by Don Berry
Finally, on the 19th of April, the party reached the Green River and camped about fifteen miles above the mouth of the Sandy.
On my arrival . . . [at the Green] . .. I determined to relieve my men and horses of their heavy burdens to accomplish which, I concluded to make four divisions of my party, send three of them by land in different directions, and, with the fourth party, descend the river myself with the principal part of my merchandise.
Zacharias Ham took a party of six men "Westerly to a mountanous country that lay in that direction," i.e., to the Ham’s Fork Plateau, just beyond which is the valley of the Bear River. On this journey Ham doubtless fell upon and named Ham’s Fork of the Green, one off the important streams in the subsequent history of the trade.
Clyman "with six men to the sources of the Shetskadee," i.e., north, working the area covered by Tom Fitzpatrick and himself the previous year.
Fitzpatrick "with 6 men southwardly," paralleling by land Ashley’s own water route down the Green.
Before dispatching these parties Ashley wrote out a detailed set of instructions for each of the leaders. These instructions dealt with "The place of rendavoze for all our parties on or before the 10th July next" and gave a list of signs which Ashley would make to designate the spot:
Trees will be pealed standing the most conspicuous near the Junction of the rivers or above the mountains as the case may be—should such point be without timber will raise a mound of Earth five feet high or set up rocks the top of which will be made red with vermillion thirty feet distant from the same—and one foot below the surface of the earth a northwest direction will be deposited a letter communicating to the party any thing that I may deem necessary . . .
Thus were the arrangements made for the first of the most famous of mountain institutions, the annual rendezvous. It is certain that Ashley had not yet realized how important the idea of the rendezvous was; it is equally certain that by the end of the first one he had been struck by the inescapable logic of it.
The rendezvous, when it became standard procedure, gave the American trapper an enormous advantage over the British brigades coming down from the north. In order to penetrate the mountains in time for the spring hunt a party had to leave their permanent base in the dead of winter, enduring the kind of hardship the vast winter had dealt both Ogden and Ashley. The time and energy spent in the simple transportation of a trapping party to its grounds were inestimable, and constituted the greatest expense inherent in the trade.
On the other hand, suppose the trappers remained in the mountains for the winter; didn’t come back to civilization at all, but wintered on the spot with friendly Indians or in camps of their own. A supply party could reach them at a predetermined spot in the summer, when hunting was poor anyway, and take their furs back. The trappers themselves would have nothing to do with the eventual marketing of their pelts; that would be left to better businessmen than they; they would simply live in the mountains permanently but without permanent base, which suited most of them fine. This was the beginning of the mountain man.
But this first rendezvous, of 1825, was not conceived as a permanent fixture of the trade. It was simply a gesture of expediency, an attempt to round up Ashley’s widely scattered bands of trappers;
From the 19th to the 2lst of April they remained in camp on the Green while Ashley prepared for his voyage by water. A bullboat measuring sixteen by seven feet was constructed for his party and loaded with the merchandise he had brought with him and the furs taken en route. He would deposit these at "some conspicuous point not less than 40 or 50 miles from this place," and that would be the place of rendezvous. He intended to continue beyond this point himself, being anxious to find out where the "Shetskadee" went; it was not clear from the existing information whether this was a part of the Pacific drainage system or not, and the knowledge was essential.
He left camp on the 2lst and began the first attempt to navigate the Green River.
IV
The bullboat made forty miles the first day, but the general discovered she was too heavily burdened, and clumsy. The next day was spent making a companion craft. On the 24th they got under way again, with goods and crew distributed between the two boats. While in this camp they were overtaken by the land party under Fitzpatrick, who supplied themselves briefly and went on ahead.
Ashley selected his rendezvous point on the lst of May, but changed his mind a few days later when he reached Henry’s Fork: "finding this a much more suitable place for a Randavouze I have made marks indicative of my intention to randavouze here."
He named the stream Randavouze Creek, but the name didn’t stick; it became Henry’s Fork. 'So far," Ashley notes, "the navigation of this river is without the least obstruction."
