Author Archives: Angie Thomas

A Harvest All Their Own; Thanksgiving in the Rocky Mountains During the Fur Trade?

By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff

Mountain men and fur traders in the Rocky Mountains did not celebrate Thanksgiving as we know it today. The national holiday was not established until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it during the Civil War, hoping “to heal the wounds of the nation.”[1]

That said, trappers were certainly familiar with the idea of giving thanks. Many Native American tribes and colonial communities across North America held harvest festivals each fall to celebrate the end of the growing season and to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. [2] Mountain men, whether originating from these colonial communities or living among and trading with Native Americans, may have joined in these seasonal celebrations.

By late November, when we celebrate Thanksgiving today, the mountain men were engaged in their own kind of fall ritual, one focused on winter preparations and survival. Fall marked the peak of the beaver trapping season, when the animals’ winter coats were at their thickest and most valuable.  As the fall hunt drew to a close, trappers, like the beaver they pursued, were busy readying themselves for the harsh winter ahead.

In his 1830s journal Adventures of a Mountain Man, trapper Zenas Leonard described how the men spent early November:

On the 1st day of November we commenced travelling up the valley, on search of a suitable place to pass the winter, and on the evening of the 4th, we arrived at a large grove of Cottonwood timber, which we deemed suitable for encamping in. Several weeks were spent in building houses, stables, &c. necessary for ourselves, and horses during the winter season. This being done, we commenced killing Buffaloe, and hanging up the choice pieces to dry… We also killed Deer, Bighorn Sheep, Elk, Antelope, &c., and dressed the hides to make moccasins.[3]

Photo by Dave Bell of Wyoming Mountain Photography of a beaver pond.

It is no coincidence that November’s full moon is called the “Beaver Moon.”[4] Beaver are especially active this time of year, repairing dams, reinforcing lodges, and storing food for the frozen months ahead. Throughout the fall, they gather branches and stems from willows and trees, anchoring them underwater in a cache near their lodge. Once the surface freezes, these submerged “pantries” provide a steady food supply all winter long – a harvest of their very own.[5]

Just like beaver, mountain men were building shelters, storing provisions, and preparing for months of isolation and cold. Both were following instincts, or hard-earned experience, that told them it was time to prepare, endure, and survive until spring. Whether nestled in a beaver lodge or holed up in winter quarters, it was the ritual of preparation, harvesting and gathering that sustained both human and wildlife communities through the long, harsh winters. 

As their diet shifts from tender summer greens to the bark and woody stems they so carefully stored, one might imagine the beaver feeling a touch of gratitude for their industrious efforts. Their hard work has paid off – they have plenty to eat, a warm lodge, and months ahead to rest in cozy comfort – a kind of Thanksgiving, beaver-style.

[1] Abraham Lincoln, “Proclamation of Thanksgiving,” October 3, 1863, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 6:497–498.

[2] Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Harvest and Thanksgiving: Native American Perspectives (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2015); https://www.si.edu/spotlight/thanksgiving/history, accessed 10/23/2025.

[3] Zenas Leonard, Adventures of a Mountain Man: The Narrative of Zenas Leonard, Written by Himself, intro. by Milo Milton Quaife (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 19.

[4] https://www.almanac.com/full-moon-november, accessed 10/22/2025.

[5] https://wgfd.wyo.gov/Regional-Offices/Lander-Region/Lander-Region-News/Busy-Beaver, accessed 10/22/2025; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Beaver Restoration Guide, Version 1.0. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2022. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BRG%20v.1.0%20final%20reduced.pdf.

