CHAPTER IV.

THE TRADER AND TRAPPER.

For sixty years after Lewis and Clark returned from their expedition, the headwaters of the Yellowstone remained unexplored except by the trader and trapper. The traffic in peltries it was that first induced extensive exploration of the west. Concerning the precious metals, the people seem to have had little faith in their abundant existence in the west, and no organized search for them was made in the earlier years of the century. But that country, even in its unsettled state, had other and important sources of wealth. Myriads of beaver inhabited the streams and innumerable buffalo roamed the valleys. The buffalo furnished the trapper with means of subsistence, and beaver furs were better than mines of gold. Far in advance of the tide of settlement the lonely trapper, and after him the trader, penetrated the unknown west. Gradually the enterprise of individuals crystallized around a few important nuclei and there grew up those great fur-trading companies which for many years exercised a kind of paternal sway over the Indians and the scarcely more civilized trappers. A brief resumé of the history of these companies will show how important a place they occupy in the early history of the Upper Yellowstone.

The climax of the western fur business may be placed at about the year 1830. At that time three great companies operated in territories whose converging lines of separation centered in the region about Yellowstone Lake. The oldest and most important of them, and the one destined to outlive the others, was the world-renowned Hudson's Bay Company. It was at that time more than a century and a half old. Its earlier history was in marked contrast with that of later years. Secure in the monopoly which its extensive charter rights guaranteed, it had been content with substantial profits and had never pushed its business far into new territory nor managed it with aggressive vigor. It was not until forced to action by the encroachments of a dangerous rival, that it became the prodigious power of later times.

This rival was the great North-west Fur Company of Montreal: It had grown up since the French and Indian War, partly as a result of that conflict, and finally took corporate form in 1787. It had none of the important territorial rights of the Hudson's Bay Company, but its lack of monopoly was more than made up by the enterprise of its promoters. With its bands of Canadian frontiersmen, it boldly penetrated the north-west and paid little respect to those territorial rights which its venerable rival was powerless to enforce. It rapidly extended its operations far into the unexplored interior. Lewis and Clark found its traders among the Mandans in 1804. In 1811 the Astorians saw its first party descend the Columbia to the sea. Two years later the American traders on the Pacific Coast were forced to succumb to their British rivals.

A long and bitter strife now ensued between the two British companies. It even assumed the magnitude of civil war, and finally resulted in a frightful massacre of unoffending colonists. The British government interfered and forced the rivals into court, where they were brought to the verge of ruin by protracted litigation. A compromise was at last effected in 1821 by an amalgamation of the two companies under the name of the older rival.

But in the meantime a large part of their best fur country had been lost. In 1815 the government of the United States excluded British traders from its territory east of the Rocky Mountains. To the west of this limit, however, the amalgamated company easily forced all its rivals from the field. No American fur company ever attained the splendid organization, nor the influence over the Indians, possessed by the Hudson's Bay Company. At the time of which we write it was master of the trade in the Columbia River valley, and the eastern limit of its operations within the territory of the United States was nearly coincident with the present western boundary of the Yellowstone Park.

The second of the great companies to which reference has been made was the American Fur Company. It was the final outcome of John Jacob Astor's various attempts to control the fur trade of the United States. Although it was incorporated in 1809, it was for a time overshadowed by the more brilliant enterprises known as the Pacific Fur Company and the Southwest Fur Company. The history of Mr. Astor's Pacific Fur Company, the dismal experiences of the Astorians, and the deplorable failure of the whole undertaking, are matters familiar to all readers of Irving's "Astoria."

The other project gave for a time more substantial promise of success. A British company of considerable importance, under the name of the Mackinaw Company, with headquarters at Michilimacinac, had for some time operated in the country about the headwaters of the Mississippi now included in the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Astor succeeded in forming a new company, partly with American and partly with Canadian capital. This company bought out the Mackinaw Company, and changed the name to South-west Fur Company. But scarcely had its promising career begun when it was cut short by the War of 1812.

The failure of these two attempts caused Mr. Astor to turn to the old American Fur Company. The exclusion Act of 1815 enabled him to buy at his own price the North-west Fur Company's posts on the upper rivers, and the American Company rapidly extended its trade over all the country, from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains. Its posts multiplied in every direction, and at an early date steamboats began to do its business up the Missouri River from St. Louis. It gradually absorbed lesser concerns, such as the Missouri Fur Company, and the Columbia Fur Company, and in 1823 was reorganized under the name of The North American Fur Company. In 1834, Astor sold his interests to Chouteau, Valle and Company, of St. Louis, and retired from the business. At this time the general western limit of the territory operated in by this formidable company was the northern and eastern slope of the mountains which bound the Yellowstone Park on the north and east. Its line of operations was down the river to St. Louis, and its great trading posts were located at frequent intervals between.

