2021 Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal, Volume 15

In the Absence of the Indians: Looting of American Indian Graves During the Fur Trade
by Mark van de Logt, PhD, and Dan Jibréus
The article tells of how 19th century scientists, ethnologists and naturalists, sometimes with the help of fur traders, took human remains from Native burials throughout the West. At the time, it was considered leading edge science to categorize the different peoples of the world based on precise measurements of their skulls. The list of these skull collectors is a surprising who’s who of professional and amateur naturalists and western travelers. Central to the story is a skull taken from an Arikara grave in 1844 that has spent more than a century in a collection in Sweden, and one of the author’s efforts to return it to its people.

Welcome to my Indian Weed! Tobacco and the Fur Trade
by James A. Hanson, PhD
The fur trade connected Native tribes to each other and brought the goods of the world to them, and vice versa. Tobacco was a trade item that made the journey from its origins in the Americas to the rest of the world and back again as an item of international trade.

Grand Ignace: Apostle of the Flatheads
by George Capps
History occasionally remembers ordinary people who have extraordinary influences on events beyond their lifetimes. Grand Ignace was an Iroquois trapper, raised near Montreal, who settled among the Salish people of what is now Montana. Brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, Ignace became part of a quest for missionary priests to bring the religion of his youth to his new homeland. Over time, his story became wrapped in myth, and his identity obscured.

Sublette’s Trace: The Fur Trade’s Influence on Emigrant Trails
by Jim Hardee
The trails used by tens of thousands of westbound emigrants following the rendezvous era were pioneered by trappers, who in turn learned the routes by observing Native American seasonal travel. Jim Hardee’s article examines and locates a fur trade road that grew into an emigrant trail which outlived its original namesake.

The Fort Hall Account Book: Sales Patterns and Seasonal Cycles
by Michael P. Schaubs
The accounts of Nathaniel Wyeth’s Fort Hall provide an invaluable and early record of the business side of the mountain fur trade. The lists of goods brought overland from the settlements, or by ship to the Columbia River to be packed to Fort Hall, tell the story of what was available to customers. Goods recorded in an inventory, and sales recorded on a ledger, reflect the daily life of the fort: the statistics provide insights the narrative accounts of Fort Hall do not contain.

For a further description and Editor’s Notes see Volume 15 – 2021

Sublette County Historical Society, 2021

Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal, Volume 11

The Henry & Ashley Fur Company Keelboat Enterprize                                                                      
by Clay Landry and Jim Hardee

Navigation of the dangerous and unpredictable Missouri River claimed many lives and thousands of dollars in trade goods in the early 1800s, including the HAC’s Enterprize.            
Two well-known fur trade historians detail the keelboat’s misfortune, Ashley’s resourceful response, and a possible location of the wreck.

More than Just a Rock: the Manufacture of Gunflints                                                                      
by Michael P. Shaubs

For centuries, trappers and traders relied on dependable gunflints for defense, hunting, and commerce. This article describes the qualities of a superior gunflint and chronicles the revolution of a stone-age craft into an important industry.

The Hudson’s Bay Company and the “Youtah” Country, 1825-41                                                  
by Dale Topham

The vast reach of the Hudson’s Bay Company extended to the Ute Indian territory in the latter years of the Rocky Mountain rendezvous period, as pressure increased from American trappers crossing the Continental Divide.

Otholoho and Grohean: Two Fast horses, One Set of Tracks
By Jerry Enzler

A story of two race horses whose tracks might have merged – one stead the pride of William Drummond Stewart, the other the favorite of Jim Bridger.

Traps: the Common Denominator                                                                                                          
by James A. Hanson, PhD.

The portable steel trap, an exponential improvement over snares, spears, nets, and earlier steel traps, revolutionized trapping in North America. Eminent scholar James A. Hanson tracks the evolution of the technology and its deployment by Euro-Americans and Indians.

Bad Pass Trail: Gateway between the Wind and Yellowstone Rivers                                            
by Mike Bryant

This 30-mile corridor, in use since prehistoric times, connects two important watersheds and provides a detour around the 1,000-foot-deep Big Horn Canyon. Use of the trail by mountain men is documented from 1805 through the end of the rendezvous era.

Sublette County Historical Society, 2017

Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal, Volume 10

Hugh Glass: The Rest of the Story 
by Clay Landry
This article investigates new and rarely-considered data to build a more complete, and no less remarkable, picture of the man and his circumstances, especially in his later life.

“This Outrageous Desease”: Charles Larpenteur’s Observations of the 1837 Smallpox Epidemic  
by Michael M. Casler
With the use of Larpenteur’s first-hand account, along with other primary sources and modern understanding of the pathogen to advance a nuanced picture of how fur traders dealt with the scourge that annihilated so many Native Americans and devastated families in the fur trade.

The Rats at Fort Clark 
by Don Arp, Jr.
Francis Chardon, bourgeois of Fort Clark, waged a war on rats from 1834-1839.  Learn what made these vermin such a formidable adversary on the frontier. This article compiles statistics that reveal how these pests affected daily life at an American Fur Company post on the Missouri River.

The Influence of the Fur Trade on John Sutter
by Jim Hardee
Everyone knows that the 1849 Gold Rush started at Sutter’s Mill in California.  But did you know that John Sutter learned from mountain men on every step of his journey west?  

