Mountin Man Giveaway

[nydude]

William Henry Ashley?

(1778, Powhatan County, Virginia–March 26, 1838, Boonville, Missouri) a pioneering fur trader, entrepreneur, and politician.

Google / Wikipedia helped; tech is making it so tha we don't need to remember anything.. it may be sad but I only think in key words these days.

"In 1826 William H. Ashley sold the fur trading company to Jedediah Smith and some of his other men, and devoted his energy to politics. As a member of the Jacksonian Party, he won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1831, 1832, and 1834. In 1836 he declined to run for a fourth term in Congress, and instead ran for Governor of Missouri, losing badly. Many attribute his defeat to his increasingly pro-business stance in Congress, which alienated the rural Jacksonians."

Here is a nice small early American example of business needing support from local government and how it effects policy.

 

[chewbacca]

Don't know if you guys consider him a mountain man or not...how 'bout writer George W. Sears, or as we call him - Nessmuk. Inventor of "ultralight" camping and canoeing, creator of the now called Nessmuk Trio, and of course, the reason we all have to try our hand and making or using a Nessie.

 

[RoyalM]

Jedediah Smith
Jim Savage
John Colter
Jim Bridger
Kit Carson (x2)
John Grizzly Adams
Hugh Glass (x2)
Liver Eatin’ Johnson
Osborne Russell
Alfred Packer
John O’Keefe
Frederick Burnham
Thomas Fiztpatrick
Jim Beckworth
Old Bill Williams
John Fremont
John D. Albert
Donald Mackenzie
Etienne Provost
Thomas T Tobin
Nathaniel Wyeth
Zebulon Pike
“Uncle Dick” Wootton
Benjamin Vernon Lilly
William "Bill" Sublett
Manuel Lisa
John McDouall Stuart
Robert Newell
William Henry Ashley
George W. Sears

My 2nd guess is:

Warren Angus Ferris (December 25, 1810 in Glens Falls, New York - February 8, 1873). He was a trapper and fur trader in the Rocky Mountains during the early 1830s. In 1834, Ferris acted as a clerk for the American Fur Company in a journey to the mountains of western Wyoming. Out of curiosity, Ferris found Indian guides and made a side journey into what is today Yellowstone National Park. In a journal that he kept during that time, later published as Life in the Rocky Mountains, Ferris gave one of the first descriptions of the gysers of Yellowstone.

 

[dipbait]

Ive read a lot of Mountain Men books. Clever contest.

My guess is Toussaint Charbonneau , a man of low character who was once stabbed while committing rape. He was a trader for the North West company and came to fame by purchasing the Indian captive Sacajawea. A man of little value on the Lewis and Clark expedition. His most valued asset was that as a cook and a shrewd trader. He struck a deal with the Shoshones for some much needed horses.

 

[Shotgun]

2nd guess:

James P. Beckwourth,
Trapping beaver and other animals for their fur in the early 1800s was a lonely and often dangerous way of life. Living under difficult conditions and forced to hunt daily for food, it was not a profession undertaken lightly. The privations were made up for with the chance to become rich in a short period of time. What few know however, is that the fur trade empires created opportunities for people from many ethnic backgrounds. Trappers included Eastern American Indians from the Shawnee, Delaware, and Iroquois tribes, Hawaiians, native New Mexicans, French Canadians, and people of African Ancestry.

Of the black trappers making a living in the Rocky Mountains, none is as well known as James P. Beckwourth. Born in Frederick County, Virginia in 1797 or 1798, he was the child of Jennings Beckwith, a slave-owner and one of the plantation slaves, known only as Miss Kill.

One of several mixed race siblings, young Beckwith moved with his father to St. Louis, Missouri in the early years of the 19th century. As a boy, Beckwith learned about his natural surroundings and spent time hunting in the outskirts of French St. Louis. He apprenticed to a blacksmith, but after a while, ran away and later became part of a trapping expedition on the Wood River.

