Jedediah Smith

American frontiersman

• Born: January 6, 1799
• Birthplace: Jericho (now Bainbridge), New York
• Died: May 27, 1831
• Place of death: Near Cimmaron River en route to Santa Fe, New Mexico

One of the greatest, and certainly the most adventurous, of American mountain men, Smith charted trails through the Rockies that helped open the West to settlement by the pioneers who followed the fur traders.

Early Life

Jedediah Strong Smith was born into a New York family that moved a number of times as the frontier pushed farther west. His family appears to have been thoroughly middle class and respectable, and he received a good education and was well read. Family tradition, in fact, credits a book, the 1814 publication by Nicholas Biddle of History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark, with firing the young Smith’s imagination and making him determined to see the places Merriwether Lewis and William Clark described in their journals. By 1822 he and his family had made their way to Missouri. There he signed on with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, recently organized by William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry. Smith became one of the original Ashley Men, the individual fur trappers and traders that set off into the wilderness under Ashley’s command.

Life’s Work

Ashley, a Missouri businessperson, and Henry, an experienced fur trapper, originated the annual trappers’ rendezvous in the intermountain regions of the West. The Rocky Mountain Fur Company would pack supplies and trade goods for the mountain men in to a central location, such as a site on the Green River in Wyoming, and pack the furs out, eliminating the lengthy trek to St. Louis for individual trappers and traders. Ashley’s plan met resistance from the Arikara, a Native American tribe whose members had become accustomed to serving as the middlemen between white fur traders and other tribes on the upper Missouri, but Ashley simply relocated his base of operations and effectively cut the Arikara out of the fur business. Other trading companies quickly copied the idea and, before overtrapping ended the fur trade, hundreds of mountain men would gather for the midsummer rendezvous to dispose of the furs taken in the previous year and to stock up on supplies for the coming winter.

Unlike the stereotypical image of the uncouth mountain man, generally portrayed in popular culture as hard-drinking and vulgar in language and behavior, Smith was a devout Christian, neither drank nor smoked, and was consistently serious in his demeanor. Even when personally in danger or in pain, he remained calm, never allowing his men to see his concern or fear. On his second expedition, a grizzly bear attacked and mauled Smith. The bear smashed Smith’s ribs and tore at his scalp. The bear left Smith alive, but with his scalp literally dangling by an ear. He coolly instructed one of his companions, Jim Clyman, to reattach the loose skin using needle and thread. Clyman stitched the scalp back in place as best he could but was convinced that repairing the ear was hopeless. Smith told him to try anyway. Clyman did. After a two-week convalescence, Smith resumed command of the party.

Contemporaries of Smith described him both as highly respectable and as an inspiration to those around him. When called upon to say a few words over the grave of John Gardner, a recently deceased fellow fur trader, Smith’s eulogy moved observers to comment that Smith left no doubt in anyone’s mind that their friend had found salvation. Coupled with his legendary physical courage, it is not surprising Smith quickly established himself both as a leader and as an explorer.

Smith spent his first winter in the mountains along the Musselshell River in present-day Montana. The following summer, 1823, Ashley directed Smith to take a group of men and find a Native American tribe known as the Crow with the object of establishing trade relations with them. Smith’s party succeeded in making contact with the Crow people and spent the winter with them. Members of the Crow tribe described to Smith the Green River area in what is now the state of Wyoming. The Green was reputed to be an area rich in furs and thus far unexploited by other traders, and Smith and his men resolved to explore the region.

During the spring of 1824 Smith and his party rediscovered South Pass, a passageway through the Rocky Mountains, and successfully traversed it with both wagons and livestock, proving that such travel was possible. Previous parties had relied completely on pack animals to carry supplies and trade goods. South Pass had been utilized before by white men, in 1814, but the route had been forgotten. Other trails, such as the one over Lemhi Pass used by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, were impassable with wagons and were just barely passable with horses and mules. The trail that Smith blazed through Wyoming in 1824 later became an integral part of the Oregon Trail , the path that thousands of pioneers would take to reach the Pacific Northwest.

Smith and the men with him spent the following year trapping and trading in Wyoming and Idaho. Following the first trappers’ rendezvous, he returned to St. Louis with William Ashley and the company’s furs. Andrew Henry had decided to retire from the fur trade, so Ashley asked Smith to replace Henry as his partner.

Smith returned to the mountains ahead of Ashley and his main party the following spring to arrange for the trappers’ rendezvous. At the rendezvous, Ashley negotiated the sale of his share of the company to Smith and two new partners, David Jackson and William Sublette. Ashley—in exchange for a promissory note signed July 18, 1826, which committed Jackson, Smith, and Sublette to pay “not less than seven thousand dollars nor more than fifteen thousand dollars” for merchandise—agreed to arrange for the shipment of trade goods to the location of the following year’s rendezvous. After the rendezvous ended, Ashley returned to St. Louis while Smith, Jackson, and Sublette divided their party into smaller groups for the fall hunt.

Smith, accompanied by seventeen men, decided to explore the region south of the Great Salt Lake and to assess its potential for the fur trade. Smith and his men traveled the length of Utah, following first a tributary of the Colorado River and then the Colorado itself, pushed on into what is present-day northern Arizona, and then crossed the Mojave Desert into California, eventually reaching the Spanish mission at San Gabriel near present-day San Diego. The 1776 Spanish Dominguez-Escalante Expedition had attempted this route across the desert but had failed to complete it. The bulk of Smith’s party remained on the Stanislaus River in California in the spring of 1827 while Smith and two men attempted to find a route back to northern Utah through the Sierra Nevada. They succeeded and, striking northeast across Nevada, became the first white men to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert as they returned to Utah for the trappers’ rendezvous at Sweet (now Bear) Lake.

