Jim Bridger
Jim Bridger (born March 17, 1804 in Virginia , † July 17, 1881 in Washington , Missouri ), actually James Bridger , often also Old Gabe and Casapy or Blanket Chief by the Indians , is considered one of the most capable mountain men , trappers , scouts and explorers in the US Wild West . He was a gifted storyteller. To this day, it is unclear whether many stories were true, embellished or entirely made up.
Childhood and youth
Jim Bridger was born probably on April 17, 1804 in Richmond, Virginia. Eight years later he moved west with his parents and sister to near St. Louis . When Jim was twelve years old, his mother died, and a year later his father died. Jim probably initially worked as a stooge on a ferry on the Missouri River to support himself and his sister. Then he started an apprenticeship with a blacksmith, but broke it off in 1822.
Life in the Rocky Mountains
Employed fur hunter
On February 13, 1822, an advertisement appeared in the Missouri Gazette and Public Advertiser :
"For enterprising young men: The undersigned wishes to hire 100 men for a year, two or three years to climb up to the source of the Missouri River [...]"
Bridger, almost 18 years old, felt addressed, answered it and became part of Ashley's hundred . The members of the group were very different. The only thing they had in common was their inexperience with the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. Like Jim Bridger, many of them should be known as experts in mountain life, for example James Clyman , Tom Fitzpatrick , Hugh Glass , Edward Rose , the Milton and William Sublette brothers, and Jedediah Smith .
In 1823, William Henry Ashley and Major Andrew Henry officially founded the Rocky Mountain Fur Company . Bridger moved with Henry's group of the expedition through what is now the US state of South Dakota to the Yellowstone River . Various Indian peoples lived in the area visited . Allegedly, Bridger and his colleagues were involved in fights with Arikara warriors.
During the first time in the mountains, a grizzly bear, Hugh Glass, was attacked. Bridger and his colleague John Fitzgerald thought Glass was dead and left him behind. However, in the winter of 1823/24, which the group spent at the mouth of the Bighorn River in the Yellowstone River , Glass suddenly reappeared in their camp and forgave the inexperienced Bridger his mistake.
The next summer Bridger crossed the South Pass and with it the main ridge of the Rocky Mountains with a hunting party led by Jedediah Smith . In the winter of 1824/25 they camped in Cache Valley , which is located in the north of what is now the US state of Utah and in the south of Idaho . Bridger used the time to explore the Bear River to the south. He came across the Great Salt Lake , but thought it was an arm of the Pacific due to its salt content . Jim Bridger's name made the rounds as the discoverer of the Great Salt Lake. Etienne Provost's claims that he was the first to reach both the South Pass and the Great Salt Lake go back to his own assertion many years later and are not realistic based on verifiable data about his whereabouts.
In 1826 Bridger joined a group of fur hunters led by William L. Sublette and David E. Jackson near what is now Yellowstone National Park . In 1827 he was seen with Jackson in the Green River Valley , the following winter he set his traps in Cache Valley and in the spring on Portneuf and Bear Rivers. In the fall of 1828 Robert Campell and Bridger invaded Absarokee Indian territory . She may have been with Jim Beckwourth .
Overall, Bridger worked as a trapper in the Rocky Mountains between 1822 and 1839. His constitution turned out to be excellent and allowed him to survive extreme conditions. He roamed the area from today's US state Colorado to the Canadian border. On his explorations he met a number of pioneers who became famous, including Kit Carson , John Fremont , Joseph Meek and John Sutter .
Ashley and Henry had introduced the " rendezvous " system. The fur hunters met once a year at a specified location with the dealers, delivered their furs there and took new supplies. The first rendezvous took place on July 1, 1825 at Henrys Fork , and Bridger was probably present. It is certain that he took part in all other meetings except that of 1833.
