Rocky Mountain Fur Company

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The Rocky Mountain Fur Company was founded as a fur trading company in St. Louis in 1823 by William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry and dissolved after several changes of shareholders in 1834, heavily in debt. Even if the company was actually called the Rocky Mountain Fur Company for only the shortest part of its existence , this name has caught on. The company revolutionized the fur trade, its employees explored parts of the North American continent that no white man had previously set foot on; at times it kept up with the UK 's leading Hudson's Bay Company and the financially strong American Fur Company .

Company history

Early 1822, the United States managed at the instigation of Senator Thomas Hart Benton , the west of the 1796 Mississippi Rivers existing factory system from. Government trading posts lost their monopoly on the fur trade with the Indians, and anyone could obtain a license under certain conditions. The Superintendent for Indian Affairs , William Clark , in St. Louis was in charge . The local politicians and only moderately successful entrepreneurs William Henry Ashley teamed up with Andrew Henry together with the Missouri Fur Company of Manuel Lisa Indian trade had gained experience in, and she requested when Ashley's friend Clark one of the first licenses.

Ashley and Henry wanted to start the fur business again: With a license to trade, they planned to bring large groups of men to the upper reaches of the Missouri River to hunt beavers themselves. The purchase of fur from the Indians would only be a side business.

From 13. February 1822 , the new company set Ashley & Henry following advertisement in the newspapers of St. Louis:

"FOR Enterprising Young Men: The undersigned wishes ONE HUNDRED men who will climb to the source of the Missouri River and be employed there for a year, two or three years."

Among the participants in the first expedition in 1822 and in the following year were almost all men who became famous as trappers and mountain men and who shaped the early days of the Wild West . Including Jim Bridger , Jedediah Smith , Hugh Glass , Thomas Fitzpatrick , David E. Jackson , James P. Beckwourth , James Clyman and the brothers Milton and William Sublette .

Jedediah Smith's Routes

The beginnings

The first expedition from May 1822 was a disaster. One of the two keelboats capsized shortly after leaving, equipment and provisions for over 10,000 dollars were lost and had to be bought by Ashley. When the participants reached the mouth of the Yellowstone River on the upper reaches of the Missouri in late summer and built their fort there, almost all of their horses were stolen from them by the Assiniboine shortly afterwards . They could not spread out into the whole area as planned, but were limited to the surrounding area. In the spring of 1823, Jedediah Smith probably drove over 1,400 kilometers down the river alone to ask Ashley to procure more horses to take care of the trappers.

The supply trip in 1823 went smoothly to the Arikaree , where horses were to be bought as in the previous year. Despite all caution, the Indians attacked at dawn on June 3, thirteen trappers died with the first wave of arrows and bullets, ten or eleven were seriously wounded. The survivors, including Smith and Jackson, swam to the boats. The boats with the survivors retreated a little further downstream, the seriously injured were taken under the direction of Smith in one of the boats over 700 km to Fort Atkinson and on to St. Louis. From Fort Atkinson, Colonel Henry Leavenworth and all six companies of the Sixth Regiment of the US Army embarked on the so-called Arikaree War . The small campaign was the US Army's first military action against Indians west of the Mississippi.

The brief skirmish was disappointing for the soldiers, the troops were deployed incompetently, and Lakota Indians allied with the whites were not actually deployed. On the evening of the same day negotiations took place, the delegations agreed on the return of all firearms and other goods that the Arikaree had received as payment for the horses that were later slain, and the free passage of all whites on the river. All sides then smoked the peace pipe . For the trappers it was achieved that their boats could navigate the river, but the campaign failed completely in terms of impressing the Indians. Both the Lakota and the Arikaree considered the whites weak and repeatedly attacked groups of hunters in the years to come.

After the campaign, the season was well advanced and the company hadn't made any money this year either. Some of the men under Henry worked their way from the mouth of the Grand River along the river into the area of ​​the peaceful Crow and Cheyenne Indians. They built a base at the mouth of the Bighorn River in Yellowstone and sent a small group along the Bighorn to hunt for beaver pelts . A second part under Jedediah Smith and Thomas Fitzpatrick rode overland directly to the upper reaches of the Bighorn. Ashley sent more men on his return from the Arikaree campaign in St. Louis to go hunting further south in the Pawnees area between the Arkansas River and Platte River . Henry gave up over the following year. He was nearly 50 years old and the company with Ashley threatened to collapse after two years with no earnings. He went to St. Louis from the Yellowstone River, cashed out his nearly worthless stake and retired from the fur business.

