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Jedediah Smith
Jedediah Smith, life portrait, said to have been drawn by a friend, from memory, after the 1831 death of Smith[1]
Born	Jedediah Strong Smith January 6, 1799 (1799-01-06)[2] Jericho, Tioga County, New York, present-day Bainbridge, Chenango County, New York
Died	May 27, 1831 (1831-05-28) (aged 32) Northern Mexico Territory, south of present-day Ulysses, Grant County, Kansas
Cause of death	Attacked by native Americans
Nationality	American
Other names	Diah, Old Jed, and Jed.
Occupation	clerk, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, explorer
Employer	Ashley-Henry Fur Company, partner in the Ashley Smith Fur Company and Smith, Jackson and Sublette'
Known for	Being a mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, American West Coast, American Southwest, first west-east crossing of the Great Basin Desert and naming of Cache Valley, Utah
Parent(s)	Jedediah Smith, 1st and Sally Strong
Relatives	Austin Smith (brother) Ira Smith (brother) Peter Smith (brother)

Jedediah Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831), was a clerk, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the North American West, and the Southwest during the early 19th century. After 75 years of obscurity following his death, Smith was rediscovered as the American whose explorations led to the use of the 20-mile (32 km)-wide South Pass as the dominant point of crossing the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.

Coming from a modest family background, Smith traveled to St. Louis and joined William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry's fur trading company in 1822. Smith led the first documented exploration from the Salt Lake frontier to the Colorado River. From there, Smith's party became the first United States citizens to cross the Mojave Desert into what is now the state of California but which at that time was part of Mexico. On the return journey, Smith and his companions were likewise the first U. S. citizens to explore and cross the Sierra Nevada and the treacherous Great Basin Desert. In the following year, Smith and his companions were the first U. S. explorers to travel north from California (on land) to reach the Oregon Country. Surviving three Native American massacres and one bear mauling, Jedediah Smith's explorations and documented travels were important resources to later American westward expansion.

In March 1831, while in St. Louis, Smith requested of Secretary of War John H. Eaton a federally funded exploration of the West, but to no avail. Smith informed Eaton that he was completing a map of the West derived from his own journeys. In May, Smith and his partners launched a planned para-military trading party to Santa Fe. On May 27, while searching for water in present-day southwest Kansas, Smith went missing. It was learned some weeks later that he had been killed during an encounter with the Comanche – his body was never recovered.

After his death, Smith's memory and his accomplishments were mostly forgotten by Americans. At the beginning of the 20th century, scholars and historians made efforts to recognize and study his achievements. In 1918, a book by Harrison Clifford Dale was published covering Ashley-Smith western explorations. In 1935, Smith's summary autobiography was finally listed in a biographical dictionary. Smith's first comprehensive biography by Maurice S. Sullivan was published in 1936. A popular Smith biography by Dale Morgan, published in 1953, established Smith as an authentic national hero. Smith's map of the West in 1831 was used by the U.S. Army, including western explorer John C. Frémont during the early 1840s.

Early life

Lewis and Clark

Smith was born in Jericho, now Bainbridge, Chenango County, New York, on January 6, 1799,^[3][a][5] to Jedediah, 1st and Sally Strong, both of whom were descended entirely from families that came to New England from England during the Puritan emigration between 1620 and 1640. Smith received an adequate English instruction, learned some Latin, and was taught how to write decently.^[4] Around 1810, Smith's father, who owned a general store, was caught up in a legal issue involving counterfeit currency after which the elder Smith moved his family west to Erie County, Pennsylvania.^[6] At the age of 13, Smith worked as a clerk on a Lake Erie freighter, where he learned business practices and probably met traders returning from the far west to Montreal.^[4] This work gave Smith an ambition for adventurous wilderness trade.^[4] According to Dale L. Morgan, Smith's love of nature and adventure came from his mentor, Dr. Titus G. V. Simons, a pioneer medical doctor who was on close terms with the Smith family. Morgan speculated that Simons gave the young Smith a copy of Meriwether Lewis's and William Clark's 1814 book of their 1804–1806 expedition to the Pacific,^[b] and according to legend Smith carried this journal on all of his travels throughout the American West.^[8] Smith would provide Clark, who had become Superintendant of Indian Affairs, much information from his own expeditions into the West.^[9] In 1817, the Smith family moved westward again to Ohio and settled in Green Township in what is present-day Ashland County.^[10]

Smith joins "Ashley's Hundred"

