A Fur Trader & Explorer in the American West I – Beginnings

Jedediah Strong Smith (1799-1831) 

maternal 4th cousin 5x removed 

 

 

When I research an ancestor, I often find interesting information on a collateral relative, that is, someone who is not in my direct line but rather a cousin, aunt, or uncle of some degree. These serendipitous discoveries often lead me down a rabbit hole where I become completely immersed in the relative's story, only to abandon my direct ancestor for the time being.

Jedediah Strong Smith is one of those unexpected, happy finds. We share a common great-grandfather, John Smith (1637-1676), who was Jedediah's 3^rd great-grandfather and my 8^th. A chart at the end of this post shows our relationship.

Jedediah Smith (Wikimedia)

Jedediah was a hunter, trapper, fur trader, businessman, explorer, cartographer, and author who led an adventurous, colorful, albeit brief, life in the early 19^th century. He was also a man of many firsts, something that didn't come without great risk, hardship, and sacrifice in the American West of the 1820s-1830s. 

Frontiersmen had to have determination and grit, along with resilience, resourcefulness, and a liberal dose of common sense if they were going to survive. Jedediah possessed all these traits and more, which no doubt contributed to his ultimate success as a businessman and explorer.

Right: This portrait is believed to have been sketched from memory by a friend around 1835, after Jedediah's death in May 1831. "It is the only portrait known with any claim to authenticity." (Jedediah Smith Society)

 

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– A TRAPPER'S LIFE –

Trapping beaver was a hard life. During the peak of the Rocky Mountain fur trade from 1820-1830, around 3,000 trappers traversed the American West. Most of them worked for fur companies, traveling in groups (brigades) of 40 to 60 men. Once a brigade had a base camp to work from, the men trapped in twos or threes. They rode horses long distances through rugged terrain in all kinds of weather, scouting for beaver-rich country and hunting for food. Rivers were used extensively as a means of transporting supplies and furs – they were the highways of the time. Keelboats were the primary mode of transportation.

 

Pen and Ink Drawing of a Keelboat by Paul Rockwood. (National Park Service)

Keelboat Mandan historical marker in Fort Benton, Chouteau County, Montana. (By Barry Swackhamer August 14, 2019, courtesy HMdb)

A replica of the keelboat Mandan used in the 1952 movie, The Big Sky. (By Barry Swackhamer, August 14, 2019, courtesy HMdb)

Trapping season was generally in the fall and spring when beaver pelts were heaviest. During these times, a trapper spent a good deal of time standing knee-deep and bent over in frigid water, setting his traps or removing his prey. Beaver pelts and other furs were sold during the summer. This is also when the fur companies outfitted the trappers with supplies for the coming season. During the winter, the men would sometimes trap until the rivers and streams were completely frozen over. After that they stayed close to their camps, venturing out of their shelters only to hunt for food, water, and wood.

The trappers camp-fire. A friendly visitor. Lithograph by F.F. Palmer. Published by Currier & Ives, N.Y. ca. 1866. (Library of Congress)

Most of us today wouldn't even begin to consider trying a trapper's diet. It consisted mostly of fish, deer, elk, buffalo, rabbit or other small game, and even beaver. In certain circumstances the meat would be eaten raw. Sometimes trappers made pemmican, a mixture of dried pounded meat mixed with fat and berries. This survival food could keep up to a year or more. According to America: The Story of Us - Westward (S1 E3), produced by the History Channel (available on Amazon Prime or Apple TV+), a trapper needed 6,000 calories per day to survive during trapping season because conditions in the Rocky Mountains were so severe. (A segment on Jedediah Smith begins at 12:56 minutes.)