It was an optimistic note, but didn’t last long:
we continued our voyage about half a mile below our camp, when we entered between the walls of this range of mountains, which approach at this point to the waters edge on either side of the river and rise almost perpendicular to an immense height. The channel of the river is here contracted to the width of sixty or seventy yards, and the current (much increased in velocity) as it rolled along in angry submission to the serpentine walls that direct it, seemed constantly to threaten us with danger as we advanced.
He was now in Flaming Gorge Canyon. In spite of the ominous aspect the river was beginning to assume, they 'succeeded in descending about ten miles without any difficulty or material change in the aspect of things and encamped for the night."
The next day Ashley entered Red Canyon, just over the border of present Utah, where the river turns east: "the navigation became difficult and dangerous at twenty miles from our last camp, the roaring and agitated state of the water a short distance before us indicated a fall or some other obstruction of considerable magnitude?
This fall is now known as Ashley Falls. The bullboats had to be unloaded and lined over the falls. The party camped for the night a mile below the falls. While here Ashley painted a famous inscription on the cliffs overlooking the river. It read, simply enough, Ashley—1825; virtually the same legend every schoolboy marks on some monument or other. Ashley wasn’t marking a monument, however; he was making one. For many years after, during the period when Ashley himself had been forgotten, this enigmatic note gave rise to much speculation as to who the writer might have been. It was certainly a shock to the travelers of 1849, who thought they were the first white men to see this canyon."
Things got worse and worse; the rapids more frequent and more violent, and the necessity for portages slowing them down. Finally, in Split Mountain Canyon, he tried to keep the boats in the water too long. They discovered "at the distance of about 4 or 500 yards . . . a verry great & dangerous fall." The smaller of the two boats, bringing up the rear capsized, which turned out to be good fortune; it kept her where she was until word of this fall had been relayed. Ashley’s boat was ahead, and by the time they discovered the falls it was too late to land. "I discovered from the appearances of the rocks that our only way & that doubtful . . . was to lay the boat straight with the current and pass in the middle of the river."
Just after they entered the "heavy billows our boat filled with water but did not sink." Wallowing in the middle of the stream, the bulky craft was caught by the current and thrown against a rock near the base of the rapids. It swung off into an eddy, "two of the most active men then leaped in the water took the cables and towed her to land just as from all appearances she was making her exit with me with her for cannot swim & my only hopes was that the boat would not sink."
James P. Beckwourth figures largely in this story, in spite of the fact that he was hundreds off miles away, and going in the other direction, to boot. In Life and Adventures he had saved the general from a wound-maddened buffalo only a page or so before, and in the shipwreck now rescues Ashley from the seething torrent. (In his account James P. Beckwourth does say the general was no swimmer, which the general’s journal confirms. It should be admitted
, however, that until Dale Morgan’s identification of the Ashley diary historians had scoffed at the idea of Ashley’s shipwreck entirely; but James P. Beckwourth was right and they were wrong.)
By May 16 Ashley had finished his passage through the Uinta Mountains and camped at the mouth of the stream since known as Ashley’s Fork. There (apparently) he met two of the men from Provost and Leclerc’s party, who gave him the intelligence that the country south of him was dangerous and barren of game. Nevertheless, the general decided to continue a little farther down, probably in hopes of contacting the main body of Provost’s trappers.
He came upon Provost’s winter camp at the mouth of the White River (two miles below the Duchesne). Nobody home. The trappers were out—on their way to the meeting with Peter Skene Ogden, in fact—but there was a note saying Leclerc was six miles farther down with goods. Back into, the boats and downstream; but Leclerc wasn’t there either, having been forced by the scarcity of game out on an extended hunting party.
