Chapter II: Part 2

A few dass sinci our trader arived by whom I received two letters one
from Dr. Lukens the other from yourself under date of January 1827
which gives me great congratulation to hear that you are both happy
wilst I am unhappy also to hear from my friends shortly after writing
to you last year I took my departuri for the Black-foot Country much
against my will as I could not maki a party for any other rout. We
took a northerly direction about fifty miles where we cross Snake
River or the South fork of columbia at the forks of Henrys & Lewis’s
forks at this place we was dayly harrased by the Black-feet from
thence up Henrys or North fork which bears North of East thirty miles
and crossed a large ruged Mountain which sepparates the two forks from
thence East up the other fork to its source which heads on the top of
the great chain of Rocky Mountains which sepparates the water of the
Atlantic from that of the Pacific. At or near this place heads the
Luchkadee or Calliforn Stinking fork Yellow-stone South fork of
Massuri and Henrys fork all those head at an angular point that of the
Yellow-stone has a large fresh water lake near its head on the verry
top of the Mountain which is about one hundrid by fourty miles in
diameter and as clear as crystal on the south borders of this lake is
a number of hot and boiling springs some of water and others of most
beautiful fine clay and resembles that of a mush pot and throws its
particles to the immense height of from twenty to thirty feet in
height The clay is white and of a pink and water appear fathomless as
it appears to be entirely hollow under neath. There is also a number
of places where the pure suphor is sent forth in abundance one of our
men Visited one of those wilst taking his recreation there at an
instan the earth began a tremendious trembling and he with dificulty
made his escape when an explosion took place resembling that of
thunder. During our stay in that quarter I head it every day.

From here, probably the West Thumb thermal area, “by a circutous rout to the Nourth west” and after some more bloody encounters with the Blackfeet, the trappers moved toward the Bear Lake rendezvous. In 1828 Potts left the hostile mountains and embarked from New Orleans on a cattle ship, which sank with all hands in the Gulf of Mexico.

At the 1827 rendezvous at Bear Lake Jedediah Smith appeared like a ghost out of the Great Salt desert, reporting that the Spanish Governor of California had expelled him from that province. He arranged with his partners, Jackson and Sublette, to meet two years hence “at the head of Snake River.” Then, after a rest of only ten days, he summoned volunteers and again set his face toward the Pacific Ocean. In the winter of 1827-28, while Sublette attended to the business of getting supplies from St. Louis, Jackson sent fur brigades north from Bear Lake to the Snake River and its tributaries, where they came in frequent contact with the Hudson’s Bay Company trappers under Ogden. In 1828 the rendezvous was again Great Salt Lake, and again the trappers dispersed to hunting grounds on the Bear, the Snake, and the Green.

In March 1829 William Sublette left St. Louis for the mountains with a heavily laden pack train and 60 men, including a novice of 19 named Joseph L. Meek, whose life story, as told to Mrs. F. F. Victor, is a prime source of information. After the general rendezvous, which that year was held in July on the Popo Agie River northeast of South Pass, Captain Sublette sent a brigade under his brother, Milton Sublette, to the Bighorn Basin, then set out with the main party, including Meek, Bridger, and Fitzpatrick, for the upper Snake River Valley at the foot of the Tetons, the point of reunion with his partners which had been agreed upon two years previously. The episode which followed, one of the treasured traditions of the Western fur trade, is described in Mrs. Victor’s River of the West:

Sublette led his company up the valley of the Wind River, across the
mountains, and on to the very headwaters of the Lewis or Snake River.
Here he fell in with Jackson, in the valley of Lewis Lake, called
Jackson’s Hole, and remained on the borders of this lake for some
time, waiting for Smith, whose non-appearance began to create a good
deal of uneasiness. At length runners were dispatched in all
directions looking for the lost Booshway.

The detachment to which Meek was assigned had the pleasure and honor
of discovering the hiding place of the missing partner, which was in
Pierre’s Hole, a mountain valley about thirty miles long and of half
that width, which subsequently was much frequented by the camps of the
various fur companies.

This is the core of the tradition. From this it has generally been inferred that it was on this occasion that the lake and the valley were named in honor of David E. Jackson, and that this was Captain Sublette’s idea. David E. Jackson, sometimes referred to as “Davey,” is the mystery man of the Smith-Jackson-Sublette trio. How old he was, what he looked like, where he came from prior to 1823 is not known. He was one of the “enterprising young men” who responded to Ashley’s call in that year. That his “rating” with trappers was high and that he was one of the acknowledged leaders of the Rocky Mountain fur trade is clear from the fact of the partnership formed in 1826. He was not illiterate, for his signature appears on documents, but like most of his associates he kept no diary, so that our knowledge of his exact wanderings is indistinct. It is part of the tradition that he spent the winter of 1828-29 in the vicinity of Jackson’s Hole, and his known interest in the region prompts us to believe that he had spent several previous years there as well. He might well have been one of the six men who accompanied Smith on his “discovery” of Jackson Hole in 1824. He left the mountains in 1830, went to Santa Fe and then on to California on a trading venture in 1831, and apparently returned to St. Louis in 1832, where he disappears, so to speak, under a cloud. One rumor has it that he “ran off with property belonging to the firm of Jackson, Waldo and Young,” another that “he dissipated his large and hard-earned fortune in a few years.”

After the reunion in Pierre’s Hole, according to Meek, the entire company moved up Henry’s Fork of the Snake, and across the Divide to the valleys of the Madison and Gallatin. Crossing the Gallatin Range in early winter, the trappers reached the vicinity of Cinnabar Mountain, three miles below Yellowstone Park’s present North Entrance. Here two men were killed and the party was scattered by the Blackfeet. Meek alleges that he wandered into the future Park, where he ascended a high peak. Crossing Yellowstone River, he ran into an incredible region smoking “like Pittsburgh on a winter morning” with the vapor from boiling springs, haunted by the sound of whistling steam vents, dotted with cone-shaped mounds surmounted by craters from which issued “blue flames and molten brimstone,” and devoid of living creatures. From here, apparently the seldom visited Mirror Plateau, Meek crossed the Absaroka Range to the winter camp on Powder River.

