David E. Jackson

David Edward Jackson (* approx. 1785-1790; †  December 24, 1837 in Paris , Tennessee) was an American trapper and fur trader . From 1826 to 1830 he was a partner in the fur trading company Smith, Jackson & Sublette , later the Rocky Mountain Fur Company . According to him, Jackson Hole and Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park and the place Jackson in Wyoming named.

Origin and entry into the fur trade

Almost nothing is known about David Jackson's birth and the beginning of his life. What is certain is that he took part in the British-American War of 1812, he could have participated in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans under the leadership of Andrew Jackson . His older brother George Jackson worked as an Indian trader on the upper Mississippi River in 1810/11 and has known the politician, soldier and businessman William Henry Ashley and possibly his future partner Andrew Henry since then . Ashley & Henry (later the Rocky Mountain Fur Company ) from St. Louis wanted to be the first fur traders to set up hunting in the mountains in 1822 and outstrip their local rivals with the Missouri Fur Company . To do this, they put the following advertisement in the newspapers:

"TO Enterprising Young Men. The subscriber wishes to engage ONE HUNDRED MEN, to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two or three years."

"To 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."

- Published in the Missouri Republican and other newspapers in February and March 1822

At that time, David Jackson was living as a farmer with his wife and four children in Ste. Genevieve County , Missouri below St. Louis and applied for the ad. Almost all men who were to shape the image of the trappers and fur traders in the next decades - almost all mountain men who were to become symbolic figures for the early days of the Wild West - were among the participants in this expedition or their immediate successors. In addition to David Jackson, Jedediah Smith , Jim Bridger , James Clyman, Thomas 'Fitz' Fitzpatrick , Hugh Glass , Edward Rose and the brothers William and Milton signed Sublette . At over 30, Jackson was one of the oldest and most experienced. He was probably not hired as a hunter but as a clerk (fur buyer and commercial employee). The group embarked on May 8th with two keelboats and sailed up the Missouri River .

On June 3, 1823, Jackson was among the company's trappers attacked by the Arikaree . He was injured and Jedediah Smith is said to have saved his life. The following small campaign of the Sixth Regiment of the US Army , 60 volunteers from the circle of the fur hunters and around 200 warriors of the Lakota against the Arikaree was the first fight against Indians west of the Mississippi. Jackson was called to serve as an officer in the Volunteer Forces.

Smith, Jackson & Sublette partner

The next time Jackson performs at the first of the annual Rocky Mountain fur traders gatherings . According to documents, all employees of the company were present at the so-called rendezvous , including Jackson. He was safe at the next rendezvous, because on June 16, 1826 he, Jedediah Smith, William Sublette and he bought Ashley's trading company after Henry had left in 1824. The purchase price was quoted in the press as $ 30,000, payable over five years in cash or beaver pelts at five dollars each. Ashley remained attached to them, however, and continued to supply the company with supplies and barter goods. He went back into politics and was from 1831 to 1837 Missouri MP in the US House of Representatives , was particularly involved in Indian issues and died in 1838, shortly after his retreat to St. Louis.

Jackson was in charge of organizing mountain hunting in the new Smith, Jackson & Sublette partnership , Smith was exploring new hunting grounds in the west, and Sublette was in charge of the St. Louis office and annual supply trains. Jackson himself preferred to hunt in the area of ​​the Teton Range in what is now northwestern Wyoming , his closest colleague was Thomas 'Fitz' Fitzpatrick, who led the day-to-day business as his clerk .

In 1830 the partners sold what was now called the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to their colleagues Jim Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette (William's brother), Henry Freab and Baptiste Gervais. The purchase price was $ 16,000, payable in cash by June 15, 1831 or in beaver pelts at $ 4.25 each. They also had the proceeds from the sale of this year's furs that they brought to St. Louis. The season finally grossed $ 84,500, the highest sum ever made by any St. Louis company.

More ventures and death

In 1831 the three former partners founded a company again and they started trading on the Santa Fe Trail with the Mexican Nuevo Mexico . Jedediah Smith was slain by Comanche on her first trade trip, and the company was liquidated after the goods were sold in Santa Fe . Jackson decided to continue trading with the Mexican territories and moved to Tucson in what is now Arizona . From here he followed the route of Juan Bautista de Anza , who was the first Spaniard to set foot in the region in 1775 , to the Gila River and on this to the Colorado River . He was the first American in the region. From here he moved first to the San Luis Rey Mission , then to San Diego . In the winter of 1831/32 he traveled around California and visited the San Gabriel Arcángel Mission , Monterey and came north to San José and Santa Clara . Whether it reached San Francisco is a matter of dispute. In California he bought around 600 mules and around 100 horses, which were cheap here but coveted and expensive by the fur hunters in the Rocky Mountains.

He returned to Santa Fe the same way in July 1832, sold some of the animals there and moved on to Missouri, where he arrived in the fall. In the years that followed, his health deteriorated. He invested his fortune in Tennessee and the south, and later in lead mines in Missouri. He had to give up planned further trade trips to Santa Fee in 1835 and California in 1836 for health reasons. In January 1837 he traveled to Paris , Tennessee, where he contracted typhus . For the next eleven months he lived there in a tavern, shaken by constant attacks of fever, unable to go about his business or return home. He died on December 24th.

Jackson Hole with Jackson Lake in front of the Teton Range

meaning

After returning from the mountains in 1830, Jedediah Smith worked on a literary report on his travels and put his findings on the as yet hardly explored geography between the Rocky Mountains and California on a map. Jackson helped him with his experience of the northern hunting areas. In the draft of this map, the name Jackson Lake appeared for the first time , as did Sublette Lake for the lake now known as Yellowstone Lake . The valley around the lake east of the Teton Range, in which Jackson spent the winter several times, was first referred to as Jackson Hole on a map by Warren Angus Ferris in 1835 . In the south of the valley, Jackson , Wyoming was later created .

Jackson was the first American to travel from Santa Fe on the southern route to California, and in the section between Santa Fe and Tucson, he was possibly the first white man to completely cross the land of the Apaches . In the Colorado desert he explored the water points and thus laid the basis for Stephen Watts Kearny's campaign and his Army of the West in the Mexican-American War of 1846/48.

His contributions to the fur trade are overshadowed by colleagues Smith, Sublette, Fitzpatrick and others. But Jackson organized the hunt for one of America's premier fur trading companies in its prime, when it could rival Britain's Hudson's Bay 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 inconspicuously rendezvoused the furs that Smith, Jackson & Sublette kept in business. "

literature

• Harrison Clifford Dale: The explorations of William H. Ashley and Jedediah Smith 1822-1829 . Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale 1941, Reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8032-6591-3 .
• 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, 1956-72, Vol. 9, pp. 215-244.
• Vivian Linford Talbot: David E. Jackson. Field Captain of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade . Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum, Jackson Wyo. 1996, ISBN 1-886402-01-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Harrison Clifford Dale: The explorations of William H. Ashley and Jedediah Smith 1822–1829 . Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale 1941, Reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8032-6591-3 , p. 164.
2. ^ Harrison Clifford Dale: The explorations of William H. Ashley and Jedediah Smith 1822–1829 . Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale 1941, Reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8032-6591-3 , p. 296.
3. ^ 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, 1956-72, Vol. 9, p. 223.
4. ↑ Don Berry: A Majority of Scoundrels. Harper & Brother, New York 1961, p. 226.