Regions of the Missouri River Watershed

Coming from a family of very modest means, Smith struck out to make his own way.^[5][10] He may have left his family in search of a trade or employment a year prior to their settlement in Green Township. In 1822, Smith was living in St. Louis. ^[c] The same year Smith responded to an advertisement in the Missouri Gazette placed by Gen. William H. Ashley. ^[12] General Ashley and Major Andrew Henry,^[d] veterans of the War of 1812, had established a partnership to engage in the fur trade^[13] and were looking for "One Hundred" "Enterprising Young Men" to explore and trap in the Rocky Mountains.^[14] Superintendent of Indian Affairs William Clark had granted Ashley-Henry license to trade with Native Americans in the Upper Missouri and he actively encouraged them to compete with the powerful British fur trade in the Pacific Northwest. ^[9] Smith, now a 6-foot-tall, blue-eyed 23-year-old with a commanding presence, impressed General Ashley to hire him.^[10] In late spring, Smith started up the Missouri River on the keel boat Enterprize, which sank three weeks into the journey. Smith and the other men waited at the site of the wreck for a replacement boat, hunting and foraging for food. Ashley brought up another boat with an additional 46 men^[15] and upon proceeding upriver, Smith got his first glimpse of the western frontier, coming into contact with the Sioux and Arikara.^[16] On October 1, Smith finally reached Fort Henry at the mouth of the Yellowstone River,^[17] which had just been built by Major Henry and the men that he had led up earlier.^[14][e] Smith and some other men continued up the Missouri to the mouth of the Musselshell River in central Montana, where they built a camp from which to trap through the winter.^[20]

Arikaras massacre

Arikara warrior
Bodmer (1840–1843)

The next spring (1823), Major Henry ordered Smith to go back down the Missouri to the Grand River to take a message to Ashley to buy horses from the Arikaras, who due to a recent skirmish with Missouri Fur Company men were antagonistic to the white traders.^[21] Ashley, who was bringing supplies as well as 70 new men upriver by boat,^[22] met Smith at the Arikara village on May 30.^[23] They negotiated a trade for several horses and 200 buffalo robes and planned to leave as soon as possible to avert trouble, but weather delayed them, and before they could depart, an incident provoked an Arikara attack. Forty Ashley men, including Smith, were caught in a vulnerable position, and 12 were killed in the ensuing battle.^[24][f] Smith's conduct during the defense was the foundation of his reputation: "When his party was in danger, Mr. Smith was always among the foremost to meet it, and the last to fly; those who saw him on shore, at the Riccaree fight, in 1823, can attest to the truth of this assertion."^[26]

Smith and another man were selected by Ashley to return to Fort Henry on foot to inform Henry of the defeat.^[25] Ashley and the rest of the surviving party rode back down the river, ultimately enlisting aid from Colonel Henry Leavenworth who was the Commander of Fort Atkinson. In August, Leavenworth sent 250 military men along with 80 Ashley-Henry men, 60 men of the Missouri Fur Company and a number of Lakota Sioux warriors to subdue the Arikaras. After a botched campaign, a peace treaty was negotiated.^[27] Smith had been appointed commander of one of the two squads of the Ashley-Henry men, and was thereafter known as "Captain Smith."^[28]

First expedition, grizzly bear attack, and South Pass

19th-century depiction of a grizzly bear attack

After the campaign, in the fall of 1823, Smith and several other of Ashley's men traveled downriver to Fort Kiowa. Leaving Fort Kiowa in September, Smith and 10 to 16 men headed west, beginning his first far-western expedition, to make their way overland to the Rocky Mountains.^[29] Smith and his party were the first Euro-Americans to explore the southern Black Hills, in present-day South Dakota and eastern Wyoming.^[30] While looking for the Crow tribe to obtain fresh horses and get westward directions, Smith was attacked by a large grizzly bear. Smith was tackled to the ground by the grizzly breaking his ribs. Members of his party witnessed him fight the bear, which ripped open his side with its claws and took his head in its mouth. When the bear retreated, Smith's men ran to help him. They found his scalp and ear ripped off, but he convinced a friend, Jim Clyman, to sew it loosely back on, giving him directions. The trappers fetched water, bound up his broken ribs, and cleaned his wounds.^[31] After recuperating from his bloody wounds and broken ribs, Smith wore his hair long to cover the large scar from his eyebrow to his ear.^[32] The only known portrait of Jedediah Smith, painted after his death in 1831, showed the long hair he wore over the side of his head, to hide his scars.

Crow Indians
Bodmer (1840–1843)

The party spent the rest of 1823 wintering in the Wind River Valley. In 1824, Smith sent an expedition to find an expedient route through the Rocky Mountains. Smith was able to retrieve information from Crow natives. When communicating with the Crows, one of Smith's men made a unique map (buffalo hide and sand), and the Crows were able to show Smith and his men the direction to the South Pass.^[33] Smith and his men crossed through this pass from east to west^[34] and encountered the Green River near the mouth of the Big Sandy River in what is now Wyoming.^[35] The group broke into two parties—one led by Smith and the other by Thomas Fitzpatrick to trap upstream and downstream on the Green.^[36] The two groups met in July on the Sweetwater River, and it was decided that Fitzpatrick and two others would take the furs and the news of the identification of a feasible highway route through the Rockies^[g] to Ashley in St. Louis.^[37] Canadian trapper Robert Stuart employed by John Jacob Astor's fur company had previously discovered the South Pass in 1812 while traveling overland back from the Pacific Coast, but this information was kept secret.^[38][39] Smith later wrote a letter to Secretary of War John Eaton in 1830 making the location of the South Pass public information.^[39]
Major Henry returned to St. Louis on August 30,^[40] and Ashley began making plans to lead a caravan back to the Rockies to regroup with his men.^[41] Henry declined to return with Ashley, instead choosing to retire from the fur trade.^[42]

