Craters of the Moon Historic Context Statements

Close Encounters: The Fur Trade in the Craters of the Moon Region, 1820-1856:
OVERVIEW OF THE FUR TRADE ON THE SNAKE RIVER PLAIN

The Snake River Plain was the scene of an international rivalry for furs in the early nineteenth century. American, French, and British trappers, agents of far-flung empires, competed with each other for a share of the lucrative fur trade. European men fancied the stove-pipe hats made of slick beaver fur, and thus primarily fashion stimulated trappers to fan out across North America and enter even the remote Snake River country in search of beaver pelts. Although American fur trappers advanced this enterprise across the Rockies and created a wedge for their nation's commercial expansion, they were no match for the British-owned Hudson's Bay Company. By the 1820s, the Hudson's Bay Company controlled the trade in the Snake River country and held the monopoly until beaver numbers declined and silk replaced beaver hats by the mid-1850s. Fur trappers, however, left more than a legacy of decimated beaver populations. These mountain men, as they were otherwise known, were also forerunners of an American imperialism that would eventually conquer the West and its native peoples. Fur trappers also contributed substantially to the geographic knowledge of the West and the Snake River Plain, for they blazed trails across, and provided descriptions and maps of, the region for the first time. [1]

The fur trade followed on the heels of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805, which passed through northern Idaho on its mission to locate a route to the Pacific. The trade received further impetus after David Thompson, geographer of the Montreal-based North West Company, explored similar territory in 1809. But establishing fur trade operations in southern Idaho was no simple task. Lying between the mountains and the Snake River was the Snake River Plain, twenty thousand square miles of lava landscape. Trappers had to contend with its arid environment, severe weather--harsh winters and hot summers--remoteness, and Indians. [2]

Andrew Henry, of the Missouri Fur Company, ventured first into the Snake River country. In 1810, he built Fort Henry on the upper Snake River, on Henry's Fork, near what is now Rexburg. It was the first American fur post west of the Rockies, yet an extreme winter dashed Henry's hopes for a fur business, and he abandoned the post the following spring. Epitomizing the environmental adversity associated with travel on the plain was the Pacific Fur Company expedition in 1811. Known also as the overland Astorians, the party crossed southern Idaho on its way to establish a fur post at the mouth of the Columbia River. Led by Wilson Price Hunt, the party suffered greatly through its own bungling and its contact with the hostile surroundings of the Snake River Plain. Game was scarce. Members of the party attempted but failed to navigate down the Snake in boats and instead set out for the Columbia by land. The bedraggled group, which had separated into several parties, eventually reached Fort Astoria where it was reunited in February 1812. [3]

After enduring incredible hardships, members of the Astorian party were more impressed with the barrenness of the Snake River Plain than its potential as good beaver country. Hunt, for one, characterized the region as a "dreary desert of sand and gravel." It was a place to pass through. Within a year, for example, a small group of Astorians led by Robert Stuart marched eastward for St. Louis across the plain, undergoing similar trials as the first group. Stuart thought the country was terribly poor, barely able to sustain the native peoples who lived there. Stuart's contribution, ironically perhaps, was not in his assessment of the plain for beaver but in the route he chose; it eventually became the Oregon Trail. [4]

Nevertheless, at least one Astorian saw the region differently. Donald Mackenzie saw some promise for hunting beaver in the Snake country and for this reason led the first Snake River brigade for the North West Company in 1818. He built a trading fort at the confluence of the Columbia and Walla Walla rivers, and setting out from there to the east, trapped the tributaries of the Snake. The brigade system proved highly successful because it did not rely on seeking trade with Indians. Mackenzie's men trapped their own furs, used horses for transportation and carrying supplies, and lived mostly off the land. Mackenzie also succeeded because he maintained good relations with the Nez Perce and Snake country Indians, and because the brigade system provided safety in large numbers and trapped unexplored and unexploited country. Mackenzie headed the brigades until 1821 when the North West Company merged with the Hudson's Bay Company. [5]

Realizing profits were to be made through the brigade system, the Company established it as a regular part of the trade in the Columbia district. Among Mackenzie's successors were Alexander Ross, Peter Skene Ogden, and John Work. Over the next decade, their expeditions carried out the Hudson's Bay Company's dual purpose in the Snake River country: profit as much as possible from the beaver trade, and deplete the beaver in order to prevent Americans from coming to the region. The Company attempted to do both as quickly as possible, and by the early 1830s had achieved these goals. [6]

