They Did Not Long Enjoy
Unmolested The Sway Which They Had Somewhat Surreptitiously
Attained.
A fierce competition ensued between them and their old
rivals, the Hudson's Bay Company; which was carried on at great
cost and sacrifice, and occasionally with the loss of life.
It
ended in the ruin of most of the partners of the Northwest
Company; and the merging of the relics of that establishment, in
1821, in the rival association. From that time, the Hudson's Bay
Company enjoyed a monopoly of the Indian trade from the coast of
the Pacific to the Rocky Mountains, and for a considerable extent
north and south. They removed their emporium from Astoria to Fort
Vancouver, a strong post on the left bank of the Columbia River,
about sixty miles from its mouth; whence they furnished their
interior posts, and sent forth their brigades of trappers.
The Rocky Mountains formed a vast barrier between them and the
United States, and their stern and awful defiles, their rugged
valleys, and the great western plains watered by their rivers,
remained almost a terra incognita to the American trapper. The
difficulties experienced in 1808, by Mr. Henry of the Missouri
Company, the first American who trapped upon the head-waters of
the Columbia; and the frightful hardships sustained by Wilson P.
Hunt, Ramsay Crooks, Robert Stuart, and other intrepid Astorians,
in their ill-fated expeditions across the mountains, appeared for
a time to check all further enterprise in that direction. The
American traders contented themselves with following up the head
branches of the Missouri, the Yellowstone, and other rivers and
streams on the Atlantic side of the mountains, but forbore to
attempt those great snow-crowned sierras.
One of the first to revive these tramontane expeditions was
General Ashley, of Missouri, a man whose courage and achievements
in the prosecution of his enterprises have rendered him famous in
the Far West. In conjunction with Mr. Henry, already mentioned,
he established a post on the banks of the Yellowstone River in
1822, and in the following year pushed a resolute band of
trappers across the mountains to the banks of the Green River or
Colorado of the West, often known by the Indian name of the
Seeds-ke-dee Agie. This attempt was followed up and sustained by
others, until in 1825 a footing was secured, and a complete
system of trapping organized beyond the mountains.
It is difficult to do justice to the courage, fortitude, and
perseverance of the pioneers of the fur trade, who conducted
these early expeditions, and first broke their way through a
wilderness where everything was calculated to deter and dismay
them. They had to traverse the most dreary and desolate
mountains, and barren and trackless wastes, uninhabited by man,
or occasionally infested by predatory and cruel savages. They
knew nothing of the country beyond the verge of their horizon,
and had to gather information as they wandered. They beheld
volcanic plains stretching around them, and ranges of mountains
piled up to the clouds, and glistening with eternal frost:
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