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Show I MAJOR JIM BRIDGER, THE FIRST GREAT UTAHN. I wm He Discovered Great Salt Lake, Developed a Trail Into Salt Lake Valley over a Route 1 Bl Followed Later fry Brigham Young, and was Once the Most Celebraica U flf of all the Mountain Men Who Lived Here Before 1 the Mormon Immigration. Wm BY ISAAC RUSSELL Wm Were the true history of the west ever fully B brought into position alongside the facts of dell de-ll velopment east of the Rockies, Jim Bridger, &H "Major," by grace of a title bestowed through jM common consent ould become a great and hon-fljl hon-fljl ored name withni the Wasatch. Hi Bridger was a prominent man In Utah, and a H citizen who powerfully shaped her earliest des-Wg des-Wg tinies in times previous to those recorded ffljjj through the work of regular settlers. Living 91 here from 1825 to 1854, he became the original SI citizen as well as pathfinder and explorer. Bl Last week it was promised that a series of XI articles should take up the scraps of history such ffl as still exist about the first generation of Anglo Ml Saxons who lived their lives within the Wasatch Bf valleys. Bsl Greatest of all these western men dwelling in HI this particular region was Jim Bridger. Farther Hi! east towards the Yellowstone there was Henry, SI! from whom Henry's lake takes its name; Jack-Si Jack-Si son, from whom we get the huntsman's paradise jB of Jackson's Hole. And in Utah it has been al-SJ al-SJ most totally forgotten that "Ogden's Hole" was. Si the country north of where that city is now SI located, just as it has been forgotten that James SI Bridger was the man who first built a road into Bl Salt Lake valley, first of all who ever made the HI fact known that the waters of Great Salt Lake BS had actually been seen, and was the actual guide Bl who developed the way for a fur trad" '" trail B I into the Great Salt Lake valley. H ff With the unrighteous assurance that charac-B charac-B terlzed the official investigators, James Fremont B stood on the Weber river plateau in 1843, looked S I at the Great Salt Lake, threw all the rhapsodies S I that a Balboa would be entitled to on discovering 9 1 a Pacific, and proceeded to record the joy of an B I absolutely first discovery. B I The wrong this did to Bridger was that just B sixteen years previously he stood at the mouth B ; of Bear river, where it runs into the lake, tasted B its brackish waters, told what he had found to S Ashley and Henry, and even in St. Louis, where B the trapper tales were serving to make the fer B ment that resulted in the sending of Fremont 9 and his followprb, as .well as to incite the interest B of possible settlers. B The discovery of Great Salt Lake by Bridger Si dates back to the entrance of trappers, into this B region in 1824. Henry, Ashley, and Bridger had S worked themselves at the head of a party up the Missouri, and into Cache valley, Utah, which . they then called Willow valley. 1 Robert Campbell, a St. Louis banker, passed through the west this year, and put on record in the Pacific Reports his meeting with the explor- J Their quest was beaver. They found the Bear river winding around on both sides of them, and decided to send a scouting party to ascertain j where it ran. Bridger, setting out on this mission, mis-sion, emerged through the mountains to a point where the lake could be seen. In 182G four men of the trapping party were sent in skin boats to circumnavigate it, to ascertain whether other streams, bearing beavc , emptied into it. , In the stories of pioneer Utah there is no tale of mighty hunting experience, or of river where j traps might be set to advantage. This was be- cause a whole generation of men had lived here of the Anglo Saxon race, builded in the late twenties and early thirties, settlements in three great valleys, and after trapping the country bare of its small game, and shooting it free from its larger bags, had gone their way from an abandoned hunting ground. ers just after they had returned from the cruise, without finding an outlet. Ogden's trappers met the party, too, that summer and were told of the nature of Great Salt Lake, and Washington Irv- ing, in his "Captain Bonneville," has made us a record of this circumstance. Bonneville came to Utah to place his name of "Lake Bonneville" on the ancient waterway whose shore lines still mark the hillsides, a full eight years after Bridger's discoveries had made gossip for the trapper camps and for the Missouri frontier. Bridger was a man of great heart, and this is another reason his memory deserves better