About the first of April 1830, according to Meek, “Jackson, or ‘Davey,’ as he was called by his men, with about half the company, left for the Snake country.” At the Wind River rendezvous in July, “Jackson arrived from the Snake country with plenty of beaver....”

At Wind River, on August 4, 1830, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, having earned a deserved fortune from their labors, decided to retire from the mountain trade, and sold their interest to a group of their employees who had already distinguished themselves in the service—James Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Henry Fraeb, and Baptiste Gervais. The main trapper band, numbering over two hundred and including Meek, followed Bridger and Fitzpatrick northward to the Three Forks of the Missouri, thence south to Ogden’s Hole, a small valley in the Bear River Mountains. In the fall of 1830, John Work, heading the annual Snake River expedition of the Hudson’s Bay Company, got wind of the American invasion of his domain. Among other rumors was one that Fontenelle and his men “have been hunting on the Upper Snake. They were set upon by the Blackfeet on the Yellowstone River and 18 men killed.”

In the spring of 1831, after wintering again at Powder River, Meek reports on the spring hunt: “Having once more visited the Yellowstone, they turned to the south again, crossing the mountains into Pierre’s Hole, on to Snake river; thence to Salt river; thence to Bear river; and thence to Green river to rendezvous.” Confirmation of this comes from Joseph Meek’s brother Stephen, who says that this year he trapped on the Yellowstone, Wind, and Musselshell Rivers, “going through Jackson’s Hole to the rendezvous on Popyoisa River.”

From the Powder River encampment Fitzpatrick headed for St. Louis to round up a supply caravan. Running into his old companions Smith, Jackson, and Sublette en route to Santa Fe, he was persuaded to join them, being promised an outfit when they arrived. Thus he shared the delays and perils of that expedition in which Jedediah Smith was slain by a Comanche spear, and when he left Santa Fe, he was far behind schedule. Picking up young Kit Carson and other volunteers at Taos, he followed the east slope of the Rockies into eastern Wyoming country, sometime during September reaching the North Platte River at Laramie’s Fork. Here he met Fraeb, who had been sent to look for him while the others waited impatiently with parched tongues at Green River. Fitzpatrick returned to St. Louis for supplies, while Fraeb led the recruits westward, traveling via Green River and Jackson’s Hole to “winter quarters on the head of Salmon River.” Thus there was no real summer rendezvous in 1831.

At this time the shadow of the American Fur Company, the great monopoly of the Upper Missouri region, fell across the Rocky Mountains. In February 1830 the newly organized “Western Department” of this company, determined to capture the lucrative mountain trade, sent out an expedition from St. Louis under Andrew Drips, Lucien Fontenelle and one Robidoux. Our chief source of information about this company during the early 1830’s is the journal of Warren A. Ferris. From an encampment near the Big Hole country of Montana, Ferris writes: “On the 8th [of October, 1831] two of our men accompanied by three or four Indians departed for the Trois Tetons, to meet Mr. Dripps who was expected this fall from the Council Bluffs, with an equipment of men, horses, and merchandise.”

From spring camping grounds on the Bear and Snake River tributaries, the brigades of the rival companies converged on Pierre’s Hole, where the Rocky Mountain Fur Company partners had scheduled their rendezvous for 1832. Although they welcomed peaceful Indians and “free” trappers, they expressly did not invite their competitors of the American Fur Company who, nevertheless decided to attend. Rumors of the impending conclave of the “mountain men” also reached the scattered bands of independent trappers, among whom was George Nidever. In the spring Nidever’s band trapped up the Green River until May, intending to continue on to “the head waters of the Columbia,” but turned back when they learned that “the place we intended going was already being trapped by other companies.” (This strongly suggests that somebody, probably Rocky Mountain men, were trapping in Jackson’s Hole prior to the rendezvous.) Returning to the Platte River, they met “O’Felon” and Moses “Black” Harris, two other independent traders, with whom they proceeded by way of Teton Pass to the rendezvous, where they arrived on July 4.

The experienced William Sublette, one-time partner, had contracted with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to supply trade goods, and to take out the beaver hides. With Robert Campbell he set out for St. Louis in May 1832 with over 100 men. At Independence he picked up a band of eighteen green New Englanders under Nathaniel J. Wyeth, an ambitious young man who had hopes of succeeding, where John Jacob Astor had failed, in establishing a fur-trading empire in Oregon. At Laramie’s Fork he recruited some twenty trappers under Alfred K. Stephens, and other trappers were picked up farther on. Not the least remarkable feature of this expedition was that at least five of its members kept notes—William Sublette, the methodical Nathaniel Wyeth, his brother John B. Wyeth, another of his followers named John Ball, and Zenas Leonard, one of the “free” trappers with Stephens.

Sublette’s account is contained in a letter to General Ashley, dated Lexington, Missouri, September 21, 1832. He indicates that he arrived at the head of the “Colorado of the West” (Green River) on July 2, being attacked that night by Blackfoot Indians; arrived “on the waters of the Columbia” July 4 “and at the rendezvous of the Rocky Mountain Hunters, on the Columbia river, west of the Three Teton Mountains,” on July 8. Nathaniel Wyeth’s diary agrees substantially with Sublette on chronology, but is much more illuminating. He clearly depicts the dangerous descent of the Hoback, the fording of “Lewis River” on July 6, and the climb up Teton Pass, “a gap of the mountains due south of the Trois Tetons.” The disillusioned brother, John Wyeth, gives us a dramatic picture:

On the 4th [6th?] of July, 1832, we arrived at Lewis’s fork [Snake
River], one of the largest rivers in these rocky mountains. It took us
all day to cross it. It is half a mile wide, deep and rapid. The way
we managed was this: one man unloaded his horse, and swam across with
him, leading two loaded ones, and unloading the two, brought them
back, for two more, and as Sublet’s company and our own made over a
hundred and fifty, we were all day in passing the river. In returning,
my mule, by treading on a round stone, stumbled and threw me off, and
the current was so strong, that a bush which I caught hold of only
saved me from drowning.

“Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick became “White Hair” Fitzpatrick as a result of events which befell him in 1832. Zenas Leonard states that in June 1832 while he was encamped at Laramie’s Fork:

Mr. Fitzpatrick and a company of 115 men came to our camp. He was on
his way [from St. Louis] to join his company on the west side of the
mountains, on the Columbia River, and to supply them with merchandise,
ammunition, horses, etc....

Having made this arrangement with Mr. F., our camp [on the Laramie]
was all confusion at an early hour this morning, preparing to depart
for the Columbia river. Mr. F. took one of the fleetest and most hardy
horses in his train, and set out in advance of the main body, in order
to discover the disposition of the various Indian tribes through whose
dominions we were to travel, and to meet us at a designated point on
the head of the Columbia river.

While en route to Pierre’s Hole, probably in the valley of Green River, Fitzpatrick was ambushed by or stumbled upon the hostile Gros Ventres, probably the same who later raided Sublette’s camp. By sacrificing his horse and secreting himself in a hole in the rocks, he managed to elude these savages, but nearly starved while wandering through the wilderness. Fitzpatrick’s whereabouts during his ordeal are not recorded, and in most accounts he merely turns up (on July 8, according to Ferris) in Pierre’s Hole in a pitiful state. Meek relates that “he made his appearance in camp in company with two Iroquois half-breeds, belonging to the camp, who had been out on a hunt,” which is also the way that Irving got it from Bonneville. George Nidever claims to have been one of these hunters, and, if his story is straight, Fitzpatrick was found in Jackson’s Hole: “A week or so after the arrival of the company a trapper by the name of Poe and I went out for a short hunt, and met Fitzpatrick crossing the Lewis Fork.... We piloted him back to camp.”

By the 17th of July the whiskey kegs were all empty, and the wild celebration which invariably climaxed every rendezvous of the fur traders perforce came to an end in Pierre’s Hole. On this day the combined companies of Nathaniel Wyeth and Milton Sublette set out for the lower Snake River. On the morning of the 18th they described a column of Gros Ventre tribesmen descending a hillside, “fantastically painted and arrayed, with scarlet blankets fluttering in the wind.” The ensuing conflict was a victory for the trappers. Some of the Indians escaped from their improvised fort into Jackson’s Hole, leaving perhaps twenty-six of their number dead, while their trail of blood suggested other heavy casualties. This battle upset the general time-table and delayed the various departures from the rendezvous. On the 24th of July, Wyeth and Milton Sublette resumed their journey which had before been so rudely interrupted, Wyeth eventually continuing on to visit the British establishments on the Pacific Coast. Captain Sublette was compelled to linger because of his injuries, and, on the 25th, seven who planned to accompany him to St. Louis became impatient and started out by themselves. These were Joseph More of Boston, one of Wyeth’s deserters, a Mr. Foy of Mississippi, Alfred K. Stephens, “two grandsons of the celebrated Daniel Boone,” and two others unidentified. In Jackson’s Hole, apparently near the mouth of the Hoback, they were ambushed by a band of Gros Ventres. More and Foy were killed instantly, while Stephens died from his wounds after he and the four survivors retreated with tiding of disaster to Sublette’s camp.

On July 30 Bridger and Fitzpatrick led the Rocky Mountain Fur Company brigades northward from Pierre’s Hole toward the headwaters of the Missouri, while William Sublette found himself sufficiently recovered to assist Campbell in organizing the homeward-bound caravan, composed of sixty men and a beaver-laden packtrain. According to Irving, “they chose a different route through the mountains, out of the way, as they hoped, of the lurking bands of Blackfeet. They succeeded in making the frontier in safety.” It seems evident that the Sublette caravan turned north after crossing the Snake and then ascended the Gros Ventre River and crossed over to Wind River by way of Union Pass. While the Sublette caravan was leaving the valley, they were shadowed by a “large body of the Blackfoot tribe,” doubtless the murderers of More and Foy, who showed a healthy respect for the heavily armed trappers. Thus it would seem that, while he did not entirely elude the Blackfeet, Sublette managed to bluff his way past them and avoid what might well have become the “Battle of Jackson’s Hole.”

At the Pierre’s Hole rendezvous, Drips and Vanderburgh, the American Fur Company partisans, were frustrated in their competitive effort by the fact that their supply train under Fontenelle had failed to arrive. It was now too late to bid for the furs taken out by Sublette, but they might follow Bridger and Fitzpatrick with profit if they only had trade goods. Accordingly, they resolved to hasten to Green River to see if they could find the belated caravan. The clerk, Warren A. Ferris, gives a detailed account of the passage through “Jackson’s Big Hole,” in early August:

In the evening we halted on a spring, four miles east of Lewis River,
after marching twenty-two miles. On the 5th we passed six or eight
miles southeast, and halted on the margin of the stream [Hoback],
flowing from that direction. During our march, some of the hunters saw
the bones of two men, supposed to be those killed from a party of
seven, in the latter part of July....