South Pass and Rendezvous

In February 1824, on the advice of the Crow, Smith and his men moved west, south of the Wind River Range they crossed the main ridge of the Rocky Mountains at South Pass . The pass was flat and easy, the mountains not, as Lewis and Clark claimed in 1806 , an obstacle that could only be passed on foot and without loads, but there was a relatively easy route into the unexplored land behind the mountains and ultimately to the Pacific Ocean .

The main ridge was also the outer border of the United States. Beyond to the north was the Oregon Country . After the British-American War of 1812 , the United States and Great Britain agreed to share it in 1818, but so far the British of the Hudson's Bay Company have had it almost alone. Americans had only advanced over the mountains on expeditions and in small groups and had previously left the beaver population to the British. The south was formally part of Mexico, which had only been independent of Spain since 1821 . In practice, state power did not extend beyond Santa Fe and Taos 500 km south so that Americans could move and hunt freely.

For Ashley in St. Louis, the future looked bleak: the company's debts were on the rise, and his partner, experienced in the field, had left. He himself had to go to the mountains, where he felt uncomfortable as a politician and businessman. The news of the discovery of the pass could not yet be put into place; it was the only hope. He applied for a new license to trade fur in his name and set off with provisions and barter goods for the coming season in September. In October he met Thomas Fitzpatrick on the way, who brought the few skins from the previous season with him for sale. These were sent to St. Louis with some men and Fitzpatrick went with Ashley towards the mountains.

It was there on the Green River across the ridge in 1824 that all of the company's famous men worked. Smith, Jackson, Clyman, the Sublettes and Bridger found abundant beaver populations and made the catches of their lives. From the Indians, they learned about life in the wild and the intricacies of successful beaver hunting. In June they all met on the upper reaches of the Sweetwater River , fetched supplies from a buried warehouse and celebrated the successful season. At the meeting they got the idea to turn it into a method of trading for the next year.

That fall, Smith moved northwest along the Snake River , met Alexander Ross of the Hudson's Bay Company , and escorted him to the Flathead Post , where he met Peter Skene Ogden . From the two of them, Smith learned more about English operations in the Northwest. In winter, Smith hunted alone in the beaver areas on the Great Salt Lake , which Jim Bridger had recently discovered, and collected 668 furs, an extraordinary number for a man. Together, the company's men hunted skins weighing over 9,000 pounds that season.

After a meeting with the southern team in 1823/24 and a winter at camp, Ashley and Fitzpatrick also reached the Green River in April 1825. They explored the southern part of the river by boat and then headed north to Henry's Fork , where the first of the future annual rendezvous of the fur hunters took place from July 1st . Ashley brought supplies up for the next season in the mountains, supplied his trappers with barter goods to trade with the Indians, and picked up last year's pelts for delivery to St. Louis. Not only 91 hunters from our own company came, but also trappers from the British Hudson's Bay Company , who broke the contract and offered their skins to the Americans. The meetings quickly developed into large gatherings, at which Indians from the near and far area also arrived and offered their furs for exchange. They were “paid for” with diluted whiskey, glass beads and colored textiles. In addition, the rendezvous became orgy-like celebrations that played a major role in the spread of venereal diseases , especially syphilis , among the Mountain Men and the Indians. The fur trade was lucrative; fur paid at $ 3 in the mountains made at least $ 5 in St. Louis. With transportation and other costs a little over a dollar, that leaves a profit of around 20%. The greatest profit came from the fact that all trappers and Indians had to buy equipment, tobacco, alcohol and all other goods at the prices set by the company.

As a replacement for Henry got on Captain Jedediah Smith, who had risen to the head of the fur hunters, he became a junior partner of Ashley in the trading house now called Ashley & Smith . Ashley, Smith and a few others moved back east over the ridge with the furs they had gathered, built boats and drove the Bighorn and Yellowstone back to Missouri, where they met a US Army expedition that they took on their ships to St. Louis took. Smith immediately headed for the mountains with new men and provisions to hunt in the autumn, Ashley resumed running the town after an absence of more than a year.