After Fitzpatrick left, Smith and six others, including William Sublette, again went over South Pass, and in September, 1824 encountered a group of Iroquois freemen trappers who had split off from the Hudson’s Bay Company Snake Country brigade led by Alexander Ross (fur trader). Smith told the Iroquois they could get better prices for their furs by selling to American traders, and accompanied the HBC brigade back to its base at Flathead Post in Montana. Smith then accompanied the HBC Snake Country brigade led by Peter Skene Ogden back southeast, leaving Flathead Post in December, 1824. In April, 1825, on the Bear River in what is now Utah, Smith and his companions split from the HBC brigade and joined a group of Americans that had wintered in the area. In late May, 1825, on the Weber River near present Mountain Green, Utah, 23 freemen trappers deserted from Ogden’s brigade, backed up by a group of American trappers led by Johnson Gardner. Several of the deserters were among the Iroquois trappers Smith had assisted in September, 1824. Smith may have been present at the confrontation, but the extent of his involvement in the desertion of the HBC freemen, if any, is unclear.^[43]

First Rendezvous of 1825 and Smith, Jackson & Sublette partnership

Ashley left St. Louis late in 1824^[42] and after an exploring expedition in Wyoming and Utah he and Smith were reunited on July 1, 1825, at what would become the first rendezvous.^[44] During the rendezvous, Ashley offered Smith a partnership to replace Henry.^[45][h] Smith returned to St. Louis for a time, where he asked Robert Campbell to join the company as a clerk.^[47]

Second Rendezvous of 1826

During the second rendezvous in the summer of 1826, Ashley decided no longer to be directly involved in the business of harvesting furs. Smith left a cache near the rendezvous site at what would become known as Cache Valley in northern Utah, and he and Ashley traveled north to meet David E. Jackson (Virginia), and William L. Sublette (Kentucky) at Bear River area near present-day Soda Springs, Idaho. Ashley sold his interest in his and Smith's partnership to the newly created partnership of Smith, Jackson & Sublette^[48][i] but agreed to continue to send supplies to the rendezvous
^[49] and broker the sale of furs brought to him in St. Louis.

The new partners were immediately faced with the reality, that beaver were rapidly disappearing from the region the two previous partnerships had traditionally trapped. But contemporaneous maps showed promise of untrapped rivers to the west,^[50]
most notably the legendary Buenaventura.^[51] The Buenaventura was also thought to be a navigable waterway to the Pacific Ocean possibly providing an alternative to packing loads of furs back to St. Louis.^{[citation needed]} The previous spring, Smith had searched for rivers flowing to the Pacific west and northwest of the Great Salt Lake.^[52] Although he pushed into eastern Nevada, he failed to find the Humboldt River, the probable source of the legend of the Buenaventura.^[53] Having determined the Buenaventura must lie further south, Smith made plans for an exploratory expedition deep into the Mexican territory of Alta California.^[j]

First trip to California, 1826–27

Jedediah Smith's party crossing the burning Mojave Desert during the 1826 trek to California by Frederic Remington

Smith and his party of 15 other men left the Bear River on August 7, 1826, and after retrieving the cache he had left earlier headed south through present-day Utah and Nevada to the Colorado River, finding increasingly harsh conditions and difficult travel.^[54] Finding shelter in a friendly Mojave village near present-day Needles, California, the men and horses recuperated and Smith hired two runaways from the Spanish missions in California to guide them west.^[55] After leaving the river and heading into the Mojave Desert, the guides led them through the desert via the Mohave Trail that would become the western portion of the Old Spanish Trail.^[56] Upon reaching the San Bernardino Valley of California, Smith and Abraham LaPlant (who spoke some Spanish) borrowed horses from a rancher and rode to the San Gabriel Mission on November 27, 1826, to present themselves to its director, Father José Bernardo Sánchez, who received them warmly.^[57][k]

Father Sánchez gave Jedediah and LaPlant a lavish dinner at Mission San Gabriel.

The next day, the rest of Smith's men arrived at the mission, and that night the head of the garrison at the mission confiscated all their guns.^[58] On December 8, Smith was summoned to San Diego for an interview with Governor José María Echeandía about his party's status in the country.^[59][l] Echeandía, surprised and suspicious of the Americans unauthorized entrance into California, had Smith arrested, believing him to be a spy. ^[60] Accompanied by Abraham LaPlant, Smith's Spanish interpreter, Smith was taken to San Diego, while the rest of the party remained at the mission. Echeandía detained Smith for about two weeks, demanding that he turn over his journal and maps. Smith asked for permission to travel north to the Columbia River on a coastal route, where known paths could take his party back to United States territory. Upon intercession of American sea Captain W.H. Cunningham of Boston on the ship, Courier, Smith was finally released by Echeandía to reunite with his men.^[4] Echeandía ordered Smith and his party to leave California by the same route they entered, forbidding him to travel up the coast to Bodega but giving Smith permission to purchase needed supplies for an eastern overland return journey.^[61][4][62] Smith boarded the Courier sailing from San Diego to San Pedro, to meet his men.^[63]

