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Calvin
T. Briggs was born in 1808
at
Brattleboro,
Vermont. Little is known of his early
life. In 1834 he was present
in
St. Louis, where he was hired by Nathaniel
Wyeth, to accompany Wyeth’s company,
the Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company on a trading expedition to
the mountains. Briggs was
hired at the rate of $250 for an 18 month term of employment (that comes
to $13.88 per month).
Wyeth had previously made a “secret” agreement with the Rocky Mountain
Fur Company to provide supplies at rates lower than had been provided by
William Sublette and Campbell. Sublette
and Campbell had a financial stranglehold on the Rocky Mountain Fur
Company, and the company owners were attempting to break free by using
another supplier. The secret
agreement became known to Sublette and Campbell when a letter intended for
Milton Sublette, one of the partners in the
Rocky Mountain Fur Company was mistakenly delivered to William Sublette (Milton’s brother). In the spring
there ensued a race between the supply trains of Wyeth and Sublette &
Campbell for the 1834 Rendezvous, a race
which was easily won by the experienced Sublette & Campbell.
By the time Wyeth arrived at Rendezvous, the Rocky Mountain Fur
Company had been forced into reorganization, and the company refused to
accept the goods that Wyeth had contracted to supply.
Although Wyeth
was able to trade some of his goods to Indians and free trappers, he was
stuck with a large stock of supplies at the end of rendezvous.
Wyeth intended to have a surplus of trade goods in order to establish a
trading center in the Columbia River Basin. However, the loss of
trade at the Rendezvous was a major disappointment. After the
rendezvous, his party traveled to the Snake River Plain, where he established Fort Hall.
By
August 5, 1834
, work on the fort was largely complete.
Wyeth left a small number of men at the fort (including Osborne
Russell) and continued on to
the mouth of the
Columbia River
where he intended to establish a salmon fishery.
Briggs was one of the men who accompanied Wyeth to the
Columbia
.
In November, 1834, Wyeth sent a number of men under Captain Thing,
including Briggs back to Fort Hall, where they arrived on Christmas Eve.
There was much partying at the fort between Christmas and New
Years, however, Briggs appears to have abstained.
His name does not appear on company ledgers showing any purchase of
whiskey or rum during this time. Instead,
the ledgers show that in January and February of 1835, Briggs was
purchasing food and domestic items such as tea, sugar, soap, rice,
needles, thread and vermilion. It
may have been at this time that he began his lifelong relation with a
Shoshone woman.
From
April to October, 1835, Briggs was occupied as a hunter/trapper in the
area around Fort Hall. In
October, his contract with Wyeth expired, and was not renewed.
For the next four months Briggs remained at Fort Hall, buying
additional goods on credit. In
February 1836 he purchased $595.32 worth of trade goods and went into
partnership with Moses Collins, Charles Schriver, and Alexander Wade.
They trapped and traded in the area to the north and west of Fort
Hall. The partners were not
highly successful and when they settled with the company in June, returns
were only $20.22 a man. Later
that year he formed a new trapping partnership with Collins, earning
$78.62 by October
7th, 1836
.
As a free
trapper, Briggs had been purchasing supplies at Fort Hall on credit
(including $60 for a “Superior Rifle”) at the company store.
In order to pay down his debts, he
commenced working for the Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company again
on October 14, 1836
, this time at a wage of $25 per month.
He continued his employment as a trapper/trader through the winter
of 1836-1837. In April, 1837,
he decided to trap for himself again, this time with much greater success
than previously. By August,
1837, he had paid off his accounts with the company.
During his three years with the Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company,
Briggs had little to show, except for experience, the "Superior
rifle" and a good friend. A
strong bond, starting in January 1835 was formed with John J Burroughs.
Their friendship was cemented when each married Shoshone Indian
sisters. These marriages were
unusual in that both men kept their Indian wives and families with them
when they returned to civilization years later.
Briggs activities
are uncertain for the next few years.
He was reported to have been to
California, perhaps in 1837. Dick
Wooton reports that Briggs was trapping out of Bent’s
Fort with a party of seventeen men, maybe in 1838 or 1839.
By June, 1840, Briggs was back at Fort Hall, now owned by the
Hudson’s Bay Company. From
1843-1846 Briggs and Burroughs lived on the
Arkansas River
near
El Pueblo. While in
El Pueblo, John Brown, a trapper and spiritualist, befriended Briggs and Burroughs.
One night Browns “Spirit Guide” warned Brown that he must stay
with Briggs the following day or terrible things would happen to Briggs.
The following morning the men went out to hunt deer, and forgetting
Brown’s dream, the men split up. Soon
Brown’s “Spirit Guide” warned Brown to return to Briggs.
When he found Briggs, Briggs was laying prostrate on river ice,
unable to move. Briggs had cut
a small hole in the ice to check a beaver trap he had set some days
earlier, and had gotten his own hand caught in the trap.
Unable to remove the trap from his hand, Briggs was unable to get
his hand through the hole in the ice.
Briggs would have died here, had Brown not returned.
Between 1846-1848
the men lived near Hardscrabble, approximately 30 miles up river from El Pueblo, where they continued to trap, as well as doing miscellaneous
jobs
in the community and nearby ranches. It is almost certain that both
men knew Marcelino Baca, who also resided in the El
Pueblo and Hardscrabble areas at this time.
On
December 10, 1847
the account book for Lancaster Lupton’s Hardscrabble store notes that
Lupton paid “Biggs & Burrows” five dollars.
In 1849 both Hardscrabble and
El Pueblo
were abandoned, and Briggs, Burroughs and Brown set out for
California, arriving at Sutter’s Fort on
September 1, 1849, eventually settling in Sacramento. Four years later Burroughs
returned to Kentucky with his family. At this time
Briggs began ranching and raising cattle, which he would do for the
remainder of his life. Briggs
died in Sacramento
in 1868 at the age of 60.
To learn more
about Calvin T. Briggs see the following references:
The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, Vol. 2, edited
by LeRoy R Hafen, published 1965 by the Arthur H Clark Company.
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