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                   The Mountain Man as Explorer


                   ┌───────────────────────────┐
                   │  F1 - Introduction        │
                   │  F2 - Colter              │
                   │  F3 - Santa Fe Trail      │
                   │  F4 - Ashley:             │
                   │       Jedediah Smith      │
                   │  F5 - Walker & Bonneville │
                   └───────────────────────────┘

                  Select on Function Key (F1 - F5)









~#1
           Introduction


         Meanwhile, a new breed of western explorer had begun to appear on
    the scene - the mountain man - descendant of the French and British
    trapper who toured the northern river routes.  Part romantic adven-
    turer and part self-made entrepreneur, part criminal the mountain man
    was a characteristically American figure who had no counterpart in
    Europe or anywhere else in the world.  Some were black sheep like
    Benjamin Harrison - son of the President - who was shipped west to
    spare family embarrassment for his drunkenness.  Others were criminals
    like Ed Rose who had been a Mississippi River pirate.  But essentially
    the mountain man became a hunter who roamed the Rockies for years at a
    time, exploiting its bounty in beaver furs, enjoying an independent
    life while hoping to make his fortune.  Some like William Ashley,
    Robert Campbell, and William Sublette, did prosper, but most never
    quite realized their American dream.  One trapper in the 1824-24
    season returned with 668 pelts which may have been a record.  But most
    quickly spent what they made on supplies for the next season and, if
    anything was left, lost it on a short summer's debauchery.

         The life of the mountain man, armed only with his high impact
    Hawken rifle, a knife, maybe a hatchet, and a small "possibles sack"
    into which he stuffed food, tobacco, small tools, and a pouch for lead
    and powder was rugged and dangerous.  If the perils of nature, starva-
    tion or wild animals did not get him, hostile Indians tried to.
    Nonetheless, the mountain man loved the freedom of the mountains and
    plains, the adventure, and the search after new territory to see and
    trap.  This was what made him an explorer though he did not consider
    himself one.  And his life, so close to the Indians, so attuned to
    their knowledge, so adapted to their ways, made him a proficient
    though usually unlettered explorer.

~#2
    JOHN COLTER [1775-1813]:

         The first mountain men were members of Lewis and Clark's Corps of
    Discovery.  On Aug 15, 1806, on their way down the Missouri the Corps
    met two men, Joseph Dickson and Forrest Hancock, who were heading
    north to trap beaver in the Yellowstone country.  Reports had already
    reached St Louis of the skins to be had there.  They were able to
    persuade John Colter to join them even though he had already suffered
    two years of hard trail deprivation.  He was to stay in the mountains
    for another four years.  Both men worked for Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard
    who had come to St Louis from New Orleans, and of whom it was said
    "rascality sat on every aspect of his ... Mexican face."  So hated by
    most of his men that he dare not turn his back on them, Lisa was
    nonetheless a very successful fur trade entrepreneur.  He initiated a
    new way for collecting furs.  The old French and British scheme
    established fixed posts and encouraged Indians to bring pelts from
    their tribal lands.  That could not work in the West.  The mountain
    Indians were not trappers.  He would rely mainly on employed trappers
    who would go wherever beaver was to be found regardless of Indian
    tribal boundaries.  Then, once a year, the man would bring their catch
    into a central point, a fort and eventually, the Rendezvous which
    started 1825, for pay and resupply.  In this way he could control the
    trade and the price of each skin and cost to the trapper for the next
    season.  Lisa did, however, attempt to keep peace with the Indians but
    a liberal distribution of gifts.

         Lisa immediately grasped the potential of Lewis and Clark's
    discoveries.  Forbidden by Federal authorities to operate in the new
    Louisiana Territory, as early as April 1807 he nonetheless launched a
    42-man expedition up the Missouri.  Making his way past the now-
    hostile river tribes, especially the Arikara, he established Manuel's
    Fort in the heart of the Rocky Mountain Indian country at the junction
    of the Bighorn and Yellowstone rivers in central Montana.  From there
    he sent out small parties of men in all directions.