After waiting for almost another month for an exit visa and then spending at least two more weeks breaking the horses they had purchased for the return trip, Smith's party left the mission communities of California in mid-February 1827. The party headed out the way it had come, but once outside the Mexican settlements, Smith convinced himself he had complied with Echeandía's order to leave by the same route he had entered, and the party veered north crossing over into the Central Valley.^[64] The party ultimately made its way to the Kings River on February 28 and began trapping beaver.^[65] The party kept working its way north, encountering hostile Maidus.^[66] By early May 1827, Smith and his men had traveled 350 miles (560 km) north looking for the Buenaventura River, but they found no break in the wall of the Sierra Nevada range through which it could have flowed from the Rocky Mountains.^[54] On December 16, 1826, Smith had written in a letter to the United State ambassador plenipotentiary to Mexico his plans to "follow up on of the largest Riv(ers) that emptied into the (San Francisco) Bay cross the mon (mountains) at its head and from thence to our deposit on the Great Salt Lake"^[52] and appeared to be following that plan. They followed the Cosumnes River (the northernmost tributary of the San Joaquin River) upstream, but veered off it to the north and crossed over to the American River, a tributary of the Sacramento that flowed into the Bay. They tried traveling up the canyon of the South Fork of the American to cross the Sierra Nevada, but had to return because the snow was too deep.^[67][m] Unable to find a feasible path for the well-laden party to cross and faced with hostile indigenes, he was forced into a decision: since they did not have time to travel north to the Columbia and make it in time to the 1827 rendezvous, they would backtrack to the Stanislaus River and re-establish a camp there. Smith would take two men and some extra horses to get to the rendezvous as quickly as he could and return to his party with more men later in the year and the group would continue on to the Columbia.^[69]

The exploration of the West by Jedediah Smith. The branch of the Sacramento River that is labeled as pointing northeast is now known as the Pit River.

After a difficult crossing of the Sierra Nevada near Ebbets Pass, Smith and his two men passed around the south end of Walker Lake.^[70] After meeting with the only mounted natives that they would encounter until they reached the Salt Lake Valley,^[n] they continued east across central Nevada, straight across the Great Basin Desert just as the summer heat hit the region. Neither they nor their horses or mules could find adequate food, and as the horses gave out, they were butchered for whatever meat the men could salvage. After two days without water, one man, Robert Evans, collapsed near the Nevada–Utah border and could go no further, but some natives Smith encountered gave them some food and told him where to find water, which he took back to Evans and revived him.^[71][o] As the three approached the Great Salt Lake, they again were unable to find water, and Evans collapsed again. Smith and Silas Gobel found a spring and again took back water to Evans.^[72] Finally, the men came to the top of a ridge from which they saw the Great Salt Lake to the north, a "joyful sight" to Smith.^[73] By this time they only had one horse and one mule remaining. They reached and crossed the Jordan River where local natives told him the whites were gathered farther north at "the Little Lake" (Bear Lake on the border between present-day Utah and Idaho). Smith borrowed a fresh horse from them and rode ahead of the other two men, reaching the rendezvous on July 3. The mountain men celebrated Smith's arrival with a cannon salute,^[p] for they had given up him and his party for lost.^[76]

Third Rendezvous of 1827 and second trip to California, 1827–28

Smith's return to California threatened Mexican authority at Mission San José.

As agreed, Ashley had sent provisions for the rendezvous, and his men took back 7,400 pounds (3,400 kg) of Smith, Jackson & Sublette furs^[77] and a letter from Smith to William Clark, then in the office of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the region west of the Mississippi River, describing what he had observed the previous year. Smith left to rejoin the men he had left in California almost immediately after the rendezvous. He was accompanied by 18 men and two French-Canadian women, following much of the same route as the previous year.^[78] However, in the ensuing year, the Mojave along the Colorado River who had been so welcoming the previous year had clashed with trappers from Taos and were set on revenge against the whites.^[79] While crossing the river, Smith's party was attacked; 10 men, including Silas Gobel, were killed, and the two women were taken captive. Smith and the eight surviving men, one badly wounded from the fighting, prepared to make a desperate stand on the west bank of the Colorado, having made a makeshift breast work out of trees and fashioned lances by attaching butcher knives to light poles.^[80] The men still had five guns among them, and as the Mojave began to approach, Smith ordered his men to fire on those within range.^[79] Two Mojaves were shot and killed, one was wounded, and the remaining attackers ran off.^[80] Before the Mojave could regroup, Smith and eight other surviving men retreated on foot across the Mojave Desert on the Mohave Trail to the San Bernardino Valley.^[81]

California's Central Valley. Smith and his men explored the southern San Joaquin Valley in 1826–27, and the northern Sacramento Valley in 1828.

Smith and the other survivors were again well received in San Gabriel. The party moved north to meet with the group that had been left in the San Joaquin Valley, reuniting with them on September 19, 1827. Unlike in San Gabriel, they were coolly received by the priests at Mission San José, who had already received warning of Smith's renewed presence in the area. Smith's party also visited the settlements at Monterey and Yerba Buena (San Francisco).

