Part 1

COLTER’S HELL AND JACKSON’S HOLE

By Merrill J. Mattes

Published by YELLOWSTONE LIBRARY AND MUSEUM ASSOCIATION and the GRAND TETON NATURAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION in cooperation with NATIONAL PARK SERVICE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

© 1962 Yellowstone Library and Museum Association Reprint 1970

The Yellowstone Library and Museum Association and the Grand Teton Natural History Association are non-profit distributing organizations whose purpose is the stimulation of interest in the educational and inspirational aspects of Yellowstone and Grand Teton history and natural history. The Associations cooperate with and are recognized by the United States Department of the Interior and its Bureau, the National Park Service, as essential operating organizations.

As one means of accomplishing their aims the Associations publish reasonably priced booklets which are available for purchase by mail throughout the year or at the museum information desks in the parks during the summer.

Photographs used were provided through the courtesy of the National Park Service, except where otherwise credited.

COLTER’S HELL AND JACKSON’S HOLE: The Fur Trappers’ Exploration of the Yellowstone and Grand Teton Park Region

By Merrill J. Mattes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page I. Strange Land of “Volcanoes” and “Shining Mountains” 1 II. The Mystery of “La Roche Jaune” or Yellow Rock River 9 III. John Colter, The Phantom Explorer—1807-1808 13 IV. “Colter’s Hell”: A Case of Mistaken Identity 19 V. “Les Trois Tetons”: The Golden Age of Discovery, 1810-1824 25 VI. “Jackson’s Hole”: Era of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, 1825-1832 35 VII. “The Fire Hole”: Era of the American Fur Company, 1833-1840 53 VIII. Epilogue: 1841-1870 77 Selected Bibliography 86 Vicinity Map at rear

I. Strange Land of “Volcanoes” and “Shining Mountains”

The Yellowstone-Grand Teton region was not officially discovered and its scenic marvels were not publicly proclaimed until the 1870’s, beginning with the Washburn-Langford-Doane expedition. For thirty years before, from 1841 to 1869, this region was a Paradise Lost, rarely visited by white men. But for thirty years before that, or from 1807 to 1840, this region had hundreds of appreciative visitors. These were the Rocky Mountain fur trappers. While searching for the golden-brown fur of the beaver, destined for the St. Louis market, these adventurers thoroughly explored this fabulous region. Although news of their discoveries received scant public notice back in the settlements, or was discounted as tall tales, to them belongs the honor of being the first actual explorers of these twin parks.

Neighboring Yellowstone and Grand Teton, established as National Parks in 1872 and 1929, respectively, are separately managed today as units of our National Park System. But geographically, now as well as in the early nineteenth century, they embrace one unique region, characterized by topographic and geologic features that are the crescendo of a great scenic symphony. Here, at the heart of the continent, the source of the three major river systems of the continent—the Columbia, the Colorado, and the Missouri-Mississippi—may be found the greatest geyser basins, the largest mountain lake, the most colorful of kaleidoscopic canyons, one of the richest arrays of wildlife, and one of the most spectacularly beautiful mountain ranges in the world. The Yellowstone-Grand Teton region has historical unity, also, particularly during the obscure but heroic age of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.

“Colter’s Hell”—bearing the name of the legendary discoverer, and conjuring up visions of a primitive “Dante’s Inferno”—is the term which visitors today associate with the early history of Yellowstone National Park and its universally famous hydrothermal wonders. Actually, the wandering, bearded, buck-skinned beaver trappers never referred to the geyser region of the upper Madison as Colter’s Hell. As we will see, the real Colter’s Hell in Jim Bridger’s day was another place altogether, having nothing to do with anything within Yellowstone Park itself. In trapper times the Yellowstone geyser area had no fixed name but was variously described by them as a region of “great volcanoes,” “boiling springs” or “spouting fountains.” On the recently discovered Hood and Ferris maps (see below) it is labeled “the Burnt Hole” (although this name seems to have been restricted by Russell and others to the Hebgen Lake Valley). Captain Bonneville tells us that his men knew of this region as “the Firehole” and this name, as applied to the river draining the geyser basins, survives today.