Self-employed fur hunter
At the rendezvous of 1830, Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick , Henry Fraeb , Jean Gervais and Milton Sublette bought the Rocky Mountain Fur Company from Jedediah Smith, William Sublette and David Jackson, which they in turn had taken over from Ashley and Henry in 1826. Thus, in the battle for beaver pelts, Bridger competed even more directly with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and with John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company . Bridger and his partners ran the fur trading company until 1834. How tough and uncompromising the competitive situation was was shown in 1832 after the rendezvous in Pierre's Hole. With the beaver population already declining in the most common hunting areas, Fitzpatrick and Bridger ventured into the dangerous Blackfoot territory . American Fur Company's trapper brigades followed Fitzpatrick and Bridger in the hopes that they would lead them to abundant beaver areas. Bridger and his colleague suddenly broke off the hunt and led their pursuers criss-crossing the Blackfoot's territory. After all, the American Fur Company's hunters were alone in unknown, hostile territory. Vanderburgh, one of their leaders, was killed by Blackfoot warriors.
Bridgers Trapper and the Blackfoot clashed again and again. For example, the Blackfoot Bridgers group stole horses in February 1835. Traps were also lost and some trappers were injured.
In 1835 Bridger married Cora, a Flathead Indian. On August 13, 1835, missionary Marcus Whitman Bridger operated a three-inch arrowhead from his back. Bridger had captured the arrowhead from the Blackfoot three years earlier.
On August 22nd, 50 hunters headed for the Lakota Territory and then the Flathead. The hunt among the Blackfoot had paid off despite the resistance of the Indians, so that Bridger invaded their country again in 1836, this time with 60 trappers. A trapper was killed in a fight with the Blackfoot.
On July 5, 1838, Bridger's hunting party turned up at the rendezvous with a Blackfoot scalp . Presumably Bridger had taken revenge for the Blackfoot's constant raids and with his group attacked one of their villages that had been weakened by a smallpox epidemic. 15 Indians are said to have been killed.
The fur hunt had made Bridger good money; but gradually the population of fur animals came to an end. In 1838 he went on a hunting trip again, traveled to the Wind River and Jackson Hole , wintered on the Fall River and in the spring of 1839 hunted in the territory of the Absarokee. In the summer of 17 years in the Rocky Mountains, Bridger returned east to his sister for the first time. There he preferred to sleep on the floor in front of the house rather than in a room. If an order for payment of over 3300 US dollars to Bridger is known from 1838, he only received 408 dollars for his furs in St. Louis.
In 1840 he founded Fraeb & Bridger with Henry Fraeb . Equipped with trade goods, they set off for the last big rendezvous in the Rocky Mountains. As a result, Bridger hunted with a group on the Columbia River . Presumably he then traveled south with Fraeb and Joseph Reddeford Walker to the Hopi Indians and from there westwards to California . He probably arrived in Los Angeles in February 1841 .
Dealer
In August 1841, Bridger began building Fort Bridger , a trading post on the west bank of the Green River , to equip the Oregon Trail pioneers . His partner Fraeb was killed by Indians during this time.
Bridger was respected as a trapper and mountain man and was feared by his enemies. Harsh customs prevailed in the West at that time, and Bridger had adapted well to it. For example, he is said to have stolen merchandise from HBC.
In 1842 he traveled to St. Louis with 20 men and 20 bundles of furs. Due to the now great tension between different Indian peoples and the whites, they had to bypass the land of the Lakota and Cheyenne. In St. Louis he found a new partner in Louis Vasquez and set out with him again to the west.
In 1843 he began a little further south, at Blacks Fork in the southwest of today's state of Wyoming , with the construction of a second Fort Bridger, which is still called that today. In the following years he repeatedly set out on forays into the wilderness; he did not like the rigid life in the fort. In the wilderness he hunted and set traps, although the beavers in particular were almost extinct. He arrived at Fort Union almost empty-handed .
Bridger traveled to California the following year. He did not return to his fort until 1845. In autumn he received a total of $ 5,000 for 840 beaver skins , 675 deer blankets , 28 mules, 24 horses and 1,400 sea shells from California. In between chasing Bridger skins for bison and led wagon - caravans on the Oregon Trail.