Governor Echeandía, who was at the time in Monterey (capital of Alta California), once again arrested Smith, this time along with his men. Yet despite the breach of trust, the governor once again released Smith after several English-speaking residents vouched for him, including John B. R. Cooper and William Edward Petty Hartnell in Monterey. After posting a $30,000 bond, Smith received a passport, on the same promise – to leave the province immediately and not to return.^[82] Also as before, Smith and his party remained in California hunting in the Sacramento Valley for several months.^[q] Upon reaching the northern edge of the valley, the party scouted the route to the northeast afforded by the Pit River, but determined it to be impassable,^[84][r] so veered northwest toward the Pacific coast to find the Columbia River and return to the Rocky Mountain region. Jedediah became the first explorer to reach the Oregon Country over land by traveling up the California coast.^[86]

Trip to the Oregon Country

Fort Vancouver, 1845

When Smith's party left Mexican Alta California and entered the Oregon Country the Treaty of 1818 allowed joint occupation between Britain and the United States. In the Oregon Country, Smith's party, then numbering 19,^[s] and over 250 horses,^[t] came into contact with the Umpqua people. The tribes along the coast had monitored the party's progress, passing news of conflicts between the group and Indigenes, and the Umpqua were wary.^[87] One of them stole an ax, and Smith's party treated some of the Umpqua very harshly in order to force the thief to return it. On July 14, 1828, while Smith, John Turner and Richard Leland were scouting a trail north, his group was attacked in its camp on the Umpqua River.^[48] At about eight o'clock on the night of August 8, 1828, Arthur Black arrived at the gate of Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) post at Fort Vancouver, badly wounded and almost destitute of clothing. He believed himself to be the only survivor of the men at camp, but did not know of the fate of Smith and the two others. Chief Factor John McLoughlin, superintendent at the fort, sent out word to the local tribes that they would be rewarded if they brought Smith and his men to the fort unharmed, and began organizing a search party for them,^[88] but Smith and the two others, having been alerted to the attack and instead of returning to the camp climbed a hill above it and witnessed the massacre, arrived at the fort two days after Black.^[48][u] McLoughlin sent Alexander McLeod south with Smith, Black, Turner and Leland and several HBC men to rescue any other men that had been in camp that had possibly survived,^[v] and their goods. After recovering several horses in bad condition, Black and Leland remained with some HBC men to care for them and the HBC horses, and Smith, Turner, and 18 HBC men proceeded to the massacre site. On October 28, they reached it and found 11 decomposed bodies, which they buried.^[98][w] They ultimately confirmed that all 15 of the unaccounted-for men had died,^[100] and recovered 700 beaver skins and 39 horses, as well as Harrison Rogers' journals.^[x]George Simpson, Governor-in-Chief of the HBC, paid Smith $2,600 for the horses and furs,^[101] and in return, Smith assured that his American fur trade company would confine its operations to the region east of the Great Divide.^[102] Smith remained at Fort Vancouver until the spring of 1829, when he and Arthur Black traveled back east to meet up with his partners.^[103][y]

Blackfoot warrior
Bodmer (1840–1843)

Blackfeet expedition, 1829–30

In 1829, Captain Smith personally organized a fur trade expedition into the Blackfeet territory. Smith was able to capture a good cache of beaver before being repulsed by hostile Blackfeet Native Americans. Jim Bridger served as a riverboat pilot on the Powder River during the profitable mountain man expedition. In the four years of western fur trapping, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette were able to make a substantial profit and, at the 1830 rendezvous on the Wind River, they sold their company to Tom Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Jim Bridger, Henry Fraeb, and John Baptiste Gervais who renamed it the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.^[104]

Return to St. Louis

Secretary of War
John H. Eaton

After Smith's return to St. Louis in 1830, he and his partners wrote a letter on October 29 to Secretary of War John H. Eaton, who at the time was involved in a notorious Washington cabinet scandal known as the Petticoat Affair^[105] and informed Eaton of the "military implications" in terms of the British allegedly alienating the Indigene population towards any American trappers in the Pacific Northwest. According to biographer, Dale L. Morgan, Smith's letter was "a clear sighted statement of the national interest".^[106] The letter also included a description of Fort Vancouver and described how the British were in the process of making a new fort at the time of Smith's visit in 1829. Smith believed the British were attempting to establish a permanent settlement in the Oregon Country.^[100]

Smith had not forgotten the financial struggles of his family in Ohio. After making a sizable profit from the sale of furs, over $17,000 (approx. $4 million in 2011),^[107] Jedediah sent $1,500 to his family in Green Township; whereupon his brother Ralph bought a farm. Smith also bought a house on First Avenue in St. Louis to be shared with his brothers. Smith bought two African slaves to take care of the property in St. Louis.^[106]

The partners' busy schedules in St. Louis also found them and Samuel Parkman making a map of their cartographic discoveries in the West,^[108] to which Smith was the major contributor. On March 2, 1831, Smith wrote another letter to Eaton, now a few months away from resigning due to the Petticoat Affair,^[105] referencing the map^[109] and requesting to launch a federally funded exploration expedition similar to the Lewis & Clark expedition.^[106][z] Smith requested that Reuben Holmes, a West Point graduate and military officer, and himself would lead the expedition.^[109]

