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Show The Trapper and the Pioneer in Utah lk.SL, K A Survey of the Points at Which Their Work Came into Contact and Made for a Fellowship of Consideration in Utah History Hjf What is the nature of the fellowship between K trapper and pioneer, that those who dwell in the Hf valley where the one settled should remember Hg also the service here of the other? Hl Orators of the steam-heated variety like to H picture it that the fellowship is slight or non- Hi existent. - One such, speaking at the dedication Hi of the Knight smelter last July, shouted to hi HL assembled listeners that it was the settlers and Hl not the trappers who made this country worth H while. Hi And what he said was just so. Precisely bo- H cause it was not the trappers who settled the Br country, and because they went their way to be B followed by an eclipse of the interest in tholr- H' work of trail blazing, exploring, guiding, and H peace-making with Indian tribes, the question of H rewriting into Utah's history the preface that H they enacted for it, is an inherited privilege of 1 this generation. H' "WJe have already seen how the trappers H brought to Utah its geographical names, and how H an American, Ashley, carried out of Cache valley H the furs that first attracted to the mountains the H great horde of trappers comprising the American H Fur company, the many free traders who had the H game" eliminated before ever the wagons of the H pioneers took up their trail In this direction. H ' And we have seen how Ashley's first partner, H Jedediah Smith, was the first explorer to cross H the southern rim of the Great Basin, and pathfind H a route to Los Angeles from Utah- lake, and how H map makers, using his Information, brought out H tho first reliable maps of the country -adjacent to H the Great Salt Lake. How the first wheeled ve- H hide came to Utah in 1827, we have also seen, H and how the first use was made of the famous H South Pass through which poured into Utah and H the west a stream of settlers. H For this paper there remains to trace the H fellowship of pioneer with- trapper how the ex- H plorations of the one helped the other along his H way. And what the background was to such H meetings as Moses Harris and Miles Goodyear and H Jim Bridger, and J. W. Farnham, and Father De H Smet had with the pioneers along their course H up the Platte and into Salt Lake valley. H For explorers had lived in vain if settlers H moving in a great mass, had been compelled to H come over their trails without knowing them, H and to find out again all that It had taken a score H of years and ten to develop into the common H knowledge of the western frontier. H Out of St. Louis the trail grew to Salt Lake H just as it grew from there to Santa Fe and to H Oregon, and at this great crossing point of all H western trails, grew up a clearing house of west- H , era information. It became this first when Lewis B and Clark wintered there, westward bound, and H never lost its frontier prestige until the railroad H matte the old trails a matter of history. In this H clearing house was thrown for general informa- H tion Jim Bridger's story of his discovery of Great H Salt Lake. To the same center went his stories H of tho Yellowstone park that for thirty years no H editor dared to publish for fear of ridicule that H such lies could possibly be worth repeating. And H finally, as interest in the west grew from faint H beginnings Into a general frontier ferment that H threw wagon train after wagon train on to the B plains bent upon saving Oregon from England, H and settling the Willamette valley in numbers B strong enough to do it, the government was H forced to take notice, and to send the son-in-law B of Senator Benton of Missouri, Lieutenant John J Charles "Fremont of the engineer corps, on -x tour I of investigation. The word "exploration" is purposely avoided, as Fremont is known as a "pathfinder" only in political po-litical speeches, and himself confessed at the end of lis principal expedition, that he had gone over trails already made, and under the guidance always of men who had already been over them. Then for our pioneers. The first contact we find of their fellowship with previous explorers is when Orson Hyde, on a Church mission to Washington, Wash-ington, Is handed a copy of Fremont's report, 20,000 of which were ordered printed by congress to serve as a guide book for settlers bound to the west. In the abstract of it he sent to his Church leader, he outlined the path three years later followed by the pioneers up the Platte river, stated that he was having a copy of the book sent on directly, and concluded by urging an immediate im-mediate expedition to the Willamette valley for the reason that the country was much in demand, was rapidly filling with settlers, and that if the Church in considerable numbers settled there at once, others would look elsewhere in finding western homes. Large portions of this book were reprinted in the Millennial Star, and although a Utah history