The Perilous West: Seven Amazing Explorers and the Founding of the Oregon Trail

293 Pages·2012·2.96 MB·English

by  Larry E. Morris

The Perilous West
Ramsay Crooks and Robert McClellan
John Hoback, Jacob Reznor, and Edward Robinson
Pierre and Marie Dorion
The Perilous West
Seven Amazing Explorers and the
Founding of the Oregon Trail
Larry E. Morris
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
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Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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Copyright © 2013 by Rowman & Litlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morris, Larry E.
The perilous West : seven amazing explorers and the founding of the Oregon Trail / Larry E. Morris.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-1112-4 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-1114-8 (ebook)
1. Oregon National Historic Trail—Discovery and exploration. 2. Oregon National Historic Trail—
Description and travel. 3. Explorers—Oregon National Historic Trail—Biography. 4. Explorers—
West (U.S.)—Biography. 5. West (U.S.)—Discovery and exploration. 6. West (U.S.)—Description
and travel. 7. West (U.S.)—History—To 1848. I. Title.
F880.M67 2012
978'.01—dc23
2012032260
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
“The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them
with my hand. I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found
out what a little circle man’s experience is. For Ántonia and for me, this had
been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which
predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same
road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed
together the precious, the incommunicable past.”
—Willa Cather, My Ántonia
Acknowledgments
During my final year of work on this project, I lost three good friends—
Matt Brown, Brent Petersen, and Matt Smith. This book is dedicated to their
memory.
The editors at Rowman & Littlefield have been great to work with. Thanks
to Niels Aaboe, Sarah David, Carrie Broadwell-Tkach, Jon Sisk, Darcy Evans,
Benjamin Verdi, and Karen Ackermann.
Thanks to the archivists and staff at the Family History Library, Salt Lake
City; Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library and L. Tom Perry
Special Collections, Provo; the State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia;
the Missouri History Museum, St. Louis; the Filson Historical Society,
Louisville; the Kentucky State Archives, Frankfort; the Kentucky Historical
Society, Frankfort; the Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison; the Abraham
Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield; and the Baker Library,
Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.
Thanks to the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies for funding part of
the research associated with this book.
Thanks to the many historians who researched these seven remarkable
individuals in the past—especially Washington Irving, a tireless researcher and a
mighty fine writer.
I appreciate the support of a whole host of folks, particularly Robin Russell,
Bill Read, Russ and Cindy Taylor, Rachel and Taeh Osborne, Ron Anglin, Jay
Buckley, and Jim Hardee. It has been a particular pleasure to attend the Fur
Trade Symposiums held every two years in such historic locations as Three
Forks, Montana, and Pinedale, Wyoming. The Museum of the Mountain Man in
Pinedale and its parent organization, the Sublette County Historical Society,
have done a wonderful job of finding and preserving the history of the Western
fur trade.
Most of all, I appreciate the support of my wife, Deborah, and our family—
Whitney, Justin, Jen, Elliot, Liam, Courtney, Adam, Isaac, Tahlia, Charles,
Tiffani, and Margo. In a series of memorable trips, Deborah and I followed the
Astorians along the Wind River, the Teton River, Henry’s Fork, the Snake River,
the Columbia, Bear River, the south fork of the Snake, the Hoback River, and the
Sweetwater, but there was nothing quite like seeing the mouth of the Walla Walla
River, where Marie Dorion and her sons were rescued.
Prologue
“The Timely Arrival of This Poor Unfortunate Woman”
On the morning of April 17, 1814, seventy-six well-armed men in ten
canoes fought their way up what William Clark called “the great Columbia
River,” contending with the “strong and rapid” current as they ventured into the
Rocky Mountains from the Pacific coast. They had embarked two weeks earlier
from Astoria, a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia named after the
renowned fur magnate John Jacob Astor, America’s first millionaire, who had
funded the enterprise—but who would never see the settlement. The War of
1812 and the sale of Astoria to Canada’s North West Company had compelled
these voyagers, some accompanied by Indian wives and children, to return to
their home base in Montreal. They faced the daunting task of ascending the
Columbia north into present British Columbia and then winding their way east
across the continent, enduring cold, illness, injury, and hunger while infrequently
replenishing their supplies at a smattering of trading houses as they paddled the
Canoe, Athabasca, North Saskatchewan, Winnipeg, French, and Ottawa Rivers
and a host of lakes, including Lake Superior. They would reach their homes
early in September, but only after they had made an endless series of
troublesome portages—one in neck-high icy water—scaled a series of snowy
mountain passes, and lost two of their number to the white water of the
Athabasca.[1]
The Astorians were well underway by 8:00 a.m. as they journeyed through
the “Great Plains of the Columbia,” in present-day southeastern Washington, an
area quite unlike the region of lush forests near the coast. They could see
“nothing but bare hills” in the distance, with hardly a shrub or a patch of grass
visible. Steep cliffs, some two hundred feet high, rose on both sides of the
tremendous river, nearly a thousand yards wide at this point. The barren plains
