Merrill J. Mattes

“ This depicts that remarkable twisted region of the Rocky Mountains where the headwaters of the Yellowstone, the Wind, the Green, the Snake, and the Missouri rivers unwind before rolling to their respective oceans. The undated map is crude and smeary, and it has all the ear-marks of being sketched in the field without benefit of desk or blotter. In view of De Smet’s express testimony that the most famous trapper of all supplied him with his geographic data, at least for the “Yellowstone Park” section, it is a fair guess that this was drawn by De Smet with Bridger at his elbow. ”

“ For some twenty years before the advent of Lewis and Clark, French-Canadian voyageurs of the North West Company were in league with the Mandans, and from these Indians learned of the distant “Pierre Jaune” or “Roche Jaune” River, a translation from the Indian equivalent of “Yellow Rock River.” Chittenden theorizes that the ultimate origin of the name descends from the brilliant and infinite varieties of yellow which dominate the color scheme of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and which probably awed the first aboriginal explorer just as it does today’s auto-borne tourist. ”

“ The Teton Mountains are the most conspicuous landmarks of a region which contains the scrambled sources of the three greatest river systems of continental United States. As we have seen, Yellowstone Park to the north gives birth to the eastward-flowing Missouri and the westward flowing Columbia waters. East of the Tetons, in the Wind River Mountains, is the head of Green River which rolls southward to merge into the mighty Colorado River, tumbling through the arid lands to the Gulf of California. ”

“ Turning with reluctance to things of a more terrestrial nature we pursued our way down to Pierre’s Hole, where we fortunately discovered and killed a solitary bull....
The rendezvous of 1834 was scheduled for June on Ham’s Fork of the Green near present Granger, Wyoming; and here converged all the scattered trapper bands, with the exception of those in the pay of Bonneville, who had 55 his own private rendezvous on Bear River. Drips hunted up the Snake River to Jackson’s Hole, and apparently crossed into the valley of the Green from there. Behind him came Ferris. ”

“ From spring camping grounds on the Bear and Snake River tributaries, the brigades of the rival companies converged on Pierre’s Hole, where the Rocky Mountain Fur Company partners had scheduled their rendezvous for 1832. Although they welcomed peaceful Indians and “free” trappers, they expressly did not invite their competitors of the American Fur Company who, nevertheless decided to attend. Rumors of the impending conclave of the “mountain men” also reached the scattered bands of independent trappers, among whom was George Nidever. ”

“ The ensuing conflict was a victory for the trappers. Some of the Indians escaped from their improvised fort into Jackson’s Hole, leaving perhaps twenty-six of their number dead, while their trail of blood suggested other heavy casualties. This battle upset the general time-table and delayed the various departures from the rendezvous. On the 24th of July, Wyeth and Milton Sublette resumed their journey which had before been so rudely interrupted, Wyeth eventually continuing on to visit the British establishments on the Pacific Coast. ”

“ Actually, the wandering, bearded, buck-skinned beaver trappers never referred to the geyser region of the upper Madison as Colter’s Hell. As we will see, the real Colter’s Hell in Jim Bridger’s day was another place altogether, having nothing to do with anything within Yellowstone Park itself. In trapper times the Yellowstone geyser area had no fixed name but was variously described by them as a region of “great volcanoes,” “boiling springs” or “spouting fountains.” ”

“ This expedition to the Jackson’s Hole country was also significant as the first in an amazing series which has established Jedediah Smith as perhaps the foremost explorer of Western America.
We have noted the visit of McKenzie’s brigade of British-Canadians to the Upper Snake and a region of boiling fountains, in 1818-1819, as reported by Ross. Now, in 1824, Ross himself conducted the second British invasion of Yellowstone Park, while crossing from Okanagon to the headwaters of the Missouri. ”

“ In the spring of 1810, after Colter had departed, the Missouri Fur Company fort at Three Forks was so besieged by the Blackfeet that Andrew Henry was forced to flee with his trappers southwestward. They crossed the Continental Divide to the north fork of Snake River, since known as Henry’s Fork. A few log shelters built here near present St. Anthony, Idaho, called “Henry’s Fort,” became the first American establishment on the Pacific slope. During the rigorous winter of 1810-1811 it may be reasoned that these men explored the country within a wide radius of the Teton Mountains. ”