Undaunted by the Company's power and presence, opportunistic Americans hunted furs in the Snake River country as well. Though Americans outnumbered Company trappers and possessed a peculiar blend of adventurer and businessman, they could not match the Company's organization, its capital, knowledge of the territory and trade, and its rapport with Indians. Expectant capitalists, for example, such as William H. Ashley and Jedediah Smith, who numbered among the various owners and operators of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, challenged but never threatened the Bay Company's monopoly in the 1820s and 1830s. By 1834, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company succumbed to the pressures of the Hudson's Bay Company and rival American Fur Company and closed its doors. [7]

Independent trappers, represented by Captain Benjamin L.E. Bonneville and Nathaniel J. Wyeth, were beset by similar difficulties in their attempts to profit from the fur trade. Bonneville entered the fur trade after taking leave from the army in 1831, although some historians believe he was sent under cover to explore the frontier. Leading experienced trappers, Bonneville hunted furs in the Snake River region beginning in the winter of 1832. He left and returned to the plain in 1833, working toward the Columbia River Valley by 1834. Bonneville proved no match for the Hudson's Bay Company and produced little to show for his trapping ventures. Exploration seemed to suit him better; he led the first wagon party through South Pass, dispatched parties to explore the Great Basin, and reconnoitered the Snake River Plain. [8]

At first Wyeth, a Boston ice dealer, tried to establish a fur-trading enterprise on the lower Columbia in 1832. Failing, he turned to the Rocky Mountain region and the Snake River Plain, hoping there to have some success. He contracted to supply trade goods to the fur rendezvous held on the Green River in 1834, but St. Louis suppliers beat him to the sale, arriving first and stealing his customers. Saddled with a large supply of merchandise, Wyeth salvaged his commercial venture and that year constructed Fort Hall on the Snake River, a trading post north of what is today Pocatello. Yet nothing seemed to go right for Wyeth. Plagued by disaster and the control of the Hudson's Bay Company over the lower Columbia, he was unable to supply Fort Hall successfully. In 1836, he retired from the fur business and offered to sell his fort to the Bay Company, which bought the post in 1837 and assumed charge of it a year later. Around this same time the Bay Company obtained Fort Boise, located at the mouth of the Boise River. [9]

The acquisitions of these fur posts signaled the end of the brigade system. By 1832, the Company considered the Snake country a "fur desert," and the roving expeditions were sent elsewhere. From forts Hall and Boise, the Hudson's Bay Company began operation of a profitable supply business for mountain men and overland travelers for more than a decade. In addition to depleted beaver populations, changing fashion exacted a further toll on the fur trade with the switch from beaver to silk hats. International diplomacy changed the nature of the fur business as well. Great Britain and the United States had agreed to joint occupation of the Oregon country in 1818. But with the Oregon Compromise of 1846, the region was assigned to the United States, leading to the gradual withdrawal of the Hudson's Bay Company from southern Idaho. With its abandonment of forts Boise and Hall in 1855 and 1856, respectively, the Company's presence vanished from the plain and with it the fur trade. [10]

Throughout the West, the fur trade produced a lasting legacy, not in commerce, but in geographical knowledge. Competition for furs drove trappers into the remote and isolated reaches of southern Idaho. Trappers primarily covered the perimeter of the crescent-shaped Snake River Plain, following the Snake and exploring its tributaries in the mountains abutting the plain's borders. In the process, Snake brigade leaders such as Donald Mackenzie blazed some of the first routes across southern Idaho. Mackenzie was known for locating the route from the Boise River through Camas Prairie and the Wood River Valley to Day's Defile and the Big Lost River. From there the route crossed south toward the Snake River (and later Fort Hall), passing Big Southern and Twin buttes, and connecting to routes up or down the Snake. Alexander Ross likewise explored routes through the Salmon River and Sawtooth country for the first time. Similarly, Bonneville produced two valuable maps of his western travels, one of which included the Snake River country. Driven by utilitarian goals, though, fur traders rarely entered the desert region except out of necessity to reach mountain rivers rich in beaver. [11] On the whole, fur hunters ignored the Craters country, describing it with little interest, for it held little value for them, being merely a place to cross and survive.