Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/117



THE CENTENNIAL lllSTOin' E ORIOGON na

tlieir course, ^l^' was never lost. Father DeSiiiet prouounceil Jii'idger oue of the truest specimens of the real IJouky mouutain trapper. LJridger's peak was named iu his honor; and in the capitol building of the state of ^Minnesota is the painting of a trapper in full dress, of which Bridger was the original. He aided Dr. Whitman on his first trip to Oregon, and in return, the Doctor c\it an iron arrow- head out of Bridger "s shoulder, which had been fired into him l)y a Blackfoot Indian. Nevertheless, the trapper retained no grudge against the led race, and took a Shoshone woman for a wife.

There were many others engaged in pioneering into the western wilderness toward Oregon for furs and Indian trade. There were the four Sublette Bi-oth- ers, all able, energetic men in their manner of life. Captain Sublette served with Ashley and brought him out. He had a rare faculty of managing the In- dians, but when he had to fight them, they always got the worst of it. Sublette was the first man to tame the Blackfeet. After a desperate fight with them at "Pierre's Hole," renowned among the Rocky mountain men as the greatest bat- tle with the Indians, the Blackfeet submitted to Sublette and helped him cele- brate a sort of Roman triumph on his return to St. Louis with a pack of Indian ponies, a mile long, laden with peltries. One of the Sublettes drifted as far west as California, as one of the foi-ty-niners, and there got into a fight with a grizzly bear, killed the bear, but died afterwards from the wounds inflicted by the beast.

And about this time there were scores of adventurous spirits pushing out from St. Louis to all points ranging from the headwaters of the Missouri down to Santa Fe and on to California. Kit Carson was probalily the most noted of these hunters and Indian fighters.

EXPEDITION OF JEDEDIAH S. SMITH — 1S24-S

In the .suHuner of 1824, Jedediah S. Smith, who was born in the state of New York in 1804, went to St. Louis and found employment with Ashley and Henry. And iu the ensuing winter they made their headquarters and home at the Hudson's Bay Company post among the Flathead Indians. In 1825 Smith returned to St. Louis, and in the following year came back to Snake river with a still larger company of trappers. Pushing his way west and south, trapping as he went, passing probably down through the Harney Valley and Klamath Lake regions to the head of the Sacramento river, he is found on San Francisco bay in 1827. After sizing up the California region and not liking the rule of the Spaniard and the priest, Smith with nineteen men left California, and pro- ceeded along up the Pacific coast trapping as he went. This expedition is re- markable in that, standing alone, it is the only expedition of a large company that made the trip between Oregon and California along the sea coast, instead of by the more open and far easier route by the Sacramento, Umpqua and Willamette valleys.

This adventure of Smith i)roved a most disastrous affair to him and his men. By the time the party had reached the Umpqua river they had taken furs to the amount of twenty thousand dollars in value. But here they came in contact with with a relentless foe — the Rogue River Indians. The Rogue Rivers, having their home in the beautiful Rogue River valley in Jackson county, roved over