Smith, Jackson & Sublette

At the rendezvous in 1826, Ashley got out of the risky business. Thanks to the past two years, the company has been debt free. He sold his stake in Jedidiah Smith, David Jackson, and William Sublette, and the company was now called Smith, Jackson & Sublette . Ashley secured a monopoly on the supply trains to the company's rendezvous in an additional contract, but made an undertaking to SJ & S not to supply any competitors. Both parties wanted to become monopolists in their respective fields of business. All trappers in the mountains would sell to SJ&S and they would have to buy their equipment and barter goods from Ashley with the proceeds. This was the beginning of the independent trappers who were no longer bound by contract to a trading house, but in practice had no choice.

The partners divided their responsibilities: William Sublette headed the office in St. Louis, David Jackson organized the hunt in the Rocky Mountains while Jedidiah Smith went looking for new hunting grounds. He traveled southwest through the area of ​​what is now Utah and Nevada through the desert to California .

In St. Louis, the rise of SJ&S was closely watched, but John Jacob Astor was also watching closely. His company, the American Fur Company , had a quasi-monopoly in the fur trade on the American side of the Great Lakes from New York . After the attempt of 1811/12 to expand the company's activities to the Pacific Ocean with a base in Fort Astoria failed in the war against the British in 1812, it had concentrated on the east. After the discovery of the beaver population in the Rocky Mountains, his company pushed west again. In December 1826 he bought Pratte & Co , a traditional company of the Chouteaux fur trade family of French origin, with a focus on the lower reaches of the Missouri, and made it the AFC's western outfit . Six months later he acquired the Columbia Fur Company , which worked the upper reaches of the river, and incorporated it into his company as the Upper Missouri Outfit . Within a few months, practically the entire Missouri River belonged to the financially strong American Fur Company. The company of Smith, Jackson & Sublette in St. Louis no longer stood against fragmented small competitors, but against a corporation that controlled the entire value chain from the beaver castles to the markets in Europe.

Over the next several years until 1829, Jedediah Smith made his spectacular discoveries for the company in California, the Great Basin Desert, and the Oregon Pacific Coast. But he brought hardly any furs and only cost the company. David Jackson earned the money: he organized the hunt for one of the most important American fur trading companies in its prime, when it could compete with the British Hudson's Bay Company and the American Fur Company . Under his leadership, contacts with the Indians were peaceful and his work financed Smith's more spectacular discoveries. Author Don Berry therefore calls him the “trapper par excellence ” and continues: “He made no history, did not explore terra incognita [as a fur hunter] , he did not lose men on the right and left [like Smith on his expeditions]. He wasn't particularly interested in politics and wasn't very ambitious. But season after season he unobtrusively rendezvoused the furs that Smith, Jackson & Sublette kept in the business. ”But the beaver populations declined, hunting in the areas with peaceful Indians had reduced the populations there, the Hudson's Bay Company had on snakes River beaver populations systematically cleared out when they feared that their American competitor would outstrip them in their formerly sole hunting ground. The men of Smith, Jackson and Sublette penetrated more and more often and deeper into the area of ​​the Blackfoot , the most feared Indian people in the region, because the beaver populations were still the best there.

Rocky Mountain Fur Company

On the rendezvous of 1830 Smith and his partners sold the company to their previous employees Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Henry Fraeb, Jean Gervais and Milton Sublette, William's brother. Only now has the name Rocky Mountain Fur Company been officially registered. Smith, Jackson and William Sublette were not only in the black as a result of the successful 1829/30 season, they also made a substantial profit thanks to the largest revenue of $ 84,500 in St. Louis. But they, especially their merchant Sublette, had seen the competition the American Fur Company was building and decided to get out.

The AFC had built Fort Union on the upper reaches of the Missouri River near the mouth of the Yellowstone from 1829 under Kenneth McKenzie, who joined the company with the Columbia Fur Company . On the edge of the Blackfoot and McKenzie territory, in 1831 his men were able to secure security from the Indians. In addition, they could easily advance into the mountains and into the previously exclusive hunting area of ​​the RMF.

William Sublette had the monopoly for supplying the rendezvous transferred to him when he sold, Ashley had gone back into politics. From 1831 to 1837 he was a member of the Missouri State in the US House of Representatives and was particularly involved in Indian issues. He also took over the sale of furs from William Sublette on the east coast .

