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Show TRecentiyubii I Light on Romantic Story of Fur Trade 5f In the RockyJvjountamS a Century Ago ' ! i J J "A - L i ....n. .Ty,.., - ...... 1,''. . , i l Par8de f 016 Assembled Indns at the Fur Traders' Rendezvous In the Rocky Moun- j tains In 18.57. ' r-wtw.WMrr;iM?eBore' Wh0 aPanied Sir William Drummond H Stuart (or Stewart) of Murthly Castle, Scotland, to the Far West In 1837. This picture hung in Murthly l' Castle unbl about 1926 when it, and other paintings by Miller, were sold and sent to New York U was pur- Y chased there by E. W. Marland, then governor of Oklahoma, and presented to the Oklahoma Historical tf society in 1936. By ELMO SCOTT WATSON 1 (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) J rpHE romantic era of the Rocky mountain fur trade of a century ago came to life again the other day and once J- more such frontier notables as Old Jim Bridger, Kit d(f Carson, Nathaniel J. Wyeth, Jim Beckworth, Captain Bonne- 'h ville, Lucien Fontenelle and the Robidoux brothers strode '. A across the stage of history. They appeared in a new book "Life in the Rocky Mountains A Diary of Wanderings on the Llf Sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado, from February, 1830, to November, 1835, by W. A. Ferris, then in the Employ of the American Fur Company," edited by Paul .-streps, C. Phillips and published by Fred A. Rosenstock the Old flisPai l West Publishing company of Denver, Colo. and, at the time he perished, under thirty years or age. Bold, daring and fearless, yet cautious, deliberate and prudent; uniting the apparent opposite qualities, of courage and coolness, a soldier and a scholar, he died universally beloved and regretted by all who knew him. Ferris had many other narrow escapes from death during the remainder re-mainder of his service with the American Fur company. Concerning Con-cerning his career in the Rockies, Phillips writes: "The five and a half years which Warren Ferris passed in the mountains had done much to broaden his experience and develop de-velop his powers. He had served under such great masters of the in time to take part in the famous Battle of Pierre's Hole in July, 1832. That fall he was in another famous frontier fight in which his leader, William H. Vandenburgh, lost his life. Ferris tells a dramatic story of this incident how the party of seven trappers came upon traces of an Indian hunting party and how they cautiously approached a little grove of trees "watching each wavering twig and rustling bough, to catch a glimpse of some skulking savage." Then: Suddenly the lightning and thunder of at least twenty fusils burst upon our astonished senses from the gully, and awoke us to a startling consciousness of imminent danger, magnified beyond conception, con-ception, by the almost magical appear- fur trade as Andrew Drips, Lucien Fontenelle, Joseph Robidoux, Robi-doux, and William Henry Vandenburgh; Vanden-burgh; and his acquaintance with them in the small trading and trapping parties must have been intimate. He also met Jim Bridger, Bridg-er, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Robert Campbell, Henry Fraeb, William and Milton Sublette, and other leaders of the opposition and learned of their ways and abilities. abili-ties. He knew Bonneville, Nathaniel Na-thaniel P. Wyeth, Captain John Ghant and other independent traders. Another man whom he met, and evidently greatly admired ad-mired but does not mention in his narrative, was Sir William Drummond Stuart, the famous English explorer and hunter. , J THE DEATH OF VANDENBURGH From the painting by Irvin Shope, now in the Montana State University Library. A reproduction of this picture forms the frontispiece frontis-piece in "Life in the Rocky Mountains." :oatJ "Life in the Rocky Moun-5 ff tains" is referred to in the becaa foregoing as a "new book." inJ Perhaps "rediscovered nar-nyca't; nar-nyca't; ratiVe" would be a more accurate ac-curate description. For after F,r"i Ferris' "wanderings on the C0'5 sources of the rivers etc." jf g were over, the diary which he , (a had carefully kept was rewritten rewrit-ten as a continuous narrative and published serially :n an tens early American magazine, i.he 5zli;f Western Literary Messenger esJ of Buffalo, N. Y., in 1843-44. In this form it was known to 1 a few scholars of the fur trade depi era but there were many gaps in the narrative because the Mes-CaI Mes-CaI senger ceased publication early em in its career and many numbers had apparently been lost. Then Mr. Rosenstock, who had been collecting copies of this magazine, traced down the missing numbers and made them available to Mr. S. Phillips, who had already started tfl work on a biography of Ferris. " Later research