It was not uncommon for trappers to endure periods of starvation. When this occurred, they were known to eat their horses, leather fringe from their clothing, snakes, insects, and other unappetizing things. In December 1829, Jedediah wrote to his brother, Ralph, that when he went a few days without eating, he was satisfied if he "could gather a few roots, a few snails," or better satisfied if he and his companions could afford themselves "a piece of horse flesh, or a fine roasted dog." (The Ashley-Smith Explorations)   

The men who chose a life in the rugged mountains of the West had to make the best of their difficult working and living conditions − and they had to be on high alert at all times. Fur trappers were exposed to life-threatening dangers every day: high altitudes, treacherous terrain, injuries, Indians who were becoming more hostile, extreme temperatures, harsh winters, and wild animals, particularly the grizzly bear. Tens of thousands of these ten-foot-tall, half-ton predators roamed the West during the 1800s. These exceptional circumstances clearly took a toll since one out of five trappers didn't survive his time in the brutal environment. Of the survivors, a great number had scars or injuries that were a testament to their close encounters with death – trapping was definitely not an occupation for the faint of heart.

THE TRAVELS OF JEDEDIAH SMITH

– ROOTS –

Google Maps 2023 (with added locations and labeling)

Jedediah Strong Smith was born in Jericho, now Bainbridge, New York, the fourth of Jedediah and Sarah "Sally" Strong Smith's fourteen children. The family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania when he was about 10 years old. As young teen, Jedediah worked as a clerk on a Lake Erie freighter where he became captivated by the tales of travel and exploration told by traders returning from the west. After a family friend, believed to be Dr. Titus Simons, gave him the 1814 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark book, Travels to the Source of the Missouri River and Across the American Continent to the Pacific Ocean, documenting their 1804-1806 expedition, Jedediah was hooked.

Jedediah's adventures began in March 1822 when he responded to an ad placed in a St. Louis newspaper by General William Ashley. Ashley and his partner, Major Andrew Henry, both veterans of the War of 1812, owned the fur trading company, Ashley & Henry. The ad called for "One Hundred Men" to "ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years." (Jedediah Smith's Travels Pictures Maps). 

Jedediah was a blued-eyed, dark-haired young man of twenty-three who, by this time, stood over six feet tall. He possessed a quiet confidence that immediately impressed Ashley, and was hired on the spot as a hunter for the company. With that, Jedediah Smith became one of "Ashley's Hundred." After a second group was recruited in 1823, Jedediah was keeping company with the likes of Hugh Glass (subject of the movie, The Revenant), William Sublette, David Jackson, James Clyman, Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Jim Beckwourth, and Kit Carson, hunting, trapping beaver, and living an adventurous, although perilous, life in the wilderness.  

Despite the dangers involved, the fur trade was a booming, lucrative business due to the popularity of beaver hats in Europe. By 1822, it was estimated that 1,000 men, most from St. Louis, were employed in the trade on the Missouri River and about 500 on the upper Mississippi. The fur trappers made their employers wealthy men. One company arrived in St. Louis with a keelboat containing furs valued at $10,000 (about $250,000 in 2022). (The Ashley-Smith Explorations)

~ 1822 ~

– SPRING: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS –

By 1822, the scene had already been set. The United States was a fledgling country with vast amounts of land still claimed by the British Empire, Spain, and Mexico. Apart from the Louis and Clark expedition, Euro-Americans had not explored the majority of what would become modern America and, as they moved west, the Americans would often depend on the Indigenous peoples of the regions for guidance. But conflicting interests, philosophies, and views of the natural world would clash, leading to bloodshed and outright war over the coming decades. Jedediah Smith's experiences would be very much the product of these circumstances.  

On August 10, 1821, Missouri became the most recent state admitted to the Union, after reaching a sufficient population and meeting the other requirements for statehood. It would be fifteen more years before another state was added. (Map from Wikimedia Commons)

A few weeks after Jedediah and others were hired in St. Louis, part of the group departed that city in a keelboat with Andrew Henry. Their plan was to trap and trade on the upper Missouri River. The destination was a remote region at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in present-day North Dakota. This group arrived in early September and soon had finished building a base of operations, the Ashley-Henry Post, also called Fort Henry. Jedediah followed as part of William Ashley's group some weeks after Henry's departure, arriving around the first of October. 