         In the winter of 1807, John Colter, armed with only a pistol and
    a pack of trade goods, set off westward on a solo search past present-
    day Cody, Wyoming, where he discovered an extensive geyser basin and
    hot steaming springs forever after dubbed (in derision) "Colter's
    Hell."  More importantly, he crossed over the Absaroka Mountains into
    the wintery beauty of Jackson's Hole, and thence past the towering
    Tetons to Pierre's Hole.  After wintering here, Colter turned for
    home.  On the way back he discovered the wonders of what is now
    Yellowstone Park.  He was also captured by 500 Blackfeet.  For sport
    the stripped him, gave him a head start and sent their young warriors
    after him.  He was able to allude them.  After 7 days and 150 miles he
    limped into Lisa's Fort.  Few, however, would believe his stories
    about what he had seen.  Clark new many of these men who passed on
    their stories to him.  Clark became a central clearing house of infor-
    mation and he added many broad details to his own maps of the West.

         While Colter was adventuring to the southwest in Pierre's Hole,
    George Drouillard explored the entire Tongue River and Big Horn
    Basins.  He drew a crude map of where he had been, alluding to the
    supposed existence of Spanish outposts a "few days" march south on the
    Green River.  He had looked for a transmontaine passage southward to
    those Spanish settlements, but he could not get over the relatively
    low Owl Creek Range into the Wind River Valley, which would have led
    him to South Pass.  From there he could have crossed westward to the
    Green River and the area of the supposed Spanish settlements.
    Nonetheless, Drouillard possessed great knowledge of the northern
    beaver country, which, because of his map, did not die with him when
    he was killed by Blackfeet on John Colter's last expedition to the
    Three Forks of the Missouri in 1810.

         Still another of Lisa's explorers did succeed, though with great
    hardship and difficulty, in breaking out to the south.  In 1811
    Ezekiel Williams and a band of trappers marched southeast of the Big
    Horn Mountains, crossed the valley of the North Platte and continued
    south, west of the front range of the Rockies, through the beautiful
    interior parks of Colorado.  Unfortunately, most of his band were
    either killed or captured by the Arapaho.  Williams himself was
    captured, but favored by luck, he was rescued after several months and
    sent on his way down the Arkansas River, arriving at Boon's Lick
    Trading Post in September 1813.  Williams had discovered Colorado and
    its rich, beautiful beaver country beyond the mountains.  His know-
    ledge, which never reached cartographers, should have made clear the
    immense north-south distance of the Rocky Mountain country.

~#3
                              The Santa Fe Trail

         Spain required all trade goods to come from the Mexican south
    where it could be controlled.  Goods would be much cheaper coming from
    America and when available were eagerly gobbled up.  While Lisa's men
    were exploring the tributaries of the Upper Missouri and looking for a
    transmontaine trade route to the settlements of Taos and Santa Fe,
    Jacques Clamorgan, Lisa's secret partner, circumvented Spanish edicts
    against operating in the Louisiana Territory and in 1807 had made his
    way across the plains and into Santa Fe hard on the heels of Zebulon
    Pike's ill-fated expedition.  There he awaited the arrival of Lisa's
    men from the north in vain.

         During the next decade increasing numbers of American adventurers
    made their way from St Louis across the Southwest and into the Spanish
    capital.  Most were ejected or imprisoned by the wary Spaniards.  In
    1821, however, on the heels of Mexico's declaration of independence
    from Spain, the trader William Becknell led a pack train of mules into
    Santa Fe.  The trade was so rich in Spanish silver that Becknell
    hurried back to Missouri in January 1822 in time to return the same
    year with a caravan of 3 wagons which would carry more.  His first
    route was not good for wheeled traffic so he sought a smoother path.
    In so doing he laid out the Santa Fe Trail over which thousands of
    freight wagons and soldiers would pass.  He also brought mules and
    burros which were to provide the stock for the Missouri Mule.  The
    people of the northern province now welcomed trade with the Americans
    but were not alone.  Some of the leading families of Santa Fe invested
    heavily in their own commercial ventures sending trading parties
    northeast to St Louis or Independence.

