Godly Mountain Man: Like All Fur Trappers of the Early 1800s, Jedediah Smith
  by Jodie Gilmore

Godly Mountain Man: Like All Fur Trappers of the Early 1800s, Jedediah Smith Wore Buckskin and Carried a Rifle. but, Unlike Many Others, He Also Carried a Bible and Exhibited a Deep Love for God.

In the early 1800s, it was commonly opined that “God stayed on his own side of the Missouri River.” St. Louis was the last outpost of civilization, and west of that area was considered to be a wilderness of heathen savagery. This point was vividly driven home to Jedediah Smith and the other members of his shore trading party as they huddled behind a gruesome breastwork of dead and wounded horses. The Arikara Indian bullets and arrows were pouring down upon their exposed position on the sandbar.

Just two years before, in 1821. Jedediah had left his home in Ohio to seek his fortune farther west, heading for St. Louis with what he considered the bare necessities: his clothes, his rifle and his Bible. It was in St. Louis that he saw General William Ashley’s advertisement for “enterprising young men,” an invitation that brought Smith to Ashley’s doorstep. Ashley must have seen something of Jedediah’s potential, for he readily signed him up. And so Jedediah joined such famous (and soon-to-be-famous) mountain men as Jim Bridger, Hugh Glass, James Clyman, Thomas Fitzpatrick, William Sublette and Mike Fink.

Now, two years later, previously friendly Indians (variously known as the Arikaras, Riccarces, or simply Rees) had turned hostile and were doing their best to annihilate General Ashley’s men. As the Indians advanced, the fur traders plunged into the Missouri River, desperately swimming for the boats anchored in the middle. Some made it--some did not.

According to one account, Jedediah was one of the last to enter the water, covering his comrades with return fire up to the last possible moment. “‘When his party was in danger, Mr. Smith was always among the foremost to meet it, and the last to fly; those who saw him on shore, at the Riccaree fight, in 1823, can attest to the truth of this assertion.”

In a mere 15 minutes on that fateful May afternoon. Ashley lost one-sixth of his force (15 dead, 9 wounded). The defeat was termed the worst disaster in the history of the Western fur trade. But in that same 15 minutes. Jedediah Smith made the transition from raw recruit to natural leader. When young Jedediah Smith had come to St. Louis in 1822 and signed on as a mountain man with General Ashley’s fur trading company, he could hardly imagine the dramatic effect his presence was to have on the American West.

Out of Obscurity

Jedediah was born in 1799, the sixth of 14 children. The family was steadfast in their Methodist beliefs, and Jedediah took his religion to heart. He was also fairly well educated. Dr. Titus Simons, a hometown physician, taught young Jedediah to read and write in English and Latin. Later, two of Jedediah’s siblings married into the Simons family, and Jedediah remained close to Dr. Simons his entire--but relatively brief--life. He also remained steadfast to his Christian beliefs and always kept his Bible close at hand.

And so it was that, after the terrible massacre on the Missouri River, the survivors turned to Jedediah Smith and his Bible, for there was no ordained minister within several hundred miles. According to a letter written by Hugh Glass, Jedediah offered up a powerful prayer to God, “in whose sternness all were prepared to believe, in whose compassion at this moment they much needed to believe.” This somber gathering of men is believed to be the first act of Christian public worship in the state of South Dakota.

By the fall of 1823, the hostile Arikaras had been driven from their villages on the Missouri, making passage north possible again. Jedediah led a small party of trappers (between 11 and 16) west and north in search of beaver. But horses were scarce, and what few were allotted or loaned to Jedediah were for packing supplies--the men had to walk. The land between Ft. Kiowa and the Black Hills, Jedediah’s first goal, was parched and unforgiving.