 

Cropped view of the "Map of the Trans-Mississippi Territory of the United States During the Period of the American Fur Trade as Conducted from St. Louis Between the Years 1807 and 1843" from H.M. Chittenden's History of the Fur Trade of the Far West, published in 1902. (Library of Congress) [Blue and yellow highlighting added. The red dot indicates Jedediah's approximate location in the fall of 1822 near the confluence of the Musselshell and Missouri Rivers, about 250 miles from the Ashley-Henry Post at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers.]

 

Shortly after, Ashley returned to St. Louis to attend to business matters, recruit more men, and purchase supplies for the next trapping season. Jedediah remained at Fort Henry and soon traveled with a party of men to the mouth of the Musselshell on the Missouri River in present-day Montana to trap through the remaining fall season and into the winter.

 ~ 1823 ~

– THE ARIKARA ATTACK –

Between late 1822 and early 1823, several conflicts arose between the Blackfoot, Assiniboine, and Arikara tribes and the Missouri Fur Company, which was hunting and trapping in U.S. government-recognized Indian territory. The attacks and skirmishes took place in an area roughly bounded by the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers on the west, north, and east, and nearly as far south of the Missouri River as Fort Atkinson. The Ashley & Henry enterprise was also affected, suffering the loss of four of men in one attack and fifty stolen horses in another. One of the conflicts between the Missouri Fur Company and the Arikaras took place about the time William Ashley was departing St. Louis in early April.

Ashley headed upriver from St. Louis with supplies and 90 new recruits. Among them was Hugh Glass who had been hired as a hunter. After a stop at Fort Atkinson, the boats continued their ascent of the Missouri River into Sioux and Arikara country. Unbeknownst to William Ashley, Andrew Henry had sent Jedediah Smith downriver to intercept him and deliver a message to acquire fifty horses to replace the stolen ones. The men met some distance below the Arikara villages. 

(Google Maps with added locations and labeling)

Ashley was aware of the conflicts that had taken place, so he approached the two Arikara villages with caution when he arrived on May 30. Negotiations were conducted and an agreement reached on June 1. But an incident during that night, the result of irresponsible behavior by two of Ashley's men, led to an attack on the Ashley & Henry men on the morning of June 2 by members of the tribe.

The Arikaras were able to fire down on Ashley and his party from behind a barricade on the bluff where their villages were located. Ashley's men were in the open on a beach across the river with the horses they had just acquired lying dead or dying but providing their only cover. Jedediah and the other hunters dug in and fired upon the Arikaras from their precarious positions, while many others (particularly the boatmen) fled the scene in the keelboats and skiffs or attempted to swim out of range. 

[The painting below is a representation of a Mandan village; the Arikaras built shelters similar to these. After the conflicts with the Ashley & Henry and Missouri Fur Trading Companies, the Arikaras abandoned their village and eventually lived with the Mandan for a time. The Arikaras suffered devastating smallpox outbreaks in 1837 and 1856. Today many live on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.]

Mih-Tutta-Hangkusch. A Mandan Village by Karl Bodner, date unknown. (State Historical Society of Missouri)

Ashley and his group retreated about twenty-five miles down the Missouri to a place near the mouth of the Cheyenne River to take stock of their situation. Fifteen of his men had been killed and eleven wounded, including Hugh Glass who was shot in the leg. All nineteen of the newly acquired horses were killed. Ashley decided to send for reinforcements. Jedediah volunteered to make the 250-mile overland trek to Ft. Henry through unknown, hostile territory – it was too risky to travel upriver; he was accompanied by an unnamed, experienced French Canadian. 

 

Ashley and party remained camped downriver for over a month until Andrew Henry returned with Jedediah, Jim Bridger, and most of the other Ashley & Henry men. The Arikara attack on June 2 and subsequent August 9-12 counterattack by part of Ashley's group and troops from Fort Atkinson (about 300 miles away) is described in detail here.

