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1831
Willow
Valley
Rendezvous:
Thomas Fitzpatrick would not leave the mountains for
St Louis
until March of 1831 and wouldn’t arrive in
St. Louis
until early May, nearly two months after the deadline for completing
arrangements with Smith, Jackson and Sublette for the needed supplies.
Since Smith, Jackson and Sublette had received no word from the
mountains, they had made alternate plans and already left for Santa Fe
with a train of trade goods bound for Santa Fe and Taos. Fitzpatrick
followed Smith, Jackson and Sublette, and arranged to have supplies
shipped out of Santa Fe. Jedediah
Smith would lose his life in a skirmish with Comanche Indians along
the Cimarron Cutoff of the
Santa Fe Trail
.
Having obtained
$6,000 worth of supplies Fitzpatrick headed north out of
Santa Fe with about forty men, including Kit Carson.
The pack train headed north along the front range of the
Rockies
to the North Platte River, and thence up to the Sweetwater, where he met with Henry Fraeb.
Fraeb accompanied the pack train to resupply the trappers and
Fitzpatrick headed east to ensure the supplies for 1832 arrived on time.
The mountain men had rendezvoused in early summer awaiting the
needed supplies. The location
of this rendezvous is uncertain, possibly either Willow
Valley, and or Green River. Evidence
seems to favor the
Willow
Valley location. (Map)
Joe
Meek again describes this years rendezvous in River
of the West “The large number of men now employed, had exhausted the stock of goods
on hand. The camp was without
blankets and without ammunition, knives were not to be had; traps were
scarce; but worse than that all the tobacco had given out, and alcohol was not!
In such a case as this, what was a mountain man to do?” After
waiting several weeks without a sign from Fitzpatrick, the trappers left
for the fall hunt without the desperately needed supplies.
Fraeb spent the remainder of the fall getting the supplies
delivered to the trappers. Warren
Ferris reports “Fraeb arrived…and the camp presented a confused scene
of rioting and debauchery for several days, after which however the kegs
of alcohol were again bunged, and all became tranquil.”
During the fall and winter of 1831 the American Fur Company was
mobilizing additional trappers to the
Northern Rocky Mountains
in order to ratchet up the competition for beaver during the following
year.
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1832
Rendezvous
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