A Majority of Scountrels - Don Berry

by Don Berry

  The traders were, of course, concerned with only one thing: a profitable trade. Ethical matters did not weigh heavily in the balance against the pure aesthetic pleasure of a satisfactory account book. And, while the government factories were forced to operate under self-imposed limitations, the private trader was relatively free of these restrictions. There were naturally regulations governing the conduct of private trade, particularly with respect to liquor, but these were circumvented with great regularity and ingenuity. The government posts had the advantage that they were under no obligation to make a profit, but they were handicapped in ways that far overbalanced this initial leverage in their favor. By refusing to supply liquor to the Indians they denied themselves, from the beginning, the most potent weapon in the trading arsenal. By securing their trade goods exclusively from American industry—not highly developed—what they offered for trade was often distinctly inferior to that provided by private traders, who commonly used British goods. Theirs was a "no credit" policy with the Indian, presumably in order to establish a sound sense of thrift.

  Trading was a passive affair; the government factors simply sat and waited until an Indian came in with his furs. The private trader: used as much alcohol as he could smuggle in; used high-quality imported trade goods; allowed advance credit as desired, outfitting the Indian trapper before he began the hunt and thus, in effect, mortgaged his furs ahead of time. While the government factory waited for the Indian to volunteer his catch, the private trader developed the policy of accompanying his customers on their annual hunts. By collecting the pelts as they were taken, he guaranteed payment of the debt and, presumably, ensured that the Indian’s credit rating would not be impaired by any oversight on his part.

  The government simply could not compete on the same level as its own licensees. The very reasons for setting up a government trade prohibited the use of such tactics. This is not to imply, however, that the factory system was an immediate or unqualified failure. The wonder is that it succeeded as well as it did, for despite the advantages held by private concerns the government remained in the field for twenty-six years. During this time its share of the trade was great enough to incur the substantial hatred of the private traders who, for their part, believed the factories held an unfair advantage, and fought for their overthrow with persistent

  vigor.

  Unoflicial spokesman for the commercial traders was Ramsay Crooks, who, as general agent for John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, was probably the most important critic of government policy. The intensity of his opposition and, by implication, the opposition of all the St. Louis traders is indicated in the letter of congratulations he sent Senator Benton on the final overthrow of the system in March, 1822. In it he refers to the "unqualified thanks of the community for destroying the pious monster . . . the country is indebted for its deliverance from so gross and unholy an imposition."

  APPENDIX B

  Bonneville and Wyeth

  In the spring of 1832 there were in the mountains two new parties of major importance. The activities of one of them, I Captain Bonneville, were peripheral to the affairs of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Nathaniel Wyeth, however, became deeply involved in the affairs of RMF and was a major character in the remaining two years of the company's existence. The historical importance of both these men warrants giving their background in somewhat greater detail than was possible in the narrative text.

  I

  Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville (known to the Indians less euphonically as Bald Head) was a captain of the 7th Infantry. French born, he had come to the United States as a child, a fugitive from the Napoleonic Wars. He graduated from West Point in 1815 and subsequently served tours of duty in such frontier posts as Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, and Fort Smith, Arkansas. On these tours he was brought into contact with various Indian traders, pioneers, trappers, and other assorted wilderness wanderers. Bonneville was not the first to have his imagination tired by their stories, nor certainly the last. As Washington Irving later described it:

  (He) became so excited by their tales of wild scenes and wild adventures, and their accounts of vast and magnificent regions as yet unexplored, that an expedition to the Rocky Mountains became the ardent desire of his heart, and an enterprise to explore untrodden tracts the leading object of his ambition.

  There is a moderately intriguing air of mystery about this 1832 junket of Bonnevil1e’s. For one thing, it has been suggested that he was serving the government in some capacity as a spy; ferreting out the secrets of British infiltration in the disputed area, and what not.

  (The argument for this seems to me flimsy. It is summed up by Bernard DeVoto in Across the Wide Missouri thus: "One can hardly believe that in the late autumn of 1831 the Army, under the Secretary of War, would grant a two-year leave of absence to an officer who was going to Oregon without considering what he might accomplish there and briefing him accordingly .... Finally when Bonneville over-stayed his leave he was dismissed [from] the service—only to be reinstated by the commander-in-chief, Andrew Jackson . . . even an admiration for maps would hardly have justilied a full pardon for a grave military offense." But when Bonneville returned to civilization he didn’t report to Washington, as might have been expected; he went directly to Astor’s house as a guest [where he met Irving]. With the mountain parties anxious enough to give all the information they could on British activities [which were no secret anyway] such an undercover assignment seems unnecessary. However, this is the army, and the military mind is passing strange. It may have been so.)

  Whatever the actual case, Bonneville was officially on a 26-month leave, running from August, 1831, to October, 1833. In granting him leave, the War Department authorized it

  for the purpose . .. of exploring the country to the ‘Rocky mountains and beyond, with a view to ascertaining the nature·and character of the several tribes inhabiting those regions; the trade which might be profitably carried on with them; the quality of the soil, the productions, the minerals, the natural history, the climate, the geography and topography, as well as the geology of the various parts of the country.

