Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
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A hundred ninety four years ago today, on June 2nd of 1823, a group of fur trappers
in the Yellowstone area of Wyoming were attacked by Arikara Indians. Fifteen of
the group were killed. The attack would lead to a pointless and ineffective military campaign,
and would inspire a scene from the 2015 movie The Revenant. But it was more important than that,
because that attack caused a small group of American fur traders to
change how they did business. And that change, would transform the nation.
The story includes many personalities of the Old West but it begins with one in particular. William
Henry Ashleigh had already moved to the and that would eventually become the state of Missouri,
before it was even purchased for the United States from France as part of the Louisiana
territory in 1803. During the war of 1812, he served in the Missouri militia and had risen
to the rank of Brigadier General. He went by the title General for the rest of his life.
When Missouri became a state in 1820, he was elected its first Lieutenant Governor. William
Henry Ashleigh was the quintessential frontier businessman, and in 1822 he set his sights on
the lucrative fur trade in the great American West that had just been opened up by Lewis and Clark.
In 1822 Ashleigh and a partner would run ads in St. Louis area newspapers addressed to,
“enterprising young men” saying that they wanted to raise a company of 100 men to ascend the
Missouri River to its source, and there be employed for a period of one, two or three
years. There was no shortage of men who wanted to volunteer to become part of Ashley's 100,
and the subsequent expeditions that would all be part of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. And
the names of the participants read like a who's who of the early American West. Jedediah Smith,
Jim Bridger, Hugh Glass, Williams Sublett, Kit Carson, David Edward Jackson, Thomas Fitzpatrick.
Ashleigh had a new idea for the North American fur trade that was largely based on an 1822 law
that had been passed by Congress prohibiting the sale of alcohol to Native Americans. Previously
the fur trade had mostly acquired their pelts from Indians, who actually did most
of the trapping And fur companies, like the Hudson Bay Company, would build Posts along
major rivers and those Posts would be a center, where they would trade with Indians for pelts,
and then take the pelts downriver to market. But the item of barter was alcohol,
and that was now prohibited. And so when Ashley advertised for enterprising young men in 1822,
he was suggesting a completely different deal. The men themselves would do the trapping and the
company would provide to them all the tools and equipment that they needed to do so. In exchange,
half of the pelts that they acquired would go to the company, the other half of the pelts would
be sold to the company at the prevailing rate, and that would be the men's wages. It seemed
a good deal but it was resented by the Native Americans, who resented the angle attempts to
undercut their fur trade and that was a large part of what drove the Arikara attack in 1823.
Now after the attacks, many company men, a bunch of U.S. soldiers and about six hundred Sioux
Indians, who were enemies of the Arikara, went chasing the Arikara all over the Wyoming territory
but they never managed to bring them to battle. And Ashley realized that the Arikara would come
back just as soon as the soldiers left, and that the Greater Yellowstone Basin would not be a safe
place to try to acquire furs. And so that attack would force him to change strategy one more time.
Knowing that he didn't want to be tied to the Yellowstone River in Arikara country, the next
year Ashley led his men out there on horseback. Instead of as the fur trade had always been,
being tied to the rivers, now they could go out in small groups and go acquire their pelts
and do their trapping. And then they would come together once a year where they would trade the
pelts and get their pay and acquire equipment before going out again in what was called,
the Rendezvous System. And it transformed the industry, the mobility of horseback opened up
huge new swaths of unexplored land that were rich with game and pelts. But more than that,
these enterprising young men, out there in the wilds on horseback,
would make discoveries throughout the Mountain West that would open the west to settlement.
Jim Bridger would become the first white man to see the Great Salt Lake, and would establish a
trading post along the Green River that would eventually become a critical resupply point
for wagon trains along the Oregon, California and Mormon trail, and is still there today as
the small town of Fort Bridger Wyoming. Later in 1859, he would be the chief guide for the
Raynolds Expedition, which would explore and map nearly 250,000 square miles of the mountain west.
Jedediah Smith led the first group of white men who would explore the Black Hills of South Dakota,
and then went west, becoming the first US citizens to cross the Sierra Nevada
mountains and travel up the coast of California to the Oregon Territory.
Thomas Fitzpatrick was the scout that shepherded the first two immigrant
wagon trains along the Oregon Trail to California and Oregon.
William Sublette founded a trading post in Wyoming that would eventually become
a center of trade and diplomacy, and a centerpiece of the Indian Wars. Eventually
it was renamed Fort Laramie and it still exists today as a national historical site.
David Edward Jackson was the first white man known to winter in the valley in front of the
Teton Mountains, and that is why that world-famous valley, now known as Jackson Hole, bears his name.
Army Officer John C. Fremont was a central figure in America's westward expansion. It
was his documentation and maps that really allowed the westward expansion. But he was
really a creature of Ashleigh's 100, he would eventually lead five expeditions in the Mountain
West. In the first expedition he depended upon the map that was created by Jedediah Smith,
and as his chief guide, he used one of Ashley's enterprising young men, a man named Kit Carson.
On his second and longest expedition, the Chief Guide was Thomas Fitzpatrick,
and Kit Carson would join him again for his third expedition, the last before the Civil War.
William Henry Ashley sold his share of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to Jedediah Smith
in 1826. He returned to Missouri where he served three terms in the United States Congress before
unsuccessfully running for governor Missouri. To be sure fur trading was a dangerous and not
always profitable business. And there were certainly controversies. Many of Ashley's
100 were implicated in the mistreatment of Native Americans. The industry itself was short-lived as
over-trapping, dwindling animal populations, competition among the different companies and
a change in fashion in the 1830s from fur hats to silk hats eventually brought an end to the
mountain man existence. But in their time Ashley's 100 knew the Mountain West better than any Anglo
Americans alive, and their knowledge of the terrain and the native populations was shared with
government and private sources. Their names are strewn across maps from Missouri to California.
Their names are on mountain ranges, forests, rivers, mountain passes, counties and cities
are named after them. Because they led.. the nation.. west. And they deserve to be remembered.
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