CHAPTER VI
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Frémont, the Pathfinder—Ownership of the Colorado—The Road of the Gold Seekers—First United States Military Post, 1849—Steam Navigation—Captain Johnson Goes to the Head of Black Canyon.
The great Western wilderness was now no longer “unknown” to white men. By the year 1840 the American had traversed it throughout, excepting the canyons of the Colorado, which yet remained, at least below the mouth of Grand River, almost as much of a problem as before the fur trade was born. Like some antediluvian monster the wild torrent stretched a foaming barrier miles on miles from the mountains of the north to the seas of the south, fortified in a rock-bound lair, roaring defiance at conquistadore, padre, and trapper alike.
Kaibab Pai Ute Boys Playing a Game of Wolf and Deer. Kaibab Pai Ute Boys Playing a Game of Wolf and Deer. Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
Till now the trappers and fur companies had been the chief travellers through this strange, weird land, but as the fourth decade of the century fairly opens, a new kind of pioneer appears suddenly on the field; a pioneer with motives totally different from those of the preceding explorers. Proselyting or profit had been heretofore the main spurs to ambition, but the commanding figure which we now observe scanning, from the majestic heights of the Wind River range, the labyrinthian maze of unlocated, unrecorded mountains, valleys, rivers, and canyons, rolling far and away to the surf of the Pacific, is imbued with a broader purpose. His mission is to know. The immediately previous elements drifted across the scene like rifle-smoke on the morning breeze, making no more impression on the world’s knowledge. They recorded little, and, so far as information was concerned, they might almost as well never have set foot in the wilderness. But the new man records everything: the wind, the cold, the clouds, the trees, the grass, the mice, the men, the worms, the birds, etc., to the end of his time and his ability. He is the real explorer, the advance guard of those many expeditions which followed and whose labours form the fourth division of our subject. Frémont is the name, since that time called “Pathfinder,” though, of course, the paths he followed had often before been travelled by the redoubtable trapper, whose knowledge, like that of the native, was personal only. Indeed, he was guided in his journeys by several men now quite as famous as himself—Kit Carson, Fitzpatrick, Walker, and Godey. But the field was still new to the world and to science. Quite appropriately, one of the highest peaks from which the Colorado draws its first waters, is now distinguished by the name of the earliest scientific observer to enter its basin. Frémont came up the North Platte and the Sweetwater branch, crossing (1842) from that stream by the South Pass thirty-four years after Andrew Henry had first traversed it, over to the headwaters of the Colorado. The ascent to South Pass is very gradual, and there is no gorge or defile. The total width is about twenty miles. A day or two later Frémont climbed out of the valley on the flank of the Wind River Mountains. “We had reached a very elevated point,” he says; “and in the valley below and among the hills were a number of lakes at different levels; some two or three hundred feet above others, with which they communicated by foaming torrents. Even to our great height the roar of the cataracts came up, and we could see them leaping down in lines of snowy foam.” Thus are the rills and the rivulets from the summits collected in these beautiful alpine lakes to give birth to the Colorado in white cascades, typical, at the very fountainhead, of the turbulence of the waters which have rent for themselves a trough of rock to the gulf.[1] Springing from these clear pools and seething falls, shadowed by sombre pines and granite crags, its course is run through plunging rapids to the final assault on the sea, where wide sand-barrens and desolation prevail. Frémont understood this from his guides and says: “Lower down, from Brown’s Hole to the southward, the river runs through lofty chasms, walled in by precipices of red rock.” The descent
“of the Colorado is but little known, and that little derived from vague report. Three hundred miles of its lower part, as it approaches the Gulf of California, is reported to be smooth and tranquil; but its upper part is manifestly broken into many falls and rapids. From many descriptions of trappers it is probable that in its foaming course among its lofty precipices, it presents many scenes of wild grandeur; and though offering many temptations, and often discussed, no trappers have yet been found bold enough to undertake a voyage which has so certain a prospect of fatal termination.”
[1] These mountains, as the glacial accumulations began to permanently diminish, must have annually sent a long-continued huge flood of water down the rivers heading there.
Canyon of Lodore, Green River. Looking up the Canyon. Canyon of Lodore, Green River. Looking up the Canyon. Walls 2000 to 2500 feet. “Wheatstack” in distance. Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
He was mistaken about the trappers, not having ventured, for, as we have seen, there are traces of at least three parties: that of Ashley, that of the missionaries mentioned by Farnham, the trappers also mentioned by him, and the one indicated by the wreckage discovered in Lodore by Powell’s expeditions, though the latter and that mentioned by Farnham are possibly the same.
The fur trade, which up to about 1835 was principally in beaver skins, had now somewhat changed, and buffalo robes were the chief article of traffic. But the buffalo were also beginning to diminish. They were no longer found on the western slope of the mountains, and no wonder, as the fur companies _annually_ gathered in about ninety thousand marketable skins during the ten years ending with 1842, yet it was only those animals killed in the cold months whose pelts were suitable for the fur business. The largest number of buffalo were killed in the summer months for other purposes; therefore one is not surprised that they were soon exterminated in the Colorado River Valley, where they never were as numerous as on the plains, and apparently never went west of the mouth of White River.
Las Vegas, Southern Nevada, on the Old Spanish Trail. Las Vegas, Southern Nevada, on the Old Spanish Trail. Oil sketch by F.S. DELLENBAUGH.
Frémont went over to the California region, returning through Nevada by way of the Spanish Trail, past Las Vegas (see cut, page 137), and up the Virgen, which he called the most dreary river he had ever seen, till he reached the point where Escalante had turned east. From here he followed Escalante’s trail back to Utah Lake, passing through Mountain Meadows (1844), afterward the scene of the terrible massacre of emigrants by a body of Mormons under John D. Lee.[2] His route was full of interesting adventures, but it is not possible to give details here.[3] Passing over the Wasatch by way of Spanish Fork, he again entered the valley of the Colorado on the head-waters of the Uinta, pausing briefly at Roubidoux’s Fort on Uinta River. Soon after he left, the fort and its occupants were annihilated by the Utes. Crossing Ashley Fork he climbed on the trail high up the mountain, where he had “a view of the river below shut up amongst rugged mountains;” Whirlpool Canyon and the Canyon of Lodore. Descending then to Brown’s Hole, he crossed the river in a skin boat, and camped just above Vermilion Creek, opposite the remains of an “old fort,” which was doubtless Fort Davy Crockett. “Here the river enters between lofty precipices of red rock” (now the Gate of Lodore), “and the country below is said to assume a very rugged character; the river and its affluents passing through canons which forbid all access to the water.” After journeying to the head of the Platte, and south through the Parks, he went east by the Arkansas, and came again in 1845 to cross the Green a little farther south on his way to California.
[2] For an account of this unfortunate affair see _The Rocky Mountain Saints_,