“ The experienced William Sublette, one-time partner, had contracted with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to supply trade goods, and to take out the beaver hides. With Robert Campbell he set out for St. Louis in May 1832 with over 100 men. At Independence he picked up a band of eighteen green New Englanders under Nathaniel J. Wyeth, an ambitious young man who had hopes of succeeding, where John Jacob Astor had failed, in establishing a fur-trading empire in Oregon. At Laramie’s Fork he recruited some twenty trappers under Alfred K. Stephens, and other trappers were picked up farther on. ”

“ Warding off starvation by slaughtering an “old rundown buffalo bull,” the travelers journeyed from here to South Pass and down the Platte, wintering in the vicinity of Scotts Bluff.
For a few years after Stuart’s party disappeared up Hoback Canyon, the Tetons and Jackson’s Hole were left in solitude. Due to the hostility of the Blackfeet, the loss of Astoria in the War of 1812, and the indifference of the Federal Government, American interest in the Western Fur trade suffered a relapse. British interests now took the initiative. ”

“ After losing one horse in precipitous Hoback Canyon, the party reached Jackson’s Little Hole, where they killed several buffalo, and successfully by-passed a large village of Indians. They crossed over to Green River, and on the 8th fell in with Fontenelle, “who had passed from St. Louis to the mouth of the Yellowstone in a steamboat, and thence with pack horses to this place.” Ferris accompanied Vanderburgh and Drips on the return trip in pursuit of Bridger. ”

“ There is a “Little Falls” at the head of the canyon but the more impressive Lower Falls are 81 unexplainably omitted. To the southwest, in the position of present Shoshone Lake, is “De Smet Lake.” To the east at the forks of “Stinking Fr.” appears the “Sulphur Springs or Colter’s Hell Volcano” which, due to the unavailability of this map, has led so many historians astray. This map, with its manuscript forebears, ranks with the Ferris journal and map and the Potts letter as one of the principal historical documents pertaining to early Yellowstone. ”

“ Bonneville’s wagon train was the second to ascend the traditional overland route along the Platte and the Sweetwater, and the first to cross South Pass. In the Green River Valley on July 26 the Captain was overtaken by Fontenelle’s company. On the west side of the Green, five miles above Horse Creek, he started the erection of Fort Bonneville, while his rival encamped farther upstream, for his jaded horses and mules would budge no further. After Fontenelle’s departure, above noted, the Captain decided upon the advice of “free trappers,” to head for Salmon River for the winter. ”

“ According to the impious Joseph L. Meek, the sermon on Sunday the 23rd in Jackson’s Little Hole (the site of which has been memorialized by the State of Wyoming as 62 that of “the first Protestant sermon in the Rocky Mountains”) was not such a great success as Parker makes out, for, “in the midst of the discourse, a band of buffalo appeared in the valley, when the congregation broke up, without staying for a benediction,” and every man excitedly joined in the hunt.
Marcus Whitman removing arrow from Jim Bridger. ”

“ After an extended camp at the outlet of Yellowstone Lake they went east to the head of Clark’s Fork, thence back to the Yellowstone at the ford near Tower Falls, thence to Gardner’s Hole and back to the lake outlet. En route they saw disturbing evidence of “a village of 300 or 400 lodges of Blackfeet” that had only recently been evacuated. In their camp on Pelican Creek, just east of the present Fishing Bridge campground, they were suddenly assailed by a horde of “70 or 80” Blackfeet “who rent the air with their horrid yells” and inflicted severe arrow wounds on Russell and one other. ”

“ They fought off the Indians with their rifles, but suffered great pain and hardship in making their way back to Fort Hall via West Thumb, Snake River, Berry Creek and Conant Pass at the north end of the Teton Range. This was Russell’s final sorrowful exit from Wonderland.
Two slim and shaky clues to other Yellowstone expeditions in the late 1830’s are available. In his journal of 1839, while sojourning in the Utah country, apprentice trapper E. Willard Smith reports: “The country around the headwaters of the Yellowstone, a tributary of the Missouri, abounds in natural curiosities. ”