Yellowstone Park, carved out of territorial Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, is a rough-edged rectangle of 3,500 square miles that straddles the twisting course of the Continental Divide. It is a geological circus, a unique creation of ancient volcanoes and glaciers, flanked on the southeast and east by the Absaroka Range, on the north by the Snowy Range, on the northwest by the Gallatin and Madison ranges, on the west by the Centennial Range, and on the south by the Teton Mountains.

From the Park flow the headwaters of two continental rivers and their major tributaries. From here the Snake River arcs southward toward Jackson’s Hole and the cathedral-like Tetons, destined to join the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. Here the Firehole and Gibbon rivers, draining the principal geyser basins, unite to become the Madison River, and here also arises the Gallatin, these being two of the Three Forks of the Missouri. Here arises a branch of the North Fork of the Shoshone River, a tributary of the Bighorn. And here, after its birth near Two Ocean Pass, begins the mighty Yellowstone River which, after passing through its vast mirror-like lake and its prismatic canyon, flows out onto the plains to receive the Bighorn and join the Missouri on its marathon journey to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.

This region held a fortune in coveted beaver skins, but it was remote, snowbound, haunted by the vindictive Blackfeet, and plagued by weird visions, sulphurous fumes, and uncanny noises. Here indeed was fertile soil for a legend.

On a clear day Yellowstone Park visitors can see to the south the mountain spires which identify Grand Teton National Park of Wyoming, an indefinable shape of 500 square miles. (The actual boundaries of these neighboring parks are separated by a scant five miles.) The Tetons are perhaps the most distinctive of the granite giants which comprise the Rocky Mountains. A series of sharp pyramids of naked rock, the peaks stand like sharks’ teeth against the sky. The most precipitous sides and the most needle-like summit belong to the highest of these, the Grand Teton, which rises over 7,000 feet from its immediate base, nearly 14,000 feet above the level of the distant sea.

The Teton Mountains are the most conspicuous landmarks of a region which contains the scrambled sources of the three greatest river systems of continental United States. As we have seen, Yellowstone Park to the north gives birth to the eastward-flowing Missouri and the westward flowing Columbia waters. East of the Tetons, in the Wind River Mountains, is the head of Green River which rolls southward to merge into the mighty Colorado River, tumbling through the arid lands to the Gulf of California.

Jackson’s Hole is that part of the Upper Snake River Valley which lies at the eastern base of the Teton Range. One of the largest enclosed valleys in the Rocky Mountains, its glaciated floor extends about sixty miles north and south, and varies up to twelve miles in width. It is bounded on the west by the Tetons, on the east and south by the less pretentious Mount Leidy Highlands and the Gros Ventre and Hoback Mountains. The Gros Ventres merge imperceptibly into the Wind River Mountains farther east, the crest of which forms the Continental Divide. The southern extremity of the Tetons merges with the eastern end of the Snake River Range near the canyon where the Snake River escapes from the valley.

Historic Jackson’s Hole, also known as “Jackson’s Big Hole”—but now politely refined to just plain Jackson Hole—was named in 1829 for David Jackson, one of the partners of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. To the early trapper a “hole” was a sizeable valley abounding in game, and usually (with the exception of Yellowstone’s “Firehole”) associated with some distinctive personality—hence Brown’s Hole, Pierre’s Hole, Gardner’s Hole, etc. However, Jackson’s Hole was more than just a pleasant spot for trapping and camping. Research gives substance to the view that this was the historic crossroads of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.

Jackson’s Hole was destined by geography to become a traffic center of the Western fur trade. Between South Pass at the head of the Little Sandy and the northern passes above the Three Forks of the Missouri it offered the most feasible route across the Rocky Mountain barrier. In addition, it was the focal point of a region that was highly prized and vigorously contested because of its populous beaver streams. Here trappers’ trails converged like the spokes of a great wheel and, after Lewis and Clark, most of the important trapper-explorers crossed Jackson’s Hole on their journeys.

