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Show CAMPED ON TIE S!l OF OGDEN ! WHEN WEST WAS A WILDERNESS l V v r ' vedidiah S. Smith, Pioneer Trapper, Was One of Ashley's ( Party to Explore Utah Caught Beaver in Ogden River , J North Ogden Was Known .as Ogden's Hole, a Fa- - vorite Camping Place for Hunters Smith j Nearly Perished on a Journey Across Nevada Ne-vada Later He Was Killed by In- ! dians A Story of the Days f of the Frontier. 1 . (By 0. A. KENNEDY.) M It is well known that the early w history of Utah is mingled with that & of the missions oMho Catholic church... f We ktfow that , the" Sprinish padres- t came north from Mexico into Utah, i' perhaps as far north as the vreat I Salt Lake. 3 Perhaps they 3et up their crucifixes f and celebrated masses with only the ! wandering red men as auditors; .here l where has since been bullded a city j of churches. And later history has related how 1 still another church has made this intermountain land , its own lu a pe- culiar sense and has written, its own ' history on every page of the recordr, i of a great state, so that when men anywhere in the world think of that ' feta'te, they think also of that church. ! : But very few seem to know that Methodism had any part in the early !' history of Ogden and of Utah; that twenty years before, the coming of r the Mormon pioneers a representative 1 of Methodism came as a hunter, Irap-per Irap-per and explorer into "the valleys of ft these mountains" blazing the trails, $ seeking out the passes, fighting the Indians, and holding his own with . ; the rough and unafraid men of the . I mountains. To quote one authority: "Besides I being an adventurer and a hero, a I trader and a Christian, he wns hlm- self Inclined to literary pursuits and J iad prepared a geography and atlas j of the Rocky mountain region, ex- tending perhapB to the Pacific, hut ;! his death occurred before its publl- cation." , . J This remarkable man belonged to ) the great family of Smiths and he 3 $ was far more entitled to fame than J J the great Captain John, whose name 5 4 is familiar, to every schoolboy as the If hero of the first years of Virginia, mm lor his name will always be written IK terge in story of the beginning of Silt things in a dozen western states. jifi One writer likens him to "that dis- ijK tinguished character of later years, ftlf Stonewall Jackson, in combining 111 with the most ardent belief in, and 3K practice of, the Christian religion, an 311, undaunted courage, fierce and inv- Mil Petuous nature and untiring energy, if- Jedldiah S. Smith was born about If 3804 in New York state and at the lit age of IS he was one of General lift Ashley's recruits in the expedlton III; that left St. Louis" for the upper Mis- M sour: in 1S22. iJlf Ho had as mates on that trip such , ,111) aen as Brldger, Sublette and Jack-all' Jack-all' son, all names fated to be as famous 31' as his own. It was said of Smith HI.' at that time. "A Christian and a sol-Sit sol-Sit dlor, the Bible and the rifle were lK his inseparable companions and the mild leaching of the one never dimln- ?ji 1shed in ,any way the vigor with S31- which he used the other. QMW Smith took part in the fight with Hf; the Arickarees on June 2 1S23, an., ssll' after Ashlev had retreated down the Missouri river and while he was wait- Sl ing for-Col. Leavenworth to arrive $1 Trttu a detachment of United States - soldiers, ho desired to send a mes- ml aS to William Henry who was in SSI command of the first division of the JhftW expedition. The message had to be Mil carried about 200 miles through a Mi hostile country to the mouth of the jj&l Yellowstone where Henry had built a When volunteers were called for, ff the first to offer was Smith. Ashley E&l accepted him as .bis messenger in Si I' Plte of the fact that he was but fi&fc 18 years of age, but insisted on send. VlM. In with him a Canadian frontier. JPJJ aan of experience. The trip was made, the message delivered am Henry and his division returned down the river to reinforco Ashley. Berhaps. as- a reward for his services ser-vices Smith was ' placed in charge of a 'boat containing the filrs taken by Henry on the Yellowstone, and sent down the river to St. Louis. He returned later in the year, but prob-abiy prob-abiy too late to take part in tlue second sec-ond fight with the Arickarees. Smith accompanied the Ashley party par-ty to the Yellowstone and up that river to the Powder river and to the Big Horn. He 3eems to have deve oped early as a leader, for in the spring of 1S24 he was sent with a small party across the country to the headwaters of the Snake river. Here they hunted and trapped the balance bal-ance of the year and fell in with a number of Hudson bay men who had become separated from their leader, Alexander Ross. By clever trading or otherwise, Smith came into possession of the beaver skins taken by the Hudson bay trappers, about 100 in number, which later led Ross to sarcastically refer to Smith as "a very intelligent person." The Smith party made its way-across way-across the Continental divide into Montana and spent tho winter oi. 1S24 among "the Flathead Indians. Here he met more of the Hudson bay men and learned much about the Co lumbia river country. He later returned to St. Louis nnd his information was considered so valuable that It Avas reported by General Gen-eral Atkinson to the war department. Smith appears ' about this time to have succeeded William Henry as Ashley's right-hand man and was apparently