When the Elk Bugled: A Moonlit Moment in the Fur Trade

By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff

Here a circumstance occurred which furnished the subject for a good joke upon our green Irish camp keeper. … It was the commencement of the rutting season with the elk, when the bucks frequently utter a loud cry resembling a shrill whistle, especially when they see anything of a strange appearance. We had made our beds at night on a little bench between two small, dry gullies. The weather was clear and the moon shone brightly. About ten o’clock at night, when I supposed my comrades fast asleep, an elk blew his shrill whistle within about 100 yards of us. I took my gun, slipped silently into the gully and crept toward the place where I heard the sound, but I soon found he had been frightened by the horses and ran off up the mountain. On turning back I met Allen, who, hearing the elk, had started to get a shot at him in the same manner I had done without speaking a word. We went back to camp, but our camp keeper was nowhere to be found. We searched the bushes high and low ever and anon calling for “Conn,” but no “Conn” answered. At length Allen, cruising through the brush, tumbled over a pile of rubbish, when lo! Conn was beneath, nearly frightened out of his wits. “Arrah! an’ is it you, Allen?” said he trembling as if an ague fit was shaking him. “But I thought the whole world was full of the spalpeens of savages. And where are they gone?” It was near an hour before we could satisfy him of his mistake, and I dare say his slumbers were by no means soft or smooth during the remainder of the night.[1]

In this journal entry, mountain man Osborne Russell shares a rare detail from life in the fur trade era, the whistle, or bugle, of a bull elk during the rut. His account stands out not only for its humor and storytelling but also for capturing a rare and specific moment of trapper life.

The scarcity of similar observations about elk bugling in other journals does not suggest that trappers failed to notice or appreciate these sounds. Fur trappers and mountain men undoubtedly heard the bugles of elk, an unforgettable sound that marks the rutting season in the Rocky Mountains. More likely, the absence reflects differences in what individuals chose to record, or what has survived in print. Most fur trade journals focus on trade logistics, survival, mapping, or relationships with Native peoples, subjects far more relevant to daily life than the bugle of an elk on a moonlit night.

Photo by Dave Bell of Wyoming Mountain Photography of an elk bugling.

Russell, however, offers something unique: a brief account of what life in the fur trade sometimes sounded like, and a humorous glimpse into how trappers experienced those moments. Through his narrative, we can imagine the moonlit camp, the sudden stillness after the elk’s call, and the laughter of companions once fear gave way to relief.

In the Museum’s ongoing work to bring history to life, accounts like Russell’s help us understand not just what mountain men did, but what they and their comrades heard, felt, and feared, and allow us to imagine just how constant those fears must have been in the mountains. Yet Russell’s journal reminds us that even in an era of hardship and danger, there was room for curiosity and humor, moments that bring these historical figures to life for us today.

[1] Osborne Russell, Journal of a Trapper, 1834–1843, (Boise, ID: Syms-York Company, Inc., 1921) 70. “Spalpeens” is an Irish word roughly translated as “rascals.”

Wildfire in the Fur Trade

By: Angie Thomas | Edited By: Jim Hardee

Photo by Dave Bell of Wyoming Mountain Photography of the Cliff Creek Fire in 2017.

There are few references to large, uncontrolled wildfires in the Rocky Mountains in fur trade journals. One notable exception is George Ruxton’s detailed account of a narrow escape from a wildfire near Pike’s Peak in the spring of 1847. After descending from the mountains to camp beside a spring, Ruxton awoke to find the surrounding landscape engulfed in flames, with fire sweeping rapidly through the gorge and consuming dry brush, pines, and cedars. In a desperate effort to escape, he saddled his horse and drove his mules through the burning grass and brush, eventually forcing his way through a wall of fire and into an icy creek to reach safety.1 (Click here for full account).  While such large-scale fires were rarely recorded by fur traders, there are several references to intentional burning – often by Native Americans using fire for communication, improving habitat for hunting, or as a battle strategy. 

Fire As Communication

Rather than the intricate smoke signals made famous in Hollywood westerns, Native Americans often set entire valley bottoms on fire to create dense, visible smoke plumes. On August 31, 1804, near the Lemhi River in what is now eastern Idaho, members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition witnessed the following:

This day warm and Sultrey, Prairies or open Valies on fire in Several places. The country is Set on fire for the purpose of collecting the different bands (of Pend d’Oreille Indians), and a Band of the Flatheads to go to the Missouri (River drainage) where They intend passing the winter near the Buffalow.2

Trapper Warren Ferris observed a similar event in 1833:

The Indians with us, announced our arrival in this country by firing the prairies.  The flames ran over the neighboring hills with great violence…and filling the air with clouds of smoke.3

A year earlier, in 1832, Ferris had described a fire signal exchange near today’s Bannock Pass: 