In historic times there were seven gateways to and from Jackson’s Hole: northward up Snake River; northeastward up Pacific Creek to Two Ocean Pass; eastward up Buffalo Fork to Twogwotee Pass; eastward up the Gros Ventre to Union Pass; southward up the Hoback to Green River; westward via Teton Pass or Conant Pass (at the south and north extremities of the Teton Range) to Pierre’s Hole.

The Tetons received their name from French-Canadian trappers who accompanied the earliest British expeditions into this territory. As they approached the range from the west, they beheld three towering mountains upon which they bestowed the name of “Trois Tetons” (“Three Breasts”). This romantic designation was readily adopted by the lonely trapping fraternity to whom the sharp snowy peaks (now known as the Grand, Middle and South Tetons) became a beacon to guide them through the hostile wilderness. To the Indians the Tetons were variously known as “The Three Brothers,” “The Hoaryheaded Fathers,” and “Tee Win-at,” meaning “The Pinnacles.” The earliest Americans in the region, being more practical than romantic, could find no better name for the silvery spires than “The Pilot Knobs,” while an official Hudson’s Bay Company map indicates with equal homeliness, “The Three Paps.” The name “Three Tetons” survived, however, and was officially recognized by cartographers. The name first appeared publicly in the Bonneville Map of 1837.

The Upper Snake River (i.e., above the mouth of Henry’s Fork) was called “Mad River” by the Astorians. Others simply referred to it as the “Columbia River” or “the headwaters of the Columbia,” but to most of the fur trappers it was “Lewis River” or “Lewis Fork,” so originally named in the Clark Map of 1810 for Capt. Meriwether Lewis, as Clark’s Fork of the Columbia was named after his fellow explorer, Capt. William Clark. This name was much more appropriate than its present one, which is derived from the Snake or Shoshone Indians, and first appears on the Greenhow Map of 1840.

In spite of past efforts by water power advocates to “improve” it by a dam, Yellowstone Lake remains just as it was when first discovered by John Colter, the original “Lake Eustis” of the Clark Map of 1810. Jackson Lake, however, was enlarged by a dam built in 1916 by the Bureau of Reclamation. This lake is identifiable with the “Lake Biddle” of the Clark Map of 1810, the “Teton Lake” of Warren A. Ferris, and the “Lewis Lake” referred to frequently by another trapper, Joseph L. Meek. There is today a tributary of the Upper Snake known as Lewis River, heading in a Lewis Lake within the confines of Yellowstone National Park, neither of which are to be confused with the historic “Lewis River” and “Lewis Lake.”

II. The Mystery of “La Roche Jaune” or Yellow Rock River

For some twenty years before the advent of Lewis and Clark, French-Canadian voyageurs of the North West Company were in league with the Mandans, and from these Indians learned of the distant “Pierre Jaune” or “Roche Jaune” River, a translation from the Indian equivalent of “Yellow Rock River.” Chittenden theorizes that the ultimate origin of the name descends from the brilliant and infinite varieties of yellow which dominate the color scheme of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and which probably awed the first aboriginal explorer just as it does today’s auto-borne tourist.

Although there is room for debate as to whether any of the Canadian traders beat Lewis and Clark to the mouth of the Yellowstone, it is certain that one of their number preceded the Americans in the approach to its headwaters. On September 10, 1805, Francois Antoine Larocque reached “Riviere aux Roches Jaunes” just below the mouth of Pryor’s Fork, near present Billings, Montana, in the course of “a voyage of discovery to the Rocky Mountains.” After wintering at the Mandan villages in 1804-1805 as a neighbor of the hibernating Lewis and Clark, and being thwarted in his desire to accompany them upstream, Larocque had returned to his post on the Assiniboine for supplies, then hurried back to the Mandans, going from there overland via Knife River, the Little Missouri, and the Tongue to the Bighorn Mountains, country of the Crows.