“ At Wind River, on August 4, 1830, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, having earned a deserved fortune from their labors, decided to retire from the mountain trade, and sold their interest to a group of their employees who had already distinguished themselves in the service—James Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Henry Fraeb, and Baptiste Gervais. The main trapper band, numbering over two hundred and including Meek, followed Bridger and Fitzpatrick northward to the Three Forks of the Missouri, thence south to Ogden’s Hole, a small valley in the Bear River Mountains. ”

“ Secondly, although there are no phenomena readily apparent to passing motorists at the bona fide and unmarked Colter’s Hell site just west of Cody, the evidence of thermal activity, not entirely extinct now, is abundantly evident to 22 anyone who cares to pause enroute to or from Yellowstone’s East Gate. On the Canyon rim downstream from the rocky defile enclosing the Buffalo Bill Dam, there are extinct geyser cones up to thirty feet in height and an extensive crust of fragile sinter. ”

“ David E. Jackson, sometimes referred to as “Davey,” is the mystery man of the Smith-Jackson-Sublette trio. How old he was, what he looked like, where he came from prior to 1823 is not known. He was one of the “enterprising young men” 40 who responded to Ashley’s call in that year. That his “rating” with trappers was high and that he was one of the acknowledged leaders of the Rocky Mountain fur trade is clear from the fact of the partnership formed in 1826. ”

“ It is commonly supposed that, prior to Colter, no white man had knowledge of strange phenomena on the Upper Yellowstone, this supposition being one of the pillars of the “first-discovery” theory. It is fairly evident that Clark knew nothing of geysers when he was within seventy-five miles of them in 1806 but, ironically enough, at this time some intimation of them had certainly reached others, including Clark’s sponsor, Thomas Jefferson. ”

“ This was an Indian tale, received after Clark’s return, but 11 before Colter’s return, to the effect that at the head of Tongue River, a branch of the Yellowstone, “there is frequently heard a loud noise like Thunder, which makes the earth Tremble, they state that they seldom go there because their children Cannot sleep—and Conceive it possessed of spirits, who were averse that men Should be near them.” Speculates Vinton, “it can hardly be doubted that the Indians referred to the geyser basin in the Park,” rather than to the Tongue River neighborhood. ”

“ Although later a prominent pioneer of Oregon and California, his claim to fame rests on his Journal of a Trapper, which “as a precise and intimate firsthand account of the daily life of the trapper explorer ... has no equal,” except that of Warren A. Ferris, who left the mountain scene just as Russell arrived. On the 15th of June 1835 a party of fourteen trappers and ten camp keepers was made up. ”

“ On July 20 Warren A. Ferris and Robert Newell departed at the head of an outfit destined for the Flathead trade. The little party consisted of six “engages” with pack horses, and five armed Indians, amounting in all to thirteen armed men. Their route was the usual one via Hoback Canyon and Teton Pass. The ecstatic description of Jackson’s Hole from the summit of the pass, given by Ferris on this occasion, is one which can be appreciated by the modern tourist:
... ”

“ Upper Geyser Basin from the cone of Old Faithful. W. H. Jackson photo. 1871
19
WHISKEY KEGS
IV. “Colter’s Hell”: A Case of Mistaken Identity
One of the most venerable old axioms of fur trade history is that of Colter’s Hell, which may be formulated thus: “After John Colter discovered what is now Yellowstone National Park, he told others of the scenic wonders there. No one believed him, and his listeners derisively dubbed the imaginary place Colter’s Hell.” No item of Yellowstone history is more widely believed, more universally beloved, and more transparently incorrect. ”

“ For twenty years thereafter there is little positive evidence of white men in this valley. It was forty-five years before the arrival of the first permanent settler. For over a hundred years the historic importance of Jackson’s Hole as the continental crossroads of the Western fur trade has been all but forgotten.
Rocky Mountain men setting traps.
76
Section of Map accompanying Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, by Bvt. Brig. Gen. W. F. Raynolds, Washington, 1868. Errors and omissions reflect failure of the Raynolds expedition to reach the Yellowstone Park area in 1860. ”