Drawn to the outdoor life, Beckwith changed his name to Beckwourth and joined the 1825 trapping party to the Rocky Mountains led by General William H. Ashley. In 1825, Ashley made himself rich by reintroducing an Indian idea. He brought goods and supplies to a pre-arranged place in the mountains and traded his goods for the trapper's pelts.

As a trapper for Ashley, Beckwourth rubbed shoulders with many of the famous trappers of his day. He was a contemporary of such men as Jim Bridger, Christopher "Kit" Carson, Tom "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick and Moses "Black" Harris.

Beckwourth found a freedom in the mountains that would not have been possible for a black man anywhere in the United States at that time. Beckwourth worked as an independent trader and as an employee of Bent, St. Vrain and Co. at Bent's Old Fort and for the American Fur Company.

Beckwourth claimed to have been part of a group of trappers who established El Pueblo, a trading post on the Arkansas River that later became the city of Pueblo, Colorado.

The black mountain man claimed to have lived with the Blackfoot and later the Crow peoples. He learned the Crow language and married several Crow women.

Beckwourth traveled to New Mexico where he opened a hotel and gambling parlor and took dispatches to California for the U.S. Military. He later moved to California during the Gold Rush and set up a store. He also discovered a pass in the Sierra Nevada Mountains still called Beckwourth Pass.

Beckwourth followed gold miners to Colorado in 1859 and was a part of the beginnings of Denver, Colorado. Always restless, Beckwourth traveled back and forth across the west until taking a job as an interpreter for the 1866 Carrington Expedition out of Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

Riding to Fort C.F. Smith in what is today Montana, Beckwourth complained of headaches and nosebleeds. While in the camp of his old friends, the Crow; Beckwourth suffered symptoms of a stroke and died at 67 or 68 years of age. He was buried on Crow land in what is today Montana near the present Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. His final resting place was far from his Virginia birthplace, but fitting for this African American adventurer whose life touched so many cultures.

 

[bcornelis]

I would have to throw in my hat with Kit Carson. He was a trapper ,guide and explorer in his younger years and one of the first caucasions to explore much of the Western US.

At a trapper rendezvous in 1835 he duelled with a French-Canadian trapper Joeseph Chouinard by charging each other on horses. Carson shot off Chouinards thumb (possibly making this only time a Canadian has been beaten by an American in combat - just kidding).

Carson was married three times, Singing Grass, Making-out-road and Josefa, having a total of 10 children.

Carson was also involved in the Mexican-American war, Amercian civil war and Indian wars in later years, with many tales that grew legendary of this warrior and adventurerer.

Carson himself, from most accounts never considered himself to be a legend, but an ordinary man that was described as humble, honest and a family man..

 

[Uncle Timbo]

Jed Clampett?

Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was shootin' at some food,
And up through the ground came a bubblin' crude.
Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.

Well the first thing you know ole Jed’s a millionaire,
Kinfolk said Jed move away from there
Said Californy is the place you ought to be
So they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.
Hills, that is. Swimmin' pools, movie stars. - The Beverly Hillbillies!

Well now its time to say good-bye to Jed and all his kin.
And they would like to thank you folks fer kindly droppin' in.
You’re all invited back again to this locality
To have a heapin' helpin' of their hospitality
Hillbilly that is. Set a spell. Take your shoes off. Y’all come back now, y’hear?

 

[el dub]

Then there was Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier. Killed him a bar when he was only 3.

 

[Rotte]

Thanks for updating the list RoyalM.

It's a nice looking list, but...it ain't complete.

I didn't think I was being obtuse or clever when I picked my mountain man answer for this contest, but I suppose he is a bit more obscure than I had first realized. We'll give it a bit of time and then perhaps I'll start adding some clues.

Great stories y'all!

 

[hdglock]

Jim Baker

From Wiki

Jim Baker (1818–1898), trapper, scout and guide, was a friend of Jim Bridger and Kit Carson and one of General John C. Fremont's favorite scouts. He was one of the most colorful figures of the old west.

