Jedediah Smith
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Image:JedediahSmith.jpg Jedediah Strong Smith (born January 6, 1799 - presumed date of death May 27, 1831) was a hunter, trapper, fur trader and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the American West Coast and the Southwest during the 19th century. Jedediah Smith's explorations were significant in opening the American West to expansion by white settlers, mostly from New England, Missouri and Europe. According to Maurice Sullivan, "Smith was the first white man to cross the future state of Nevada, the first to traverse Utah from north to south and from west to east; the first American to enter California by the overland route, and so herald its change of masters; the first white man to scale the High Sierras, and the first to explore the Pacific hinterland from San Diego to the banks of the Columbia [River]." Prospectors and settlers later poured in to the areas that 'Old Jed' Smith had trail-blazed as a trapper and fur trader, during the subsequent Gold Rush.
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Pioneering the Shining Mountains (ill-fated first attempt)
In the spring of the year 1822, the young Jedediah Smith, "following a vision, strode into St. Louis." With very little money, a rifle and a pack, Jed Smith answered an advertisement which the businessman, soldier and politician, General William H. Ashley had placed in the St. Louis 'Republican', seeking 'enterprising young men' to follow the River Missouri 'to its source'. The proposed party of one hundred men was to be led by Major Andrew Henry. Subsequently, Smith was hired by the expedition as a hunter, to provide meat, animals and beaver pelts for the party. A crowd of revelers and merry-makers showed up to wave farewell to the departing party. Osage 'Indians' watched as the Canadian boatmen piloting the 'Enterprise' moved the ship up the river Missouri, past the Osage Nation and Boone's Settlement. But, "near the mouth of Sniabar Creek in the northwestern part of Missouri,... [the ship's] mast suddenly struck a branch hanging over the water. The boat wheeled broadside to the current, and was swept under in a moment." Thus, the first attempt of the Ashley-Henry partnership to break into the wilderness met with disaster, in the loss of the Enterprise and ten-thousand dollars worth of trade goods and other possessions. "Nothing was salvaged except a few articles that floated and were caught..." (The account does not mention whether anybody drowned or not. Apparently, 'life was cheap' out in the 'Old West').
The 'Petrified Forest' and the Sioux
On the Spring River, the party was excited to find along with "the supposed fortifications of ancient peoples", "the petrified figures of a youth, a maiden and a dog in what is now South Dakota", perhaps the most sensational of what later became the 'tall tales' of the expedition. Fortunately for historians, the young hunter Jedediah Strong Smith kept an extensive journal of his and his fellow-adventurers' travels. Next, the party encountered the 'roving' Sioux Indians, who impressed Smith with their "intelligence, superior morals, stature and manner of living". (Some of these 'mountain men' were sufficiently impressed with the Indian 'way of living' as to join them, to live among them, or at least, not to cause them any trouble. However, ever since a frontiersman named Alexander Carson had shot a Sioux warrior for 'target practice', the white men had needed to be on their guard around the outraged Sioux. Although the Ashley-Henry party was well-defended and sufficiently powerful enough for the Sioux to leave them alone and despite their animosity, "Jedediah felt that here, in the Sioux nation, aboriginal life was most attractive."
References
- Maurice S. Sullivan, The Travels of Jedediah Smith (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 13.
- Maurice S. Sullivan, 'Jedediah Smith, Trader and Trail Breaker', New York Press of the Pioneers, 1936.