A Majority of Scountrels - Don Berry

by Don Berry

  Negotiations were concluded in December of 1826, and Bernard Pratte & Company officially became the Westem Department of American Fur (though this new status was not made public immediately). Only after the merger was complete did B. Pratte & Company make their decision on Ash1ey’s proposal. When an agreement was finally reached, Pratte was not acting for an independent firm, but as representative of American Fur. Ashley, through no fault or knowledge of his own, gave "equa1 participation"in the adventure" to John Jacob Astor.

  II

  It has been necessary to go into these complex business arrangements in detail. The activities of the mountain men cannot be comprehended without taking into account the background against which they played out their roles. This background—the subterranean struggle for power in the trade—has never been treated adequately. The dramatic, the essentially romantic, character of the—mountain trade has obscured the fact that the trappers were frequently pawns, being played in an elaborate and sophisticated game they knew nothing about.

  It was not simply a matter of exploitation (though this, too, was characteristic of the trade). The critical struggles were of an almost political nature, and they took place in St. Louis, Philadelphia, and New York, between such persons as Ashley, Pratte, and Astor.

  There is an aura of intrigue and mystery about many of these sub rosa arrangements that may never be dispelled. Often the details were not made public at the time—as in the present case—and the available data has had to be unearthed by students. This data is, understandably, incomplete. From those documents which have survived, it is possible to sketch in the outlines with fair assurance that the over-all picture will be accurate, even if the detail is obscured.

  The ethics of the business manipulations were highly questionable, involving outright deceit and treachery. (This is, of course, a matter of personal judgment. It may simply represent a monstrous naiveté on my part.)

  Nevertheless, it is clear enough that Ashley’s proposal to B. Pratte & Company was contrary to the spirit of his Smith Jackson and Sublette agreement with Smith Jackson & Sublette. (Except for the extremely unlikely possibility that this had been discussed at the rendezvous and agreed to by the new firm; an agreement tantamount to cutting their own throats.) It is also clear what Ashley was trying to accomplish, though I may have been assigning him too grandiose an ambition in attributing to him a desire to monopolize the entire mountain trade. Still, if his arrangements had gone through according to plan, this is exactly the situation that would have obtained, at least for a few years.

  Several factors intervened to prevent the Ashley empire from being established. The first of these was the equivocal position of his proposed partners, B. Pratte & Company. Until their merger with American Fur had been accomplished they were not in a position to undertake any agreement of such potential importance. Further, they were becoming simply the Western Department of John-Jacob Astor’s firm. Any decision of this scope would have to be made

  by a representative of the parent company, probably Astor’s agent, Ramsay Crooks.5

  Secondly, Ashley-as-Mountain-King was not an attractive image. His plan, as proposed, would put an enormous amount of power in the hands of a man almost obsessively ambitious. Any of the principals on the other side Pratte, the crafty Pierre Chouteau, Crooks—would have been alive to the dangers inherent in giving Ashley too much authority.

  In their correspondence, Pierre Chouteau neatly used Ashley's own reputation against him. His great skill, said Chouteau in effect, would be needed on the expedition itself. Ashley’s personal presence as leader of the trip was made one of the prime conditions of agreement. This naturally reduced Ashley to the status of a brigade leader with some investment in the enterprise. It also got him away from the nerve center, St. Louis, where the matters of policy and power were decided. Chouteau became quite insistent on this point. Ashley must lead the expedition in person; B. Prattek & Company could handle the administration and business end very well, thank you.

  This arrangement was contrary to Ashley’s wishes and his capabilities. He was not well at the time—his letters make frequent reference to the unhappy state of his health—and furthermore he had no intention whatever of returning to the mountains in person. He wanted to be on the civilized end of the business, the profitable end. He wanted, above all, to be in a position to resume his interrupted political career and to enjoy the benefits of St. Louis social life with his new wife.

  All these factors were probably contributory to the final arrangement. Ashley’s original broad scheme was turned down: However, if he were willing. to restrict his activity to a simple supplying party—omitting the trapping entirely—B. Pratte & Company (acting for John Jacob Astor) would take a half interest.

  Ashley’s dream of empire was thus converted into a much more limited project. A reasonable profit might be expected, but the elements of power and control implicit in his first proposal were gone. Ashley’s ambition had run up against a stone wall: the business acuity of men like Crooks, Chouteau, Pratte, and Astor, compared to whom Ashley was a mangeur de lard. In this first venture the Big Guys had deftly shown him his place and the caliber of his competition.

  It must have been a chastening experience.

  III

  The involved business negotiations described above took place in St. Louis from the fall of 1826 until early spring of 1827. During this time, of course, Smith Jackson & Sublette were entering Year One of the company in the mountains.

  When Rendezvous 1826 broke up, each of the new partners took a brigade and commenced the fall hunt. This was a critical time; their success—or lack of it—would determine whether or not the three-man partnership could remain in business.