On the fourth day, they found the water hole upon which they relied was dry, with another 15 miles to go before they reached the next river. Their guide outdistanced the trappers, and the men trudged on, separating widely in their search for water. One, Jim Clyman, by happy accident found a water hole, and he signaled the others with gunshots. At dark, Jedediah finally reached the site, but two men were missing. When he bad drunk enough to be able to speak, Jedediah reported that the other two men had given up and that he had buried them up to their chins in sand, to conserve their body moisture.

As soon as he could stand, he took one of the horses back and brought the men to the water hole. This kind of action typified Jedediah’s commitment to his men, often putting his own life in peril to save theirs.

The favor was returned not long after. As Jedediah and his men traversed a brushy bottom in the Black Hills, a grizzly at tacked the men and packhorses. Jedediah met the bear face to face. Clyman’s account, though difficult to interpret, described the scene:

[The g]rissly did not hesitate a moment
but sprang on the capt taking
him by the head first pitc[h]ing
sprawling on the earth he gave a grab
by the middle fortunately cat[c]hing
by the ball pouch and Butcher K[n]ife
which he broke but breaking several
of his ribs and cutting his head badly. 

None of the men had any surgical experience, yet Jedediah, their beloved captain, was now lying bleeding at their feet. Jedediah was calm despite his wounds. He instructed two men to go for water, and another to find a needle, thread it, and sew up his wounds Clyman was the one chosen to do the “mending.” He described Jedediah’s wounds:

[T]he bear had taken nearly all his
head in his capcious mouth close to
his left eye on one side and clos to his
right ear on the other and laid the
skull bare to near the crown of the
head leaving a white streak whare his
teeth passed one of his ears was torn
from his head out to the outer rim[.]

Clyman stitched Jedediah up to the best of his ability, but he initially was reluctant to try to reattach the ear. However, Jedediah was adamant that he wanted Clyman to try, so Clyman reports he “put my needle stiching it through and through and over and over laying the lacerated parts together as nice as I could with my hands.” Within 10 days, Jedediah had recuperated enough to travel, and the party resumed their trek toward the Rockies, far to the west. After wintering with friendly Crow Indians, Jedediah and his men continued west on their quest for beaver furs. In March, in the teeth of late winter gales that blew the snow already on the ground into recycled blizzards, Jedediah’s group crossed the Continental Divide, at South Pass. Though Robert Stuart’s party of 1812-1813 had come east through the South Pass from Astoria, the pass had since been forgotten, and Jedediah was the first white man to use it heading west and to become familiar with it. This discovery would impact generations to follow.

Moving up the Ladder

Continuing to prove his worth as a trapper and leader, Jedediah was chosen as a partner in Ashley’s fur company in August 1825, after Major Andrew Henry declined to continue his partnership. When Ashley returned to St. Louis for supplies, Jedediah accompanied him. After hastily restocking, Jedediah set off 26 days later for the Rockies once again, to be in complete charge of the winter and spring beaver hunts. The following summer, Ashley sold out completely to Jedediah, who formed a partnership with William Sublette and David Jackson.

Now the senior partner in one of the major fur trading companies in North America (in direct competition with the Hudson Bay Company), Jedediah had come a long way from that young man standing outside Ashley’s house just four years earlier. It was at this juncture that Jedediah turned his explorer’s eye from what are now Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to the previously unexplored country south and west of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. After sending his junior partners off with parties trapping for beaver in the area around Yellowstone, Jackson Hole and other points north, Jedediah and approximately 15 men, along with 700 pounds of dried buffalo meat, set off in mid-August 1826 for points unknown.

Across the Burning Sands

Although 700 pounds of meat sounds like a lot to start out a journey with, by mid-September, Jedediah found himself in the middle of the inhospitable Great Basin, out of meat, and beginning to lose horses from starvation--there was no grass for them to eat, and precious little water. Paiute Indians provided a small amount of corn and pumpkins, but the Americans found it hard going, continuing south to the Colorado River, which they reached at the beginning of October.