ap-parently given a free hand in the management of his trapping parties. He was probably on the present slto of Ogden as early as 1S25 and assisted as-sisted General Ashley In establishing a post on Utah like in 1826. The rendezvous for 1S2C was fixed In Cacho valley and, from, that point, the trappers spread out to all the valleys and streams in easy striking distance. It was in that year uiat peter Skecn Ogden was supposed to have lost ?75,000 worth of beaver fur through the shrewdness of Ashlev Ash-lev and his men. but the accuracy of the statement has been denied by Ogden's own biographers. Tho most noted of Smith's achievements achieve-ments was the California trip. In 1S26 on July IS, Ashley sold out his Interest in the Rocky Mountain Fu.' companv to Smith, D. 13. Jackson and W. L. Sublette. The instrument, still in existence, is witnessed by Robert Rob-ert Campbell and. is dated "near iae Grand Lake west of the Rocky moun-tains." moun-tains." This without doubt was at, or near the present site of Ogden; for tb? Ogden river was already on the map as a place famous - for beaver, and Ogden's Hole, the cove In the mountains moun-tains now occupied, by. North Ogden, was a favorable camping place for the trappers. No sooner was the deal with Ashley closed up than Smith started for California, Cali-fornia, leaving Jackson and Sublette to manage the affairs of the compa- nJSmith was back again in the summer sum-mer of 1S27 at the old camping place "at the Great Salt Lake." where he wrote a letter to the Missouri Re publican of St. Louis, which got Into print October 12, 1827. Prom this letter Bancroft, in his History of Call-fornia Call-fornia has made the following sn I P''sTartcd August 22, 1826,' from the Srtlt' Lake, crossed the' little Uta lake, went up tho Ashley river, which flows Into that lake through the country of the Sumpatch Indians, crossed a range of mountains extending southeast south-east to northwest, crossed a river which he named Adams for the president pres-ident and which flowed southwest. Ten days' march to the Adams again which had turned southeast." Bancroft suggests that Smith crossed cross-ed from the Sevier to the Virgin and supposed It to be the same stream. Chitteudeu in the history of the American Fur Trade expresses the opinion that the Virgin river was named nam-ed after Thomas Virgin, one of the fifteen men of Smith'sparty. He was wounded in a fight with the Indians near that river. Smith crossed the Colorado and followed fol-lowed down to near the present Mexican Mexi-can line. There he drossed the Colorado Colo-rado and marched straight west to San Diego There the Spanish authorities au-thorities did not receive him w.. any degree of enthusiasm. The captain of an American ship Interfered in his behalf and he was allowed to purchase supplies on con dition that he should get out of the country at once. But Smith and his' men found plenty of beaver in flu streams of the west slope or the Sierras and they spent the winter of 182C "in those delightful valleys. The Spaniards remonstrated but Smith wrote them long letters explaining ex-plaining that hp could not get over the mountains because of the snow and when the padre in charge of one of the Catholic missions wrote com plaining that Smith had 'enticed lik Indians away, he received a dipio inatic noto, still in existence. Smith closed in these words: "Though a foreigner, Reverend Father, Fa-ther, your true friend and Christian brother, J. S. Smith." Tho very day ho sent this letter. Smith started on his return trip to Utah. The following is his own ac count: "On' May 20, 1S27, with two men, seven horses and two mules, ladened with hay and food, I started from tho valley. In eight days we crossed Mount Joseph, losing on this passage two horses and one mule. "At the summit of the mountain, the snow was from Tour to eight feet deep and so hard that the horses sank only a few inches. After a march of 20 days eastward from Mount Joseph, I reached the southwest south-west corner of the Great Salt Lake. "The country (Nevada) separating it from the mountains is arid and without game. Often we had no water wa-ter for two days at a time; we saw but a plain without the slightest trace of vegetation. Further on l found rocky hills with springs, then hordes of Indians, who seemed to us the most miserable beings imaginable. imagin-able. "When we reached the Great Salt Lake, we had only one horse and one mule so exhausted that they could hardly carry our slight baggage. We ha'd been forced to eat the horses that had succumbed." Smjth reached the rendezvous "near the Salt Lake" in June, 1827, and on July 13 started again for California, Califor-nia, this time with IS men. He followed fol-lowed his old route to the Colorado but, while crossing on a raft, the Mohave Indians attacked the party and killed ten men and captured all the supplies. The survivors nearly perished In crossing the Salton desert , but arrived arriv-ed at San Gabriel late in August. Ho left two wounde'd men and started north to join his ' first party which was still catching beaver in the Sierras. Si-erras. , At San Jose Smith was arrested by the Spanish authorities and sent to Monterey Here another. American sea captain interceded for him and he was released but given two months to get out of California. But Smith and his party liked the climate and were in love with the scenery of California. Moreover, the trapping ' was good, so in spite of the insistence of the Spani3h, Smith decided