  Two of these men we have been able to watch since the beginning of this narrative. Jedediah Smith and Bill Sublette had gradually assumed an increasing importance in Ashley’s parties, though both started as complete greenhorns. With the retirement of Andrew Henry they (and Tom Fitzpatrick) became the backbone of the field operations. But where did the third partner come from? The answer, such as it is, is simpler than most: I don’t know. His name appears at the bottom of the Articles of Agreement, and this is the first hint we have of David E. Jackson’s existence.6

  Davey Jackson, like Andrew Henry, is a man without a biographer, and this is a most unfortunate situation for a historical personage. Jackson, however, has better compensation than Henry. Jackson’s Hole, Wyoming, is named for him, and no man could ask better remembrance than that. It was probably around this time, say 1825-1827, that Jackson’s Hole received its name, but no definite record exists. More than likely he was booshway of a brigade which trapped the Hole in these years.

  Sublette and Jackson took their respective brigades north, to work the Snake and its tributaries. Of Jackson’s specific itinerary we know nothing at all, of course. Somehow none of the literary men ever got into his brigades. Sublette had with him Daniel Potts, who had been with the Ashley-Henry venture from the beginning; from the first encampment at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Potts wrote two letters which have become of some importance in the literature of the trade. The first, from the rendezvous just ended, summarized his activities from 1823 to 1826, largely as a member of Captain Weber's brigade.7 The second was written from Rendezvous 1827, and from it is drawn what we know about Sublette’s movements this fall of 1826.

  Leaving Cache Valley Sublette worked his brigade slowly up to the Snake, probably by way of the Blackfoot River or the Portneuf. There was no hurry, at least with respect to trapping; this was still summer, and the pelts were liable to be ratty. Up to the Forks, where he turned up Henry’s Fork (of the Snake River; not the identically named tributary of the Green) for a distance of about thirty miles, which would put him a little above present St. Anthony, Idaho. From there he crossed over the Tetons, heading east, into Jackson’s Hole, where he reached the main fork of the Snake again. This he followed north to its source past Jackson Lake. For most of this time he was be
ing harried by roving bands of Blackfeet, though the party records no casualties this season. Following the Snake past Jackson Lake had swung them toward the east again; now they turned directly north and crossed the range separating Jackson’s Hole from what is now Yellowstone National Park. (The most likely route for this would seem to be up Barlow's Fork and Heart Fork Lake.) Here, just a few miles from the continental divide, they came upon the Heart Lake Geyser Basin, and occasioned the first written description of the features that had made the area known to the trappers as Colter’s Hell. Potts wrote that they found a crystal-clear lake, which he generously estimated at 100 miles long by 40 wide. (Thee actual dimensions of Yellowstone Lake, which Potts meant, are closer to 20 miles by 14.) At the southern edge of the lake there were:

  a number of hot and boiling springs, some of water and others of most beautiful Hue clay, resembling a mush pot, and throwing. particles to the immense height of from twenty to thirty feet. The clay is of a white, and of a pink color, and the water appears fathomless, as it appears to be entirely hollow underneath. There is also a number of places where pure sulphur is sent forth in abundance.

  The lake itself for some little time bore the name 'Soubletts Lake," in honor of their worthy booshway, but this, as with many of the mountain given names, soon disappeared. Sublette’s party then took a circuitous route to the Northwest," according to Potts (which may or may not mean circling around by way of Targhee Pass and back down Henry’s Fork). On their return toward Cache Valley, the brigade ran into more intermittent trouble with the Blackfeet, and still got off with hair unlifted.

  It was late in the season when Sublette got back to Cache Valley. Jackson (having trapped east: on Ham’s Fork and the Green? or the Snake below the Portneuf?) was probably already there. The fall hunt of both brigades had been good; certainly good enough to pay the remainder of their debt to Ashley, and to warrant the sending of an express to St. Louis with an order for merchandise. (Jedediah’s movements this fall were the most important; and are treated more fully in Chapter 10.)

  Sublette himself chose to make the express, taking with him only one man, Black (nee Moses) Harris. (Alfred Jacob Miller, the painter, wrote some years later: "This Black Harris always created a sensation at the camp fire, being a capital raconteur, and having had as many perilous adventures as any man probably in the mountains. He was of wiry form, made up of bone and muscle, with a face apparently composed of tan leather and whip cord, finished off with a peculiar. blue-black tint, as if gunpowder had been burned into his face." See The West of Alfred Jacob Miller [Norman, 1951*.]) Harris was very near the classic type of the mountain man. He appears again and again in the records of the time, sometimes for his version of the putrefied forest tale (see p. 74), just as often for the craft that became his specialty, the midwinter express, either alone or with one other man. This time it was with Bill Sublette, and it is the first appearance of Harris in the role.

  The two left Cache Valley in the dead of winter, January 1 of the year 1827. Thea snow was heavy, and they could expect it all the way to St. Louis; which made horses out of the question. They left on snowshoes, their only provisions carried on the back of a dog. (Before the advent of the horse in the mountains, almost all Indians had been dependent on trained pack dogs. There were still a few of these Indian-trained dogs about, but they soon disappeared as the bands became entirely horse-oriented.) The record—as related by Sublette fifteen years later—says the dog was loaded with fifty pounds of provisions and the men carried dried buffalo meat on their backs.

  The first few days they probably followed the course of the Bear up and around the northern end of the Bear River Mountains; then crossed the complex series of ridges separating Bear Lake from the Valley of the Green River.

