Mountain Men

In the last historical blog about crossing unincorporated territories, I mentioned the mountain men. I will admit, I have a soft spot for these fellows. Theirs was always the ultimate in an adventurous life fraught with danger but independent and free of societal restrictions.

John Jacob Astor is a name most familiar to the discussion of the fur trade in the 1800s. Astor was from Germany and emigrated to the United States after the American Revolutionary War. He had a chance meeting with a fur trader, and it inspired him to get into the North American fur trade himself. He purchased raw hides from Native Americans, tanned them himself and sold them in London for a significant profit. It wasn’t long before he took advantage of the Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States, which opened new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region. He quickly contracted with the Montreal-based North West Company, a rival of the Hudson’s Bay Company in London.

https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/john-jacob-astor

By 1800, he had accumulated over a quarter of a million dollars ($10.5 million in 2025 dollars) and was a leading figure in the fur trade. The US Embargo Act of 1807 disrupted his business so, with the permission of President Thomas Jefferson, Astor created the American Fur Company in 1808. From that he created subsidiaries reaching clear to the Pacific Coast and eventually established a trading post on the Columbia River: Fort Astoria, known as the first United States community on the Pacific Coast.

At the peak of beaver fur’s popularity in fashion, there were an estimated 3,000 mountain men working in the Rocky Mountain region. Most were employees of the different fur companies, their wages being paid once a year when they came in with their accumulation of hides and were paid by the hide. They lived on their own and made their own decisions, rarely working together.

There was fierce competition between the rival fur companies as the population of fur-bearing animals dropped. The Natives, seeing the devastation of the over-trapping, started objecting to the trappers’ greed. Tensions grew and altercations, killings and sabotage abounded.

These men knew every trail and route from trading post to trading post making them valuable guides to the emigrants of the 1849-50s.  They integrated into the native culture by marrying women and having families and made their living by trading furs for goods from local trading posts.

Some of the most famous mountain men were Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick, Jedidiah Smith, Jim Beckwourth, and Hugh Glass to name just a few.

In The Gantlet, Jim Bridger and his trading partner, Louis Vasquez, play integral roles. In 1849, Jim Bridger finds himself in a delicate situation which will be the topic of my next blog - stay tuned.