While wintering with the Mandans, Captain Clark sketched two maps of the unexplored country westward, based on “the information of traders, indians and my own observation and ideas.” One of these shows “Rochejhone River” with six tributaries from the south, five with Indian names, two translated as “Tongue River” and “Big Horn R.” The Bighorns and Rocky Mountains beyond are represented only by diagrammatic strokes. There is a trail from the mouth of Knife River to the Bighorns, roughly the same subsequently taken by Larocque. This was actually a refinement of a sketch made for Clark by the Mandan Chief Big White. The second map shows “River yellow rock” minus tributaries but with the Crows (“gens de Corbeau”) located just west of an imaginative “montagne de roche—conjecturall.” These maps, the first to our knowledge to depict the Yellowstone River, were sent to President Jefferson on April 7, 1805, by Meriwether Lewis, to accompany his eagerly awaited progress report.

Upon their return trip in 1806, after wintering at Fort Clatsop at the mouth of the Columbia, Lewis and Clark divided in order to explore the country more thoroughly, the latter undertaking to determine the source of the mysterious Yellowstone. On July 15, with eleven white men, the Indian woman Sacajawea and her baby, the cavalcade crossed Bozeman Pass, which marks the divide between the Yellowstone and Gallatin Fork, and reached the vicinity of present Livingston, Montana. Never suspecting what wonders lay concealed behind the snowy mountain wall to the south, Clark hurried on down the river to rejoin Lewis, with glory enough for one expedition.

There is only one hint of volcanic phenomena which Clark seems to have obtained from any source other than the presumed conversation with Colter, mentioned below. This was an Indian tale, received after Clark’s return, but before Colter’s return, to the effect that at the head of Tongue River, a branch of the Yellowstone, “there is frequently heard a loud noise like Thunder, which makes the earth Tremble, they state that they seldom go there because their children Cannot sleep—and Conceive it possessed of spirits, who were averse that men Should be near them.” Speculates Vinton, “it can hardly be doubted that the Indians referred to the geyser basin in the Park,” rather than to the Tongue River neighborhood.

It is commonly supposed that, prior to Colter, no white man had knowledge of strange phenomena on the Upper Yellowstone, this supposition being one of the pillars of the “first-discovery” theory. It is fairly evident that Clark knew nothing of geysers when he was within seventy-five miles of them in 1806 but, ironically enough, at this time some intimation of them had certainly reached others, including Clark’s sponsor, Thomas Jefferson. On October 22, 1805, James Wilkinson, governor of Louisiana Territory, with headquarters in St. Louis, sent to the President, in care of Captain Amos Stoddard,

a Savage delineation on a Buffalo Pelt, of the Missouri & its South Western branches, including the Rivers plate & Lycorne or Pierre jaune; This Rude Sketch without Scale or Compass ‘et remplie de Fantaisies ridicules’ is not destitute of Interests, as it exposes the location of several important Objects, & may point the way to useful enquiry—among other things a little incredible, a volcano is distinctly described on Yellow Stone River.

Wilkinson apparently obtained this primitive map from unidentified traders. It could not have been a copy of Clark’s map sent from Fort Mandan the April previous, for it obviously contained new data. In an advice to Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War, dated September 18, 1805, Wilkinson revealed that his interest in Yellowstone curiosities was sufficiently aroused to dispatch an expedition of his own upriver!

I have equipt a Perogue out of my Small private means, not with any view to Self interest, to ascend the missouri and enter the River Piere jaune, or yellow Stone, called by the natives, Unicorn River, the same by which Capt. Lewis I find since expects to return and which my informants tell me is filled with wonders. This Party will not get back before the Summer 1807—they are natives of this town....

Who were Wilkinson’s explorers, and what became of them? Who were the “informants”? Was their information firsthand or derived from Indians who, unlike the Mandans, were acquainted with details of the Upper Yellowstone? These questions may be unanswerable, but they arise to shadow the giant figure of John Colter.

