A Chronicle of the Great Emigrant Trail"
by W. J. Ghent, pub. 1929
Excerpts from Chapter 1, The Pathmakers
The Illustrated London News, 1858
When the fur-trappers invaded the West they found a criss-cross pattern of many trails. Some of these for a time they followed, but oftener they made their way through an untracked wilderness. They were hunting for beaver, and far and wide they searched wherever beaver might be found. Perhaps none of them ever trod the floor of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, but elsewhere they seem to have penetrated to every niche and cranny of the rugged West. Long before the Government undertook any general exploration of this vast region, virtually all of it had become known, in minute detail, to the hardy and indomitable trappers.
This early exploration was largely financed by the plug hat of our forefathers. The dauntless spirits who in the face of every peril kept to their quest could hardly have indulged their passion for adventure but for the good money commanded by the beaver pelt. Fashion decreed the high hat of prime beaver fur, and even the unfashionable accepted the decree. Assuredly the beaver fur had many other uses; the Chinese, for instance, who were never addicted to high hats, were its eager buyers; but its steady demand as material for headgear gave stability to the trade. In 1832 came the silk hat, with the result that by another seven years the price of beaver fur in London fell to one-eighth of its former level. For a time American fashion resisted the innovation. As late as 1846 Oliver Wendell Holmes could write the impressive counsel to men who wished to dress both modishly and well: Have a good hat; the secret of your looks lives with the beaver in Canadian brooks..... some years after the silk hat had won a certain favor in Europe and the beaver had virtually disappeared from the brooks of Wyoming and Montana. The drop in the price of fur, along with the gradual exhaustion of the supply, had paralyzed the trapping industry and driven the trappers from the mountains.
These trapper-explorers, or "mountain men," who broke the trails that opened up the West, were a unique breed of men. They had no forerunners, and their like can never again appear on the earth. Irving's familiar tribute, based on the word of Bonneville, tells what toils they endured and what perils they faced:
There is, perhaps, no class of men on the face of the earth, who lead a life of more continued exertion, peril and excitement, and who are more enamoured of their occupations, than the free trappers of the West. No toil, no danger, no privation can turn the trapper from his pursuit. His passionate excitement at times resembles a mania. In vain may the most vigilant and cruel savages beset his path; in vain may rocks, and precipices, and wintry torrents oppose his progress; but let a single track of beaver meet his eye, and he forgets all dangers and defies all difficulties. At times he may be seen with his traps on his shoulder, buffeting his way across rapid streams, amidst floating blocks of ice: at other times, he is to be found with his traps swung on his back clambering the most rugged mountains, scaling or descending the most frightful precipices, searching, by routes inaccessible to the horse, and never before trodden by white man, for springs and lakes unknown to his comrades, and where he may meet with his favorite game. Such is the mountaineer, the hardy trapper of the West.
From the journal of Osborne Russell, himself a trapper, April, 1838:
Early next morning about thirty of us were armed, equipped and mounted, as circumstances required. A trapper's equipment in such cases is generally one animal upon which is placed one or two epishemores [apishamores, saddle blankets], a riding saddle and bridle, a sack containing six beaver traps, a blanket with an extra pair of moccasins, his powder horn and bullet pouch, with a belt to which is attached a butcher knife, a wooden box containing bait for beaver, a tobacco sack with a pipe and implements for making fire, with sometimes a hatchet fastened to the pommel of his saddle. His personal dress is a flannel or cotton shirt (if he is fortunate enough to obtain one, if not antelope skin answers the purpose of over and undershirt), a pair of leather breeches with blanket or smoked buffalo skin leggings, a coat made of blanket or buffalo robe, a hat or cap of wool, buffalo or other skin, his hose are pieces of blanket wrapped around his feet, which are covered with a pair of moccasins made of dressed deer, elk or buffalo skins, with his long hair falling loosely over his shoulders, completes his uniform. He then mounts and places his rifle before him on his saddle. Such was the dress equipage of the party, myself included, now ready to start.
This time has been called the romantic period of the frontier, and again, more appropriately, the heroic period. Many of the icy streams the trappers waded were rich in the precious metal, though the fact did not become known until years after they had scattered to other scenes.
From Myron Eells' "Marcus Whitman, Pathfinder and Patriot"
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1877
The first party of whites known to have journeyed along any section of what was to become the Oregon Trail was that of Wilson Price Hunt's overland Astorians in 1811-12, and the section was in the remote West. The Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-06 traveled no part of the Trail. In the spring of 1811, Hunt started out, with sixty men, one woman (the Indian wife of the interpreter, Dorion), and two children, on his memorable journey through the western wilderness. John Jacob Astor had determined upon his magnificent venture of setting up an establishment oat the mouth of the Columbia; to this projected Astoria he had sent one expedition by sea, and he had chosen hunt to lead another by land. About the middle of July, Hunt's party traveled through what is now Wyoming to where the Wind River turns north and becomes the Bighorn, ascended the Wind, crossed the two ranges westward and reached the abandoned fort which Major Andrew Henry had established on Henry's Fork of the Snake the previous fall. The remote western section was further followed or paralleled by the two Snake expeditions of the North West Company in 1818-20 and by the four expeditions of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1824-29.
The most important of the early expeditions following the discover of South Pass was that of Smith, Jackson and Sublette. It marked the beginning of wheel traffic on the Oregon Trail. The train was composed of ten loaded wagons, drawn by five mules each and two Dearborn carriages, drawn by one mule each, left St. Louis on April 10, 1830.. It was led by Sublette, for his partners were then in the mountains. It followed the Santa Fe Trail about forty miles then went some degrees north of west, crossing the Kansas and reaching Platte, which it followed to the Rocky Mountains and to the head of Wind River where it issues from the mountains. It left the Trail near the present Casper, Wyoming. It arrived on July 16 and the partners sold their company to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Three weeks later, the train started on its return and reached St. Louis on October 10.
Harpers Weekly, 1868
Harpers Weekly, 1871
The route from Independence to the mouth of the Walla Walla was the original Oregon Trail, parent of all the central routes to the Pacific. This great highway ran through a wilderness. From Independence to Fort Walla Walla there was nowhere along its line, at the beginning of 1832, even a cabin. Shaped gradually by the trappers, this road was now to be traveled by the missionaries, and in a few years by thousands of emigrants seeking homes on the Pacific.
Harper's Weekly, 1875
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