Transcript
Chris Wimmer (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by US Cellular. Some things are worth waiting for, like getting your diploma or finding the right partner. You know what's not worth waiting for? The cable guy. Fortunately, US Cellular's Home Internet is so simple to install, you can do it yourself and it's just $39.99 per month when bundled with a wireless plan with a three year price lock guarantee. US Cellular Home Internet made simple without the waiting terms apply visit uscellular.com for details. Want to shop Walmart? Black Friday deals first Walmart plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one year annual membership. Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart + see terms@walmartplus.com in the earliest days of spring, 1824, sometime between late February and early March, Jedediah Smith and his group of about a dozen fur trappers became the first recorded white men to travel westward through South Pass in southwestern Wyoming. The pass, which would be used by countless travelers over the coming decades, was a wide gap in the Rocky Mountains that was tame enough for people to move through on foot, on horseback or on wagons. Smith's small group was about halfway through a year long journey that had started on the Missouri river in central Montana and then followed the river to modern day North Dakota and down to South Dakota. Along the way, it featured battles with the Rickaraw warriors that devastated the Ashley Henry Fur Company, which employed Jedediah Smith and other soon to be famous mountain men like Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger and Bill Sublet. From Old Fort Kiowa, near the current town of Chamberlain, South Dakota, Smith's group had headed straight west across the Badlands, the Black Hills, the High Desert of Wyoming, the Bighorn Mountains, and finally to the Wind River Mountains south of the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. Fifty years before the park was created in what is now eastern Wyoming, Jedediah Smith had survived a grizzly bear attack that happened around the same time as his friend Hugh Glass was attacked by a grizzly a couple hundred miles to the north. Smith fared better than Glass and was back in the saddle just 10 days after suffering gory injuries to his head. Smith and his group had finished crossing the high desert, then the Bighorns, and had camped for the winter with the Crow Nation at the base of the Wind river Mountains. In February 1824, they continued their journey westward. A Crow elder told them how to find South Pass, and now the pioneering American trappers were at the Green river in the southwest corner of Wyoming. Jedediah Smith, the 25 year old leader of the group, laid out his plan. Jim Kleiman and four men would trap the northern waters of the Green River. Bill Sublette would take another five men and trap the lower branches of the river. Smith would go with Sublette's group and then continue south to trap the Black Forks River. The two groups would then rendezvous a few miles away at the Sweetwater river with as many beaver pelts as possible. Like most plans, it didn't quite work out that way, at least for Jim Kleiman's group. As Kliman and his men rode toward their trapping grounds, they encountered a band of Shoshone whom Kliman recognized by the intricate porcupine quill work that adorned their buckskin shirts. The Shoshone on foot, accompanied the trappers for a while, despite the fact that Kliman's group shared their abundance of beaver meat and snow geese with the Shoshone. One morning, the Shoshone stole the trapper's 20 or so horses and pack animals and disappeared. Left with no choice, Klyman's group continued trapping on foot until it was time to rejoin Jed Smith and Bill Sublette. Kleiman's group hid their pelts, traps and chains, hung their saddles and tack on tree branches and headed for the Sweetwater River. After several miles, they surprised a small hunting party of Shoshone who were riding their stolen horses. The trappers raised their rifles and forced the smaller hunting party to surrender. The Shoshone hunters led the American trappers to their camp. One of the mountain men held the chief at gunpoint and the trappers recovered all the remaining horses. They retrieved their hidden pelts and their gear and rode out of Shoshone territory without any loss of life. It was a close call and Jim Kleiman's luck would not hold out for long. When Jedediah Smith arrived at the rendezvous spot on the Sweetwater River, Kleiman was nowhere to be found. From Black Barrel Media, this is an American Frontier series on legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're beginning regular stories of the earliest days of American expansion across the continent. In this series we'll focus on the lives and legends