was the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, 19 years of age (same age as you said you are now, Steve) when he signed on in Missouri. He was kind of a hell-raiser, but also a superb hunter, and became, along with Pierre Drouillard, the main meat-getter and special assignment scout for the expedition.
“When they finally started down the Missouri River for home, in 1806, John decided he didn’t want to leave this shinin’ country. Guess he saw the mountains like we all did. So he came back upriver on the Missouri, and did a little exploring all by his lonesome. By 1807 a big Saint Louis trader, Manuel Lisa, was sending him out to spread the word to the Crows and other tribes that the Great White Father’s fur-trading supermarket was coming. Colter just moved around all this country by himself, with his long rifle and a thirty pound pack. Lived with the Indians in the winter, especially the Crows.
“Colter had a number of run-ins with the Blackfeet; in fact, some blame him for the intractable hostility of the Blackfeet to the Americans, though I guess they were just trying to keep hold of their way of life. The most famous story about John Colter and the Blackfeet is when, one time, the Indians captured Colter and a companion, butchered the other man alive in front of Colter, flung the bloody pieces in his face, and told John to run for his life. He outraced those Blackfeet for five miles or more, turning to kill the one brave that stayed close behind him, with the brave’s own spear. Then he hid in the icy-cold Jefferson River all day, poking his nose up beneath some drifting logs and reeds, until the Indians gave up looking for him and went home.
“After he came through the Hole in 1807, he went up north through Yellowstone Park, just like the tourists do today, and saw the steaming pots and geysers and hot springs. When he told about the marvels he had seen, nobody quite believed him, but for years Yellowstone was known to the Mountain Men as ‘Colter’s Hell’ Many took the stories to be tall tales, such as the one “Old Gabe,” Jim Bridger, a leader years later among the Mountain Men, liked to tell: “You could catch your trout in one pool, and boil it for dinner in the pool next door!” said Bridger, who was, of course, not exaggerating.
“What happened to John Colter, Jim,” I asked.
“Well, by 1810, this first, most indestructible, youngest, and maybe greatest of the Mountain Men had had enough. He went back to Missouri to farm (can you imagine that?), married, and died two years later of liver disease.”
Dick’s voice rose from the grass: “John Colter sure was something, but I don’t think you can call him the greatest. The greatest was undoubtedly Jedediah Smith, the Mountain Man’s Mountain Man. The beaver were a sidelight to him; what Jed Smith really was driven by was exploration—he discovered South Pass, down below the Wind Rivers, where the wagon trail was later to take settlers over the mountains; he was the first white man we know of to cross the Sierras; he blazed trails all up and down the Rockies, in the dry country beyond, over by the Great Salt Lake, and in California. Jed Smith did more than anyone to understand the geography of the Shining Mountains. What all those early guys were looking for were two things: beaver to trap, and an easy river route to the Pacific, to connect up with the Missouri. They never found that route. This area around the Hole is a kind of a hub from which the water spokes fan out, going east and west from the Continental Divide, but, as Lewis and Clark and many others found out, there is no direct, easy passage. But the idea died hard; for years they searched for the Bonneventura River, which was supposed to flow from the west side of the Rockies through the Sierras to the sea, but they didn’t find it, because it didn’t exist. They sure found beaver, though, and they trapped the mountain streams, hard, for twenty years or so, until the beaver were all but gone. Then the Mountain Men were all but gone, too. Their entire era lasted from the very early days of about 1810 to only about 1840, when the beaver streams began to be trapped out, and when changes in men’s fashions back East and in Europe created a disastrous decline in prices for pelts.
“Jedediah was quiet and religious, but a great leader of men. He had come West with Ashley’s brigade as a green youth of twenty-three, and immediately showed his leadership qualities among men older and more experienced than he was. When he formed the Rocky Mountain Fur Company with David Jackson (and by the way, that’s who Jackson Hole and the Lake are named for—even though Colter had come through first, years before) and Bill Sublette, they brought about the most efficient and successful fur trapping operation in the Rockies. They were the first to bring goods by wagon into the mountains and to the Mountain Men’s rendezvous. Ironically, they probably accelerated the sharp decline in beaver and fur prices that led to the end of what they most loved in these Shining Mountains. There’s a Mount Jedediah Smith over on the west side of the Tetons, I’ve been over there last summer, just to have a look around. It’s right next to Mount Meek—over by Alaska Basin—named after Joe Meek, who was one of the wildest of that hair-raising bunch. What a bunch they were, and what a time, a Shinin’ Time, that must have been up here. I wish, well, never mind… “
“And how did Jed Smith end up, Dick,” I asked.
“Well, unlike Colter, he died with his boots on, killed in a fight with Comanches, way down on the Santa Fe Trail, in 1831, at the advanced age of 32. His entire career of exploration and beaver trapping in the Rockies had lasted but a short eight years. He had tried, once, to leave the mountains and settle down, like John Colter did before him, but of course he couldn’t do it, so he came back. If there was a “greatest” of the Mountain Men, Jed Smith was it.”
“And what about David Jackson?”
“Interesting. Almost nothing is known about Jackson, where he came from, where he went after Jedediah was killed. He first turns up, with Jed, at Ashley’s big fight with the Arikaras along the Missouri in the early 1820s. He was with the group traveling the Santa Fe trail when Jed was killed, a decade later. But, before and after, nobody knows. Like that song says, he came with the dust, and he went with the wind. He was judged by his peers to be one of the best brigade leaders of the beaver hunts, knowing just where to go, and how to stay alive to get there, and keep your hair in the process. “
After a bit, the sky clouded over some more, the mosquitoes got bad and the no-see-ums showed up, and Jim announced that it was time “to go up to the Lodge and do some more serious fishing.” Larry, who was as shy as a cat at a dog convention, decided to head back on his own to the bunkhouse. It was no trick at all to move easily around the park road system; all summer long the tourists, and the Park Service vehicles, would pick up any young person who stuck his, or her, thumb out, day or night. No one on either side of that Fifties’ deal worried about there being any threat to their personal safety. About the only bad thing I ever heard happening was when one of our crew was in a car that bounced off a bear that was crossing the road at night over by Signal Mountain. The bear ran off, but the car had to be towed. Nobody was hurt.
So Jim, Dick and I got back in the Ford. Jim was driving, Dick was in the shotgun seat, and I was in back snugged up between the silent ghosts of John and Jedediah. We meandered up to the Lodge, perched on a bluff overlooking the lake.
I don’t remember much about the architecture or interior lobbies of the Jackson Lake Lodge, because I only entered it a few times, and those were to go to the bar. Mostly, as I will relate, the time we spent “at the Lodge” was actually at the recreation hall or single-story dorms for the young college kids who were working there for the summer. They were busboys, waiters and waitresses, maids, outdoor help, etc. What Dick and Jim told me was really nice for the Park Service guys like us, was that the ratio of summer workers at the Lodge was about three females to every male. Ah, hah. I comprehended that arithmetic. As I came to understand it, there was kind of a pecking order, a status chain, among the young people. At the top were the Park Service crews (and evidently it didn’t matter whether you were roughing it in the mountains or driving a garbage truck, if you had the right stuff). In the middle were the kids working at the lodges and concessions in the park. And at the bottom were those unfortunates who were summer help as ‘pseudo-Rangers’, the ‘Flat Hats’ who got to dress
