Joseph Reddeford Walker

With his good looks and plumed hat and 6' stature, Joe Walker was the romantic stereotype of the mountain man.  His escapades with ladies were legendary - so was his knowledge of the West.

Walker operated as trapper and trader out of Independence, Missouri for 12 years, was sheriff of Jackson County until a promise of waters rich in beaver, wine and women lured him on an expedition to California in 1833.  Walker understood the ways of the Indian, was kind and affable to men, and loved to explore unknown regions.

From Salt Lake down the Humboldt River, over the Sierras near Yosemite and reaching the Pacific Coast, Walker covered most of the West.  In 1833 he discovered Walker Pass in the San Joaquin Valley.  Walker Pass provided an easy wagon train trail around the south end of Sierra Nevada. In 1869 the transcontinental railroad would follow the Humboldt River route.

After Joe married an Indian chief's daughter who was lost (along with is children) to cholera, his career would span 47 years as a trapper, trader and guide.  He advised wagon trains to California, bought and sold cattle and led gold prospecting parties to California and Colorado. 

His lists of "firsts" equals and surpasses Jedediah Smith's in the discovery of the West.

When his eyesight began failing, he retired to his ranch in California where he died at the age of 78.  For more in depth on Joseph Walker - search this blog...we have followed him from his birth through his life. 

Next time...Trapper Wives
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Today in Pioneer History: On April 7, 1805 after a long winter, the Lewis and Clark expedition departs its camp among the Mandan Indians and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.

Moutain Men Move West

For the next few posts we are going to look back at somewhere we have already been in this blog - the early mountain men and fur trappers.  We took an extensive trip across the life of Joseph Walker a while back that you can search the blog for if you want an eye-witness account of that kind of life.  Here I am just including a bit because it fits chronologically in the development of the West...

The lucrative fur trade was always a part of the trappers story.  Loving the wilderness, leaving the life of the town and the farm, these hunters/trappers were known as "mountain men".   These rugged men learned Indian ways, had expert survival skills and were extremely tough.  Their days of glory lasted a little more that two decades, but their legend is a permanent part of the history of the American West and the pioneer.

As the pioneer settlers came, the mountain men moved on further west.  They were always two steps ahead of civilization.  They weren't looking for gold, or for land, but for an animal.  At the time it was beaver fur that was fashionable.  The pelts (called "heavy bank notes") were worn as coats and hats in Europe and America.  There was a time when American rivers swarmed with beaver, but money from the beaver pelts made fortunes.  So no one took notice for 20 years, as the beaver was slaughtered to the point that there was none to hunt - and the trappers livelihood ended.

Next time...How it all started.
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Today in Pioneer History: "On March 10, 1864, local hell-raiser Jack Slade is hanged in one of the more troubling incidents of frontier vigilantism in Montana. Slade stood out even among the many rabble-rousers who inhabited the wild frontier-mining town of Virginia City, Montana. When he was sober, townspeople liked and respected Slade, when drunk, however, Slade had a habit of firing his guns in bars and making idle threats. Finally fed up with his drunken rampages and wild threats, a group of vigilantes took Slade into custody. Slade, who had committed no serious crime in Virginia City, was hanged.

A New Frontier System in New England

As fur trading in the Northeast began, fur traders began building "trucking houses" at Springfield, Northampton and other more distant points.  In the 1640s, they began invading the Hudson River Valley, settled by the Dutch in 1624.  The Dutch had ousted the Swedes in 1654 who tried to settle in nearby Delaware.  They tried the same with the New Englanders who began trading in the Mohawk Valley with the Iroquois.  The New Englanders retaliated by seizing New Amsterdam in 1664 and renaming it New York.

New England farmers came close behind the fur traders.  Unlike their fellow frontiersmen in Virginia,
New Englanders moved in groups under the guidance of leaders rather than as individuals scattered about as their future western pioneer would do.  Areas adjacent to settled areas came first. The building lots were laid out, fields were plowed for farming, then a village green, around which was church, parish, house and school were built. 

The New England frontiers advanced in orderly sections adjacent to each other, assuring pioneer "safety, Christian communities, schools, civility and other good ends."  The system encouraged community enterprise, fields cleared by joint labor, cattle watched over by herdsmen, and the common effort aided in marketing the small agricultural surpluses. 