than its present obscurity. The broken down emigrant, whether Mormon or goldseeker, found him always willing to lend the forge of his Fort Bridger blacksmith shop to the repair of the wagon, or to trado a good ox from his fenced fields for the lame critter of the westward-bound settler. Government oflicers found him able to sketch any valley of the west on a deer skin, and always willing to do it. When Captain Howard Stansbury attempted to leave Utah, Aug. 29, 1850, after making his survey of Great Salt Lake, he had to take his course past Fort Bridger, and he put on record Continued on page 13 "Bridger." Continued from page 8 the matter of the big-heartedness of the first genuine Utahn. "Fort. Bridger," he wrote, "is a trading post much frequented by the Shosbones, Utuhs and Uintah Indians. The party remained here several sev-eral days to readjust the packs and complete the final arrangements for crossing the plains. The trunks and heavy baggage were left in charge of Major Bridger to be forwarded by the first Mormon train from the city, Governor Young having kindly engaged to see that they were safely carried to St. Louis. "Major Bridger, although at considerable sacrifice sac-rifice to his own interests, offered his services as guide, he being well acquainted with the country bver which it was my desire to pass. The offer was most cheerfully accepted, and as our route lay directly through the territory of powerful Indian tribes, great care was made to equip the party with arms and ammunition necessary neces-sary for our defense." And then a little farther along the service of Major Bridger in saving a valuable government l officer from exteimination with all his important 1 records is told. Concerning a camp on the Little ' Snake, Stansbury thus makes a record: "As we were reposing our weary limbs before i the camp fire regaling ourselves with our pipe, "now our only luxury, Major Bridger entertained us with one of those trapper legends which ! abound among these adventurous mountain men. "I had determined to take only a noon rest here. This intention was frustrated by the ap-! ap-! pearance of Indians who were discovered mov ing towards us from all points of the compass in considerable number. By felling trees we built a fort to wait the arrival of our visitors. The I United States flag was displayed, and, finding that the Indians were gathering in the distance, Major Bridger shouldered his rifle and walked j out towards them and made various signs to the advance party that came out; to meet them. We I soon perceived that they had recognized him and were making a perfect race for camp. Our es- teemed friend, Major Bridger, seemed to know personally many of our visitors, and was known to all of them by the repute of his numerous adventures. ad-ventures. Although intimately acquainted with the language of the Crows, Blackfeet and most of the tribes west of the Rocky Mountain chain, he was unable to speak either the Sioux or the Cheyenne. "Notwithstanding this he held the whole circle cir-cle for over an hour, perfectly enchanted and evidently deeply interested in a conversation and narrative, the whole of which was carried out without the utterance of a single word. The circumstance that attracted my attention in this interview with the untutored sons of the forest more than any other was the perfection to which they have reduced a system of purely arbitrary and conventional signs, by which over all this vast region, intercourse may be had between tribes that are perfect strangers to each other. "The simultaneous exclamations of surprise or interest and the occasional outbursts of hearty laughter showed that the Avholo party not only understood Bridger's theme, but the minute details de-tails of tho pantomime enacted before them. I looked with the closest attention, but the signs to me were for the most part perfectly unintelligible." unintel-ligible." There is at least one of Jim Bridger's talos on record. It is given by Lieutenant J. W. Gunnison, Gunni-son, U. S. A., who with Captain Howard Stansbury Stans-bury surveyed Great Salt Lake. While passing oastward out of Utah, Gunnison stopped at Bridger's camp, and thus records a tale of Indian adventure, as Bridger told it: "In the Youab (Juab) valley, near Salt Mountain, Moun-tain, is a remarkable well or circular pit at tho bottom of which is a spring of water, called by the Utah, Pun-gun. They fancy that in this resides re-sides a child who comes to the surface at the setting set-ting of the sun; and when one approaches, it cries and screams for help, making most frightful