had yielded no game, and the group was subsisting on “extremely lean” horses
and dogs purchased from Indians. Then, near the mouth of the “meandering
Walla Walla, a beautiful little river, lined with weeping willows,” they saw
“three canoes, the [Indians] in which were struggling with their paddles to
overtake” them. Determined to be on their way—and concluding their pursuers
were simply curiosity-seekers—the Astorians “paid little heed,” not breaking
their resolute rhythm as they plied their oars. But then a child’s voice cried out,
“Arretez donc, arretez donc!” (“Stop, stop!”) and the men promptly put ashore
and waited. Most of them were French-Canadian, and the sound of a child
calling to them in French had sparked their concern.[2]
The landing of the fleet made for a noisy, chaotic scene, with bearded,
buckskin-clad boatmen yelling instructions as the oversized canoes—five of
birch bark and five of cedar wood, all ten brimming with people and supplies—
crowded the rocky shoreline, their sails lowered. The armada totaled ninety
passengers, and most of them glanced back for a glimpse of the enfant who had
called out to them. Then, as the Indians manning the three smaller canoes
approached, the Astorians were shocked to see Marie Dorion, the Iowa Indian
wife of the well-traveled hunter and interpreter Pierre Dorion Jr., and her two
young boys.[3] Seven months earlier, in July of 1813, Marie and her husband and
sons had departed Astoria with a small group of trappers bound for Idaho’s
Snake River country to “join there the hunters left by Messrs. Hunt and Crooks,
near Fort Henry, and to secure horses and provisions for [the] journey” back to
St. Louis.[4] The hunters they were seeking included three men Marie knew well
—John Hoback, Jacob Reznor, and Edward Robinson, three Kentuckians now in
the seventh year of their Western sojourn.
As for Dorion and his family, they had plunged westward in 1811 with five
score men under the command of twenty-eight-year-old Wilson Price Hunt, a St.
Louis merchant singled out by Astor to lead his western fur enterprise. Hunt had
been assisted by two of the most fascinating personalities in the history of the
early fur trade—Ramsay Crooks and Robert McClellan, unlikely partners whose
names will forever be spoken in tandem: Crooks & McClellan. With Hunt’s rag-
tag collection of savvy North West Company veterans; hard-drinking and hard-
driving guides, interpreters, boatmen, and hunters (some French-Canadian, some
American, and others Anglo-Indian); and one woman and two children, Crooks
and McClellan had made the unforgettable and unforgiving odyssey from the
Missouri Territory to the Pacific coast, the second group of Americans to cross
from east to west, preceded only by Lewis and Clark. During that journey, Marie
had earned a reputation for her impressive stamina, but now she looked wan and
feeble.
Several voyagers disembarked to secure a landing spot and check for
rattlesnakes among the rocks and wormwood, for they had seen many snakes the
previous day. A familiar stench filled the air, both from the “great quantities” of
salmon, steelhead trout, and sturgeon drying on Indian scaffolds and from dead
fish littering the shore. Marie Dorion’s escorts guided their craft to the edge of
the water—these were the friendly Walla Walla Indians, described by one
Astorian as “tall, raw-boned” men with “strong and masculine” voices, “well
dressed; having all buffalo-robes, deerskin leggings, very white, . . . garnished
with porcupine quills.”[5]
Someone helped Marie ashore, and her two boys scrambled out of the
canoe after her. She undoubtedly hoped to see friends in the group, and she was
not disappointed, spotting one man after another who had traveled in Hunt’s
group, with each familiar face bringing vivid memories of the interminable trek.
[6]
Taking full—and normal—advantage of his status as a partner in Astor’s
Pacific Fur Company, Donald McKenzie sat in the lead canoe as a passenger, not
an oarsman. Marie likely remembered him as a strong-willed man who had
argued with Hunt as often as he supported him. But perhaps her most memorable
image of McKenzie had nothing to do with commerce or status.
Weeks after striking out overland from the upper Missouri River, the
caravan had followed a Crow Indian trail that “led them over rough hills, and
through broken gullies, during which time they suffered great fatigue from the
ruggedness of the country.” Traveling in the extreme northeast corner of modern
Wyoming, the group found themselves in the badlands lying between the Little
Powder and Powder Rivers, their water supply suddenly vanished, the heretofore
cool weather suddenly “oppressively warm.”[7] Hunt wrote that “the great heat,
the bad road and the lack of water caused much suffering,” adding that “several
persons were on the verge of losing courage.”[8] McKenzie’s faithful dog, which
had struggled so hard to keep up, grew weaker and weaker, its eyes sunken,
looking to McKenzie for help, but he had no water to give. Then the dog finally
gave out, collapsing on the rocky trail, its heavy panting ceased.
Louis St. Michel, one of a host of French-Canadian oarsmen, sat in another
canoe, wielding a paddle and looking right at home. But Marie knew something
of what he had endured. Barely a month after forging a tortuous path across the
barren ravines, the overlanders fought cold and frostbite as they followed a swift
river through a steep, snow-covered canyon. “One of our horses fell with his
pack into the river from a height of nearly two hundred feet, but was uninjured,”
Hunt wrote. The river flowed into a larger, rapid body of water they called “Mad
River because of its swiftness. On its banks, and a little above the confluence,
[were] situated the three peaks which we had seen [twelve days earlier].”[9]
There were signs of beaver everywhere, and Marie and Pierre Dorion had
watched as St. Michel and three others prepared to stay behind and trap.
Enthusiastic to a man, they checked their Kentucky long rifles and made sure