Following the Colorado toward the Mojave Desert, Jedediah lost over half of his horses, and all the men were afoot. Regarding that country, Jedediah said it was “remarkably barren, rocky, and mountainous,” leaving the surviving horses and the men “worn out with fatigue and hardships and emaciated with hunger.” In return for his efforts, though, Jedediah could take pride that he was the first white man to complete the journey across the searing Great Basin, reaching California.

The Mojave Indians were friendly in 1826, providing Jedediah and his men with food and fresh horses. Because he could not possibly attempt to return across the desert with his meager supplies and livestock, Jedediah decided to take refuge at the California mission in the San Bernardino Valley, then travel up the Pacific Coast.

But the Spanish governor was suspicious of Jedediah’s purpose in arriving in California--was he possibly a spy? Jedediah did his best to convince him he was merely a hunter (the locals didn’t even have a word for beaver--the best they could do was “fish"). Eventually, in January 1827, he received permission to leave the mission and was ordered out of California, never to return.

The arm of the local government wasn’t long enough, though. After re-crossing the San Bernardino Mountains, Jedediah turned north up through Tehachapi Mountains, into the San Joaquin Valley, where he had heard beaver were plentiful. Indeed, by April, Jedediah’s horses were packing over 1,500 pounds of beaver pelts, and it was time to figure out how to get them back to the rendezvous near the Great Salt Lake. He began looking for a way to cross the imposing Sierra Nevadas that loomed to his east.

The Sierras proved the greatest hurdle that Jedediah had faced yet. Even though it was May, the snow proved too deep. Five horses starved to death before Jedediah turned back to the valley floor. Three weeks later, after leaving his clerk, Harrison G. Rogers, in charge of the majority of the men, horses and valuable furs, Jedediah and two companions, with seven horses and two mules, again turned their faces to the stark Sierras. Eight days, two horses and one mule later, Jedediah descended again into the Great Basin.

As on the trip to California, the Great Basin proved hard on the horses and the men. There was scant game, grass or water. The dead horses Jedediah put to good use, drying the meat and using the remaining three horses to pack it. The occasional black tailed hare proved a welcome relief from the steady horsemeat diet. As they crossed the Salt Desert that June, the days crawled by but no water was seen.

The heat was incredible, and Jedediah and his companions were obliged to bury themselves in the sand “in the shade of a small Cedar” to cool their overheated bodies. Once the sun went down, they continued on into the night. Jedediah wrote in his journal, “It seemed possible and even probable we might perish in the desert unheard of and unpitied ... the murmur of falling waters still sounding in our ears and the apprehension that we might never live to hear that sound.”

Jedediah was grieved to be forced to leave behind one of his two men, “being able to proceed no further.” His journal records, “We could do no good by remaining to die with him and we were not able to help him along but we left him with feelings only known to those who have been in the same situation and with the hope that we might get relief and return in time to save his life.” Indeed, three miles later, they found water, and were able to return and bring the man up to the spring.

Several days later, they and their two remaining horses reached the southern shore of Great Salt Lake. By July 3, they reached their rendezvous point, where, according to Jedediah’s journal, “my arrival caused a considerable bustle in camp, for myself and party had been given up as lost.” They had been gone a year, and had made an incredible journey. They brought no beaver skins back, but they had acquired information about Indian tribes, rivers, and geography that no white man possessed.

Into the Desert Again

Not 10 days after coming out of the desert, Jedediah and 18 men, outfitted with supplies for two years, turned their faces again to the southwest and the intimidating desert passage. His plan was to rejoin his men in California, then trap his way up the Pacific Coast to Fort Vancouver (now Vancouver, Washington). Having learned a lesson from his first battle with the “Sand Plain,” Jedediah avoided crossing the desert directly, choosing instead to go around it, then head for the Colorado.

Most of the trip went without incident, until he reached the Mojave settlements. Unlike last year, when they had been friendly, the Mojaves were now stirred up due to some violent clashes with American trappers out of New Mexico. They waited until Jedediah had rafted some of his men out on to the Colorado, then fell with rabid war cries on the 10 men (and two women) and horses left on the bank.