of mountain men Jedediah Smith, Hugh Glass and Jeremiah Johnson. This is episode two, Jedediah Smith Making history. At the rendezvous spot on the Sweetwater River, Jed Smith found no sign of Jim Kleiman's group. Smith directed the members of Bill Sublet's group to construct a boat while Smith climbed onto his horse and followed the river east to find Climan. Smith rode to the confluence of the Sweetwater and the North Platte and found a lean to shelter and Indian sign. Fearing the worst, he searched the area but found no evidence of a struggle. He rode back upriver and shared the news with the others. He had found a campsite, and even with no signs of a fight, he feared the worst for Jim Kleiman and his group. The next morning, with the boat complete, half of the men glided down the Sweetwater river toward the Missouri river with the beaver pelts. Jedediah Smith and the other half continued to trap along the tributaries of the Green river in what is today the southwest corner of Wyoming. The mystery of the fate of Jim Clyman and his group weighed heavily on Smith, and it would be a year before Smith learned the truth. As Jedediah Smith and his companions rode north into the Snake river country, they approached the trading and trapping grounds of the Hudson's Bay Company. Incorporated under British royal charter in 1670, the bay, as the company was informally called, had once held a de facto monopoly on fur trading in a huge swath of North America. Smith and his men were the first Americans to enter the area in more than a decade, and they represented a threat to the bay's dominance. In September of 1824, Smith & Co. Encountered a group of Native Americans they never expected to see in present day southeastern Idaho. The group was a band of Iroquois whose Traditional homelands were 1,800 miles east in New York. The Iroquois were employed by the Hudson's Bay Company, and they had just lost their horses, traps and most of their furs in a conflict with the Shoshone. The embattled Iroquois offered Smith all of their remaining pelts in exchange for an armed escort to their camp farther west. When Smith and his mountain men arrived at the bay's camp with the Iroquois, the man in charge, Alexander Ross, was immediately suspicious. Ross had worked for John Jacob Astor Specific Fur Company, then its successor Northwest Fur Company and now for the Hudson's Bay Company. He suspected the Americans under Jedediah Smith were as interested in spying on the bay's operations as they were in trapping beaver. Ross maintained his suspicions when Smith joined him on a trip to the bustling Hudson's Bay Company trading fort known as Flathead Post. The post was alive with activity and Smith marveled at the efficiency of the HBC's operations. He was in awe of the nearly 5,000 pelts that Ross crew brought in, and Smith noted how indigenous women played a crucial role in preparing the furs. Their expertise was eye opening as they cleaned, stretched and tanned the pelts. The women also prepared meals, picked berries, made pemmican and carried pelts and supplies which freed the men to trap even more beaver. As Smith and his small group settled in, an annual trade fair commenced. It drew tribes from all over the region, including the Nez Perce, who were just 30 years away from beginning their long conflict with the US government. Each tribe arrived in procession, their warriors and women burdened with furs and dried meats. The air was festive, filled with songs, chants and the occasional boom of the fort's ceremonial cannon. But despite the fair's success, tension simmered beneath the surface. Alexander Ross learned he was going to be replaced. The HBC viewed the arrival of the American mountain men as an abject failure of Ross leadership. Jedediah Smith and the others were competitors and the HBC did not look kindly on competition. HBC leaders issued new orders to their drop the long standing policy of limited trapping and create a fur desert by over trapping to prevent the Americans from making a profit. The British and the Americans were now locked in a race for dominance of the fur trade in the west. While Jedediah Smith remained at Flathead Post, he did his best to learn the meticulous organizational practices of the hugely successful Hudson's Bay company and adapt them to his own operations. Amid the hustle and strategic maneuvering at Flathead Post in what is today northern Montana, Smith found moments of solitude to reflect on his journey. His letters to his family revealed a deeply personal side which contrasted sharply with his rugged public Persona. In his letters he poured out his homesickness, his spiritual struggles and the emotional toil of his relentless quest for beaver pelts on the western frontier. He spoke of the wilderness's harsh beauty, constant dangers and isolation. Yet