Smith and his partners were also preparing to join into the supply trade known as the "commerce of the prairies". At the request of William H. Ashley, Smith Jackson and Sublette received a passport from Senator Thomas Hart Benton on March 3, 1831, the day after Smith wrote his letter to Eaton and they began forming a company of 74 men, twenty-two wagons, and a "six-pounder" artillery cannon for protection.^{[citation needed]}

Death

Comanches as depicted in the 1830s.
Painting by Lino Sánchez y Tapia (1830s)

Having no response from Eaton,^[106] Smith joined his partners and left St. Louis to trade in Santa Fe on April 10, 1831.^[110] Smith was leading the caravan on the Santa Fe Trail on May 27, 1831, when he left the group to scout for water near the Lower Spring on the Cimmaron River in present-day southwest Kansas.^[111] He never returned to the group. The remainder of the party proceeded on to Santa Fe hoping Smith would meet up with them, but he never did. They arrived in Santa Fe on July 4, 1831, and shortly thereafter members of the party discovered a comanchero with some of Smith's personal belongings.^[112] It was relayed that Smith had encountered and communicated with a group of comancheros just prior to his approaching a group of Comanche.^[113] Smith tried to negotiate with the Comanche, but they surrounded him in preparation for attack.^[112]

Most likely, the death of Jedediah Smith occurred in what was then Northern Mexico Territory, south of present-day Ulysses, Grant County, Kansas. According to Smith's grand-nephew, Ezra Delos Smith, there were 20 Comanches in the group. Smith attempted to conciliate with them, until the Comanches scared his horse and shot him in the left shoulder, with an arrow. Jedediah fought back, ultimately killing the chief of the warriors.^[aa] The version written by Austin Smith in letter to his brother Ira four months after Smith's death says that Jedediah killed the "head Chief," but nothing about any other Comanche being wounded or killed. Josiah Gregg wrote in 1844, that Smith "struggled bravely to the last; and, as the Indians themselves have since related, killed two or three of their party before he was overpowered."^[114][ab] Smith stated that his grand-uncle had fought so valiantly that the Comanche believed "he had been more than mortal, and that he could be immortal it would be better to propitiate his spirit; so they did not mutilate his body, but later gave it the same funeral rites they gave its chief"^[116][ac] Austin Smith, Jedediah's brother, who along with another Smith brother, Peter, was a member of the caravan, was able to retrieve Smith's rifle and pistols that the Indians had taken and traded to the comancheros.^[119][ad]

Personal characteristics and religious beliefs

Illustration from The Circuit Rider: A Tale of the Heroic Age by Edward Eggleston depicting a Methodist circuit rider on horseback.

Jedediah Smith was "no ordinary mountain man." He had a dry, not raucous, sense of humor, and was not known to use the profanity common to his peers.^[121] Smith's immediate family were practicing Christians; his younger brother Benjamin was named after a Methodist circuit preacher^[122] and his letters indicate his own Christian beliefs. But, although after his death, the legend of him being a "Bible-toter" and a missionary was widely disseminated, assertions that he carried a Bible with him in the wilderness have no basis in any accounts by him or his companions^[123] and the only documentation of any public demonstration of faith was a prayer said at the burial of one of the Arikara massacre victims.^[25][ae] However, neither do those accounts speak of him drinking alcohol to excess^[af] or bedding Native American women, indicating he had the discipline often associated with a strict moral code.^[126] It is known that he owned, at least, two slaves^[127] which conflicted with his northern Methodist upbringing and his behavior was not always honorable when dealing with those he considered his antagonists.^[128] He was known to be physically strong, cool under pressure, extremely skilled at surviving in the wild and possessed extraordinary leadership skills.^[126] Smith's true character is an enigma still open to interpretation^[124]

Views of Native Americans

While traveling throughout the American West, Jedediah's policy with the Native Americans was to maintain friendly relations^[26] with gifts and exchanges, learning from their cultures.^[126] As he traveled through Northern California, then part of Mexican territory Alta California, for the first time, he tried to maintain that policy but the situation quickly deteriorated. The Maidu were very fearful and defensive and Smith's men killed at least seven of them upon his orders when they refused peaceful advances and demonstrated aggressive behaviors.^[129] He later wrote that they were "the lowest intermediate link between man and the Brute creation."^[130]
Later, during his trek across the Great Basin, he said the desert indigenes he came upon "children of nature...unintelligent type of beings...They form a connecting link between the animal and intellectual creation..."^[ag] Upon returning to Mexican California, even after suffering the Mojave massacre, he continued to try to maintain good relations, punishing two of his men, albeit lightly, who had unnecessarily killed one Native and wounded another.^[133] But as the party continued north, the Natives continued the aggressive actions, and Smith's men wounded at least two more and three were killed.^[134] By the time the party reached the Umpqua, in the British-American shared Oregon Country, their tolerance was at an ebb, leading to the ax incident and resulting in disastrous consequences.^[135]

Late in 1829, Smith Jackson and Sublette wrote another letter to William Clark. The letter described the altercations the firm had had with the various Native American tribes, and encouraged a military presence and intervention to subdue the natives.