         Almost from the beginning mountain men filtered into Santa Fe and
    Taos to trade.  In 1822 William Wolfskill trapped both the lower and
    upper Rio Grande.  The following year he ascended the Rio Grande,
    crossed over the Continental Divide and explored the San Juan River
    country of northwestern New Mexico and southern Colorado.  He brought
    back a fortune in furs, and by 1824 at least four other parties had
    rushed to the San Juan country in his footsteps.  Though the Spaniards
    had long ago preceded them (Fra Escalante, for example, who was
    looking for a route to the California missions), these were fresh
    discoveries for the Americans.  They went by two routes.  One took
    them from Taos through the San Luis Valley and along the Uncompagre
    and Gunnison rivers in western Colorado to the Green River as far as
    the Uinta Mountains.  Another took them via the Chama, the San Juan,
    and the Dolores rivers to the Green, which teemed with beaver.  One of
    these parties, led by a large rotund mountain man, Etienne Provost,
    circled around the Uinta Mountains and made its way down Weber River
    Canyon through the Wasatch Range and become some of the first Ameri-
    cans to see the Great Salt Lake.  No Spaniard, not even Escalante, had
    stumbled upon it before American trappers coming up from the south and
    down from the north.  The year of its discovery was 1825 and credit
    given to Jim Bridger.

         Other bands of southwestern trapper-explorers struck off to the
    west.  In 1824 Sylvester Pattie and his son James Ohio Pattie [1804-
    c1850] moved to Santa Fe and trapped the Gila River.  Then in 1826 the
    Patties joined a band led by Ewing Young that traveled west along the
    Gila, and north to the rim of the Grand Canyon.  Largely ignoring this
    marvel, which they were the first Americans to see, they headed
    northeast via the Little Colorado to the Colorado River which they
    followed to its source in the Colorado Rockies.  Patties's account of
    the journey asserts they then marched north via the parks of Colorado
    to the Bighorn and the Yellowstone, but it seems more likely that
    Ewing Young and his men reached only as far north as the Wind River
    Valley and the Sweetwater before they returned to Santa Fe.  At any
    rate, theirs had been among the most incredible western journeys to
    date, for they had traversed the West diagonally from the far south-
    west at the junction of the Gila and the Colorado to the northern
    ranges of the Rockies, linking up with the country Drouillard had
    explored in 1809-10.

         The other achievement of the southwestern mountain men was the
    opening of a route from Santa Fe to the Pacific.  In 1827 the Patties
    again followed the Gila, this time to the Colorado, the Colorado to
    its mouth in the Gulf of California, and then north across the desert.
    Guided by Yuma Indians, they reached Santa Catalina Mission in Baja
    California on March 3, 1828, nearly dead from thirst and starvation.
    Because they were in Spanish territory, they were taken to San Diego
    and clapped into prison, where Sylvester died, leaving James Ohio to
    tell the tale of their continental crossing.  (Even at that they had
    been preceded in 1826 by Jedediah Smith and Richard Campbell - see
    following.)  By 1829 a Mexican mule trader named Antonio Armijo had
    laid out still another version of "The Old Spanish Trail" to Califor-
    nia, largely following Escalante's route north of the Grand Canyon and
    then coursing south to a site near present-day Las Vegas, Nevada, and
    thence across the Mojave Desert, over Cajon Pass, and into Los
    Angeles.  By 1832 at least three trails crossed the Great Southwest
    from Santa Fe to California.

~#4
             The Rocky Mountain Fur Company: William Ashley

         After the Astorians' abortive adventures [see previous] and the
    daring forays of Lisa's parties, the major American inroads into the
    West were made by men of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company established by
    Gen William Ashley [1778-1838].  He had been a judge, munitions make
    and Lt Governor of Missouri.  In 1821 he absorbed pieces of the Lisa
    fur empire.  In February 1822 Ashley placed an advertisement in the St
    Louis GAZETTE AND PUBLIC ADVERTISER calling for "Enterprising Young
    Men ... to ascend the Missouri to its source, there to be employed for
    one, two, or three years."  Ashley's call was answered by some who
    became the greatest of all mountain men-explorers: Jedediah Smith,
    Thomas `Broken Hand' Fitzpatrick, David Jackson, Hugh Glass, the
    Sublette brothers, James Clyman, Edward Rose, and Jim Bridger.  Ashley
    himself was an adventuresome, imaginative man who had flair and
    ambition.  A Virginian, he craved great wealth to finance a political
    career.  This he hoped to achieve with the help of his seasoned
    partner (one of Lisa's old engagees) and the "Enterprising Young Men."
    The most striking fact was the almost total inexperience of these men.
    Bridger, for example, had been an apprentice blacksmith, Rose a pirate
    and others were tired of farming or clerking.