After losing one horse in precipitous Hoback Canyon, the party reached Jackson’s Little Hole, where they killed several buffalo, and successfully by-passed a large village of Indians. They crossed over to Green River, and on the 8th fell in with Fontenelle, “who had passed from St. Louis to the mouth of the Yellowstone in a steamboat, and thence with pack horses to this place.” Ferris accompanied Vanderburgh and Drips on the return trip in pursuit of Bridger. He writes:

On the 14th we passed through the Narrows, between Jackson’s Holes;
and avoided some of the difficulties we met on our previous passage,
by crossing the river, several times. In the evening we halted for the
night near the remains of two men, who were killed in July last. These
we collected, and deposited in a small stream, that discharged itself
into a fork of the Lewis river; that flows from Jackson’s Little Hole.

Captain Benjamin L. E. Bonneville, a Frenchman of distinguished antecedents, applied in 1831 for a leave of absence from the U.S. Army for the joint purpose of exploration and trade. With funds provided by hopeful New York capitalists he organized an impressive company, including 110 men and twenty ox-drawn wagons, and on May 1, 1832, he set out from Fort Osage. Bonneville’s wagon train was the second to ascend the traditional overland route along the Platte and the Sweetwater, and the first to cross South Pass. In the Green River Valley on July 26 the Captain was overtaken by Fontenelle’s company. On the west side of the Green, five miles above Horse Creek, he started the erection of Fort Bonneville, while his rival encamped farther upstream, for his jaded horses and mules would budge no further. After Fontenelle’s departure, above noted, the Captain decided upon the advice of “free trappers,” to head for Salmon River for the winter. Leaving his cumbersome wagons at the fort, he cached most of his baggage and then packed the rest on mules and horses. The expedition set forth on August 22, reaching Teton Pass on September 3. Instead of taking the standard route via the Hoback, where hostile Indians waited in ambush, Captain Bonneville elected to take a long circuitous route to the headwaters of Green River, entering Jackson’s Hole via the Gros Ventre River.

Following the rendezvous in Pierre’s Hole, the Rocky Mountain men conducted their fall hunt in the dangerous Blackfoot country around the Three Forks of the Missouri. In attempting to follow them, Vanderburgh of the American Fur Company was slain by the Blackfeet. During the winter of 1832-33 the various rival bands holed up along tributaries of the Snake and Salmon rivers; and at the first melting of the snow they resumed their feverish scramble for the prime hunting grounds.

Most of the other trapping bands remained west of the Continental Divide to make their spring hunt, and approached the Green River rendezvous through Jackson’s Hole. The first to stir in this direction was the American Fur Company partisan Drips, who led the bulk of his forces, probably about sixty men, up Snake River, hunting and trapping as they went. At the junction of Salt River, they were compelled to leave the Snake to make the toilsome detour over the Snake River Range and Teton Pass, which they reached on May 31. Ferris vividly describes their journey through the “immense banks of snow on the mountain,” the fording of “Lewis River,” and the ascent of “Gros Vent’s Fork” to the head of Green River. He notes, “We found a large herd of buffalo in the valley, and killed several; also a large bear, which paid with his life the temerity of awaiting our approach.”

Wyeth’s enterprise on the Columbia River was balked by the shipwreck of the vessel which was to supply him, and, after a fruitless winter at Fort Vancouver, he set out eastward with Francis Ermatinger of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Below the forks of the Snake they came up with Captain Bonneville. The Wyeth journal tells the story of their Jackson’s Hole passage via Teton Pass and the Hoback. He found “horse flies on the mountains ... buffalo in the bottom also mosquitoes.” Evidence of the recent trail of the “men of Dripps and Fontenelle” was observed, also the place where More and Foy were killed the year before. Of this passage Irving reports,

No accident of a disastrous kind occurred, excepting the loss of a
horse, which, in passing along the giddy edge of a precipice, called
the Cornice, a dangerous pass between Jackson’s and Pierre’s Hole,
fell over the brink, and was dashed to pieces.

On the 13th of July [1833], Captain Bonneville arrived at Green
River....

VII. “The Fire Hole”: Era of the American Fur Company, 1833-1840

By 1832 only fragments of the Yellowstone Park area had apparently been explored, notably the Lake region. According to Warren A. Ferris, one of the great geyser basins was visited in the spring hunt of 1833 by a party of forty men under a Spaniard named Alvaris (or Alvarez). They reached the area by going up Henry’s Fork, later returning to Green River for the rendezvous. This is the first concrete evidence of white men in the Firehole Basin. The discoverer may have been Manuel Alvarez, United States consul at Santa Fe from 1839 to 1846, who figures prominently in Josiah Gregg’s journal.

The rendezvous of 1833 was held at Bonneville’s fort on Horse Creek, tributary of Green River, near Daniel, Wyoming. The St. Louis supply caravan of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, led by Robert Campbell, included young Charles Larpenteur, who wrote in his journal of a side trip through Jackson’s Hole:

The day after we reached the rendezvous Mr. Campbell, with ten men,
started to raise a beaver cache at a place called by the French Trou a
Pierre, which means Peter’s Hole. As I was sick Mr. Campbell left me
in camp, and placed Mr. Fitzpatrick in charge during his absence,
telling the latter to take good care of me ... after seven or eight
days Mr. Campbell returned with ten packs of beaver.

An epidemic of hydrophobia brought on by “mad wolves” seems to have contributed to the early break-up of the 1833 meeting. Campbell, Wyeth, and the partners of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company with fifty-five packs of beaver and a strong guard circled down through South Pass and up to the junction of the Shoshone and the Bighorn rivers, where they embarked on bullboats for the mouth of the Yellowstone. Here Wyeth was entertained at the palatial Fort Union by the famous Kenneth McKenzie, and observed a powder flask which had belonged to the unfortunate More, and which had found its way here from Jackson’s Hole by the devious channels of the fur trade.