Historical reputation

Smith for the most part was forgotten by his countrymen as a historical figure for over 75 years after his death.^[136] In 1853, Peter Skene Ogden^[ah] had written about the Umpqua massacre in Traits of American Indian Life and Character by a Fur Trader, and the Oregon Pioneers Association and Hubert Howe Bancroft wrote versions of it in 1876 and 1886, respectively. There are mentions of him in memoirs by other fur trappers, and mentions by George Gibbs and F. V. Hayden in their reports. Recollection of a Septuagenarian by William Waldo was published by the Missouri Historical Society in 1880 discussed Smith, focusing on hearsay evidence of his piety.^[124] There was no mention of Smith in the 1891 volume 5 publication of Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske.^[137] The first known publication solely about Smith was in the 1896 Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California.^[115] In 1902, Hiram M. Chittenden wrote of him extensively in The American Fur Trade of the West^[138] The same year Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh wrote about Smith's exploits with the Mojave Indians in his book The Romance of the Colorado River: The Story of Its Discovery in 1540 with an Account of Later Explorations.^[139][ai] Smith, however, again was not listed in the 1906 volume 9 publication of American Biographical Society's Biographical Dictionary of America, edited by Rossiter Johnson.^[141] It wasn't until 1908, when John G. Neihardt and Doane Robinson lamented the obscurity of Smith, that more extensive efforts to publicize his accomplishments were initiated.^[142]

In 1912, an article about Smith written by a grand-nephew, Ezra Delos Smith of Meade, Kansas, was published by the Kansas Historical Society. Five years later, Smith's status as a historical figure was further revived by Harrison Clifford Dale's^[aj] book,^[143]The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822–1829: With the Original Journals, published in 1918.^[144]
During the 1920s, Maurice S. Sullivan traced descendants of Smith's siblings, and found two portions of the narrative of Smith's travels, written in the hand of Samuel Parkman^[145][ak] who had been hired to assist in compiling the document^[108] after Smith's return to St. Louis in 1830. The narrative's impending publication had been announced in a St. Louis newspaper as late as 1840,^[al] but never happened.^[147] In 1934, Sullivan published the remnants, documenting Smith's travels in 1821 and 1822 and from June 1827 until the Umpqua massacre a year later, in The Travels of Jedediah Smith, giving a new documented perspective of Smith's explorations.^[am] Along with the narrative, Sullivan published the portion of Alexander McLeod's journal documenting the search for any surviving members of Smith's party and the recovery of his property after the Umpquah massacre. The Dictionary of American Biography, Volume 17, edited by Dumas Malone, published in 1935 contains an article on Smith authored by Joseph Schafer.^[148] The next year, the first comprehensive biography of Smith: Jedediah Smith: Trader and Trail Breaker by Sullivan was posthumously published, but it was Dale Morgan's book, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West, published in 1953, that established Smith as an authentic American hero whose explorations were overshadowed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition.^[136]

Frémont-Gibbs-Smith map

According to Maurice S. Sullivan^[an] Smith was "the first white man to cross the future state of Nevada, the first to conquer the High Sierra of California, and the first to explore the entire Pacific Slope from Lower California to the banks of the Columbia River".^[149] He was known for his many systematic recorded observations on nature and topography. His expeditions also raised doubts about the existence of the legendary Buenaventura River.^[150] Jedediah Smith's explorations were the main basis for accurate Pacific-West maps. He and his partners, Jackson and Sublette, produced a map that, in a eulogy for Smith printed in the Illinois Magazine for June 1832, the unknown author^[ao] claimed "This map is now probably the best extant, of the Rocky Mountains, and the country on both sides, from the States to the Pacific."^[26] This map has been called "a landmark in mapping of the American West"^[151] The original map is lost, its content was overlaid and annotated by George Gibbs on an 1845 base map by John C. Frémont, which is on file at the American Geographical Society Library, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.^[152][ap]

Aftermath

In the aftermath of Smith's death, the federally funded overland exploration of the West that Smith had requested in 1831 finally took place starting in 1842 commanded by Lieutenant John C. Frémont. It was Frémont's documented and published exploration of the West, during the 1840s, that opened the West to American expansion. Frémont was popularly known as the Pathfinder, up until the late 1800s, while Smith's life and reputation was nearly forgotten by his countrymen. The disputed joint occupancy of Britain and the United States of the Oregon Country where Smith stayed at Fort Vancouver was ended by the 1846 Oregon Treaty. In 1848, Mexico ceded California, where Jedediah had twice been arrested by Governor Echeandía, to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the Mexican–American War.