that the Sacramento river was too high to cross. He passed up that river to a stream that has ever since been called American Fork and stayed all winter. On April 13, 1S2S, Smith stnrted to go back to Utah and coolly decided to go by way of northern California and the Columbia river. But on the Umpuquah river tho party par-ty came to grief. July 14 Smith left the party and went out alone to hunt for a road. When he returned re-turned It was to find that the Indians had attacked the camp, had killed fifteen men and captured all the property. prop-erty. The three survivors had fled to the north and Smith after crossing cross-ing the state of Oregon alone, found them at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia Co-lumbia river. Here the Hudson Bay company officials of-ficials received Smith kindly, forgetting" forget-ting" old rivalries and sent out a party, par-ty, under McLeod, which forced tho Indians to give up his property. They bought his California beaver skins and. with a London draft for $20,000, In his pocket, smitu loit Vancouver March 12, 1829. He returned to tho east by ascending ascend-ing the Columbia to Spokane and the Flathead country. From thero he and one survivor of his original par ty started south. On the way, he met Jackson, who had evidently expected ex-pected him to return by the northern route, and on the 5th day of August in 1829, found Sublette at the Tetons on Henry Fork of the South branch of the Columbia. Because of gratitude for the kiud treatment he had received from tho Hudson Bay people. Smith Insisted that his partners should give up trapping trap-ping west of the continental divide so the partners and their men crossed over to the Big Horn country having two fights with the Blackfcet while on the way east through Montana Sublette alone made the trip that winter to St. Louis, where he cashed Smith's draft on London and brought out the next year's supplies in ten wagons drawn by five mules each, and took the first wagons over whnt was afterward known as the Oregon trail. Bancroft says that the Hudson Bay company after Smith's arrival at Fort Vancouver, being pleased with his, reports of the abundance of beaver in the California streams, "hastened to dispatch Ogden with another parly par-ly of hunters up the Columbia and Snake rivers to proceed thence southward south-ward to Smith's trail by which he was to enter California and thus get the start of any American trappers who might be sont as a result of Smith's reports. Ogden was successful ju this movement and entered the great valley about the same time that McLeod Mc-Leod left it. He -also obtained a ricli harvest of skins during his stay of eight months and carried Ills ura to tlie north by McLeod's' trail." - On April 1, 1830, Smith, taking Jim Brldger as a guide, went down the Yellowstone to the Missouri and, after af-ter a successful hunt, joined the other partners, including Sublette and his mule teams at 'South Pas's. On August 4, 1S30, Smith. Jackson and Sublette sold out to tho Rocky Mountain Fur company and left' the same day for St. Louis with ,190 packs of beaver loaded In the. ten wagons, the biggest returns or fur that any year had seen brought down from ,tho. mountains. Smith and his partners were great men" in St. Louis that winter, but of Smith it was safd: "Smith was a bold, outspoken and a consistent Christian, the first aii'l only one known among tho earl; Rocky mountain trappci3 and hlmt-ters. hlmt-ters. . No one wlio knew him well doubted the sincerity of his piety. He had become ,a communicant of the Methodist church on leaving, his home in New York and " in St. Louis he never failed to occupy a place fh the church of his choice, while he gave generously to all objects connected with the religion which ho professed and loved." The next year, 1831, the three partners, part-ners, being barred . by the terms " ot their sale fvpni the Rocky mountain hunting grounds,, started Tor Santa, Fe, perhaps intending to push on . to Southern. California, but Smith was killed on the Cimarron desert in a fight with the Comanches. The story is told that, 30011 after entering the northwest part of New Mexico, the party waa without water Tor two days. Smith, volunteered to push on ahead in search of a supply. He came at last to the Cimarron river riv-er .only .to find the bed of the stream perfectly dry. But being quite familiar with the characteristics of desert streams, he at once began to dig in th3 bed of the river. Soon he had scooped out a hole Into which the watei began to seep. ; As he stooped to drink of the wa-'ter, wa-'ter, he was wounded by a flight of arrows fired by Comanches concealed in the binhes along the river bank. In the fight that followed. Smith killed kill-ed two of the Indians before he was clain. Jackson is said to have taken; a small party through to California, but Sublette returned to St. Louis. , In the nine years that elapsed from his enlistment with Ashley in 1S22 to his death In 1S31, Jeridiah S. Smith visited and explored every state west of the Missouri, had endured almost every form of hardship and had addl cd to the sum of the knowledge of the west more than any other one man. ., : : : ; t-tt - One of the Dramatic Scenes in "Within the Law," in which Margaret lllington plays a return engagement at the Orpheum next Wednesday night. Bessie Abott, Prima Donna Soprano, The dc Kovcn Opcrs Company who sings Maid Marian in "Robin Hood, "at. the Orpheum Theater, Monday Nighl, March 23. |