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Show I WHEN THE TRAPPER CLAN WAS KING ON 1; TIMPANOGAS M B Much Neglected,. A re the Tales of Mighty Hunters in the Wasatch and the Traveling B i Traders Whose Utah Territory) Was From Fort John, Now port Laramie; B Down the Timpanogas, Now the Prooo;' to Lake Ashley, Now H Lake Utah. Their Line Was Beads and Booze and fi for Pay They Received Bear and Beaver. B BY ISAAC BUSSELL. B Rich in its love of romance and full of incident B of thrilling adventure would be the true mountain B narrative Of "Utah's first inhabitants, could tho B scraps of their story be brought together out of B the shadows to make tho men familiar who now E are known in that their names survive in moun- B tain, valley and river. B The great achievement of the clan consisted B , in carrying back to the states the tales of adven- B turo, of natural scenery, of wide expansive salinb B waters that stirred the Missouri frontier to a B I fever of excitement over the west, and stirred the B ; government Into sending out the Fremonts, the B J Stansburys, the Gunnisons and the others of the B ! "official investigators." B To name these old trapper travelers now B , will be to name names that are strange even to B those whose memory seems to run back to the S very beginning of things. There was Ashley, B whose territory was from Fort John, now Fort B Laramie, down the Timpanogas, now the Provo; B' to Lake Ashley, now Lake Utah. That he has suc ceeded in making himself remembered in Ashley I valley of eastern "Utah and in the Ashley fork of the Duchesne river those who know the names will recall. But that he brought over 150 men to Utah lake in 182G, and had a fort built there twenty years before the Mormon pioneers emerged from Emigration canyon, after being guided on 3 their way from Fort Laramie by another of these trappers, James Brldger, in a much less widely known incident. It is as obscure in fact as is the record of the trip of one of his trappers, Jedediah Smith, to Los Angeles and return to Tooele valley twenty-four years before the Mormon party under Apostles Rich, Lyman and Pratt made the trip which now is given the honor of being the original origi-nal expedition. Of Peter Skeen Ogden, who knows any more than that Ogden canyon bears his name? And of Duff Weber the record Is fully as obscu leaving us only the query as to why Weber canyon i should bear his name. Certain overshadowing facts of history in America Am-erica have so absorbed the makers of records that w the work of the travelers in the west has yet to I; be collected, brought out from under the shadow of the gold discovery in '49, the Mormon emigra-' emigra-' tion in '47, and the War of the Rebellion which in the making, interested tho eastern states while the western territory was being explored by fur I company drummers, and thei tales were being told to excite a more extended survey. Once written, the story will tell of the keen I contest for the west waged between English in fluences, crowding down the northern tributaries of the Columbia with its sea front as an objective, j tho American traders crowding down the Snake 8 and on to tho Columbia to found Astoria at the B river's mouth, the Mexican influences crowding B northward through the California settlements, and 9 even to the site of Ogden city, which the Mor- H mon settlers had to purchase from Spanish own ers; and the Russian advance represented in the Alaskan colonies. It will include the buying of Alaska as .part of the movement which pushed Mexico back through the Mexican war, drove England Eng-land awayMrom the Columbia with the naval vie torles of the War of 1812, and furnished a motive for the organization of the Nauvoo Region by Joseph Smith, when he was contesting with Kearney Kear-ney and Fremont for the honor of heading an armed advance into the land to the west in which the trapper tales grew so marvelously. From the advance work of Eve with the apple specialty in Eden followed the establishment of a number of well known houses, and the building up of a considerable world. From the advance "peddling" "ped-dling" of the old Utah and Rocky Mountain trappers trap-pers came America's interest in the west, and from the U. C. T. convention of 1908 Is going 'out the word that Utah can put up just about as good a time as anybody ever heard of. Together tho three chapters make a story without a rival in history, sacred or profane. To give the old business scouts their due credit is a difficult task, but not too difficult to afford a point of beginning and so through Goodwin's is to run a series giving all that can be learned about some of our old-time friends. That Major James Bridger, for instance, met Brigham Young and his men of the 1841 pioneers within a day's journey of Laramie and told him that he would bet $100 an ear of corn could not be raised in Salt Lake valley, has been heralded to the world. That Bridger also told him just how to get into the valley, including the route down Parley's canyon and the ascent over Big and Little Lit-tle mountains into Emigration canyon is a matter much less widely heralded as is its companion fact that to Fort Laramie the pioneer route followed fol-lowed a fur trader's wagon road. The Mormon men of the first decade after 1847 had their friends, the historians. The trappers trap-pers and traders were a disappearing generation. Careless about making records, careful only that their bowle knives were sharp and their camp was pitched where wood and water would not give out the trappers ran their course, forgot to write books about it, and had their lightly taken glories as pathfinders stolen from them by men who lightly lifted the cargo wherever an owner was not on the grounds to defend his rights. So it was that Fremont came when the trappers were almost through with their adventures, sketched a map of the river where Kit Carson and Peter Skeen Ogden had trapped for a full decade, robbing it of the name "Mary's River," which had been given it by Carson in honor of an Indian wife, and established as a proper name for a score of years. The same vandalism has robbed many a man in the Wasatch country of the names helixed to peak or river or valley. Today we know Utah lake and the Provo river. And yet Lake Timpanogas for over a hundred years was famous in tales of adventure and romance, ro-mance, and for a score of years the traders and all the Missouri frontier country knew Lake Ashley, Ash-ley, where John Jacob Astor's men were camped, and where Captain Ashley in 1826 built a great fort to protect a company of over 100 men from Indians of the Uintah Utes. Similarly "Fort John" of the Northwest Trading Trad-ing Company, became, when the trappers sold it to the government, Fort Laramie, and another thing was done to erase frpm the names of the r-T'- A ' Continued on page 0 i Contlnufcd from page 8 western country, the record of those who really explored it, made it seem worth while, and worked up that interest in it which brought the subsequent subse-quent emigration. Of the old fur drummers wJhose territory was strictly in Utah perhaps the one who has buffered most in history lias been Jedediah 'Smith, rea pathfinder of the southwest route to Los Angeles and the first American ever to cross the Sierra mountains. The Salt Lake route upon its completion com-pletion in 1905 hauled a trainload of survivors of the Apostles Rich-Lyman-Pratt party which went to San Bernardino in 1851, over the route again, put them on record as the pathfinders, and indeed theirs was the first trip on record, so far as rec- A ords in Utah were available. Smith, one of Ashley's trappers, led a party of nineteen men over the route from Utah lake In 1826, cut north from Los Angeles and returned to los'e mqst of the men and horses in the desert west of Great Salt Lake, he himself finally securing secur-ing succor from the Skull valley Indians and returning re-turning to report to his chief. Their map of the route was in the possesion of the Mormon jparty of 1851 and of an earlier Mormon party In 847, from which Bishop John Hunt of Snowflake, .Arizona, .Ari-zona, is still a survivor. To make their influence felt in western names the army surveyors, the trappers, the Indians, and the Mormons were all in an informal contest. The government men won out in the names of Fremont, Fre-mont, Gunnison and Stanisbury island, and in Gunnison Gun-nison town. The old scouts lost Lake Ashley, but retain Ogden canyon, Weber canyon, Fort Brid-ger Brid-ger and Ashley valley and river. The Indians left Us TIntic, Sanpete, Utah, and a host of names equally as well Known. |