While Bonneville outfitted an expedition under Joseph R. Walker to explore California (and discover Yosemite Valley), the American Fur Company brigades headed for the Snake River country. On July 20 Warren A. Ferris and Robert Newell departed at the head of an outfit destined for the Flathead trade. The little party consisted of six “engages” with pack horses, and five armed Indians, amounting in all to thirteen armed men. Their route was the usual one via Hoback Canyon and Teton Pass. The ecstatic description of Jackson’s Hole from the summit of the pass, given by Ferris on this occasion, is one which can be appreciated by the modern tourist:

... Gazing down in the direction of Jackson’s Hole, from our elevated
position, one of the most beautiful scenes imaginable, was presented
to our view. It seemed quite filled with large bright clouds,
resembling immense banks of snow, piled on each other in massy
numbers, of the purest white; wreathing their ample folds in various
forms and devious convolutions, and mingling in one vast embrace their
shadowy substance.—Sublime creations! emblems apt of the first
glittering imaginings of human life!...

Turning with reluctance to things of a more terrestrial nature we
pursued our way down to Pierre’s Hole, where we fortunately discovered
and killed a solitary bull....

The rendezvous of 1834 was scheduled for June on Ham’s Fork of the Green near present Granger, Wyoming; and here converged all the scattered trapper bands, with the exception of those in the pay of Bonneville, who had his own private rendezvous on Bear River. Drips hunted up the Snake River to Jackson’s Hole, and apparently crossed into the valley of the Green from there. Behind him came Ferris. On his southward journey from Montana country, Ferris decided to make a side trip from Henry’s Fork to investigate strange rumors concerning the upper Madison, a trip which resulted in the second known published description of the Yellowstone Park wonders.

Ferris, a native of New York who later resided in Texas, made his first western journey with the American Fur Company in 1830. Hardly a typical mountain man, he kept a journal of his travels entitled “Life in the Rocky Mountains,” which appeared serially in 1842 and 1843 in the Western Literary Messenger, an obscure weekly published in Buffalo, New York. The piece containing an account of his visit to the geyser region in 1834 appeared on July 13, 1842, attracted no special attention at the time except that of the editors of the Nauvoo, Illinois, Wasp, who ran it without credit in their edition of August 13, 1842. Olin D. Wheeler discovered it and republished it in 1901. Its historical importance as the first adequate description of the geysers by an eyewitness (and the second published description of any portion of Yellowstone Park) was appreciated by Chittenden, but his identity and the magnificent scope of his journal was not fully understood until its republication with extensive editorial notes by Dr. Paul C. Phillips in 1940. It was in May 1834, while his brigade was traveling through Idaho country en route to the rendezvous on Ham’s Fork of the Green, that Ferris and two Indian companions made a hurried side trip, going almost due east forty miles. His object was to verify the rumors concerning “remarkable boiling spring on the sources of the Madison” which he had heard at the rendezvous of 1833. He soon realized that “the half was not told me.” A fragment of his vivid description follows:

From the surface of a rocky plain or table, burst forth columns of
water, of various dimensions, projected high in the air, accompanied
by loud explosions, and sulphurous vapors, which were highly
disagreeable to the smell. The rock from which these springs burst
forth, was calcareous, and probably extends some distance from them,
beneath the soil. The largest of these wonderful fountains, projects a
column of boiling water several feet in diameter, to the height of
more than one hundred and fifty feet—in my opinion; but the party of
Alvarez, who discovered it, persist in declaring that it could not be
less than four times that distance in height—accompanied with a
tremendous noise. These explosions and discharges occur at intervals
of about two hours.

After this adventure, he returned to Henry’s Fork and thence to Pierre’s Hole, crossing Teton Pass on May 24. In the Hoback Canyon he found evidence that a party under Drips had preceded him.

Less well known than the vivid description by Ferris but even more remarkable is his “Map of the Northwest Fur Country,” drawn in 1836. Lying in the family trunk for over a century, unknown to geographers and historians, it was made available in 1940 for publication with the journals. This is, to quote Dr. Phillips, “the most detailed and accurate of all the early maps of the region,” far superior in accuracy to the famous maps by Bonneville, Parker, John C. Fremont, and others which were published contemporaneously. In addition to mountain chains, valleys, and trails, it locates such fascinating details as “Yellow stone L.,” “Boiling water,” and “Volcanoes” near the south shore of the lake and “spouting fountains” within the “Burnt Hole” at the head of Madison River, indicating the present West Thumb thermal area and the Upper Geyser Basin on Firehole River, respectively. The context of the journal, together with the evidence of the map, suggests that Ferris beheld and described Old Faithful, the geyser which has become the symbol of Yellowstone National Park.

In August of 1834 a party of fifty-five men in Bonneville’s employ led by Joseph H. Walker ascended Pacific Creek from Jackson’s Hole and after some debate “agreed to move down onto Wind River,” instead of descending the Yellowstone. Thus Walker, who had previously discovered Yosemite Valley, and Zenas Leonard, the journalist of the expedition, missed the big exploring opportunity which Ferris had grasped.

The quaint nomenclature bestowed on certain locales and landmarks by the mountain trappers offer more than one clue to their shadowy passage. The Gardner River Valley at Swan Lake Flats, between Mammoth Hot Springs and Obsidian Cliff, seems to be the most likely locale of the beaver-rich “Gardner’s Hole” frequented by the mountain men, probably named for Johnson Gardner, a freelance trapper who must have frequented those parts at least as early as 1834, possibly as early as 1830 as Chittenden suggests. His name appears in the Fort Union account books of 1832, which include an agreement to purchase his stock of beaver skins then cached on Yellowstone River. In 1834 he fell in with Prince Maximilian of Wied on the Lower Missouri, revealing to that distinguished traveler that “he was on his return from hunting beavers on the Upper Yelowstone.”

