Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/17

 Ewing Young in Far Southwest 5 over at least six different trails through the Southwest — the Pattie trail, the Jackson trail, the Young trail, the Armijo trail, the Wolfskill trail, and the Smith trail. The number of persons engaged in the trade during this period must have aggregated into the thousands. V. The years 1832-1837 mark the period of the de- cline of the fur trade in the Far Southwest. By 1832 the caravan trade between Missouri on the one side and Sonora and California on the other had, to a considerable extent, supplanted the fur trade in the interest of the American frontiersmen. The streams, too, had been pretty thoroughly trapped by that time. Trapping con- tinued beyond this date, it is true, but with decreasing significance and emanated principally from the Robidoux posts in the Colorado basin rather than from Santa Fe or Taos. The inadequacy of the ordinary treatment of the fur trade in the Far Southwest illustrated. The usual treat- ment of the American fur trade in the Far Southwest sums up that industry for that region under the names of Jedediah S. Smith and James Ohio Pattie with casual mention, perhaps, of two or three others who followed them. As a sort of corrective of such a treatment of the subject it might be worth while to present a few of the names of prominent men engaged in the industry. Re- member, however, that only those who played a conspicu- ous part are mentioned and that we might give the names of, perhaps, a hundred more and that the names of hun- dreds of others who took part in the business will, per- haps, never be known. With this preface we might men- tion the names of Joseph Philibert, Julius De Mun, A. P. Chouteau, William Becknell, Hugh Glenn, Jacob Fowler, Robert Fowler, Nathaniel Pryor, John McKnight, Robert McKnight, Stephen Cooper, John Heath, Samuel Cham- bers, James Baird, Ewing Young, Joe Walker, William Wolfskill, William Huddart, Sylvester Pratte, Sylvester and James Ohio Pattie, Ceran St. Vrain, Milton Sublette,