characterizes Fremont's reports on the GJreat Basin country as "discouraging," there is absolutely abso-lutely nothing In his text to warrant the statement. state-ment. The country he desc i extended up the Platte valley, through from Weber canyon to Fort Hall (Pocatello), on to Oregon, down the coast to the end of the Sierras, and back via the "Spanish Trail" across southern Utah, to Utah lake, and then out through the mountains. Note has already been made of the way in which historical societies of other states are gathering data of the first importance to Utah, and how much of this data illumines the shadows that have so long rested on the early period here. A sample of this recovery of history is the following extract from a letter written by Father Pierre Jean De Smet, to his nephew, Charles, in March, 1851. Found among the De Smet papers pa-pers in St. Louis, a veritable hive of documents of early western history, the letter is now preserved pre-served in a four-volume edition of the life and writings of Father De Smet, edited by H. M. Chittenden, whose works have already been mentioned men-tioned several times. When the Utah pioneers were encamped outside out-side of Nauvoo, determined upon coming west, Father De Smet met Brigham Young, directly in the path of the western trails, and he was fresh from the country into which the pioneers were ' heading:. i This is the way Father De Smet described their meeting in the letter mentioned: "In the fall of 184G as I drew near to the frontier of the state of Missouri, I found the advance guard of the Mormons, numbering about 10,000, camped in the territory of the Omahas, not far from the i! old Council Bluffs. They. had just been driven j out for the second time from a state of the u Union. They had resolved to winter on the threshold of the great desert, and then to move onward into it to put distance between them and their persecutors, without even knowing at that time the goal of their long wanderings, nor the spot where they should once more build themselves them-selves permanent dwellings. They asked me a thousand questions about the regions I had explored, ex-plored, and the spot which I have just described to you (the basin of the Great Salt Lake), pleased them greatly from the account I gave them of it. Was that what determined them? I would not dare to assert it. They are there. In the' last three years Utah has changed its aspect and from a desert has become a flourishing territory which will soon become one of the states of the Union." A song persistently sung in the pioneer camps had this for its refrain: "Upper California, that's the land for me." A glance at Fremont's last map clearly shows Upper California to consist of all country west of the continental divide, and considering con-sidering it this way he wrote a special treatise on this country that was widely distributed. It is clear that all preliminary trailing through Utah and trapping and trading was a work of preparation for an era of settlement, that could not have hurled its course across an unknown desert, as it passed easily over after 1843, with the permanent helps established all along the line. "I have established a small fort," wrote Jim ' Bridger to his St. Louis backer, December 10, 1843, "on Black's Fork of the Green river, which promises fairly well. The emigrants (for Oregon) are coming out fairly well supplied with money, but by the time they get here they are in need of all kinds of supplies, horses, provisions, smith work, etc Should I receive the goods I hereby ordered I will do a considerable business with them."' Hero, then, la the renl turning point between (Continued on Pago 17.) I 77E TRAPPER AND THE PIONEER (Continued from Pago 14.) the settlor and the trapper era, and here is where we have the first permanent establishment in the western progress of civilization. This was one of the places where the pioneers stopped to rest and to .overhaul their equipment From Brldger they learned in detail of the country ahead, that he had been in Salt Lake valley fifty times in his life, and where its most fertile spots lay. To Utahns it may be something of a surpriso 1 that white men had found "Utah worth while for ', twenty years and then had decided sorrowlully ' that it was no longer fit for a white man as early as 1839. If so, then picture this scene occurring between an overland traveler and his mountain guide as they approached an old cabin belonging to the guide a decade previous. The date is August 1, 1839. The place is in the Green river valley near the present site of Vernal. The traveler trav-eler was Thomas J. Farnham, whose "Travels in the Rocky Mountains" was published in 1843, and the guide was It mountaineer named Kelly. "As our hordes had found but little to eat during dur-ing the past night," the narrative proceeds, "we led and drove the poor animals through three miles of fallen timber and turned them loose to feed upon the first good grass that we found. It chanced to be one of Kelly's old encampments; where he had, some years before, fortified himself him-self with logs, and remained seven days with a sick fellow trapper. 