         They left St Louis on May 30, 1823.  At first Ashley's expedition
    came to disaster.  One of his large keelboats sank in the Missouri
    with all the trade goods aboard.  A second expedition while trading
    for horses was pinned down and all but destroyed by the fierce Arikara
    on a sandbar in the river opposite their village.  The party retreated
    and called on the U.S. Army for help.  Col Henry Leavenworth responded
    with about 200 infantry, 700 Sioux allies and a motley crew of volun-
    teers.  When the reached the camp the Arikara had left.  Clearly, with
    the Indians all along the Missouri aroused, there was no chance of
    moving in the wake of Lewis and Clark by this time, so Ashley deter-
    mined to take his parties overland.  This decision led to the opening
    of still more territory.  Andrew Henry led one band to the Yellow-
    stone, eventually establishing the post of Fort Henry (1822) at the
    confluence of the Yellowstone and Powder rivers.  From there he sent
    John H. Weber and a band that included Jim Bridger into the Wyoming
    Wind River Valley to winter with friendly Crow Indians.

~#4
    JEDEDIAH STRONG SMITH [1799-1831]:

         The other party was led by Jedediah Smith, perhaps the greatest
    of all mountain men and one of America's greatest explorers.  Born in
    Bainbridge [Binghamton], NY and raised on the Ohio frontier, Smith was
    only 24 years old, but he had been struck with exploring fever ever
    since he had read about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

         On his first expedition [1823], Smith took his men out across the
    Dakota Badlands to a spur of the Rockies called the Black Hills (the
    present Laramie Mountains).  At this point he was attacked by a
    grizzly bear who seized his whole head in its jaws and ripped off his
    scalp and one of his ears.  His men killed the bear but they held out
    little hope for Jed's survival.  Under Smith's calm direction, how-
    ever, they sewed his scalp and ear back on.  Ten days later he was
    again ready to take to the trail, hardly a handsome specimen with a
    patched-on ear and a squinted, sewed-up eye, but nonetheless in one
    tough piece.

         Soon they made the Powder River, crossed over the Big Horn
    Mountains via 4047 ft Granite Pass, and descended into the Big Horn
    Basin.  There they joined Weber's band in a bleak winter encampment
    with the Crows in the Wind River Valley.  Despite the cold they joined
    the Indians in hunting the buffalo that were seeking shelter in the
    mountains.

         At the end of February, Smith and his men including Thomas
    Fitzpatrick attempted to get out of the Wind River Valley via the
    upper end - the same Union Pass that had been used by the outward
    bound Astorians.  Deep snows blocked their path, however, and they
    returned to the Crow village.  There the Crows, using a deerskin and
    piles of sand for mountains, showed them a route around the south-
    eastern end of the Wind River Mountains.  So, still in bitter cold,
    they followed the Wind River to the Sweetwater.  Blizzards engulfed
    them.  The wind blew so hard they could not light a campfire.  Game
    was scarce, and they almost starved, but somehow they turned the flank
    of the Wind River Mountains.  In so doing, they crossed over the
    Continental Divide at the South Pass, rediscovering (for the first
    time since Stuart's westbound trip from Astoria) in 1824 that great
    emigrant gateway to the West.

         On March 19 Smith and his men reached the Green River, called by
    the Indians the Seedskeedee.  There they split up into beaver trapping
    parties.  Smith followed the Green as far south as the Uinta Mountains
    (on the other side of which Etienne Provost and his men, all unbe-
    knownst, were struggling toward the Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt
    Lake).  That same season, Smith and his men made contact with a
    brigade of North West Company men (which had merged with the Hudson
    Bay Company) under Alexander Ross on the Blackfoot Fork of the Snake
    and learned something of the country from their competitors.  Peter S.
    Ogden arrived to change that cooperative attitude.  He was on his way
    to the Columbia to order the trapping of the rivers clean to make the
    area less inviting to the advancing American competition.