Jedediah and the other eight survivors were now stranded on a sandbar in the middle of the Colorado, with hundreds of angry Mojaves ranged along the banks. They had only two knives and five guns, and 15 pounds of dried meat. No horses, no supplies. He and his men took small packs, and started off, leaving some material behind to distract the Indians (hoping they would fight over the plunder and give Jedediah and his men more time to escape). The plan worked for a while, but soon the Mojaves gave chase, and Jedediah’s party took refuge in a small grove of trees. After two Indians fell to the excellent marksmanship of the mountain men, the Mojaves ran off.

The imminent threat of death by Indians was now past, but Jedediah and his men were destitute. With no horses, no food, and no supplies, he could not hope to attempt the journey north to the Columbia River. He had no choice but to throw himself on the mercy of the San Jose mission, and hope for the best.

When he arrived at the mission in late September 1827, the local officials were not pleased to see him again, and did not treat Jedediah as courteously as in 1826. In fact, they detained Jedediah and his eight companions until December 30, whereupon Jedediah was free to return “again to the woods, the river, the prairae, the Camp & the Game with a feeling somewhat like that of a prisoner escaped from his dungeon and his chains.”

Rogers and the other men Jedediah had left behind the previous year had been brought into San Jose by the Spanish authorities. After they left San Jose, they began trapping the rivers north, forcing their way through deep sloughs, endless mud, deep fog, and incessant rain. Most days, they could only proceed three to six miles, and the exhausted horses were difficult to drive through the thick brush and steep terrain.

North past the Klamath River, over to the coast up to present-day Crescent City, then across the Rogue River, they made their tortuous way. They made a fateful stop at the Umpqua River, where the Umpqua Indians massacred all but three of Jedediah’s men. Jedediah and the survivors crossed the remaining 100 miles to Fort Vancouver, arriving on about August 10, 1828.

After wintering with the Hudson Bay Company, Jedediah and his remaining men returned in March 1829 to where Jackson was trapping, in the Flathead region. During the following winter, Jedediah finally had time to write his family and friends. Through these letters we are allowed glimpses of the deep vein of spirituality and faith that ran through Jedediah’s life.

“As to my Spiritual welfare, I hardly durst Speak I find myself one of the most ungrateful, unthankful, Creatures imaginable,” wrote Jedediah to his brother Ralph. “Oh when Shall I be under the care of a Christian Church? I have need of your Prayers, I wish our Society to bear me up before a Throne of Grace.” In the same letter, he enclosed the sum of $2,200, to be given to either his parents, Dr. Simon, or a friend in need, saying:

Oh My Brother let us render to him to
whoom all things belong, a proper
proportion of what is his due. I must
tell you, for my part, that I am much
behind hand, oh! the perverseness of
my wicked heart! I entangle myself
altogether too much in the things of
time--I must depend entirely upon
the Mercy of that being, who is abundant
in Goodness & will not cast off
any, who call, Sincerely, upon him;
again I say, pray for me My Brother
--& may he, before whoom not a
Sparrow falls, without notice, bring
us, in his own good time, Together
again. 

Judging from his letters, Jedediah would certainly be troubled by the elderly, lonely people moldering away in our nursing homes: “[L]et it be the greatest pleasure that we can enjoy, the height of our ambition, now, when our Parents, are in the decline of Life, to smooth the Pillow of their age, & as much as in us lies, take from them all cause of Trouble.” Two years later, just before leaving for his last and fatal exploratory trip, Jedediah returned to the theme of filial piety in another letter to his brother Ralph:

Let us endeavor to ease & comfort
them, to pour on Oil & balm into the
wounds, made by the relentless hand
of Time, the pleasing thought cheeres
me to Shed Tears of Joy--how long
will it be ere you and I will be under
the necessity of reme[m]bering (if we
are allowed the privilege of living)
that we were once Young? and let us
now set a pattern to our younger
Brothers & children. 