  So far prospects were not particularly encouraging: no buffalo sign and some Indian, which looked like Blackfoot. Instead of following up the Sandy, Sublette and Harris cut across the plains to the south of that river, in hopes of avoiding the Blackfeet. This reduced them to melting snow for their water, but there was plenty of that. By the middle of January they were descending the Sweetwater; the fifteenth day out they made camp for the night in the shelter of Independence Rock.

  Moving on the next day, they had to plow their way through drifted snow, and the going was hard. It became worse the farther they went; no game, no firewood, and frequently not even a hollow in which they could protect themselves from the wind and cold. They were coming on starvin’ times and there was still the danger of Indians. Finding some evidences that Pawnees were moving about on the North Platte, the men left that river for several days and stumbled along out of sight of the water.

  Finally they found, and followed, the trace of another band of Indians, hoping to get some food from them. Their own provisions had given out (part of them lost somewhere on the trail, fallen from the worn dog-pack) and both men and dog were reaching what seemed to be the end of the road. After four days they overtook the camp, which were Omahas under the chief Big Elk. While they were friendly, they could be of little help; Indians fared no better than whites in a winter like this. Subsequently they met several other bands on the move, all of whom received them hospitably but were unable to give them anything in the way of food. With one of these Sublette was able to trade his butcher knife for a buffalo tongue, good at the time, but hardly enough to support two men and a dog for long.

  A raven was shot near Grand Island but was small comfort. Fatigue and hunger were such that they couldn’t tell "whether it was good or bad, or how it tasted."

  By now the dog was lagging far behind each day, following their tracks into camp long after dark. Both men were so weak from hunger and their exertions they were barely able to make camp at night. One night, some forty or fifty miles below Grand Island, Harris had a proposition! Sublette that night had just brushed the snow away and fallen into his blanket exhausted; Harris had managed to kindle some kind of fire with broken branches. As they sat in the blind stupor of starvation, Harris suggested they kill and eat the dog.

  According to Sublette’s later story, he was at first reluctant, but was finally persuaded. (Both men were reportedly sick at this time; but in circumstances of that kind it is difficult to distinguish between sickness and health.)

  Harris swung at the dog with his ax, but the animal crawled back to his feet; there was no strength behind the blow. Staggering up to the howling dog, Harris struck at him again, and missed. On the third time the axhead flew off the handle, and the dog wailed away into the night. The two men groped for it in the darkness, and finally found it. Harris stabbed it, and threw it on the fire to singe off the fur, in accepted Indian fashion; but the reflex convulsions of the animal kicked the fire away. Sublette, frantic, finally bashed in the crown of the dog’s head with his own ax and stumbled back to his blanket.

  Harris stayed on his feet long enough to roast the dog, saving some for Sublette, who was able to eat a little in the morning. What remained they packed with them. It lasted for two days.

  They were able to kill a rabbit and four wild turkeys in later days, which took them to the Big Vermillion. A little beyond that river they stumbled into a Kaw village, where they were fed. Sublette was apparently somewhat better by this time, but Harris had sprained an ankle and could barely pull himself along. Sublette, by trading his pistol, got a horse for the remaining two-day journey to St. Louis.

  They arrived on March 4, and it could not have been a pleasant homecoming to discover that Ashley was brimming with plans to send a trapping party into the mountains against them.

  IV

  There is no written record of Sublette’s reaction when he discovered Ashley’s plans. He must have objected in the strongest terms, and his objections may have had some effect on the final shape of the expedition. Possibly he was able to convince B. Pratte & Company that their best interests for the future lay not with Ashley, but with Smith Jackson & Sublette. (This, again, is pure conjecture. There is no evidence.)

&nb
sp; Almost immediately after Sublette’s arrival in St. Louis, arrangements for the supply party were initiated. Pratte & Company appointed a business agent for the expedition, in the person of James B. Brutfee. Bruffee worked on a straight salary: $800. The booshway, the field captain, was apparently Ashley’s choice. This was Hiram Scott, who had served as a nominal captain under Ashley in the Aricara campaign. Scott was paid a total of $280, a rate of $2 a day for the time the party was in the field.

  On March 8, 1827, Ashley advertised in the St. Louis papers for fifty men. He had little trouble in finding them; the rumors of his successes the past two years (both true and exaggerated) had made the name .of William H. Ashley synonymous with fortunes to be made in the mountains. (This was a dream that died hard, if at all.)

  Most of the men hired on at $110 a year, according to a document now in the collection of the Missouri Historical Society. There are a few unexplained variations: Antoine Durrnai got $120; Potette Dyerda (Dejarda) $130; and Antoiné Janis was high with $165. By the end of the trip, paytime, these sums were somewhat reduced by advances en route of one kind and another; Augustus Gerarda, for one example, had only $27.20 cash coming. (All except for John Bowen, who had $109 left out of his $110; I’d give a lot to know what he spent that buck for in transit. It must have been a soul-rending decision.)

  By April 11 the expedition was outfitted and ready to go. Their jump off point was Lexington, and on the 11th Ashley wrote to Pratte & Company: