I did among Indians, in the daytime I rode about the valley hunting waterfowl who rend the air at this season of the year with their cries." He took his furs to Fort Hall. In the spring of 1842, writes Russell:

... I started in company with Alfred Shutes my old Comrade from Vermont to go to the Salt Lake and pass the Spring hunting water fowls eggs and Beaver. ... arrived at the mouth of Bear river on the 2d of April. Here we found the ground dry the grass green and myriads of Swans, Geese, Brants and Ducks which kept up a continual hum day and night assisted by the uncouth notes of the Sand hill Cranes. The geese Ducks and Swans are very fat at this season of the year We caught some few Beaver and feasted on Fowls and Eggs, until 20th May and returned to the Fort where we stopped until the 20di June when a small party arrived from the Mouth of the Columbia river on their way to the United States and my com- rade made up his mind once more to visit his native Green Mountains after an absence of 16 years whilst I determined on going to the Moudi of the Columbia and settle my self in the Willamette [of Oregon].

Russell settled in Oregon and then in California and had a rather distinguished career on the Pacific Coast.

In the party with which Alfred Shutes journeyed back to the United States was a very interesting character. This was Joseph Williams, who in 1841, at the age of sixty-three, had left his home and family of ten children in Indiana to go on a mission to Oregon. After spending the winter on the Northwest Coast he was now returning home in 1842. From Alfred Shutes, Osborne Russell's companion, Williams obtained a description of the Salt Lake Valley and wrote this in the book that recounted his travels and which he published on his return home. Rev. Williams writes:

Here [at Green River] I was told that the Eutaw Indians wish to have a missionary to come and settle amongst them, and to learn them to raise grain. I am of the opinion, that on the east side of Big Salt Lake, that Bear River empties into, would be a great place to establish a mission, and well calculated for raising all kinds of grain. It is good, rich land, a well watered and healthy country. Fish and fowls are very plenty. A beautiful prairie, about one hundred miles long, lies between the lake and the mountain. The plains are covered with green grass all winter, and well calculated for raising stock. Some pines on the mountains, and cotton wood along the creeks and rivers that flow into the lake. There is plenty of salt on the edges of the lake. It is about two hundred and fifty miles in circumference, and lies in 40° north latitude.

How interesting that this description should appear in a book published at Cincinnati in 1843. I wonder if any of the Mormon pioneers ever saw that notable little book. It was available three years before they left Nauvoo. We know that Fremont's book, published in 1845, was studied by the Mormons, but I have found no evidence that they saw Williams's book.

Well, so much for the Mountain Men. Some say they left no impress upon the West, for most of them had left this territory before permanent settlements were made in Utah. But are not the men historic who first explore a country and make known its features, even though they do not make homesteads, open mines, or found cities? Fur men made the paths that became our highways, traced out the passable canyons, and revealed the habitable valleys. They were the true trail blazers of Utah. Beside the beaver streams in which they waded and set their steel-jawed traps, now stretch our green farms and blossoming orchards. From their campfire ashes have sprung our cities.

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