the letters also carried a tone of resilience and hoped to continue his work. It was now early 1825, three years after he'd signed on with Ashley's hundred. It was time for Smith to continue his business. He traveled down the Bear river in the southeast corner of the modern state of Idaho. There he found a party of Ashley's men, including Smith's old comrade Jim Bridger. The once quiet Bear river area became a bustling hub of trapping activity. The presence of multiple American trapping parties caught the HBC off guard. The crowded conditions and strategic maneuvers created a charged atmosphere. The trappers camps buzzed with plans and whispered deals, each group seeking to outmaneuver the others. Smith's leadership and Diplomacy were tested as he worked to secure his party's success while mitigating conflicts. And the reunion of the American trapping parties brought another piece of news that would be judged historic in the future. William Ashley had ordered all of his men to meet him at the Green river in southwestern Wyoming on or about July 10, 1825. It would be the first of the legendary gatherings known as the Rendezvous. After months of grueling travel and trapping in the unforgiving wilderness in the winter and spring of 1825, Smith and his men looked forward to the gathering with anticipation and relief. Ashley promised to mark a trail to the meetup by stripping trees of their bark or erecting stone cairns. Smith and his men followed the trail to Rendezvous Creek, where they found a bustling scene that would be the first of what would become a legacy of the mountain men. The Rendezvous was a huge trade fair. Tents and makeshift shelters dotted the landscape. The air was filled with sounds of laughter, bargaining, and the occasional gunshot. Traders from St. Louis made the arduous journey westward, bringing goods that were in high demand. Gunpowder, lead, blankets, tobacco and alcohol. As Smith and his men unloaded their pelts, they marveled at the variety of goods on display. Beads and trinkets glinted in the sun, drawing the attention of Native American traders who came to barter their own furs and goods. The atmosphere was one of camaraderie and celebration, a temporary respite from the harsh realities of life in the mountains. Smith took the opportunity to catch up with old friends and acquaintances, which unexpectedly included the friend he thought he'd lost, Jim Kleiman. The previous year. Kleiman and his group of four trappers were supposed to have met Smith at the Sweetwater river so they could reunite their forces and take their furs to market. None of the five men showed up. Smith had ridden down the river in search of Kliman, but all Smith found was a lean to shelter and some Indian sign. Smith didn't see signs of a fight at the campsite, but he could only conclude that his friends had been killed by warriors. The truth was yet another story of survival in the mountain man era. There don't seem to be any surviving accounts of what happened to the four men who were with Jim Kleiman. But Kleiman left the group, presumably at the lean to that Smith found later, and went to find a good spot to load the pelts onto a boat and float them downstream. He got cut off from the group and wandered through the wilderness of south central Wyoming. He eventually found a Pawnee camp where he was robbed of everything he had rifle, knife, gunpowder, food, all of it. One of the warriors cut Kliman's long hair, but mercifully didn't scalp him. They let him go. With just a leather sack that contained a few kernels of corn, he staggered out into the arid plains of southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska. It appears as though he walked clear across the state of Nebraska, and when he saw the American flag over Fort Atkinson, near the current city of Omaha, he thought he was hallucinating and he collapsed. He woke up in the fort two days later and received his own surprise. A man he thought was dead, Hugh Glass, was sitting next to him. Jim Climate had wandered alone through the high plains for more than 80 days, and like Hugh Glass and Jedediah Smith, who'd survived grisly attacks, he recovered and went straight back to trapping. Now he told his tale to his old friend Jed Smith at the first Rendezvous, a gathering that would happen every year for the next 15 years. And in addition to swapping tales and trading for supplies, there were larger deals to be done at the Rendezvous or shortly after. William Ashley approached Jedediah Smith with a proposition. Ashley's partner, Andrew Henry, had retired from the company the previous year in 1824. Ashley wanted Smith to become his new partner. Smith said yes, and in the space of three years, he had gone from a volunteer who answered a newspaper ad to a captain who led expeditions to co owner of the company.