'A fearful time that,' said he, 'but the buffalo were plenty here then. The mountains were then rich. Why, sir, the bulls f were so bold that they would come close to the i fence there at night and bellow and roar until I '1 eased them of their blood by a pill of lead in the ' liver. So you see I did not go far for meat. Now the mountains are so poor that one would stand a right good chance of starving if he were obliged to hang up there for seven days. The game is all driven out. No .place here for a "white man now. Too poor, too poor. What little we get is bull beef. Formerly we ate nothing but cows, fat and young. More danger then, to-be sure; but more beaver, too, and plenty of grease about the buffalo ribs. Ah, those were good times; but a white man has now no more business here.' " This paragraph throws much light upon the change that came over Utah just before the settlers set-tlers came, clearing it of its trapper inhabitants. A little farther on Farnham finds a group of starving, penniless trappers in Brown's hole, talking of ranches in California, and one of these men Fremont mentions three years later, as the owner of a California ranch near the Sutter establishment, es-tablishment, where he had gone in disgust that Utah mountains were no longer able to subsist a white man! What the contact of white men with Indians in Utah had done for the settlers, made Itself evident evi-dent upon the very day of the arrival of the wagon train July 24, 1847. The first thing that happened was that a horse strayed into camp, from some previous outfit. And the second thing was that the Bannock Indians from the north and the Utes from the south came riding in to do just what all white men had taught them, offer furs in trade for tobacco and whatever other American luxuries they could procure. From Fort Hall, the British Hudson Bay Trading company's post, which had been estab-I estab-I lished since 1834, came white men into the pio- neor camp soon after it was pitched, with flour to sell, and goods to barter. At Fort Laramie, the pioneers crossed froin the north bank of the Platte to the south) bank in a ferry rented them by the veteran trappers who were then taking their last revenues from the mountains. Before reaching Fort Laramie, to instance points of contact with trappers along the roads, the plo- neers had halted to exchange words with the master of a wagon train headed from the west, bound east, in regular freighting work. This freighter of the plains, Charles Beaumont, stopped stop-ped with the pioneers long enough for fifty or sixty letters to be written and given to him to carry back to their friends and relatives in Winter Win-ter Quarters. And before Brannan with his California papers had been encountered Major Moses Harris had been met on the continental divide, Harris delivering de-livering to the pioneers a file of still another American newspaper operating in the west.. This was an Oregon print, published in the Willamette Wil-lamette alley, into which for ten years a stream of immigration had been pouring. How the lowly off ox with his nigh partner became the standard animal of the plains, traffic is one of the interesting developments made for the settler by the trapper and trader. In the fascinating pages of Washington Irving, the Utah reader may find his Astorlans galloping into the Utah country on horseback, astray from their direct route ea3t. He may fQllow them on horseback horse-back to the Bear river, and there they fell in with an Indian chief who soon leaves them waifs upon a vast expanse of land, shaking his fist jeeringly at them as his braves ride off behind their stampeded stam-peded animals. That was in the day before the problem had been solved, and when happenings were of such a nature as to create it. Mules the Indian liked, and horses he liked, and for his meat the fat of buffalo calves In good season . iid the meat of buffalo bulls In hard times, was the staple. What use, then, could he make of the ox? Horses the traders lost and mules they lost, but the pioneers had no question to decide when they chose oxen to yoke to their prairie schooners. schoon-ers. It was seventeen years before them that the ox found his place as the burden bearer of the westward journeys Here is the official record of the entrance of his advent into frontier travel. "The Bent brothers," broth-ers," wrote Thomas Forsyth to Secretary of War Lewis Cass, in a general letter of explanation on the conduct of the fur trade, dated at St. Louis, October 24, 1831, "have set out for Santa Fe with a train of oxen. If the experiment succeeds suc-ceeds it will answer the triple purpose: first, of drawing the wagons; second, the Indians will not steal them as they would horses and mules; and, thirdly, in cases of necessity part of the oxen will answer for provisions." The document containing this note of the first use of an animal playing such a large part in the early history of Utah is now on file with