Now you know where the idea of the village square came from in many towns and cities today!

Next time..Appalachian Country
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Today in Pioneer History:  On this day, August 27, 1875, the powerful western capitalist William Ralston is found drowned in San Francisco Bay, hours after being asked to resign as president of the Bank of California. Ralston was one of the first men to build a major financial empire in the Far West.

Final Count

During this time, Bonneville figured out that the trappers were more interested in injuring their rivals than actually doing any trapping.  Nevertheless, the final count of the 1832 fur trapping season was 62 packs of fur for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, 51 packs for the American Fur Company, and 30 for the free trappers.  

Bonneville's men cashed in 22 1/2 packs with $15,000 which was quite respectable for 40 men in the early 1800s west.

By the time Bonneville got to the rendezvous, Walker had already been there a month before.  The Snake chief had provided Walker with an escort of 200 men for protection and Walker had dug up the stored furs at Fort Nonsense and begun trading.  Once that task was done, Walker took 6 men and hit the trail again.
 
Walker's conduct and success in the 1832 fur trapping season indicates that he was already an experienced furman.  The ease and assurance with which he moved and maneuvered in the central Rockies in 1832-33 suggests that he may have been there before - maybe with the Tais trappers as a younger man?

Next time...Tourists and Trappers

Kit Carson

Kit Carson was probably the best known of the mountain men.  In the 1830s it was said that not even Daniel Boone was "so much on the move throughout a long and restless life" as Kit Carson.  

Carson was physically a small man, but inexhaustible which attests to the fact that he made the 3,000 miles journey from California territory to Washington through hostile Apache lands with the news of the Bear Flag Republic victory.

Before his death at Fort Lyon, Carson lay on his buffalo robe and demanded his pipe and a big dinner.  He was warned that both would probably kill him, to which he is said to have replied, "No matter.  Bring me some fust rate doin's, a buffalo steak, my pipe and a bowl of coffee".  After eating 2 pounds of meat and smoking his pipe, Carson died.  He received a funeral with general's honors and as he wished was buried at Taos.

Next time we start our journey with the greatest mountain man of them all, Joseph Walker.

Jedediah Smith

Jedediah Smith ventured west as a business man working for the fur trading companies.  His goal was to trap beaver and otter, and make trading contacts with the Native Americans.

His first expedition in 1822 provided information of Western geography and potential trails available to future homesteaders.  In 1824 he rediscovered the South Pass - an easy route across the Rockies in modern day Wyoming (fur traders actually discovered it, but never publicized the fact).

In 1831 Smith left St. Louis bound for Santa Fe, NM without adequate supplies, the why we will probably never know since he was well-acquainted with the arid territory and the need to carry water.  Eventually his party had to split up in search of adequate water or perish, and Smith was attacked alone and killed by Comanche Indians, thus ending the life of an important trader and trail blazer in our Western history.

People have debated what happened to Jedediah to make him so careless to venture out alone in such hostile territory and to come so ill prepared.  Popular historic opinion is that he became too confident in his abilities and his experience and thought he could survive just about anything...that day he was wrong.

We will meet Jedediah again on our journey with Joseph Walker...

Before the Pioneers Came...

Let's go back in time now to long before the Homesteaders, the Cattlemen or the Gold Rushers came west - and meet the mountain men and the trail blazers of the West, the "real pioneers" as some have called them, the rugged men like Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger and Joseph Walker.  They were the hunters, fur trappers and traders in a west dominated by Native Americans and the raw, untouched and uncivilized territory of the early 1800s.

Before we set off with Joe Walker who is probably the greatest and least known of these mountain men, a bit of background would be helpful...

One historian has divided those operating in the continental stage into four groups:

1.  The American Fur Company (John Jacob Astor)

2.  The Rocky Mountain Fur Company

3.  The Hudson Bay Company (British) which later merged with the Northwest Company

The independent men also worked with or against any of the above, shifting their allegiance as long as the fur trade lasted.  These men lived off the land, trapping and hunting, without a permanent shelter, ready food, or civilization nearby.  In the true sense of the word, they opened the West to those who followed.  Next time we will take a look at a couple of popular mountain men and their lives.