Born in Belleville, Illinois, at 21 he was recruited by Jim Bridger as a trapper for the American Fur Company and on May 22, 1839 left St. Louis with a large party heading for the annual rendezvous in the mountains. In August 1841 he was involved in a desperate fight at the junction of Bitter Creek and the Snake River when 35 trappers beat off a large band of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.

The decline of the fur trade in the early 1840s drove many the trappers to quit, but Baker stayed on. Little is known of his movements after 1844, but in 1855 he was hired as chief scout for General William S. Harney of Fort Laramie, and he was part of the Federal Army sent against the Mormons. In 1873 he built a cabin with a guard tower near the Colorado Placers of Clear Creek where he raised livestock until his death in 1898. His grave marked with a stone near Savery, Wyoming.

Baker was married six times, each time to an Indian woman, one of whom was the daughter of a Cherokee chief; he had a number of children.

 

[hdglock]

Its a new day, time for a new guess.

Joseph Lafayette "Joe" Meek (1810–1875)


Joe Meek was born in Virginia. He left his home for Missouri at an early age to escape a disagreeable stepmother. There, in 1829 at age 19, he joined William Sublette, and for the next eleven years lived the arduous life of a mountain man.

While in the mountains, Joe Meek had many adventures including a hand-to-claw encounter with a grizzly bear, hand-to-hand combat with a Bannock warrior, the killing of his first wife by a raiding party, participation in the battle at Pierre's Hole, July 17, 1832 (see the 1832 Rendezvous) and was a member of Joseph Walker's expedition to California in 1833-34.

As the fur trade lost importance in the 1840s, Joe Meek and Doc Newell joined the immigrants to Oregon, and escorted one of the first wagon trains across the mountains. Settling in Willamette Valley of Oregon, near what would become Hillsboro, he became a farmer, also serving as sheriff in 1843 and in the legislature in 1846 and 1847. With the Whitman Massacre and outbreak of the Cayuse War in the Oregon Territory, Meek headed for Washington D.C. where he met with President Polk. Joe Meek's case for making the Oregon Territory a federal territory came to fruition with the appointment of Joe Lane as Territorial Governor and Joe Meek as Territorial Federal Marshal.

A local resident described Joe Meek as “bold, adventurous, humorous, a first-class trapper, pioneer, peace officer, and frontier politician. More, he was the wittiest, saltiest, most shameless wag and jester that ever wore moccasins in the Rockies - a tall happy-go-lucky Virginian lover of practical jokes, tall tales, Jacksonian Democracy and Indian women."

 

[Diomedes Industries]

I guessed on the first day - but I thought it would have ended by now. As it has been three days - I will make three guesses here:

Zenas Leonard - Tapper from PA who spent five years trapping and trading with Native Americans.

Benjamin Bonneville

and because it has not been taken - but it seems WAY to obvious -

Horace Kephart



TF

 

[dingobubba]

Don't know if I would call Mr. Boone a mountain man, but he was one of this countries earlier explorers.

Daniel Boone (1734 - 1820) - An American Pioneer, Daniel Boone was a frontiersman, surveyor and Indian Fighter who blazed the trail known as the Wilderness Road in 1775. Born in Pennsylvania on November 2, 1734, In May, 1750, Boone's father moved the family to North Carolina. Boone fought in the French and Indian War in 1755 and in 1765 began to explore as far south as Pensacola, Florida. When the Revolutionary War began in 1775, Boone fought on both sides.

In 1769 he blazed the first known trail from North Carolina to Tennessee. Later, he explored much of Kentucky, which was little more than wilderness at the time. There, he established the settlements of Boonesborough and Boone's Station. In 1781, he was elected as a Virginia State Representative and the next year a Deputy Surveyor. In the meantime, he lost his land claims in Kentucky. In 1799, he moved again with his son to Missouri where he became a judicial magistrate until 1803. On September 26, 1820, he died at the home of his Nathan Boone in Saint Charles County, Missouri.