Smith, as was common practice among many American explorers, fur traders, and mountain men, kept extensive journals. His harrowing description of the journey across the Salt Lake Desert—replete with phrases such as “I durst not tell my men of the desolate prospect ahead” and “We dug holes in the sand and laid down in them for the purpose of cooling our heated bodies”—makes it clear that even Smith had his doubts regarding their survival. Nonetheless, having survived the trek across not merely one but several arid deserts, Smith continued his explorations. He arrived at the rendezvous July 3, having traveled through most of the American Southwest during the previous year, only two days later than he had promised Ashley in 1826 that he would be there. Scarcely two weeks after completing his harrowing journey from California, he was again heading south and west, motivated, as he said in his journal, “by the love of novelty.”

Having left a significant number of his men in California in the spring of 1827, Smith retraced his route to the Pacific Ocean in the fall of that year. Highly suspicious of Smith’s motives, the Spanish governor threatened the Americans with jail. Officials softened their stance and did allow Smith and his men to spend the winter of 1827-1828 in the San Francisco Bay area, but they made it clear that they did not want the Americans to linger any longer than necessary.

In the spring, the party proceeded north to present-day Oregon, and Smith became the first white man to travel from California to Oregon by an overland route. The Kelawatset Indians of the region proved hostile, however, and killed the majority of Smith’s men in an attack. Smith and three other survivors managed to reach Fort Vancouver, where they were aided by British trappers. After spending the winter of 1828-1829 at Fort Vancouver, Smith returned to the Flathead region for the 1829 trappers’ rendezvous. Briefly reunited with his partners, Jackson and Sublette, Smith then led a large force of men into the Blackfoot country of Montana and Wyoming for the fall hunt.

The Indians of the northwest were becoming increasingly unfriendly, worsening the risks to both trappers and traders, so in 1830 Sublette, Smith, and Jackson decided to sell their trapping interests to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. They returned to St. Louis and became involved in the growing trade with Santa Fe. Smith himself planned to give up the wandering life and settle down in St. Louis. His mother had died recently, and he felt a strong sense of obligation to his family. By 1830 he had spent eight years in almost constant travel and exploration. Perhaps the novelty of new places was finally losing some of its allure.

Smith purchased both a farmhouse and a town house, hired servants, and talked about preparing his complete journals and maps for publication. However, he allowed himself to be persuaded to make one last trip. In the spring of 1831 he agreed to lead a trading expedition to Santa Fe to help the buyers of his fur company procure supplies. A band of Comanche apparently surprised and killed Smith while he was scouting ahead of the main party in search of drinking water near the Cimmaron River along the Santa Fe Trail. The planned editing and publication of his complete journals never took place, and most of his papers were lost following his death.

Significance

Although numerous American explorers charted sections of the continent, few covered as much territory or saw as wide a variety of terrain as Smith, nor did their travels have as significant an impact on later settlement. Smith’s journal, written on his trek from the Green River in Wyoming to Arizona and then on to the Pacific coast, contains the first descriptions by Americans of both the wonders of the Grand Canyon and the magnificent redwood groves of California. His trek across the South Pass of the Rockies, a five-hundred-mile journey with pack wagons and livestock, opened a trail that would be utilized by thousands of pioneers en route to Oregon. Similarly, his trek across the Great Salt Lake Desert and Nevada blazed a more direct route to California. It later served as the route first for the Pony Express and then for U.S. Highway 50.

Bibliography

Allen, John Logan. Jedediah Smith and the Mountain Men of the American West. Introduction by Michael Collins. New York: Chelsea House, 1991. This biography written for a juvenile audience chronicles the exploits of the early nineteenth century mountain men who opened trails through the American West. Bibliographical references and index.

Brooks, George R., ed. Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith: His Personal Account of the Journey to California, 1826-1827. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Smith’s journey across the Mojave and the Great Salt Lake Desert, in his own words.

Dale, Harrison Clifford. The Explorations of William H. Ashley and Jedediah Smith, 1822-1829. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. Originally published as The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822-1829, in 1941. Includes original journals edited by Dale. Excellent history that summarizes the travels of both Ashley and Smith and sets them in a historical context.

Davis, Lee. “Tracking Jedediah Smith Through Hupa Territory.” The American Indian Quarterly 13 (Fall, 1989): 369. Provides vivid details about one segment of Smith’s travels. Davis, by looking at one aspect of Smith’s explorations in detail, helps to flesh out the more general accounts of his travels.

Morgan, Dale L. Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. A good basic biography of Smith, containing a portrait.

Neihardt, John Gneisenau. The Splendid Wayfaring: Jedediah Smith and the Ashley-Henry Men, 1822-1831. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Fascinating examination of Smith and his fellow fur traders and trappers and their mythic status in American history.

Smith, Jedediah Strong. The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith: His Personal Account of the Journey to California, 1826-1827. Edited by George R. Brooks. 1977. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. These accounts, by the explorer himself, are supplemented by a bibliography and an index.

Sullivan, Maurice S. The Travels of Jedediah Smith. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Originally published in 1934 using materials from Smith’s surviving journals, this book has long been considered the definitive reference on Smith’s life and travels.