Rations were short for Ashley too at this point. He detached half his party (three men) to scout for game, while he and the remaining three followed the river a little farther down to check on the unfavorable report of Provost’s men. It was true enough, the country along the river being, according to his own notation, "a barren heap of rocky mountains" The remainder of May was spent attempting to buy provisions and horses from the local Indians (Utes). It was not until the 7th of June that he made contact with his trappers again. By that time he was moving west toward the Great Basin, and encountered Etienne Provost, with a party of twelve men. Ashley now got the first direct news of his detached parties, and—what with the account of the desertion of Ogden’s Iroquois—something more than that. For the first time the general learned of Jedediah Smith’s international entanglement and his trip to the Flathead post; of the fact that Weber had wintered on the Bear River; and of the present whereabouts of both parties, now united.
On the 15th of June, after raising Ashley’s cache back on the Green River, the combined parties set out again for the Great Basin, guided by Provost. There is no direct record of Ashley’s reunion with his men, but the chances are it followed James P. Beckwourth’s description closely: "The night was spent in general rejoicing, in relating our adventures,
and recounting our various successes and reverses."
The recounting of successes and reverses was the winter night pastime of the mountain man, and the summer rendezvous had its fair share, too. A number of friends were reunited in June—Smith and Fitzpatrick and Clymana and Sublette—and the tales, without doubt, flowed freely. (It must not be supposed that, because I’ve made a certain amount of sport with James P. Beckwourth, he was the only "gaudy liar" in the mountains; a good liar was highly regarded around the fire and American mythology has been greatly enriched by these imaginings, not even excluding those of the redoubtable blacksmith.
At any rate, all the parties were together by July l, in two encampments about twenty miles from Ashley’s designated rendezvous:
when it appeared ‘[wrote Ashley] that we had been scattered over the territory west of the mountains in small detachments from the 38th to the 44th degree of latitude, and the only injury we had sustained by Indian depredations was the stealing of 17 horses by the Crows . . . and the loss of one man killed on the headwaters of the Rio Colorado, by a party of Indians unknown.
There on the Green River near the mouth of Henry’s Fork, the first of the great mountain rendezvous was held, July 1, 1825.
CHAPTER 8
"Has indemnified himself for all . . . losses"
ASHLEY had two immediate points of business to conduct at the rendezvous, the first being naturally the collection of furs and distribution of supplies. (James P. Beckwourth comments that "The general would open none of his goods, except tobacco, until all had arrived, as he wished to make an equal distribution; for goods were then very scarce in the mountains, and hard to obtain," which is quite likely.) There was more at this rendezvous than the general had counted on; about 120 men, counting the twenty-nine who had, in Ashley's discreet phrase, "recently withdrawn from the Hudson Bay. Company." And this does not count the wives and
children who accompanied the deserters.
Wives and children .... This was a new concept for Ashley, and probably for his trappers as well. While the HBC brigades customarily moved about like a small village, the Americans were going in minuscule parties; just passing through, so to speak, and in consequently greater danger from Indians than the larger British parties.
The logic of permanent residence in the mountains must have occurred to many men during this rendezvous; it certainly occurred to Ashley himself, and probably through his conversations with the knowledgeable old Iroquois Pierre Tevanitagon. In talking with Pierre, a whole new picture of mountain operations must have been shaped in Ashley’s mind. From our comfortable vantage point of a hundred-odd years we can see the final shape of the American fur trade beginning to crystallize here, and quite suddenly.
Ashley had brought with him the means of conducting a trade, a business: powder, lead, traps, knives, iron, a few trading trinkets, some coffee and sugar. But the notations he made on supplies for the next year included something else; it was not a list for supplying a trade, but for supplying a way of life. In addition to the necessities as above: combs and earrings and ribbons, soap and "slay bel1s" and sewing silk; there would be women involved in this new system. A breed of men was being born at Rendezvous 1825 whose way of life would set them apart from any other group in history: the mountain men.
Beaver was going for $3 a pound from the free trappers; $2 a pound from some others (probably those with a previous outfitting arrangement and its subsequent debt). The HBC deserters were paid at the going rate, and "Thyery" Goddin turned in 136 pounds.
