To-day the historical societies of many Western States issue each year a volume filled with material of great interest--matter that will be of enormous value to the historian who shall set down the story of the development of the West.
Since the accounts which appear in the following pages have to do with a country then unknown, the explorers who penetrated it faced new conditions and met new and primitive peoples. To subsist in these unknown lands they were forced to hunt its animals, and the purpose which led them so far afield was the trading for furs. The book thus deals with a number of cognate subjects, with exploration, hunting, the taking of fur, and Indians in peace and war; and in any or all of these there is excitement and interest enough.
Let us look back at some of the happenings in this forgotten West, which is now again being remembered.
ASSINIBOINE-PIEGAN BATTLE BEFORE THE WALLS OF FORT MACKENZIE 34
INDIAN SIGNALLING “BUFFALO DISCOVERED” 222
BUFFALO HERD NEAR LAKE JESSIE, UPPER MISSOURI RIVER 244
“BISON AND BULL, NOW IN MORTAL COMBAT, MET MIDWAY WITH A SHOCK THAT MADE THE EARTH TREMBLE” 294
“JUST AS HE WAS PUTTING A COPPER CAP ON THE NIPPLE THE BEAR ROSE ON HER HIND LEGS” 316
A DISTRIBUTION OF GOODS TO THE GROS VENTRES 356
One hundred years ago little more was known of the Pacific coast than that the land ended at the edge of the wide ocean, already furrowed by the keels of explorers, whalers, and traders.
On the north, Alexander McKenzie had reached the salt water, and a dozen years later Lewis and Clark had come to the mouth of the Columbia. A few years after that came the Astor settlement at Astoria, soon--in 1813--to be handed over to the British, to the Northwest Company, which remained in control there until its consolidation with the Hudson Bay Company in 1821.
One of the first commercial adventurers to the Columbia River, and one of the first men engaged by John Jacob Astor for his far western fur-trading expeditions, was Alexander Ross, a Scotchman, who came to Canada in early life, spent more than forty-four years in the fur trade, and finally died in the Red River settlement in 1856. Unlike most fur traders, he had the energy and the interest, in the later years of his life, to set down an account of what he had seen and done during those early years of anxiety, hard work, and success. His story “is not an arm-chair narrative derived from hearsay tales, but the result of practical experience on the spot.” During most of the time while engaged in trading with the savage tribes west of the Rocky Mountains he was a leader; and the success or failure of his expeditions--often the lives of his men and himself--depended on what he thought, did, and said. He was a man of high courage, unfailing energy, and close observation. His was serious work, yet he possessed some sense of humor, which, however, he allows to appear only now and then in his books. As a close observer stationed in the midst of things and admirably acquainted with conditions, he saw the blunders made by Mr. Astor and criticised them freely; yet he was always loyal to his chief, and speaks with apparent contempt of those other men of the north, hired by Mr. Astor for their great experience in the fur trade, who, when the War of 1812 broke out and the Northwesters descended on Astoria, seemed glad to desert their employer and to renew their allegiance to the company that they had left for Astor’s higher pay and greater privileges.