[W]e saw a dense cloud of smoke rising from the plains forty or fifty miles to the southeastward, which we supposed to have been raised by the Flatheads, who accompanied Fontanelle to Cache Valley, and who were now in quest of the village to which they belong. The Indians with us answered the signal by firing a quantity of fallen pines on the summit of a high mountain.4

Ferris also recorded an accidental fire that quickly escalated into a threatening situation near present-day Deer Lodge, Montana:

A careless [Flathead] boy scattered a few sparks in the prairie, which, the dry grass almost instantly igniting, was soon wrapped in a mantle of flame. A light breeze from the south carried it with great rapidity down the valley, sweeping everything before it, and filling the air with black clouds of smoke … [The fire] however occasioned us no inconsiderable degree of uneasiness as we were now on the borders of the Blackfoot country … who it was reasonably inferred might be collected by the smoke, which is their accustomed rallying signal, in sufficient force to attack us … Clouds of smoke were observed on the following day curling up from the summit of a mountain jutting into the east side of the valley, probably raised by the Blackfeet to gather their scattered bands, though the truth was never more clearly ascertained.5

Prairie Meadows Burning, by George Gatlin. Image Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.374.

Fire in Battle

Fire was also used in warfare. In September 1835, Osborne Russell described an attack by “about 80 Blackfeet” who attempted to flush his party out by setting fire to the surrounding grass: 

We lay almost silently about 3 hours, when finding they could not arouse us to action by their long shots they commenced setting fire to the dry grass and rubbish with which we were surrounded. The wind blowing brisk from the south, in a few moments the fire was converted into one circle of flame and smoke which united over our heads. This was the most horrible position I was ever placed in.  Death seemed almost inevitable, but we did not despair, and all hands began immediately to remove the rubbish around the encampment and setting fire to it to act against flames that were hovering over our heads.  This plan proved successful beyond our expectations. Scarce half an hour had elapsed when the fire had passed around us and driven our enemies from their position. At length we saw an Indian whom we supposed to be the chief standing on a high point of rock and give the signal for retiring.6

Fire in Hunting

Fire was even used to trap game. In the 1840s, Father Pierre De Smet described a deer hunt near present-day Lake Coeur d’Alene in which fires were lit on both sides of a line to drive animals into the lake, where hunters in canoes awaited: 

On both ends of their line they light fires, some distance apart … The frightened deer rush to right and left to escape. As soon as they smell the smoke of fires, they turn and run back. Having the fires on both sides of them and the hunters in the rear, they dash toward the lake, and soon they are so closely pressed that they jump into the water, as the only refuge left for them. Then everything is easy for the hunters: they let the animals get away from the shore, then pursue them in their light bark canoes and kill them without trouble or danger.7

Prairie on Fire by Alfred Jacob Miller. Image Courtesy of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, 37.1940.198.
For more info see https://alfredjacobmiller.com/artworks/prairie-on-fire/

Fire in Art

The drama of a wildfire was not wasted by early artists. George Catlin, an eyewitness to prairie fires, captured the chaos in his painting Prairie Meadows Burning, showing billowing smoke and figures fleeing before the flames. Alfred Jacob Miller’s Prairie on Fire depicts trappers hurriedly creating a firebreak to protect their camp from an approaching blaze.

These accounts demonstrate that fire was indeed a part of life during the Rocky Mountain fur trade, not only as a natural threat but also a cultural and strategic tool.

  1. George F. Ruxton, Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains (London: John Murray, 1849), 262-263. ↩︎
  2. Gary E. Moulton, The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001), 179. ↩︎
  3. Warren A. Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, Paul C. Phillips, ed. (Denver, CO: The Old West Publishing, Co., 1940), 215. ↩︎
  4. Ibid., 103. ↩︎
  5. Ibid., 106-07. ↩︎
  6. Osborne Russell, Journal of a Trapper: Or Nine Years in the Rocky Mountains, 1834-1843 (Boise, ID: Syms-York Company, Inc., 1921) 36-37. ↩︎
  7. Hiram Chittenden and Alfred Richardson, eds., Life, Letters, and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J., 1801-1873. (1905; New York, NY: Francis P. Harper, 1969), 1021-22.) ↩︎