Author of journal

Another important piece of the Jedediah Smith story was discovered in 1967, when another portion of the 1830–31 narrative (again in Parkman's hand) was found amongst other historical papers in an attic in St. Louis.^[153] This portion documented Smith's first California trip (1826–27), and immediately preceded the portion of the narrative found by Sullivan 35 years earlier. George R. Brooks^[aq] edited and introduced the narrative portion, along with the first "journal" of Smith companion Harrison Rogers,^[ar] in 1977.^[154]

Legacies

Geographic namesakes

Smith's exploration of northwestern California and southern Oregon resulted in two rivers, the Smith River (California) and Smith River (Oregon)^[155] being named for him.^[as] Smith's Fork of the Bear River, in southwest Wyoming, is named for him.^[156][157] and Smith's fork of Blacks Fork of the Green River may also be named for him.^[158]
The Jedediah Smith Wilderness in Wyoming bears his name

Honorary commemorations

• 
  Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and Campground^[159]
  


• 
  Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail^[160][at]
  


• 
  Jedediah Smith Wilderness^[161] Visitors benefit by learning opportunities about and access to educational information on important and influential personalities including Jedediah Smith.


• Dodge City Trail of Fame, inductee^[162]
  


• Jedediah Strong Smith's Route 1823, historic monument in South Dakota^{[163][164][165]}
  


• California Outdoors Hall of Fame, 2006 inductee^[166]
  


• Jedediah Smith Muzzleloaders Gun Club^[167]
  


• Jedediah Smith Road, Temecula, California^[168]
  


• Hall of Great Westerners, 1964 inductee, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum^[169]
  


• Jedediah Smith Classic 50 mile run, Elverta, California


• Jed Smith Ultra Classic marathon, Sacramento, California: An event in the Pacific Association USA Track and Field Ultra Grand Prix Series.^[170]
  


• Jedediah Smith Memorial, San Dimas, California^[171]
  


• "Taming the Wild West : the Legend of Jedediah Smith", 2005 film^[172]
  


• Jedediah Smith Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, Apple Valley, California^[173]
  

In popular culture

• The LA Times and Wikimapia states that Jebediah Springfield of the cartoon The Simpson's is also probably loosely based on Jedediah Smith.^[174][175] In turn, the Australian rock band Jebediah is named after Jebediah Springfield.


• In the 1984 film Red Dawn, actor Patrick Swayze portrays the character of Jed Eckert. During the hunting scene, after the deer is killed, Patrick Swayze tells the other two members of the hunting party that his Dad named him after Jedediah Smith.


• In 2005, Steven Spielberg produced the mini-series, Into the West, where American actor Josh Brolin portrayed Jedediah Smith, and in the dramatized grizzly bear mauling, showing the graphic hanging and sewing back on of the lacerated scalp of Smith.^[176] The mini-series fictionalized the death of Smith, in the California desert, by enraged Mohave Indians.^{[citation needed]}
  


• 
  Taming the Wild West: The Legend of Jedediah Smith (2005) Reenactment Documentary; Smith is portrayed by Sean Galuszka; Directed by Diana Zaslaw ^[177]
  

Notes

References

Works cited

• 
  Buckley, Jay H. (2008). William Clark: Indian Diplomat. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3911-0.
  


• 
  Schafer, Joseph (1935). Dumas Malone, ed. Dictionary of American Biography Smith, Jedidiah Strong. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 290–91.
  


• 
  Morgan, Dale L. (1964) [1953]. Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the American West. Bison Book. Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Books. ISBN 0-8032-5138-6.
  


• 
  Smith, Jedediah Strong; Rogers, Harrison G.; Ashley, William Henry (1992) [1918]. Clifford Dale, ed. The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822–1829: with the original journals (PDF ed.). leveland, Ohio: Arthur H. Clark Co.
  


• 
  Smith, Jedediah S.; McLeod, Alexander R. (1992) [1934]. Maurice S. Sullivan, ed. The Travels of Jedediah Smith; A Documentary Outline, Including his Journal. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-9206-6.
  


• 
  Barbour, Barton H. (2011). Jedediah Smith: No Ordinary Mountain Man. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-4196-1.
  


• 
  Camp, Charles L. (2013) [1973]. Joe J. Molter, ed. "Jedediah Smith's First Far-Western Expedition" (PDF). Castor Canadensis (PDF). University of the Pacific, Stockton, California: Jedediah Smith Society.
  


• 
  Weber, David J. (1982). The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-0602-0.
  

Further reading

• 
  Blevins, Winfred (2005) [1973]. Give Your Heart to the Hawks: A Tribute to the Mountain Men. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-7653-1435-2.
  


• 
  Neihardt, John Gneisenau (1941). The Song of Jed Smith. Cycle of the West. New York: MacMillan. Retrieved April 7, 2016.
  


• 
  Smith, Alson J. (1965). Men Against the Mountains: Jedediah Smith and the South West Expedition of 1826–1829. New York: John Day Co. OCLC 479655. Retrieved April 7, 2016. eBook is provided here.


• 
  Sullivan, Maurice S. (1936). Jedediah Smith, Trader and Trail Breaker (eBook). New York Press of the Pioneers.
  

External links

• 
  "JSS History – History of the Society". Jedediah Smith Society. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
  


• 
  Sears, Stephen W. (1963). "Trail Blazer Of The Far West". American Heritage. Vol. 4 no. 4. American Heritage Society. Retrieved April 7, 2016.
  


• Jedediah Smith - Frontier Legend


• Jedediah Smith Trail study