Three significant events occurred in connection with the rendezvous of 1834. (1) En route from St. Louis, Sublette and Campbell began the building of Fort Laramie (originally Fort William) on the North Platte. (2) Nathaniel Wyeth, embarking on a second venture, brought in trade goods which were not accepted, and so resorted to the establishment of Fort Hall near the junction of the Snake and Portneuf. The advent of these two fixed trading posts prophesied an end to the traditional rendezvous system. Also (3), at the rendezvous the partnership of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was dissolved, Fraeb and Gervais selling out their interests. The remaining partners—Fitzpatrick, Bridger, and Milton Sublette—formed a new firm, but they made an agreement with Fontenelle which gave the American Fur Company a virtual monopoly of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.

Among those whom Nathaniel Wyeth had left at Fort Hall in 1834 was a young man named Osborne Russell, whose subsequent career as a trapper was hardly typical, for among his trapping accessories were copies of Shakespeare and the Bible! Although later a prominent pioneer of Oregon and California, his claim to fame rests on his Journal of a Trapper, which “as a precise and intimate firsthand account of the daily life of the trapper explorer ... has no equal,” except that of Warren A. Ferris, who left the mountain scene just as Russell arrived. On the 15th of June 1835 a party of fourteen trappers and ten camp keepers was made up. Writes Russell:

Here we again fell on to Lewis’ Fork, which runs in a southerly
direction through a valley about eighty miles long, there turning to
the mountains through a narrow cut in the mountain to the mouth of
Salt River, about thirty miles. This valley was called ‘Jackson Hole.’
It is generally from five to fifteen miles wide. The southern part
where the river enters the mountains is hilly and uneven, but the
northern portion is wide, smooth and comparatively even, the whole
being covered with wild sage and surrounded by high and rugged
mountains upon whose summit the snow remains during the hottest months
in summer. The alluvial bottoms along the river and streams
intersecting it through the valley produced a luxuriant growth of
vegetation, among which wild flax and a species of onion were
abundant. The great altitude of this place, however, connected with
the cold descending from the mountains at night, I think would be a
serious obstruction to the growth of most kinds of cultivated grains.
This valley, like all other parts of the country, abounded with game.

After a nearly disastrous attempt to cross “Lewis Fork” by bullboat and raft, the party discovered a ford, and then ascended Gros Ventre Fork. The party became lost in the mountains for several weeks, missing out on the Green River rendezvous. After extricating themselves from the craggy wilderness of the Absarokas, the party reached the Lamar River or East Fork of the Yellowstone, where they encountered some woebegone Sheepeater Indians, and lost a hunter. They apparently forded the Yellowstone at the lower end of the Grand Canyon near the mouth of Antelope Creek, at a point just above the spectacular Tower Falls and the Basaltic Cliffs where the river “rushes down a chasm with a dreadful roar echoing among the mountains.” From “Gardner’s Hole” the party then crossed the mountains to Gallatin and Madison forks, where they fell in with a trapping brigade under Bridger. Just below the Madison Canyon the combined forces were attacked by eighty Blackfeet and narrowly escaped massacre.

The supply caravan under Fitzpatrick arrived at the Green River rendezvous on August 12, 1835. Accompanying him were two famous missionaries—Marcus Whitman, who distinguished himself among the trappers by extracting an Indian arrow from the back of Captain Bridger, and Reverend Samuel Parker, who alienated them by his overzealous moralizing. However, Parker made quite a hit with the assembled Flatheads and was so enthusiastic over their eagerness for Christian knowledge that it was decided that he would accompany them to their homes, while Whitman would return to the states to recruit help for a permanent mission in Oregon. Parker tells of his journey westward:

August 21st, commenced our journey in company with Capt. Bridger, who
goes with about fifty men, six or eight days’ journey on our route.
Instead of going down on the southwest side of Lewis’ river, we
concluded to take our course northerly for the Trois Tetons, which are
three very high mountains, covered with perpetual snow, separated from
the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, and are seen at a very great
distance; and from thence to Salmon river....

On the 22d ... we ... arrived at what is called Jackson’s Hole
[Jackson’s Little Hole]....

Sabbath, 23d. Had an opportunity for rest and devotional exercises. In
the afternoon we had public worship with those of the company who
understood English. The men conducted with great propriety, and
listened with attention....

Arose very early on the 24th, and commenced our way through the narrow
defile, frequently crossing and recrossing a large stream of water
[Hoback] which flows into the Snake river....

... on the 25th, [we] encamped in a large pleasant valley, commonly
called Jackson’s large hole. It is fertile and well watered with a
branch of Lewis’ river coming from the southeast [Hoback], and another
of some magnitude coming from the northeast [Snake River itself],
which is the outlet of Jackson’s lake, a body of water situated just
south of the Trois Tetons....

We continued in this encampment three days, to give our animals an
opportunity to recruit, and for Captain Bridger to fit and send out
several of his men into the mountains to hunt and trap....

On the 28th, we pursued our journey and passed over a mountain [Teton
Pass] so high, that banks of snow were but a short distance from our
trail. When we had ascended two-thirds of the way, a number of
buffalo, which were pursued by our Indians, came rushing down the side
of the mountain through the midst of our company....

In [Pierre’s Hole] ... I parted with Captain Bridger and his party,
who went northeast into the mountains to their hunting ground, which
the Blackfeet claim, and for which they will contend.

According to the impious Joseph L. Meek, the sermon on Sunday the 23rd in Jackson’s Little Hole (the site of which has been memorialized by the State of Wyoming as that of “the first Protestant sermon in the Rocky Mountains”) was not such a great success as Parker makes out, for, “in the midst of the discourse, a band of buffalo appeared in the valley, when the congregation broke up, without staying for a benediction,” and every man excitedly joined in the hunt.