At the rendezvous in 1832, the RMF shareholders gathered their experiences with the competition from AFC. RMF was operating on the verge of bankruptcy, they had not yet paid off the purchase price to the previous owners in full and felt how William Sublette siphoned off their proceeds with his prices at the rendezvous. Then there was the new competition. They decided to approach the AFC directly and offer them a division of the areas in the mountains. But their representatives refused. They had the capital to cover several years with losses and their men were now gaining experience in the mountains that RFM still had ahead of them. At the rendezvous, however, RMF regained the upper hand, according to their contracts, William Sublette only supplied them, the AFC trappers could not reliably buy their provisions. They had to supply themselves through Fort Union, with great loss of time.

The end

In the meantime, the effect of alcohol on the social structures of the Indians had spread as far as Washington and the Congress passed a law on July 9, 1832, which prohibited the import of brandy into Indian territory. Regular trade ended with it, but continued to a scarcely reduced extent as smuggling.

In January 1833, after the preseason settlement, RMF were in debt of around $ 5,400. In addition, there would be around $ 15,000 for the next supply train in the summer. Their only creditor was now William Sublette, who had bought up all claims. With the beginning of the 1833 season, William Sublette built his own structures and began to use his position of power over the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to lead them into bankruptcy. In the winter he had visited Ashley in Washington and made sure that he was working. On the way back he bought trade goods, provisions and alcohol, which is now illegal in the Indian trade, and was back in St. Louis in March.

He left the supply train to the rendezvous to his partner Robert Campbell ; he himself drove up the Missouri in two Keelboats. He set up a small new post next to each trading post of the AFC. And since, unlike his competitors, he had larger amounts of alcohol, his posts were sought-after trading partners of the Indians. Just across from Fort Union, he placed Fort William , which Campbell himself would build and run. Fort Union McKenzie had become an illegal distillery built. He had smuggled the parts, he wanted to make the brandy himself from the maize of the Indians, which he was no longer allowed to import. His system became known to competitors who reported them to the army at Fort Leavenworth . AFC had to dismantle the still and almost lost its license.

And another dirty trick of the AFC was uncovered almost at the same time: They had incited the otherwise peaceful Crow Indians to target trappers of the competition. Thomas Fitzpatrick was the victim of one such robbery in which he saved his life but lost a load of furs already marked with the RMF seal. When they were found in AFC's inventory, the reputation of the market leader deteriorated further.

In addition, the founder and director of the American Fur Company, John Jacob Astor, had seen on a trip to Europe that fashion was changing. Instead of beaver felt hats made of silk were in great demand. Upon his return, he announced that at the age of 70 he wanted to get out of the business the following year. The company would be run by Ramsey Crooks.

The season had gone bad in the mountains, heavy losses were incurred as a result of Indian raids and competition hampered all businesses. In addition to the RMF and the AFC, small businesses were now active: Benjamin Bonneville and Nathaniel J. Wyeth had each led small groups of trappers. They all lost that year, RMF's loss estimated at $ 12-15,000, with proceeds of $ 18,000 at St. Louis prices.

At the rendezvous, Milton Sublette tried to free the company from its dependency on his brother and agreed with Wyeth that he would supply them from the Pacific Ocean for the following year. Wyeth had offered them goods at half the price of William Sublette because transportation from Fort Vancouver via the Columbia and Snake Rivers was much cheaper than it was by land from St. Louis. Wyeth would also pay them $ 4 per pound of beaver skin instead of William Sublette's $ 3.25.

After the rendezvous, Campbell and Milton Sublette drove down the Yellowstone River to the Missouri. At the mouth they met William as planned. Campbell took over the construction of Fort William, the brothers drove together to St. Louis. Little did William know that Milton's deal with Wyeth was trying to free the company from dependency.

The competition between the Sublette and the AFC on the Missouri River over the fall and winter of 1833/34 ended as quickly as it began. Although AFC had little alcohol available, they won over the Indians by raising prices. Losses didn't matter; to beat Sublette, AFC offered up to $ 12 a pound of beaver fur , almost four times what they could get for it.

But Sublette was in New York in January 1834, where he negotiated personally with the management of the American Fur Company. His offer was: The AFC will buy him out of Missouri business and withdraw from the Rocky Mountains. He makes sure that there are no more competitors. By the end of the competition it was meant that Sublette would use the RMF's debts to liquidate the company. The AFC accepted. Their reputation had suffered after the distillery was exposed and the attack on Fitzpatrick, and with the departure of Astor, the richest man in the world, they lost their funds and political influence.