The third of the great rival companies was the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, which originated in St. Louis in 1822, and received its full organization in 1826 under the direction of Jedediah Smith, David Jackson and William Sublette. Among the leading spirits, who at one time or another guided its affairs, was the famous mountaineer James Bridger to whom frequent reference will be made.

This company had its general center of operations on the head waters of Green River to the west of South Pass. Unlike the other companies, it had no navigable stream along which it could establish posts and conduct its operations. By the necessities of its exclusively mountain trade it developed a new feature of the fur business. The _voyageur_, with his canoe and oar, gave way to the mountaineer, with his saddle and rifle. The trading post was replaced by the annual rendezvous, which was in many points the forerunner of the later cattle "roundups" of the plains. These rendezvous were agreed upon each year at localities best suited for the convenience of the trade. Hither in the spring came from the east convoys of supplies for the season's use. Hither repaired also the various parties of hunters and trappers and such bands of Indians as roamed in the vicinity. These meetings were great occasions, both in the transaction of business and in the round of festivities that always prevailed. After the traffic of the occasion was over, and the plans for the ensuing year were agreed upon, the convoys returned to the States and the trappers to their retreats in the mountains. The field of operations of this company was very extensive and included about all of the West not controlled by the Hudson's Bay and American Fur Companies.

Thus was the territory of the great West practically parceled out among these three companies.[O] It must not be supposed that there was any agreement, tacit or open, that each company should keep within certain limits. There were, indeed, a few temporary arrangements of this sort, but for the most part each company maintained the right to work in any territory it saw fit, and there was constant invasion by each of the proper territories of the other. But the practical necessities of the business kept them, broadly speaking, within the limits which we have noted. The roving bands of "free trappers" and "lone traders," and individual expeditions like those of Captain Bonneville and Nathaniel J. Wyeth, acknowledged allegiance to none of the great organizations, but wandered where they chose, dealing by turns with each of the companies.

[O] A singular and striking coincidence at once discloses itself to any one who compares maps showing the territories operated in by these three companies, and those which belonged to the three great families of Indians mentioned in a preceding chapter. By far the larger part of the Hudson's Bay Company's territory, as far west as the main range of the Rocky Mountains, was Algonquian. The American Fur Company's territory was almost entirely Siouan, and that of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Shoshonean.

Nor did any company maintain an exclusive monopoly of its peculiar methods of conducting business. The American Fur Company frequently held rendezvous at points remote from its trading posts; and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in later years resorted to the Missouri River as its line of supplies. In fact, the interests of the two companies finally became to such an extent dependent upon each other that a union was effected, in 1839, under the firm name of P. Chouteau, Jr.

The records of those early days abound in references to the fierce competition in trade which existed between these great organizations. It led to every manner of device or subterfuge which might deceive a rival as to routes, conceal from him important trapping grounds, undermine the loyalty of his employes or excite the hostility of the Indians against him. It often led to deeds of violence, and made the presence of a rival band of trappers more dreaded than a war party of the implacable Blackfeet.

The vigor and enterprise of these traders caused their business to penetrate the remotest and most inaccessible corners of the land. Silliman's Journal for January, 1834, declares that--

"The mountains and forests, from the Arctic Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, are threaded through every maze by the hunter. Every river and tributary stream, from the Columbia to the Rio del Norte, and from the Mackenzie to the Colorado of the West, from their head waters to their junctions, are searched and trapped for beaver."

That a business of such all-pervading character should have left a region like our present Yellowstone Park unexplored would seem extremely doubtful. That region lay, a sort of neutral ground, between the territories of the rival fur companies. Its streams abounded with beaver; and, although hemmed in by vast mountains, and snow-bound most of the year, it could not have escaped discovery. In fact, every part of it was repeatedly visited by trappers. Rendezvous were held on every side of it, and once, it is believed, in Hayden Valley, just north of Yellowstone Lake. Had the fur business been more enduring, the geyser regions would have become known at least a generation sooner.

But a business carried on with such relentless vigor naturally soon taxed the resources of nature beyond its capacity for reproduction. In regions under the control of a single organization, as in the vast domains of the Hudson's Bay Company, great care was taken to preserve the fur-bearing animals from extinction; but in United States territory, the exigencies of competition made any such provision impossible. The poor beaver, as at a later day the buffalo, quickly succumbed to his ubiquitous enemies. There was no spot remote enough for him to build his dam in peace, and the once innumerable multitude speedily dwindled away. The few years immediately preceding and following 1830 were the halcyon days of the fur trade in the United States. Thenceforward it rapidly declined, and by 1850 had shrunk to a mere shadow of its former greatness. With its disappearance the early knowledge of the Upper Yellowstone also disappeared. Subsequent events--the Mormon emigration, the war with Mexico, and the discovery of gold--drew attention, both private and official, in other directions; and the great wonderland became again almost as much unknown as in the days of Lewis and Clark.