Another who accompanied this expedition was Kit Carson. Parker gave Carson his initial shove into immortality by relating the story of his victory at the rendezvous over a “great bully” named Shunar:

... I will relate an occurrence which took place near evening, as a
specimen of mountain life. A hunter, who goes technically by the name
of the great bully of the mountains, mounted his horse with a loaded
rifle, and challenged any Frenchman, American, Spaniard, or Dutchman,
to fight him in single combat. Kit Carson, an American, told him if he
wished to die, he would accept the challenge. Shunar defied him. C.
mounted his horse, and with a loaded pistol, rushed into close
contact, and both almost at the same instant fired. C’s ball entered
S’s hand, came out at the wrist, and passed through the arm above the
elbow. Shunar’s ball passed over the head of Carson; and while he went
for another pistol, Shunar begged that his life might be spared. Such
scenes, sometimes from passion, and sometimes for amusement, make the
pastime of their wild and wandering life.

Another rendezvous was held for the summer of 1836, again on Horse Creek tributary of Green River. Fitzpatrick and Fontenelle arrived with the supply caravan on July 3. With them were the missionaries Marcus Whitman and H. H. Spalding, accompanied by their wives, the first white women ever to attend a rendezvous of the mountain men and doubtless the first to come within 100 miles of the future Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks. At this meeting Major Joshua Pilcher, as agent for the American Fur Company, formally and legally took over the interests of Bridger, Fitzpatrick, and Fontenelle, thus consolidating the monopoly. The missionaries, accompanied by Hudson’s Bay Company agents, followed the Bear River route westward. The fur trappers were left in the mountains with Drips, Fontenelle, and Bridger. Says Osborne Russell:

Mr. Bridger’s party, as usual, was destined for the Blackfoot country.
It contained most of the American trappers and amounted to sixty men.
I started with a party of fifteen trappers and two camp keepers,
ordered by Mr. Bridger to proceed to the Yellowstone Lake and there
await his arrival with the rest of the party.

Russell entered Jackson’s Hole by way of the upper Green and Gros Ventre rivers, followed the Snake River north to Jackson Lake, and on August 7 started up Buffalo Fork, to reach Two Ocean Pass. On August 13, he camped at the inlet of Yellowstone Lake, and on the 16th “Mr. Bridger came up with the remainder of the party.” They followed along the eastern shore of the lake to its outlet at present Fishing Bridge, and camped again “in a beautiful plain which extended along the northern extremity of the lake.” Russell describes the lake as “about 100 miles in circumference ... lying in an oblong form south to north, or rather in the shape of a crescent.” His further description of the boiling springs, hot steam vents, and the hollow limestone crustation “of dazzling whiteness,” apparently in Hayden Valley, ranks him with Potts and Ferris as a pioneer journalist of the Park phenomena.

In 1837 Thomas Fitzpatrick again led the supply train across the plains, picking up Fontenelle at Fort Laramie, and arriving at the rendezvous on July 18. After the business of that year was transacted, Drips returned east with Fitzpatrick’s caravan, and Fontenelle and Bridger made up a strong company of 110 men to invade the hostile Blackfoot country. Osborne Russell and five others started off separately “to hunt the headwaters of the Yellowstone, Missouri and Bighorn Rivers.” Going due north up Green River, they were attacked by “sixty or seventy” Blackfeet, but managed to escape to the rendezvous. Here they wisely decided to throw in with Fontenelle’s party, as Russell explains, “intending to keep in their company five or six days and then branch off to our first intended route.” After descending the Hoback, Russell and three others left the main party at the ford of “Lewis Fork” in “Jackson’s Big Hole” and took the same route to Yellowstone Lake used the preceding year, then went northeast over the mountains to gain the “Stinking Water.”

In the spring of 1838 the company moved westward from Powder River, trapping the Bighorn and other tributaries of the Yellowstone. Russell and Meek report another fight with the Blackfeet on the Madison, followed by a gathering of the brigade on the north fork of the Yellowstone, near the lake. Afterward, Meek reports:

Bridger’s brigade of trappers met with no other serious interruptions
on their summer’s march. They proceeded to Henry’s Lake, and crossing
the Rocky Mountains, traveled through the Pine Woods, always a
favorite region, to Lewis’ Lake on Lewis’ Fork of the Snake River
[Jackson Lake]; and finally up the Grovant Fork, recrossing the
mountains to Wind River, where the rendezvous was appointed.

Osborne Russell describes this rendezvous of 1838:

... [July] 4th—We encamped at the Oil Spring on Popo-azia, and the
next day we arrived at the camp. There we found Mr. Dripps from St.
Louis, with twenty horse carts loaded with supplies, and again met
Captain Stewart, likewise several missionaries with their families on
their way to the Columbia River. On the 8th Mr. F. Ermatinger arrived
with a small party from the Columbia, accompanied by the Rev. John
Lee, who was on his way to the United States. On the 20th of July the
meeting broke up and the parties again dispersed for the fall hunt.

The Captain Stewart referred to by Russell was an English veteran of Waterloo, Sir William Drummond Stewart, ostensibly a wealthy sportsman, who became a perennial visitor to the annual conclaves of the “mountain men,” beginning in 1833. He probably entered Jackson’s Hole on more than one occasion, in company with the trapper bands, but of this there is no proof, except the following passage to be found in Altowan, a romantic novel based on his experiences:

On the banks of a small stream, which ultimately finds its way into
the upper waters of Snake River, a rugged path, made by the bison
descending from a pass above, winds its way through the dwarf willows
and quaking asp that line its side ... on a sudden turn of the road
round a projecting cliff, Altowan stopped to contemplate the scene
below, which, though not new to him, is one of undying wonder and
magnificence. Far over an extensive vale rise ‘the three Tetons,’ high
above surrounding mountains; their peaked heads shine white against
the azure sky, while other ranges succeed each other like waves beyond
and beyond, until they merge into the purple haze of the Western
Horizon.