         Meanwhile, Weber and his men had followed Smith's trail out of
    the Wind River Valley and across South Pass to the Green River.  From
    there they trekked north to Bear Lake and the Bear River.  In the
    early spring of 1825 one of their number, Jim Bridger, on a bet sailed
    down Bear River in a bull boat and came out in the Great Salt Lake.
    He became its official discoverer.  According to a member of the
    party, Robert Campbell, "He went to its margin and tasted the water,
    and on his return reported his discovery.  The fact of the water being
    salt induced the belief that it was an arm of the Pacific Ocean...."

         The year 1825 also saw mountain men from every corner of the West
    come together for a rendezvous on a fork of the Green River.  They had
    crisscrossed the entire West and thus could exchange information as
    well as tall tales, trade goods, beaver pelts, and rotgut trader's
    whiskey.  The rendezvous, established by Ashley as a way of supplying
    his trappers, became an annual event after 1825 to 1840.

         On August 22, 1925, Smith conducted one of the great exploring
    expeditions in the annals of the West.  He set out with 17 men from
    the Great Salt Lake "for the purpose of exploring the Country S.W.
    which was entirely unknown to me, and of which I could collect no
    satisfactory information from the Indians who inhabit this country on
    its N.E. borders."  Smith's route took him southwest past the Utah
    Lake and the Sevier River, then down along what became the "Mormon
    Corridor" to the Virgin River (which he called Adams River) and
    through the wonders of present-day Zion National Park.  When he
    reached the Colorado River far below the Grand Canyon, Smith instantly
    recognized it as the same Green River which he had left at last year's
    rendezvous.  He took his men across the Colorado and into the villages
    of the grass-skirted Mohave Indians 50 miles from the present Hoover
    Dam.  From them he learned of an ancient Indian trading trail across
    the Mojave Desert.  After his men had rested, Smith led them along
    this trail and into the Mexican settlement at San Gabriel (near Los
    Angeles).  His was the first American party to cross the Southwest
    into California.

         After remaining for nearly 2 months in southern California,
    partly because of the hostility of the Mexican authorities who ordered
    him out, the intrepid Smith in Jan 1827 led his men north through the
    unknown San Jaoquin Valley to the American River still in search of
    beaver.  Here they tried to cross over the Sierra to the east but were
    thwarted by heavy snows.  Smith, however, was determined to explore
    the country between California and the Great Salt Lake in search of a
    short cut to the annual rendezvous.  Like Ashley and others before
    him, he believed that there was a river passage and he hoped to find
    it.  So, in May 1827, taking only two men with him, Smith went up the
    Stanislaus River into the towering Sierra.  After eight grueling days
    they made their way over the mountains via Ebbetts Pass.  Now came the
    most difficult part of the trek, across the arid wastes of the Great
    Basin.  Before them stretch a thousand miles of alkali desert, with
    little game, no friendly Indians to guide them, and no landmarks.
    Following a generally northeast route that parallels present-day
    Nevada highway 6 they passed by the future sites of Ham Springs and
    Ely, Nevada.  Then they turned north, but still the endless desert lay
    ahead.  On June 25 one of the men, Robert Walker, gave out and had to
    be left behind.  Smith and his remaining partner, Silas Gobel, con-
    tinued on.  Three miles ahead they came to an isolated mountain and
    water.  Smith rushed back with water to rescue his comrade, then they
    all pushed on until, on June 27, they beheld the Great Salt Lake.  On
    July 3 they arrived at the Bear Lake Rendezvous.  Smith and his two
    companions had done what no white man, and probably no Indian, had
    ever done before.  They had crossed over the towering Sierra and
    traversed the Great Basin from west to east.  It should have been
    clear from their trek that no river passage existed.