unearthed other LiEVE important material family pa-rN pa-rN WW pers, articles written by Ferris IW in his later years for the Dallas iffliiios (Texas) Herald and, most impor-ime-iw tant of all, a map of the Northwest J8. Fur Country, drawn by Ferris 'iii, ahout 1838. All of this material t distil has gone into the making of this iKoAthi "new book" which is rated by etfi historians as constituting one of ihWr the great "finds" in recent re-cosuiA re-cosuiA search in the history of the West. 4 ni Ferris was born in Glens Falls, IV' N. Y., December 26, 1810, and - Srew up in Buffalo, to which his family had moved when he was ss very young. He was trained to ;ssis' be a surveyor but at the age of , creat 18 he ran away from home because upeia: his mother disapproved of his thet:3t smoking a pipe and scolded him , the-;5 severely for doing it on the street and ft? ne day. Feeling the urge to "go jRu;: West," he finally arrived in St. Louis in June, 1829; and entered the employ of Pierre Chouteau gjSJ Jr- head of the Western de-unTEl de-unTEl ?artment of John Jacob Astor's ni, American Fur company. At that time three great com-Panies com-Panies were competing for the control of the fur business in the x i1 West. Into this struggle the young ew Yorker was plunged when he it Wt St. Louis with an A. F. C. ' , mpany in February, 1830, and ent up the Platte river, through (S uth Pass into the Green river , country. That fall they trapped the west-; west-; i tributaries of the Green and ! Wer moved over to the neigh- rorhood of Great Salt Lake. In '?31 Ferris was with a trap-. trap-. Pjng party on the upper Snake r'ver and there had difficulty with a band of rival Hudson's Bay , Uppers. That summer he 5p , crossed the Continental Divide J"to the vaUey of the Jefferson hen continued north into the val- $ 'a-f Clark'S Frk f the Colum" Is The next spring Ferris returned 5jj tne Snake river country, was ' de a clerk and sent among the 'wstoP fathead Indians with orders to 1lry r'ng them to the annual trap-'- lSst& rs' rendezvous at Pierre's Hole. r5 ae returned with the Flatheads ance of more than one hundred warriors, war-riors, erect in uncompromising enm'ty-both enm'ty-both before and on either side of us t tho terrifying distance (since meas-u'eS meas-u'eS 0 thirty steps. Imagination can not paint the horrid sublimity of the scene A thousand brilliances reflected from their guns as they were quick y nrofmo Various position . either to SS S wh"4 oarT as i&3aSa foe, and exclaimea o j . d d norse at the same moment the wouna of a Frenchman mev"wr n. vens 0f broke away towas c.mg. eallsand IsninrmySrs rowC deep intone be reached the 8u" ubaU which nearly the left shoulder by . .ball. threw me off. y ; ht position, h.wever. r rega nea my Q Nelson. fi!?;u ,llv with me, but a momen crossed the e"11.1,. return. Without ater he was Ued to 5sibility of ensiling ' f tompour devoted rending assistance to (he g partisan, he w . ' , severely wounded fnsUnt his horse seern?ck. which by two balls throug" 11 his compelled him tojTiy. y et ne v. eye for some momentSroundedi who seeing himseu leveled h.s the Possibility 01 et, foremost of his gun and shot down firod a gea. The Indians Immem u volley urn hini exultation, and a loud and shnll . yeu a brave the noble spirit of a .J00 man had passed away. Vandenburgh, a Thus eUJVm-, ind'iana. educated at UrpStt Se1 Mihtary -.demy. Seated with such men by the campfire, or traveling the trail with them, must have given the young man a larger view of the world as well as a better knowledge knowl-edge of the problems of how to deal with Indians . . . The care with which he made his observations, observa-tions, and the honest and vividness vivid-ness with which he portrayed them, make his narrative one of absorbing interest. It is the only source of information regarding many important events in the savage sav-age struggle for control of the fur trade." But aside from Ferris' importance impor-tance as a first-hand chronicler of this important era in American history, he has other claims to fame. He left the mountains in the winter of 1835 and returned to his home in Buffalo to straighten straight-en out a family tangle One of his brothers had gone to Texas and the next year Warren Ferris joined him there. He became a surveyor in the service of the new Republic of Texas and it was he who made the surveys for the town which became the great city of Dallas. Next he settled down as a farmer farm-er but took no part in the Civil war both because he was over age for sei-vice and because of his crippled shoulder received in the fight with the Indians in which Vandenburgh was killed. His later years were devoted to literary lit-erary work and he died on Feb ruary 8, 1873. |