By 1838, competition for beaver pelts was beginning to exhaust the streams, and the law of diminishing returns was making itself felt in the Rocky Mountain fur trade. Nevertheless, after the rendezvous of that year, the field commanders of the company assembled their trappers for another invasion of the Jackson’s Hole country. Again Osborne Russell illuminates the scene:

I started, with about thirty trappers, up Wind River, expecting the
camp to follow in a few days. During our stay at the rendezvous it was
rumored among the men that the company intended to bring no more
supplies to the Rocky Mountains, and discontinue all further
operations. This caused a great deal of discontent among the trappers
and numbers left the party. 21st—We traveled up Wind River about
thirty miles and encamped. 22nd—Continued up the river till noon, then
left it to our right, traveled over a high ridge covered with pines,
in a westerly direction about fifteen miles, and fell on to the
Grosvent Fork. Next day we traveled about twenty miles down Grosvent
Fork. 24th—Myself and another crossed the mountain in a northwest
direction, fell on to a stream running into Lewis Fork, about ten
miles below Jackson’s Lake. Here we staid and trapped until the 29th.
Then we started back to the Grosvent Fork, where we found the camp,
consisting of about sixty men, under the direction of Mr. Dripps, with
James Bridger pilot.

The next day the camp followed down the Grosvent Fork to Jackson’s
Hole. In the meantime myself and comrade returned to our traps, which
we raised, and took over the mountain in a southwest direction and
overtook the camp on Lewis Fork. The whole company was starving.
Fortunately I had killed a deer in crossing the mountain, which made
supper for the whole camp. Aug. 1st—We crossed Lewis Fork and encamped
and staid the next day. 3d.—Camp crossed the mountain to Pierre’s Hole
and the day following I started with my former comrade to hunt beaver
on the streams which ran from the Yellowstone....

Russell’s side trip appears to have been made cross country from near the Cottonwood Creek tributary of the Gros Ventre over the foothills of Mt. Leidy to Spread Creek, where he set traps, then back along this same route to Bridger’s camp on the Gros Ventre, then back to Spread Creek, and later down the Snake River, rejoining the main camp near the mouth of the Gros Ventre. Russell’s account of the main expedition fits in very well with the brief entry in Newell’s diary—“up Wind River into Jackson’s Hole, on to Pier’s Hole.” Another trapper present was young Jim Baker, famous Wyoming pioneer, who was making his first visit to the mountains.

An entry in Russell’s journal indicates that a party of trappers from Fort Hall reached Yellowstone Lake in 1838. Meek alleges that he went alone to Gardner’s Hole after the rendezvous and later to Burnt Hole, the neighborhood of Hebgen Lake. Here he left a joking message on a buffalo skull.

Some evidence of wintering in Jackson’s Hole is given by Robert Newell:

Capt. Drips left in December for Wind River with his camp. Capt.
Walker remained on Green River with a small party, where we are now.
Snow about one foot. January 26, 1839, buffalow scarce. I spent last
Christmas in Jackson’s Hole. We spent the balance of the winter down
on Green River, over on Ham’s Fork, the spring commencing to open the
first of March, 1839.

Kit Carson writes:

On the return of Spring we commenced our hunt, trapped the tributaries
of the Missouri to the head of Lewis Fork, and then started for the
rendezvous on Green River, near the mouth of Horse Creek....

In March, Meek, after wintering among the Nez Perces on the Salmon River, and acquiring an Indian wife (apparently his third), set out trapping again with a comrade named Allen to whom he was much attached.

They traveled along up and down the Salmon, to Godin’s River, Henry’s
Fork of the Snake, to Pierre’s Fork, and Lewis’ Fork, and the Muddy,
and finally set their traps on a little stream that runs out of the
pass which leads to Pierre’s Hole.

Correlated with other data, the “pass which leads to Pierre’s Hole” sounds very much like Teton Pass. Here, according to Victor, a horrible event occurred. Ambushed by Blackfeet, Meek managed to escape in a thicket, but the hapless Allen was caught, shot, and then gleefully dismembered within sight and sound of his companion. Meek is supposed to have wriggled away during the night and, “after twenty-six days of solitary and cautious travel,” escaped to the place of rendezvous.

Information on the rendezvous of 1839 has survived through the account of F. A. Wislizenus, a German doctor and political refugee, who accompanied the St. Louis supply train in the interests of curiosity and recreation. In addition to offering a vivid picture of proceedings at the rendezvous, he also comments on the decline of the fur trade in the Rocky Mountains. Wislizenus, Ermatinger of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Munger-Griffin missionary party, and several hundred Indians left the rendezvous for Fort Hall, going by the Bear River route, which was soon to become a part of the Oregon Trail. As for the trappers, it appears that some of them, yielding to fate, disbanded, but Meek and Newell were among those who went to Fort Hall and later trapped around Brown’s Hole (a valley made by the Green River along the northern base of the Uinta Range). Others were still attracted to Jackson’s Hole, the heart of the prime beaver country. An eminent pioneer of Montana, W. T. Hamilton, got it from “old-timers” that:

In the year 1839 a party of forty men started on an expedition up the
Snake River. In the party were Ducharme, Louis Anderson, Jim and John
Baker, Joe Power, L’Humphrie, and others. They passed Jackson’s Lake,
catching many beaver, and crossed the Continental Divide, following
down the Upper Yellowstone—Elk—River to the Yellowstone Lake.

This party was attacked by the Blackfeet near the outlet of Yellowstone Lake, suffering a loss of five men. The survivors, while trapping the Park, witnessed “Sulphur Mountain,” the Mud Volcano, Yellowstone Falls at the head of the Canyon, and the pyrotechnic displays of “Fire Hole Basin.”