 

[bcornelis]

OK so Kit Carson was a bust. My second choice of Mountain men for this contest is Zenus Leonard. Born in 1809 in Pennyslvania Leonard went West in 1831 to work for Captain Blackwell and Captain Grant (lots of Captains in the fur trading business).

In one of their first trips all the horses died in the winter and when Leonard tried to go to Sante Fe to buy more horses they were driven back by Indians and weather. They were rescued when another trapping party led by Thomas Fitzpatrick came through on their way to the Snake river.

In 1833 Leonard went to work for Joseph Walker and crossed over Utah into Sierra Nevada Mountains.

In 1834 Leonard went out on his own and trapped beavers in the Yellowstone area where he had some success. In 1835 he establised a trading post at Fort Osage.

Leonard wrote a book about his adventures in 1838. He died in 1857.

 

[Ramm9]

For a second guess I'll try Moses "Black" Harris

Known as “Black” Moses or sometimes “the Black Squire” Harris was born around 1800 in South Carolina or some say in Kentucky. There have been discussions that he was of Iroquois blood, African is more likely.

Working as a trapper in the 1820’s to mid 1830’s, Black Moses is mentioned often in records of the day as being present at numerous Rendezvous and as a member of trapping parties. He was known to have walked, during winter, from Utah to Missouri on at least two occasions delivering dispatches from the west.

Harris is best known for being an Oregon Trail guide and is credited with at least two rescues of settler wagon trains lost in the “Oregon desert”. He was also known as a master liar in telling tall tales, the “petrified forest” being most famous.

Painter Alfred Jacob Miller who painted Harris’s portrait said he was "was wiry of frame, made up of bone and muscle with a face composed of tan leather and whipcord finished up with a peculiar blue black tint, as if gun powder had been burnt into his face."

Harris died of cholera while soliciting guide work in Missouri in 1849.

 

[bcornelis]

Dang, got scooped on Zenus Leonard by Talfuchre. I will try Daniel Potts.

Potts was trapper in the Yellowstone area around 1820-1840 and wrote several letters about his adventures called the rocky mountain letters.

Some excerpts from his letters:

" Yellowstone has a large fresh water lake near its head on the verry top of Mouintain which is about one hundred by fory miles in diameter and is clear as crystal on the south borders of this lake is a number of hot and boiling springs"

"On one of the trips I have lost one Horse by accident and the last spring two by Utaws who killed them for the purpose eating one of which was a favourite Buffaloe Horse this loss cnnot be computed at less than four hundred and fifty dollars by this you may conclude keeps my nose cllose to the grind stone."

 

[Trent Rock]

Let those who seek Pegleg’s gold add ten rocks to this pile........


Trent Pick #3
Thomas L. "Pegleg" Smith (October 10, 1801–1866)

Smith later accompanied Alexandre Le Grand's expedition into New Mexico as a scout, later learning several Native American languages. During the expedition he was shot in the right knee by a local Indian and had to use a wooden leg from which he later earned his nickname. Following the expedition, Smith became a successful fur trapper despite his handicap, later relearning how to maintain his balance while riding a horse.

Smith helped establish the largest horse theft operation in the Southwest until authorities eventually forced the gang to break up in the late 1840s

http://www.examiner.com/x-4820-San-Diego-OfftheBeatenTrack-Travel-Examiner~y2009m5d17-Pegleg-Smith-Monument-has-many-seeking

 

[Jeff Venture]

Johnny Appleseed?

thats the best I got. But the rest of you guys seem to know your mountain men info COLD.

 

[Shotgun]

Johnny Appleseed?

thats the best I got. But the rest of you guys seem to know your mountain men info COLD.

The power of google my friend.

 

[Uncle Timbo]

My great, great gran pappy, Porkbilly.118. They say he had a gun that could shoot so far that he had to put salt in the load to keep the meat from spoiling fore he could get to it.