William Sublette held the only American fur company that would work in the Rocky Mountains. When he returned to St. Louis from the east, he learned of the contract between his brother Milton and Wyeth through an indiscretion. If this could save the RMF, then his plan had failed. In April 1834 he hastily set off for a rendezvous with a small team. Immediately before him, Wyeth moved into the mountains, accompanied by Milton Sublette, who, however, had to return to St. Louis because of a serious illness. William was faster, overtaking Wyeth, who was clinging to his heels. At the confluence of Laramie Creek and North Platte River , William Sublette left thirteen of his men behind to build a new Fort William after he had given up that on the Missouri. Under its later name Fort Laramie, the new fort became one of the most famous scenes of the Indian Wars . The settlement of the same name, Fort Laramie, was built north of the fort .

The rendezvous, which this year took place at Hams Fork in what is now Granger , Wyoming , was settled. The fur season had been devastating. All of the men in the RMF had caught or traded only around $ 10,000 in St. Louis prices. That was not enough to cover the old debts, equipment for the next season was no longer possible. William Sublette presented the bills and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was finished. Henry Freab was bought out by William Sublette on the morning of June 20, 1834 for 40 horses, 40 traps and $ 1,000. When Baptiste Gervais wanted to get out later that day, he got only 20 horses, 30 traps and $ 500. The other two partners present, Thomas Fitzpatrick and Jim Bridger, were late. At the end of the day, also on behalf of the absent Milton Sublette, they dissolved the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. The successor company founded at the same time as Fitzpatrick, Sublette & Bridger was never active again.

When Wyeth arrived a day later, his contract could not be fulfilled. He did not understand what was going on and assumed that bribery had driven him out of business. He went west and built Fort Hall near the Snake River. He soon had to sell this to the Hudson's Bay Company and went back to the east coast.

Succession

Milton Sublette never recovered from his illness, one leg had to be amputated and he died in St. Louis in 1837. Thomas Fitzpatrick and James Bridger reached an agreement with men from the American Fur Company on the way out of the mountains and worked for the next several years for her. Both later became the most famous scouts for the army and leaders for settler groups.

William Sublette and Robert Campbell could not benefit from the dissolution of the RMF; fur hunting in the mountains had become largely unprofitable. They converted their business into a short-lived wholesaler in St. Louis. William Sublette was politically active, while Campbell moved to the Hudson's Bay Company , where he made a significant contribution to the exploration and development of the Yukon region .

The American Fur Company took over the remains of the fur hunters in the Rocky Mountains and on the Missouri, and carried out rendezvous until 1840.

literature

Unchanged reprint of the 2nd revised edition from 1936 by Augustus M. Kelley, Fairfield, New Jersey, 1979, ISBN 0-678-01035-8 (first comprehensive publication on the subject, to this day as an authoritative standard work)

  • Dietmar Kuegler: Freedom in the wilderness - trappers, mountain men, fur traders - the American fur trade . Verlag für Amerikaistik, Wyk, 1989, ISBN 3-924696-33-0 (Methods, personalities and companies in the fur trade)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Ashley-Smith explorations and the discovery of a central route to the Pacific, 1822–1829: with the original journals . Edited by Harrison Clifford Dale. Publisher: The Arthur H. Clark Company Cleveland (1918) Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale 1941, Reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8032-6591-3 , p. 80
  2. ^ Edwin Thompson Denig: Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri . University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1961, p. 57
  3. ↑ Berry, p. 99
  4. ^ Kuegler, p. 98
  5. ↑ Dee Brown : The sun rose in the west. (Original title: The Westerners , translated by Kurt Heinrich Hansen) Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-455-00723-6 , p. 61
  6. ↑ Berry, pp. 110-112
  7. ↑ Berry, p. 226
  8. ^ Carl Hays, David E. Jackson , in: LeRoy R. Hafen (Ed.), The Mountain men and the fur trade of the Far West , Clark Co., Glendale, California, 1956–1972, Vol. 9, pp. 223
  9. ↑ Berry, p. 303
  10. ↑ Berry, pp. 272-274
  11. ↑ Berry, p. 320 f.
  12. ↑ Berry, p. 327
  13. ↑ Berry, p. 347
  14. ↑ Berry, p. 348 ff.
  15. ↑ Berry, p. 366