  As far as it is possible to tell, however, Bonneville was simply intending to engage in the fur trade. The army gave him no money; expenses were contributed by private individuals, and there is. some kind of connection with John Jacob Astor in the background. While he did make two maps, there was very little in them that had not appeared on the map of Albert Gallatin a year previous (and which was, in turn, based on information from Ashley and the Smith Jackson & Sublette parties). He seemed to have a really massive enjoyment of the mountain life with all its little freedoms from civilized conventions. Certainly he made no great effort to get back to the army.

  (Hubert Howe Bancroft, who vilifies both Irving and Bonneville up one side and down the other, claims Bonneville "was in his coarse way a bon vivant and voluptuary . . . [and] preferred lording it in the forest with a troop of white and red savages at his heels, and every fortnight a new unmarried wife flaunting her brave Hnery, to sitting in satin sackcloth of conventional parlors and simpering silly nothings .. . [to Bonneville] men were the nobler game, whom to search out in their retreat and slaughter and scalp were glorious. What were the far-off natives doing, that this reckless, bloodthirsty and cruel Frenchman should kill them?" They just don’t make historians like Bancroft any more.)

  Bonneville’s principal backing came from Alfred Seton, one of the original Astorians, and a group of more or less anonymous gentlemen associated with him. (There is a strong presumption that one of these was Astor himself.) For his field lieutenants he picked Michael Cerré and Joe Walker. Both were tough, experienced partisans and good men for the ‘job. Both had been involved in the Santa Fe trade, and Cerré had worked around the upper Missouri.

  One of Bonneville’s notions was to prove the contention Bill Sublette had made in 1830; that wagons could be taken ‘ across the divide at South Pass. At the final tally, before leaving civilized settlements, Bonn
eville had a party of 110 men and 20 wagons. Walker and Cerré had recruited the party, and it was as motley as most:

  Their very appearance and equipment exhibited a piebald mixture, half civilized and half savage. Many of them looked more like Indians than white men, in their garbs and accoutrements, and their very horses were caparisoned in barbaric style, with fantastic trappings. The outset of a band of adventurers on one of these expeditions is always animated and joyous. The welkin rang with their shouts and yelps, after the manner of the savages; and with boisterous jokes and light-hearted laughter. As they passed the straggling hamlets and solitary cabins that fringe the skirts of the frontier, they would startle their inmates by Indian yells and war-whoops, or regale them with grotesque feats of horsemanship well suited to their half savage appearance.

  Bonneville’s jumping-off place had been Fort Osage (ten miles from Independence) and he got off on the lst of May, 1832. His wagons traveled in two columns in the center; the rest of the party was about equally divided—into a van and rearguard. By now the route up the Platte and Sweetwater to South Pass was well known, and Bonneville’s passage was not novel, though too much has been made of his wagons. (It is, of course, quite true that they were the first actually to cross the divide, with the exception of Ashley’s small artillery piece). Bill Sublette’s spring ’30 caravan had preceded him all the way; and the crossing of the vast plateau called South Pass presented no particular problems.

  By July 2O Bonneville was in sight of the Wind River range, and the succeeding week saw him over South Pass and into the basin of the Green River. Toward noon on the 26th the caravan was alarmed by a cloud of dust rising directly on their trail.

  The party halted and drew up; held a brief council of war; and dispatched scouts while the wagons were drawn into defensive position. (They had previously crossed Indian trail, and the consensus was that a war party had hidden until Bonneville’s caravan was in the open plain, and without natural protection.)

  However, the scouts soon returned with the news that the dust was being made by a party of whites: fifty or sixty Company men and a supply train headed for Pierre’s Hole and Rendezvous 1832. This was the supply caravan for which Vanderburgh and Drips were waiting at rendezvous; the Company opposition to Bill Sublette. Lucien Fontenelle was , the partisan, and he was late. Rendezvous 1832 was, by this time, already over: Bill Sublette, bullet wound and all, was preparing to leave for St. Louis.

  In an attempt to make up time, the party was making forced marches. After a brief conversation with Bonneville, Fontenelle scooted on ahead to the Green, which he hoped to reach by nightfall. The main body of his party made it, but at the cost of extreme exhaustion for men and horses.

  Bonneville came up next morning, the 27th, and the two parties camped near each other. Here Fontenelle amiably lifted a few of Bonneville’s best trappers—a band of Delaware Indians—by offering them $400 for the fall hunt. The Delawares picked up their gear and left Bonneville for the padded embrace of the solvent Company, which could not expect to get enough beaver from them to pay their salaries.