By her death in 1846 Cora had given birth to three daughters, Mary Ann probably on November 18, 1835 or 1836, Felix Frances in December 1841 and Mary Josephine probably in 1846. A year later, Bridger married a ute who three years later gave birth their second child, daughter Virginia, died.
Bridger's daughter Mary Ann was one of the hostages of the Whitman massacre , in which the missionary Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa and 15 other white settlers were killed by Cayuse and Umatilla warriors on November 29, 1847 , and 54 women and children were taken hostage were. Peter Skene Ogden , an HBC fur trader, secured their release by offering the Indians 62 blankets, 63 cotton shirts, 24 rifles, 600 cartridges and seven pounds of tobacco. Mary Ann died, however, in 1848, shortly after her return to Oregon City .
Scout
In 1847 he reluctantly advised Brigham Young and his Mormons about where to settle in the Great Basin . Even then, Bridger and Young were unsympathetic; later this conflict would worsen. More and more settlers poured into the west. Bridger took advantage of this by setting up a blacksmith's workshop in his fort, which he later expanded into a rest area for covered wagon caravans.
In 1849/50 he led the Stansbury expedition to what is now Utah. Returning over the Rocky Mountains, Bridger found an alternative route south of the South Pass in what is now Wyoming. So far the South Pass had been the usual mountain crossing; the Oregon Trail also ran over this pass. However, the South Pass was a significant detour. Bridger's alternative route over the Bridger Pass shortened the Oregon Trail by 98 kilometers. Later, the Union Pacific Railroad ran over Bridger Pass as well as the Interstate 80 highway .
Probably in 1851 or earlier, Bridger married a third time, Mary Washakie, a Shoshone . She was the daughter of the great warrior and chief Washakie . In 1851 he accompanied a delegation of the Shoshone Indians to the great council of the Plains Indians east of Fort Laramie.
In the summer of 1853, a Mormon militia was supposed to arrest Bridger because they were a thorn in the side of Bridger's practice of selling alcohol and weapons to Indians. Bridger fled east and gave up his fort.
In 1854 Jim Bridger had two children baptized in St. Charles, Missouri: his six-year-old daughter named Virginia and his four-year-old son named John. He sent some of the children to the east for better education.
In 1856, Bridger served as a scout on Lieutenant Warren's expedition to explore the Black Hills and Yellowstone River.
In May 1857, US President James Buchanan gave the order to occupy the territory of Youngs Mormons. Bridger immediately volunteered as a scout and offered the army Fort Bridger as a base for supplies. In September Young began his guerrilla war against the US Army.
Bridger was one of the first whites to see the geysers of the Yellowstone area in 1857 at the latest, but possibly as early as 1830. In 1859 and 1860 he and Captain WF Raynolds sought access to the rugged terrain of today's Yellowstone National Park from the Wind River , but failed. Instead, they bypassed the park area to the south and west. Raynolds praised Bridger and especially his local knowledge in his diary.
In 1865, when Bridger was over sixty, he set out a route from Fort Kearny, Nebraska to Virginia City, Montana for a new trail, named the Bridger Trail after him . Bridger avoided the Bighorn Mountains in the west, out of consideration for the Indian tribes there. Not so with John Bozeman . He designed a direct route through the middle of the Indian area. As a result, most prospectors and emigrants to the west used the Bozeman Trail , but demanded protection from the US Army against the Indians. A little later, enemy Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors blocked the Bozeman Trail in the Powder River area . Major General Grenville M. Dodge ordered a punitive military expedition to the three hostile Indian tribes. The operation was led by Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor . Bridger served him as a scout, in the rank of major. The US troops were able to defeat the Arapaho under Black Bear in the Tongue River Battle and thus prevent the actions of this tribe for a while; but they couldn't do anything against the Lakota and Cheyenne.
That same year, Jim Bridger showed Dodge and his surveyors where to build the Union Pacific Railroad line through the Rocky Mountains.