the Wisconsin Historical oo-ciety. oo-ciety. An item of similar interest is a letter from General Ashley, which will be reproduced later, showing that as early as 1827 the division of trains on the plains into companies of fifty and subdivisions of ten was in vogue. When the pioneers pio-neers organized In this manner, set out they found themselves, on April 21, surrounded by Pawnee Paw-nee Indians, "whoso actions were not hostile, but who Intimated that gifts would be acceptable." In doing what thirty years of contact with the whites had taught them to do, the Indians found a difference botween this caravan and the others of white men they had seen, In that the others always had presents of highly valuable vermilion vermil-ion paint and priceless glass beads to give the chieftains in exchange for wholly worthless and altogether desplsedly useless beaver skins and deer hides. Early in May the French trader Beaumont, with his wagons from the west bound east, was encountered, and May 24, the fndlahs again showdd the effedC df expecting to trade with the white men who came among them. The chief of a Sioux band attired in trade cloth, presented a fl letter from P. D. Papln, a fur trader of tho H American Fur company, and counted on this to mW gain for him a respectful hearing and entertain- H ment, for Papin was an established prairie power. mW The American flag which his retainers carried, H had been given them so that they would not carry H a British flag, previously put into their posses- H sion by Hudson Bay people, and calculated to at- H tract their peltries across the northern border. H The longest stop of the pioneers on the road H west was at the Laramie refuge, in which trapper" H headquarters they settled down to overhaul their H outfit and prepare for the mountain stage of their H journey. Here they learned that a big Missouri H party was upon the plains bound for California, H with their oid enemy, Governor Boggs, in its H membership. One day after leaving Laramie they H halted to allow a wagon train of eleven wagons H to pass, freighting along to Oregon. Twenty-one H wagons passed on the next day, and on the third jH day thirteen wagons. H On the eighth there arrived from Fort Brldger H a train of wagons loaded with peltries, bound for H Fort Laramie. These were Bridger's wagons, and H the valley of the Great Salt Lake comes into di- H rect notice here in that a party of three men H with fifteen animals, mostly pack animals, are H headed past them en route from Santa Fe to H San Francisco bay, via Great Salt Lake valley. William Clayton, who kept a diary through the H pioneer journey, speaks of a favorable impression H made by Miles Goodyear upon Brigham Young, H ami the fact that Goodyear was hired to meet H the pioneers and guide them Into Cache valley H by way of the old Oregon trail, via Soda Springs. H Only the fact that Goodyear failed to keep his H appointment seemed to head off this movement, H and a little later Clayton records a long talk be- H tween Brigham Young and Brldger, In which he H sets forth that Brldger told Brigham he had been H into Sallj Lake valley fifty times, that there was H an abundance of blue grass and clover southeast H of Great Salt Lake, that the best way in was over H the Hastings or Donner trail through what is H now Emigration canyon, that cherries and berries jH were plentiful near Utah lake, that there was plenty of timber on all the mountain streams, and H plenty of fish in them, and that the Indians south of Utah lake raise as good corn, wheat, and j pumpkins as were ever raised in old Kentucky. This is all that Whitney quotes from Clayton. JM Then he goes on to add in his own language that vM Bridgor said he "would give $1,000 for the first JH ear. of corn ripened in Salt Lake Valley." Tul- j ledge declares, again without quoting any au- M thority, that it was' a bushel of wheat for which IJ Brldger offered the reward. Erastus Snow, in a JH sermon preached in 1880, gives what appears to JH be the first statement of this historic alleged JH declaration, but what kind of a sport Brldger is JH made out to lay such a wager on Salt Lake val- H ley's hopes, just after saying that tho first valley H to the south produced corn, wheat and pumpkins H to rival his old Kentucky home, tho reader Is left D to judge. Perhaps a narrative that has grossly misread Fremont, has also confused itself as to H Fremont. H If Amassa Potter still lives In Payson he will testify that the facts were as Brldger is reported by Clayton, writing at the time of the interview, for the writer well remembers seeing samplos of fine wheat Potter declared he had dug out of cfl Indian mounds located near Payson, in 1895. iH Such, then, is the brief sketch of the direct jfl contact botween pioneers and trapping explorers, l)fl and if it has added to the reasons why the work M df thesa two upbuilding forces should be treated in a certain fellowship, an understanding of the jUI dilo Uding" necessary to a complete knowledge of lam the other, it has fulfilled its purpose. lE |