– A CHANGE OF PLANS –

The trouble with the Arikaras convinced Ashley and Henry that the upper Missouri was not an option for their fur trading business and couldn't be used safely as a route to the Rocky Mountains. In addition, they were now deeply in debt. Their new plan was to travel cross-country, close Fort Henry as a base, and move their operation closer to the Rocky Mountains. 

Within days of the counterattack on the Arikaras, Ashley and Henry split into two groups and went their separate ways for the time being. Henry led a group of thirty men, including the young Jim Bridger and Hugh Glass, who had recovered enough to travel after being shot, up the Grand River to Fort Henry. From there, the group would travel west to the Bighorn River to build a new base and search for beaver.

– AUGUST: A GRIZZLY ATTACK –

On August 24, about a week into the trip, the barely recovered Hugh Glass was mauled by a grizzly near the Grand River in northern South Dakota. Given the severity of his injuries, he shouldn't have survived, particularly since he was abandoned by the two men Andrew Henry had left behind to stay with him until he healed enough to travel or until he died, which seemed more likely. Incredibly, he did survive and, even in his weakened condition, slowly made his way back to Fort Kiowa, over 200 miles from the mauling, "no later than October 11." (An Unforgettable Man: Hugh Glass)

[Read the incredible survival story of Hugh Glass here. Also see the book, The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge (2002) or a trailer from the movie, The Revenant (2015).]

Historical marker near Lemmon, South Dakota (by Ruth VanSteenwyk, 25 Oct 2019, courtesy HMdb.org)

The marker reads, in part:

Hugh Glass, a member of the Ashley Fur Party under Major Henry, going up the Grand River in August 1823, a habitual "loner", while hunting, was attacked by a grizzly bear near the Forks of Grand River. Horribly mauled, he could not be moved, a purse was made up, two men, probably Fitzgerald and Bridger, were left with him and they probably, believing him dead, took his gun and accoutrements and left him. He, however, was not dead and dragged himself to the stream, sustained himself on seasonal fruit and meat, obtained when he drove off some gorged wolves from a buffalo calf they had downed and by some means and by an uncertain route appeared at Ft. Kiowa, below the Big Bend, 190 miles as the crow flies from the Forks of the Grand River.  

 

– SEPTEMBER –

 

Ashley's group, which included Jedediah, headed down the Missouri River to Fort Kiowa. Ashley's plan was to return to St. Louis to address the company's financial problems and political matters (he was the Lt. Governor of Missouri). Jedediah and Thomas Fitzpatrick were assigned to lead a brigade of men, including frontiersmen James Clyman and William Sublette, from Fort Kiowa to the Black Hills of present-day western South Dakota. They would follow the White River across South Dakota in search of new trapping grounds.

 

The party had to wait a month before they were able to obtain supplies and horses. It was during this time that the men began calling Jedediah "Captain." He had earned their respect during the experience with the Arikaras, proving himself to be a level-headed, trustworthy, and resourceful leader. Jedediah's party was finally able to depart Fort Kiowa at the end of September.

– OCTOBER: ANOTHER GRIZZLY ATTACK –   

As the Smith party neared the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota in early October, Jedediah was attacked and mauled by a grizzly bear that burst out of a thicket. Several of his ribs were broken; the bear took almost all of Jedediah's head in its mouth, cutting him from near his left eye and across to his right ear. The skin on his skull was peeled back from there almost to the crown. One of his ears was dangling having been nearly torn completely from his head. The men chose James Clyman to do what he could for the Captain. Jedediah insisted that Clyman attempt to sew up his scalp and stitch his ear back on. Clyman recalls, "I put in my needle stiching it through and through and over and over laying the lacerated parts togather [sic] as nice as I could..." 