III. John Colter, the Phantom Explorer—1807-1808

The epic journey of discovery known as “The Lewis and Clark Expedition” was organized in the autumn of 1803 at Maysville, Kentucky. Here, on October 15, John Colter enlisted as a private with the stipulated pay of $5 a month, apparently answering the requirement for “good hunters, stout, healthy, unmarried men, accustomed to the woods and capable of bearing bodily fatigue in a pretty considerable degree.”

Colter shared all the hardships and triumphs of the expedition, as well as routine adventure in hunting, starving, Indian diplomacy, and getting chased by grizzly bears. In August 1806 the returning party reached the Mandan villages. Here Colter was granted permission by the explorers to take his leave and join two trappers from Illinois, Forrest Hancock and Joseph Dickson, bound for Yellowstone River.

The extent of the wanderings of this trio is not known. In the spring of 1807 Colter alone paddled a canoe down the Missouri to the mouth of the Platte where he found keelboats of the Missouri Fur Company of St. Louis, led by Manuel Lisa. He was promptly recruited and went with this expedition up the Missouri and the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Bighorn River, where Lisa built a log fort known as Fort Raymond or Manuel’s Fort.

It was from this point that Colter made his famous journey of discovery during the autumn and winter of 1807-1808. Colter left no written record of his own. The only thing resembling written evidence is the following by Henry Brackenridge, who heard it from Manuel Lisa:

He [Lisa] continued his voyage to the Yellowstone River, where he built a trading fort. He shortly after dispatched Coulter, the hunter before mentioned, to bring some of the Indian nations to trade. This man, with a pack of thirty pounds weight, his gun and some ammunition, went upwards of five hundred miles to the Crow nation; gave them information, and proceeded from them to several other tribes. On his return, a party of Indians in whose company he happened to be was attacked, and he was lamed by a severe wound in the leg; notwithstanding which, he returned to the establishment, entirely alone and without assistance, several hundred miles.

Aside from this slim clue, his course can be determined solely on the basis of “Colter’s Route in 1807” and other data which appear on William Clark’s “Map of the West,” published in 1814, presumably based on a conversation of 1810 at St. Louis, whither the trapper-explorer returned after hair-raising adventures with the Blackfeet in the Three Forks country. Inevitably, in view of the topographical errors and distortions of the Clark map, Colter’s precise route is subject to wide differences of opinion.

A composite of theories offered by Hiram M. Chittenden, Stallo Vinton, Charles Lindsay, and Burton Harris, to mention only four qualified scholars who have undertaken to hypothecate Colter’s route, is that Colter ascended the Bighorn, followed up the Shoshone River to near present Cody, went south along the foot of the Absaroka Mountains, up Wind River to Union Pass, into Jackson’s Hole, thence probably across Teton Pass into Pierre’s Hole, thence north via Conant Pass to the west shore of Yellowstone Lake and northeast to the crossing of the Yellowstone near Tower Falls, thence up the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek, back across the Absarokas, thence south to the Shoshone River, and back to Lisa’s Fort by way of Clark’s Fork and Pryor’s Fork.

The key to Colter’s route is the identification of Lakes Jackson and Yellowstone, respectively, as Clark’s Lake Biddle (named for the patron of his publication) and Lake Eustis (named for the Secretary of War), no longer questioned by historians. The “Hot Spring Brimstone” at the sulphur beds crossing of the Yellowstone River near Tower Falls and the “Boiling Spring” near the forks of the Stinkingwater or Shoshone (see Chapter IV) are other checkpoints which now seem quite firm. In addition, there are two interesting claims of physical evidence. While these are both necessarily debatable and subject to challenge as hoaxes, they deserve consideration. According to Philip A. Rollins, quoted by Vinton:

In September of 1889, Tazewell Woody (Theodore Roosevelt’s hunting guide), John H. Dewing (also a hunting guide) and I, found on the left side of Coulter Creek, some fifty feet from the water and about three quarters of a mile above the creek’s mouth, a large pine tree on which was a deeply indented blaze, which after being cleared of sap and loose bark was found to consist of a cross thus ‘X’ (some five inches in height), and, under it, the initials ‘J C’ (each some four inches in height).