         As soon as he could, Smith and another band of trappers set out
    over the southwest corridor route to join the men he had left in
    California.  This time, however, disaster dogged his footsteps.  The
    Mohaves, who had been turned into enemies by a fight with another
    party of trappers, massacred 10 of his men.  Smith and the 8 remaining
    were driven into the desert and only with the greatest difficulty
    reached California.  There the authorities were distinctly hostile
    with his illegal presence, and Smith went by ship to San Francisco Bay
    where he rejoined his men out of reach of Mexican soldiers.  The
    trappers then turned north towards Oregon, trapping along the way and
    enjoying great success.  But on July 14, 1828, on the Umpqua River,
    the entire party was wiped out except for 3 men and Smith himself, who
    was away from camp on a scouting expedition.  Eventually, they made
    their way 150 miles north via the Willamette Valley to the Hudson's
    Bay Company post at Fort Vancouver, where they were well received by
    John McLoughlin, the company's factor who organized a party to punish
    the Indians and recovered many of the horses and pelts and Smith's
    journal.  McLaughlin and Fort Vancouver were to be of major help to
    many who came over the Oregon Trail.

         After recuperating at Fort Vancouver, Smith went up the Columbia
    to the Hudson's Bay post at Fort Colvile near Kettle Falls.  While
    with the British, Smith noted the rich possibilities for American
    settlement in the Willamette and Columbia river valleys.  Upon his
    return he drafted a letter to the Secretary of War to this effect,
    signed by his partners David Jackson and William Sublette.  This
    letter was published by Congress and gained national prominence.  It
    helped arouse the enthusiasm of American emigration to Oregon.

         Meanwhile, Smith was not through exploring.  From Fort Colvile he
    journeyed all the way to the Canadian border.  Then, joining his
    partner David Jackson at Flathead Lake, he moved south down the
    Bitterroot Valley into Pierre's Hole for the summer rendezvous.  The
    following season he and his men passed through the Yellowstone area
    and on to the Big Horn Basin.  From there they crossed over into the
    Wind River Valley and then swung north to a winter encampment on the
    Powder River just east of the Big Horn Mountains.  The following year
    [1830] Smith continued to explore the Upper Missouri region.  After-
    wards he went downriver and seemingly into retirement.  But his
    curiosity would not let him rest.  He had never traversed the Santa Fe
    trail.  In 1831, while bound for Santa Fe, he was killed by Comanches
    on the Cimarron River.

         Without question, Jedediah Smith was one of America's greatest
    trail-blazers.  He had traversed the West from the Upper Missouri to
    the deserts of the far Southwest.  He knew the heart of the Rockies,
    the Great Plains, California and Oregon, the Columbia River, and the
    Great Basin (which he was the first white man to cross).  He had
    pioneered in the rediscovery of the central route across the Rockies
    via South Pass, and he personally informed the U.S. Government about
    the rich possibilities for settlement in Oregon and California.  He
    even left behind a map, the so-called Fremont-Gibbs-Smith map.  On a
    Fremont map of 1845, Dr. George Gibbs of Oregon, apparently using a
    manuscript map given him by Smith, sketched in all of Smith's vast
    geographical knowledge, including notes made by Smith.  Moreover,
    Smith's knowledge in less detailed form even reached Albert Gallatin
    in time for inclusion in his "Map of the Indian Tribes of North
    America."

~#5
    JOSEPH REDDEFORD WALKER [1798-1876]:

         There were, of course, many other mountain men-explorers.  Some
    were important because they were trail-blazers for the emigrants who
    moved West starting in 1832.  One of these trailblazers was Joseph
    Walker (overshadowed by Capt Bonneville), who came to know more of the
    West than any man save Jedediah Smith and Peter Skene Ogden.  In many
    ways he was more important than Smith whose travels were often un-
    planned, accidental, trapper oriented, and with inaccurate documenta-
    tion.  The trails he described became pathways for others but he
    received little recognition for his efforts.