Clyman wrote of the incident in his diary:

Grissly did not hesitate a moment but sprung on the cap* taking him by the head first pitc [h] ing sprawling on the earth he gave him a grab by the middle fortunately cat[c]hing by the ball pouch and Butcher K[n]ife which he broke but breaking several of his ribs and cutting his head badly none of us having any sugical Knowledge what was to be done one Said come take hold and he wuld say why not you so it went around I asked the Cap* what was best he said one or 2 [go] for water and if you have a needle and thread git it out and sew up my wounds around my head which was bleeding freely I got a pair of scissors and cut off his hair and then began my first Job of d[r]essing wounds upon examination I [foimd] the bear had taken nearly all his head in his capcious mouth close to his left eye on one side and clos to his right ear on the other and laid the skull bare to near the crown of the head leaving a white streak whare his teeth passed one of his ears was torn fom his head out to the outer rim after stitching all the other wounds in the best way I was capabl and according to the captains directions the ear being the last I told him I could do nothing for his Eare O you must try to stich up some way or other said he then I put in my needle stiching it through and through and over and over laying the lacerated parts togather as nice as I could with my hands water was found in about ame mille when we all moved down and encamped the captain being able to mount his horse and ride to camp whare we pitched a tent the onley one we had and made him as comfortable as circumtances would permit...

From this point forward, Jedediah wore his hair long to hide the large scar that extended across his head from his eyebrow to his ear on the opposite side of his head. After resting for about two weeks while his men hunted and explored the area, Jedediah and his party made their way toward the Rocky Mountains.  

Locations of the grizzly attacks on Jedediah Smith & Hugh Glass (Google map 2023 with added locations and labeling)

 

 

– NOVEMBER 1823 –

 

In November, Jedediah’s party reached the Wind River Valley in present-day southwestern Wyoming. They wintered there with the Absarokas (Crow), a tribe friendly to mountain men. During the next few months, Jedediah paid close attention to the stories the Absarokas told around the campfires, learning a great deal about the locations of rivers and beaver. The challenge would be to find a way across the formidable Rocky Mountains. 

 

NEXT: A Fur Trader & Explorer in the American West II - Rendezvous (posted Mar 2023)

 

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– FURTHER READING –

• Jedediah Smith's Travels Pictures Maps by Dr. O. Ned Eddins is an interesting, well-researched account of Jedediah's travels. It includes photos, maps, and excerpts from Jedediah's journals. Eddins' website, The Fur Trade Role in Western Expansion, is extensive, addressing a wide variety of topics related to the American West.  

• PJ Delhomme, author of The Ten Toughest Mountain Men and Women published in "Outdoor Life" in 2016, lists Jedediah Smith alongside Hugh Glass and eight others. Delhomme is a bit on the cheeky side but, as he says, if even half the stories about these men and women are true, they were tougher than tough.

• The Jedediah Smith Society and An Unforgettable Man: Hugh Glass websites have a wealth of information about the life and times of these men, particularly on the Hugh Glass site. The Smith site has original letters written by Jedediah and his brothers (click on the "YouTube Videos & Links to Other Sites" tab), as well as maps of his travels. The Hugh Glass site is more extensive with a much wider range of information, and many references to Jedediah. Both sites are well-researched and documented.

• The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822-1829, With the Original Journals by William Henry Ashley, Jedediah Strong Smith, and Harrison G. Rogers, published in 1918, is a free ebook available on Google Books. It includes a detailed, documented account of events leading up to and including Jedediah Smith's death, where many other sources only speculate.  

• The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah Smith: His Personal Account of the Journey to California, 1826-1827 by Jedediah S. Smith was published in 1989. Readers gave this book excellent reviews. It's available through Amazon.com. [The original hardback book was published in 1977 after the discovery of Smith's long-lost journals and maps.]

• James Clyman, American Frontiersman, 1792-1881. The adventures of a trapper and covered wagon emigrant as told in his own reminiscences and diaries.This is the former colonel's first-hand account of his experiences in the West, including his account of stitching up Jedediah Smith's head. Available on Internet Archive.

 

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Bradish-Scott Family History - November/December 2022 (Updated Feb 2023)