Jedediah always carried his Bible with him, notwithstanding towering mountains, raging rivers and fierce Indian battles. It also appears that he shared his faith with at least a portion of the friendly Indians he met. For example, in 1831, four Indians came to St. Louis from the far northwest, searching for the “white man’s Book of Heaven.” A year later, a Christian Indian wrote G.P. Disoway, a Methodist merchant in New York City, telling of the delegation to St. Louis. Disoway then wrote a letter to the Christian Advocate (a Methodist paper), which was published on March 1, 1833, along with an appeal for missionaries to go out to the Oregon Country to answer the call of the Indians for Christian instruction.

In 1834, a missionary named Jason Lee reached the Oregon Territory with several associates, and was followed in 1836 by Marcus Whitman and Henry Spalding. Whitman settled in the Willamette Valley, while Spalding served among the Nez Perce. Not long after, Washington, Oregon and Idaho became American territory.

It is not clear where the four Indians who journeyed to St. Louis first heard of the Bible; but there were few white men in what became Idaho in the late 1820s, and fewer still who put as much stock in the “Book of Heaven” as Jedediah Smith did.

Final Journey and Jedediah’s Legacy

Jedediah returned to St. Louis in the fall of 1830. Having explored more territory than most men then living with the exception of Lewis and Clark, one might think he would settle down. But the call of the wilderness was too great, and the spring of 1831 saw Jedediah setting off for Santa Fe on a trading venture. As he stated in his journals, “I wanted to be the first to view a country on which the eyes of a white man had never gazed and to follow the course of rivers that run through a new land.” But this was to be his last trip, his last chance to risk his life for those of his men.

More than halfway to Santa Fe, near the Cimarron River, Jedediah’s party ran out of water, and Jedediah went on alone to try and find it. A party of Comanche Indians descended upon him at the water hole, spooked his horse, and shot him in the back. His rifle and pistols were later recovered from the Indians by Spanish traders, but his body was never found.

In less than 10 years on the frontier, Jedediah was the first American to do many things: the first to travel west through South Pass, the first to reach California overland, the first to cross the Nevada-Utah desert, the first to cross the Sierras and the first to traverse the West Coast by land from San Diego to the Columbia. But it is the reverberations that resulted from Jedediah’s “firsts” that changed the history of the settling of the West.

By proving one could reach California overland, and bring horses back, Jedediah opened the gates for the continental trade in supplies and horses that was lucrative for years to come. By taking wagonloads of supplies to South Pass to outfit his fur trappers, Jedediah proved that not only mountain men, but traders, missionaries, and families, could travel to the Rockies and beyond. And by sharing his faith with white and red men alike, he laid the foundations for future missionary work among the northwestern Indians.

According to Dale Morgan, the definitive biographer of Jedediah, he “was an unlikely sort of hero for the brawling West of his time.” Not only was he “modest and unassuming,” but he “never smoked or chewed tobacco, never uttered a profane word, and partook of wine or brandy only sparingly on formal occasions.” He was “old Jed” to friends and “Mr. Smith” to business associates--a man who inspired both friendship and respect.

As an anonymous eulogy, printed in the Illinois Monthly Magazine. June 1832, stated, “… he was modest, never obtrusive, charitable, ‘without guile’ ... a man whom none could approach without respect, or know without esteem. And though he fell under the spears of the savages, and his body has glutted the prairie wolf, and none can tell where his bones are bleaching, he must not be forgotten.”

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Publication Information: Article Title: Godly Mountain Man: Like All Fur Trappers of the Early 1800s, Jedediah Smith Wore Buckskin and Carried a Rifle. but, Unlike Many Others, He Also Carried a Bible and Exhibited a Deep Love for God. Contributors: Jodie Gilmore - author. Magazine Title: The New American. Volume: 20. Issue: 17. Publication Date: August 23, 2004. Page Number: 34+. COPYRIGHT 2004 American Opinion Publishing, Inc.; COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group