  Shortly after this both camps moved upriver to the vicinity of Horse Creek. This seemed to Bonneville an excellent location for a permanent establishment. Accordingly, he took its position (getting the longitude wrong by about 125 miles) and began to build the post you will find in history books as Bonneville’s Old Fort, or Fort Bonneville. It was known among the mountain men as Fort Nonsense, or Bonneville’s Folly. At this point, while camped near Fontenelle, Bonneville entered our narrative for the first time.

  II

  Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, ice merchant of Cambridge, Massachusetts; a man whose intelligence, perseverance, and adaptability have often been underrated. Properly speaking, Wyeth’s story begins with another man, the feverish Prophet of Oregon, Hall J. Kelley. Kelley, a Boston teacher, had been enamored—impassioned might be a better word—with the idea of Oregon for fifteen years before Wyeth’s entrance on the scene. Kelley’s was one of the higher-pitched voices of Manifest Destiny, and he brought to his chosen task the dedication and passion of the fanatic; and also the fanatic’s unwillingness to let facts influence his position.

  Beginning in about 1817, shortly after the failure of the Astoria enterprise, Kelley became obsessed by the notion of American expansion to Oregon. He saw this distant country (figuratively speaking; he’d never been there) as a sort of Elysian Field, which it was the duty and necessity of the United States to claim. "I foresaw," he said, "that Oregon must, ventually, become a favorite field of modern enterprise, and the abode of civilization?

  This is a most moderate statement from Kelley; more frequently his perorations were laced with a religious fervor. All his knowledge of Oregon was based, of course, on reading the journals of. Lewis and Clark and the various documents of sea captains who had visited the coast. He believed every word of praise, stoutly ignored any slight hint that Oregon might not be heaven-on-earth, and based his exhortations on the resulting view. After a while it seemed to him that the actual visitors had missed the true glories, and he began to make things up.

  This was all very wild and interesting, and Kelley eventually came to conclude that he was the chosen leader of the colonization; the Boston Moses, as it were, who would lead his flock to the promised land.

  In 1829 he organized the American Society for Encouraging the Settlement of the Oregon Territory. His notion was simple enough, if a little difficult to put into practice: he wanted to transplant a Massachusettstown to Oregon, as the nucleus of the western civilization. In 1831 the organization was incorporated as the Oregon Colonization Society, with its headquarters in Boston, and Kelley began to organize an expedition.

  This was the state of things when Nathaniel Wyeth, then twenty—nine, became involved in Kelley’s great scheme. But for Kelley’s hot mysticism, Wyeth substituted a rock-hard, Yankee practical sense. ‘Wyeth was more interested in commercial and practical questions than in the visionary fulfillments foreseen by Kelley.

  It wasn’t long before Wyeth was disillusioned with the Oregon Colonization Society. He intended to accompany them—if the great migration ever took place—but he was also hedging his bets. If the wavering and insubstantial leadership of Hall Kelley was not sufficient, then Wyeth would organize a party of his own; which he proceeded to do. In

  November, 1831, he wrote:

  As time passes on the project of emigration assumes form and shape, and a nearer approach toward certainty. I think there is little doubt of my going, for I tind that I can get good men who will follow me on a trading project, on the basis of division of profits, and this thing I will do (if I can) if the emigration fails.

  Wyeth conducted an intensive campaign of research, involving himself with the accumulation of any and all knowledge he thought might be useful. He wrote query after query: detailed questions, for example, on the cultivation of tobacco. With tobacco an important part of the fur trade, what would be the chances of cultivating it in Oregon? And how? To his brother, in the same letter quoted above:

  Will you have the goodness to collect the information required for answering the questions below and as soon as practicable forward me answers to them be pleased to give your answers as definite as possible and be certain that it is correct as . . . a mistake would be bad business.

  lst Should it be planted as early in the season as to be entirely out of the reach of Frost, or will it bear a slight degree of it.

  2nd How should the seed be planted in the field where it is intended to grow? or in beds to be transplanted?

  3rd In what scituations and soil? with manure or without? in a dry or wet place?

  4th How thick will it thrive

  5th what mode of culture is required weeding? training, gathering at what time

  6th method is used to cure it and how kept after it is cured

  7th How is the seed obtained at what time gathered How treated and kept and what is the ordinary quantity required per cwt. of the product usually
Beside these queries be good enough to make any remark which you think will be usefull in the culture of the plant.

  Wyeth applied the same persistent attack to all phases of the expedition. Letters to fishermen—there were salmon on the west coast; how caught? how preserved? what is the market?—letters to merchants, government oflicials, bankers. He wallowed in information as Kelley wallowed in inspiration.

  Above all, he wanted to keep his plans as flexible as possible. He was profoundly aware that his knowledge was wanting; and planned to guard against evils arising from this lack. In December 1831, he wrote that his expedition would go "without positively settling the particular business in which they will engage but to be dictated by circumstances when there (probably the fur business will be selected).

  By January: "We have no connection with Mr. Kelleys enterprise further than accident and circumstances may indicate."

  Inevitably, aspects of the ludicrous crept in; bugles and amphibiums coming iirst·to mind. Apropos of the wonderful