In 1868 representatives of the US government signed a treaty with the Lakota and other Indian tribes in Fort Laramie , which guaranteed them vast lands. The US Army had to evacuate all forts in this area and close the Bozeman Trail. Jim Bridger's last official duty in the army was to lead troops to the forts and retrieve the army's possessions there. That same year, Bridger retired from the army at Fort Laramie.
Retirement
Bridger now suffered from arthritis , rheumatism , goiter , poor eyesight and other health problems. Besides, the West was now much busier than he had known and loved it. So he returned to Missouri in 1868 and settled with two of his daughters on his property in Westport , which he had acquired in 1855.
There he heard that General Philip Sheridan was planning a large-scale campaign against the Indians on the Bozeman Trail for the winter of 1868/69 - regardless of the peace treaty that had recently been sealed. Despite his complaints, he immediately traveled to Fort Laramie and strongly advised Sheridan not to do so. Sheridan didn't listen to Bridger and put Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in charge of the company. On November 27, Custer's troops attacked the Cheyenne village under Black Kettle on the Washita River . 103 Cheyennes died, including Black Kettle, most of them children and women.
Bridger tried unsuccessfully to obtain a rent from the government for the use of Fort Bridger. He died in 1881 and was buried nearby.
On his hundredth birthday, General Grenville Dodge had Bridgers' bones transferred to Mount Washington Cemetery (Missouri) in 1904 and a monument over two meters high was erected.
Storyteller
During and after Bridger's lifetime, he was known as a storyteller of legends. Especially during the winter months, the trappers used to live in huts and tell each other stories. Bridger was one of the most famous storytellers around. These long story evenings in the wild mountains were sometimes called "The Rocky Mountains College" .
Some of Bridger's stories turned out to be true, such as his description of the Yellowstone Geysers or that he saw fish " swam across the watershed ." In fact, at Two Ocean Pass, a stream splits into two arms, one flowing into the Atlantic and the other flowing into the Pacific, allowing fishing to cross the watershed. Also related to the Yellowstone area was the story of a river that was freezing cold at the source, but flowed down the mountain so quickly that it reached the bottom hot. Even if the reason for this hot spring was wrong, the story was basically correct: Bridger had described the Firehole River .
Other stories, though factual, were embellished by Bridger. For example, he told of a petrified forest where petrified birds sang petrified songs. Petrified forests are actually found in the Yellowstone area. Another story was about a hunter who on one as long Wapiti -Hirsch shot until he noticed that a glass mountain stayed his balls. Bridger was referring to the Obsidian Cliff , which is located in what is now Yellowstone National Park.
Initially, Bridger is said to have correctly reproduced his discoveries in the Yellowstone area. When no one believed him, he began to embellish the stories, at least to use them for entertainment.
After the park area had been explored by various expeditions and the national park was established, an editor of a leading newspaper in the West confirmed in 1879 that Bridger had told him correctly about the peculiarities of the area 30 years earlier. The editor had "laughed at Bridger's tales of lies" and had not written an article about them ( Lit .: Brown, 1961, p. 189).
One of the few who believed Bridger was Nathaniel P. Langford . Langford and Bridger first met in 1866 when Bridger was employed by a carriage company of which Langford was president. In 1870, Langford led the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition to the Yellowstone area together with Henry Dana Washburn and Gustavus C. Doane and found Bridger's incredible stories confirmed, for example about geysers or petrified trees.
Over the years, Bridger became so strongly associated with legends that many other stories were attributed to him. One of Bridger's favorite stories was about being chased by a hundred Cheyenne warriors. After running several miles, Bridger found himself at the end of a canyon, surrounded from above by the Indians. At this point in the story Bridger used to be silent until a listener asked, "What happened then, Mr. Bridger?" Bridger replied, "You killed me."
Bridger had a remarkable talent for languages . Although he was illiterate , he spoke three Indian languages in addition to English , French and Spanish . He learned the latter through living with the Indians.