         Walker's adventuring came naturally.  His father was one of the
    first to settle Appalachia and his brother died at the Alamo.  He was
    a Tennessean who gravitated to the Missouri frontier by the time he
    was in his early twenties.  By 1822 he had already made two trading
    trips to Santa Fe and subsequently aided an official U.S. Government
    survey party in laying out the Santa Fe Trail [1824-26].  He also
    helped found the outfitting center for the southwestern expeditions,
    Independence, MO, and served as the sheriff [1827] of that rough,
    brawling town.  His exploring days began in 1831 on a stock buying
    trip when he met Capt Benjamin Louis Eulalie De Bonneville [1796-1876]
    at Fort Gibson in Oklahoma.  The bumbling Bonneville was ostensibly on
    leave from the U.S. Army to conduct a fur-trading expedition to the
    Rocky Mountains.  It seems clear, however, that he was really recon-
    noitering the central Rockies for the government and searching for a
    route to California.  Though he proved to be a poor fur trader,
    Bonneville, thanks to Walker's guidance, accomplished both objectives
    admirably.

         In the spring of 1832, with Walker as his field lieutenant,
    Bonneville set out from Fort Osage for the mountains with 110 men.  He
    followed the now familiar path via the Platte, the Sweetwater, and
    South Pass to the Green River.  Eventually he built a fur trading post
    on Ham's Fort, of the Green, a very unlikely spot and few came to
    trade. Trapping was also poor.  He eventually abandoned it in favor of
    the Salmon River further north.

         At the Green River rendezvous of July 1833 Walker, under Bon-
    neville, organized a brigade of 50 trappers under Walker to march
    around the north end of Great Salt Lake and cross westward to the
    Pacific - the largest track of unknown land.  Walker and his men
    intentionally struck out for California through what was still Mexican
    territory as unofficial agents of the U.S. Government.  They trekked
    westward from the Great Salt Lake across great stretches of desert to
    Humboldt River, which they followed southwestward to the Humboldt
    sinks at the base of the Sierra.  Here, in a starving condition, they
    were forced to fight a pitched battle with Indians.  Almost in desper-
    ation they struck out into the Sierra via a southern branch of what is
    now the East Walker River.  They soon found themselves crossing the
    mountains over a kind of pass between the watersheds of the Merced and
    Tuolumne rivers.  In the course of their struggles they became the
    first white men to view the misty falls and stark chasms of the
    Yosemite [Nov 13, 1833].  They also came upon the "Big Trees"
    (Sequoia) at the foot of Yosemite as they descended into California
    where they rested at San Juan Bautista.  He found 21 missions and 50
    cattle ranches in operation each with 100,000 and 50,000 acres each
    respectively. Unlike Smith, he was sensitive to the Californios and
    dealt with them diplomatically and was well received.  So much so that
    he was offered 50 square miles of land if he would stay and bring in
    50 other families.  He declined the offer but was made welcome on his
    subsequent visits.

         On Walker's return journey starting in Feb 1834 he traveled south
    in California.  Aided by Indian guides, he followed the Kern River and
    located a pass around the southern end of the Sierra that was practi-
    cal for wagons and emigrants.  (This was mile high Walker Pass, for a
    long time the chief emigrant gateway into California.)  He reached the
    Bear River rendezvous July 1834 with not enough beaver to even pay
    their wages.  But his expedition had been so well planned and executed
    that he suffered no fatalities.  He never had trouble attracting men
    to his side for other expeditions.  Walker himself clearly realized
    what he had done and subsequently led wagon trains back over the route
    he had laid out.  Maps based on Walker's work were published in
    Washington Irving's works on the West, ASTORIA (1836) and THE ADVEN-
    TURES OF CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE (1837).

         For the rest of is long life Walker trekked all over the West,
    making many trips back and forth to California.  He also guided wagon
    trains and herded horses along the Old Spanish Trail from New Mexico
    to California.  He twice guided Fremont and was present at the
    beginning of the Bear Flag Revolt that helped touch off the Mexican
    War in California.  His dream, however, was to explore the Green River
    down its course through the Uintas and the high plateaus of Utah.  He
    was never able to accomplish this feat, which, 25 years later, brought
    fame to Maj John Wesley Powell.  Instead, in the 1860s, after an
    extraordinary series of adventures in central Arizona, Walker found
    gold.  The town of Prescott grew on the site of his gold strike, and
    became the territorial capital of Arizona.  Walker's career as
    explorer, army scout, horse trader, and rancher spanned the age from
    mountain man to prospector to the age of the railroad.
    *************************  The End  *************************