fright-ful contortions; but should any attempt to aid the child to escape, they would be carried to the lower regions. It is the ghost-cave of the Indians, In-dians, that frightens into obedience the unruly papooses. Near the spot occurred a tragedy, which the witness of it, Bridger, records as follows: fol-lows: He was traveling the trail, and, seeing a village of the Utah, he turned towards it for cu-llosity cu-llosity and trade. Passing among the lodges, he heard a low wail within one of the wigwams. He stopped before it and presently a young lad, fourteen, apparently, came out before it, sobbing bitterly, and sat down, placing his face in his bauds and resting them upon his knees. Several Indians collected about the place and in silence appeared to be waiting for some event iof importance. im-portance. He heard a sound like that of the loading load-ing of a riile within the lodge. An exclamation of satisfaction escaped from a robust brave, as he emerged from a narrow entrance as though he was now sure of accomplishing some desirable desir-able object of long contemplation. "The bog sprang up with a piteous shriek at the sound. Then as if resigned to his fate," closed his eyes and was shot through the heart. "On inquiry, Bridger was told that this boy was a prisoner taken from a 'neighboring tribe, and that he was sent off to take care of his master, mas-ter, who had that morning died." Besides repeating this story from Bridger's folk-lore, Lieutenant Gunnison pays the then veteran vet-eran trapper this tribute: "No more influential person could be found among the western Indians In-dians than the trapper, already connected with them by marriage, who lives as a trader at Fort Bridger. He is one of the hardy race of mountain moun-tain trappers who are now disappearing fiom the continent, being enclosed in the wave of civilization. civ-ilization. These trappers have made a thousand fortunes for eastern men, and by their improvidence improvi-dence have nothing for themselves. Major Bridger, or 'Old Jim,' has been more wise of late, and laid by a competence; but the mountain tastes, fostered by twenty-eight years of exciting scenes, will probably keep him there for life. He has been very active and has traversed the region from the headwaters of the Missouri to the Del Norte and along the Gila to the Gulf, and thonce throughout Oregon and the interior of California. His graphic sketches are dellght-iul dellght-iul romances. With a buffalo skin and a piece of charcoal he will map out any portion of this entire region, and delineate mountains, streams, and the circular valleys called 'holes' with wonderful won-derful accuracy." There still exists in Utah one of the old trappers trap-pers the last of his kind upon the face of the land. Ho is Joshua Terry, squaw-man and the owner of a little homo at Draper, whither he drifted after the mountains ceased to offer support sup-port for a devotee of the beaver trap and hading had-ing gun. Speaking to the writer of Bridger, Terry two years ago had this to say: "I was a mighty poor man when I met Bridger. Quarreling with James Pollock, with whom I had engaged to go to California, I left him in the winter of 1847 at Fort Hall and started back to the states, alone and without provisions. I was about dead from starvation when, after crossing several ranges of mountains, I got within two miles of Fort Bridger, and gave out. Bridger came out to meet me. He was a kindly man, not very big, nor very athletic. Late'' I learned that he had seen me from the roof of Jils fort, where he keeps a lookout. Jim took mo in and fed me. "He never let a man go away from Fort Bridger hungry. I know this, for I stayed there and worked for him two years, trailing among HH the Indians with butcher knives and guns for Iffl horses and skins." 8hB And this is all that appears on the surface H concerning Jim Bridger. Where he was born WKm and where he died, the record at present avail- ffrf" able does not say. In 1854 he had trouble with m$M the Mormon settlers over the charge that the B9 Indians used his trade guns In their warfare, fflli then declared, upon the Mormon settlers. As a JKlfi result of it he left the country, and returned lllrw again In 1S57, as a guide to Johnston's army. U In Fort Bridger, his name bids fair to go m down as long as other Utah names into history, and when the trappers receive their proper dues fl as pathfinders of the country, his will be, with t Captain Ashley's, the brightest name of those J who dwelt within the Wasatch, and could truth- H fully call themselves Utahns. B , |