Naturalists in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Era:  “They are a Perfect Nuisance”
by Carol Kuhn
The discovery of flora and fauna was also a business – not so different from piling up pelts. The new perspective examines in detail not just how, but why these men ventures into the Rocky Mountains.

Mountain Men and the Taking of California, 1845-47
by Larry E. Morris
As the fur trade waned, many trappers got involved with American military ventures. This article explains the integral roles the mountaineers played in the Mexican-American War.

Copyright 2016 – Sublette County Historical Society

2013 Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal, Volume 7

Arikara Niitunisu Beliefs and the Fur Trade
by Dr. Mark van de Logt
The article shows foreign traders gradually losing their status as supernatural spirits and becoming something more darkly human in the eyes of the Arikara. The perception of the Arikara were that of the Euro-Americans bringing recurring epidemics that devastated the tribes.

Fact and Fancy in Alfred Jacob Miller’s Early Watercolors, 1837-39
by Dr. Lisa Strong
Many readers are familiar with the artwork of Alfred Jacob Miller the only artist who attended a Rocky Mountain rendezvous. Many historians use Miller’s images as historical evidence of fur trade material culture. The article shows the insightful comparisons of various phases of the artist’s career and illuminations of the pitfalls of assuming that Miller’s artwork can be considered historical data.

Where was Fort William?
by Scott Walker
An examination of Miller’s paintings of Fort William (later known as Fort Laramie) for evidence of that structure’s historical location. Though the original site is yet to be determined by archaeologists, Scott Walker shows that careful attention to detail – in both the artwork and Miller’s commentary – can yield interesting results.

Commerce in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade: Two 1830 Promissory Notes
by Clay J. Landry
An explanation of the financial system of the fur trade and the significance of these drafts for the two illiterate men who held them.

Bartolome Baca and the Opening of the Mexican Southwest
by J. Ryan Badger
Baca, governor of the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico from 1823-25, helped initiate commerce by sidestepping Mexican statutes to encourage beaver trapping. J. Ryan Badger demonstrates how Baca’s independent streak affected the American fur trade.

Trappers’ Brides: Intercultural Marriages in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade
by Dr. Kathleen Barlow
Parsing the fantasy and the reality in Miller’s artwork to separate Euro-American assumptions about Native American women from the actual roles those women fulfilled in their societies. Ultimately Dr. Kathleen Barlow offers a way to reframe Miller’s images and writing to better appreciate Indian women’s place in the Rocky Mountain fur trade.

Murthly: Castle of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade
by James C. Auld
A glimpse into the personal life of Sir William Drummond Stewart that is anchored in the history of his ancestral home, Murthly Castle.
Stewart came to the Rockies in 1833 and spent nearly a decade attending rendezvous, adventuring with fur trappers, and collecting artifacts. When he returned to Scotland, he renovated his ancestral home as a memento of his American experiences.

Sublette County Historical Society, 2013

2012 Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal, Volume 6

Zackary Perch Claims the Northwest
by John C. Jackson
An intriguing investigation of enigmatic letters written by a shadowy American in 1807. What began for former army captain John McClallen as a commercial trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, ended as a territorial challenge on the waters of the Columbia river. McClallen’s lone voice from the west side of the Continental Divide spoke on behalf of the young United States, defending it against British encroachment on the Pacific Coast.

Who was Roy?
by John Eldredge
Graffiti invariably makes one wonder who wrote it and why. John Eldredge was sufficiently curious to research an inscription he found on a rock in a remote southwestern Wyoming location. This article shows John Eldredge’s process of probing into the fur trade history to find out about the person named in the 1814 granite epitaph. Sleuthing into early records, Eldredge ferrets out a plausible identity for Roy, as well as evidence of one of the earliest American trading ventures west of South Pass.

The Mexican Connection
by Dr. James A. Hanson
The fur trade was pursued throughout the entire region of The Rocky Mountains, not confined to the frequently-examined Intermountain West and its rendezvous sites. Dr. James A. Hanson reminds the readers of the significance of the southern Rockies within this article. He presents the history of trade relations in Spanish/Mexican territories and demonstrates how that business intersected with beaver trapping throughout the continent.

Jedediah Smith’s Journeys of “Secondary Consideration”: New York to St. Louis
by James C. Auld
This article brings to light obscure and formerly unknown details about Smith’s early life. Jedediah Smith’s career has been frequently dissected but little attention has been paid to his upbringing and the circumstances that pushed him towards the western frontier.

India Rubber in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade
by Clay J. Landry
This article examines the early development and use of this novel and worthy substance as it became a fixture of American life, aided in part by the fur trade. It looks at how India rubber products changed the way trappers in the Rockies protected themselves from the wet, cold conditions that defined their trade.

Eavesdropping on Fur Trade Mail
by Jim Hardee
With the opportunity to examine the Sublette County Fur Trade Papers, Jim Hardee was able to read many interesting letters between fur trade personalities. The article focuses on his investigation of one such piece of correspondence. A letter pertaining to Nathaniel J. Wyeth and his well known misfortune at the 1834 rendezvous on Ham’s Fork provides an alternate perspective on Wyeth’s enterprise.

Sublette County Historical Society, 2012