Although Bridger could not read, he became very interested in literature over the years. For example, in the winter of 1862/63, while serving in the US Army, he had Captain J. Lee Humfreville read the book " Hiawatha " to him . According to Humfreville, Bridger asked him what was the best book that had ever been written. Humfreville mentioned the works of Shakespeare . A little later, Bridger exchanged a copy of Shakespeare for a team of oxen with emigrants. A German boy read him from the book for $ 40 a month. Bridger was an attentive listener and loved quoting Shakespeare.
External features
According to contemporaries, Bridger was six feet tall, "straight, thin, wiry and sunburned, almost the color of an Indian". His face is described as noble and it is said to have conveyed an expression of generosity. He had dark brown hair and clear, dark eyes. He used to wear moccasins and - like the Indians - turn his toes slightly inwards when walking ( Lit .: Kuegler, 1989, p. 85).
meaning
Bridger was best known for his knowledge of geography and his skills as a trapper and hunter. Various extraordinary experiences gave him a legendary reputation. He has been on many expeditions in what is now Utah, Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota. The army highly valued his services as a scout.
In addition to the Bridger Pass and today's historic monument Fort Bridger, there are also the town of Bridger in Montana, two mountain ranges - the Bridger Mountains in Montana and the Bridger Mountains in Wyoming - the Bridger-Teton National Forest in western Wyoming, and as part of it the Bridger Wilderness and the Bridger Bowl Ski Area near Bozeman are named after him.
Bridger's rifle can be seen in the Museum of the Mountain Men in Pinedale, Wyoming.
In the 2015 film The Revenant , Bridger is portrayed by Will Poulter .
literature
- Dee Brown: The sun rose in the west. The conquest of the American continent. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-455-00723-6
- Mark H. Brown: The Plainsmen of the Yellowstone. A History of the Yellowstone Basin. GP Putnam's Sons, New York 1961, ISBN 0-8032-5026-6
- Bill Gilbert: The Wild West. The trailblazers. Time-Life-International, Amsterdam 1979, ISBN 90-6182-517-2
- Martin Hillman: On an adventure with famous explorers. Across the New World. Aldus Books Limited, London 1971
- Dietmar Kuegler: Freedom in the wilderness ... trappers, mountain men, fur traders. The American fur trade. Publishing house for American studies, Wyk auf Foehr 1989, ISBN 3-924696-33-0
- Dietmar Kuegler: Look for my heart in the prairie. Jim Bridger, Mountain Man . Verlag für Amerikaisktik, Wyk auf Foehr 2000.
- Max Mittler: Conquering a continent. The great departure in the American West. Book club Ex Libris, Zurich
- Wilcomb Washburn: Handbook of North American Indians . Volume 4: History of Indian-White Relations . Smithsonian Institution (Ed.), Washington 1988, ISBN 0-16-004583-5
Web links
- Literature by and about Jim Bridger in the catalog of the German National Library
- Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office: Jim Bridger (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hiram Martin Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West , Francis P. Harper, New York, 1902, unaltered reprint of the 2nd revised edition from 1936 by Augustus M. Kelley, Fairfield, New Jersey, 1979, ISBN 0-678 -01035-8 , p. 280, note C with further evidence
- ↑ Kenneth H. Baldwin: IV - Two-Ocean Water and Togwotee Pass: The Jones Expedition of 1873. In: Enchanted Enclosure: The Army Engineers and Yellowstone National Park. 1976, accessed on May 8, 2014 (English): "First, he verified the existence of Two-Ocean Water, a place where, as Bridger had insisted for years, water flowed simultaneously to both the Atlantic and the Pacific."
- ↑ Barton Warren Evermann: Two-Ocean Pass . In: Popular Science Monthly . tape 47 , 1895, p. 175-186 ( archive.org ).
- ↑ English Wikipedia: Jim Bridger
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bridger, Jim |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bridger, James (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Trappers, scouts and explorers in the wild west of today's USA |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 17, 1804 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Virginia , United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 17, 1881 |
| Place of death | Washington , Missouri , United States |