These skins were paid for in merchandise at the following prices:
Butcher Knives. .$ .75
Lead ................... 1.00/lb
Coffee ................ 1.50/lb
3 pt. blankets. ... . 9.00
Cloth ................... 4-5.00/yd
Awls .................... 2.00/doz
2% pt. Blankets.... 7.00
Square axes .......... 2.50
Alspice ................. 1.50/lb
Common quality
V Flannel .............. 1.50/yd
Domestic cotton.... 1.25/yd »
Assorted beads. .... 2.50/lb ‘
4th Proof Rum. ....14.50/gal
Handkerchiefs ....... 1.50/ea
Buttons .................. 5.00/gross
Flints ........................ .50/doz
Fire Steels .............. 2.00/lb
Washing soap. . . .....1.25/lb -
James River
tobacco ................... 1.75/lb
Powder ............. .. $ 1.50/lb
Tobacco .................. 1.25/lb
Sugar ....................... 1.50/lb
Scarlet Cloth ....... . 6.00/yd
Beads ...................... 5.00
N. W. Fuzils .......... 24.00 l A
Sheet Iron kettles...... 2.25 /lb
Flour ......................... 1.00/lb .
Raisins ...................... 1.50/lb
Assorted Calicos....... 1.00/yd
Thread assorted......... 3.00/lb
Vermillion ................. 3.00/lb
Tin pans.; ..,............... 2.00/lb
Ribbons assorted.........3.00/bolt
Looking glasses . ........ 50/ea
Copper kettles . . ........ 3.00/lb
Dried Fruit .................. 1.50/lb
Shaving soap ............... 2.00/lb
' Steel bracelets . ........ 1.50/pair
Large brass wire .......... 2.00/lb. `
Traps ran .$9.00/ea; and so forth.
The general ended with almost nine thousand pounds of beaver, a figure which probably includes forty-five packs en cache, which he picked up along his homewa
rd route. At St. Louis prices $40,000-$50,000 worth of beaver. This is well and good—the newspapers became almost ecstatic—but it might be well to look more closely at this figure, because it is the beginning of the legend of Ashley’s mountain success. The general is paying $3 a pound; and selling at, say $5 in St. Louis. For this profit it is necessary for him to outfit a major overland party (with the consequent great risk of loss to Indians) and make the complete trip to and from the mountains; this means paying men. With horses at a mountain price of $60—and sometimes unobtainable even at that—it doesn’t take much had luck to wipe out the profit. Later, the charge for simple transportation back to St. Louis was $1.12% a pound for beaver. 'These factors cut the profit figure down to something a good deal less impressive. But I think it was at this rendezvous that General Ashley first discovered exactly where the money was to be made in the fur trade; and the furs themselves were not the major factor. After all his subsidiary costs had been accounted for the resale of beaver yielded perhaps 80-90 cents per pound (on a cash basis), which is fine, but not magnificent. The key to making money was in the merchandise with which the pelts were bought. In St. Louis, selling pelts, Ashley had to contend with businessmen of the acuity of Bernard Pratte and the Chouteaus. This alone would keep the profit made on furs to a relative minimum. But in the mountains . . .
It must have become obvious that in the mountains the supplier was king; the markup on merchandise was at his own discretion; who was to say him nay if he decided 400 per cent over prime cost was just the thing? The supplier was in a position to make a profit at both ends; but mostly at the mountain end, because in the mountains he was in the enviable position of being able to say exactly what a dollar was worth.
S0, by virtue of the fact that he paid not in cash but in merchandise at his own valuation, the outfitter stood to make a good deal. And this is the way it fell out, eventually. With rare exceptions, the money made from the fur-trade was made by the intermediaries, the suppliers. Later, in the early thirties, the advance on prime cost became quite; ridiculous, "and this was when there was stiff competition between rival outfitters. They competed to get to the rendezvous first, but the competition—Mr. Keynes to the contrary notwithstanding—didn’t seem to give the trappers a break on prices.