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Nathaniel
Wyeth
Nathaniel Jarvis
Wyeth was born
January 29, 1802
near
Cambridge, Massachusetts in his father’s Fresh Pond Hotel. As
a young man he joined his father in managing the hotel and at the age of
22 he married his cousin Elizabeth Jarvis Stone.
During the winter, which was the hotel’s off season, he worked to
stock the hotel’s ice house with ice cut from Fresh Pond.
About 1825 Wyeth devised a horse-drawn ice cutter which allowed
uniform squares to easily be cut and broken apart.
An ice trade historian estimates that this invention reduced costs
of harvesting winter ice from thirty cents per ton to ten cents per ton (Cummings).
The invention was so successful that Wyeth cut ice for Frederic
Tudor, a regional ice supplier, and that after the winter of 1827-28 Tudor
employed Wyeth at an annual salary of $1,200.
Ultimately, this invention allowed
Boston
to become an ice export center with ice sent throughout the South, the Caribbean
and as far as
Calcutta. The financial freedom
granted Wyeth by this employment allowed Wyeth to quit the management of
his father’s hotel. However
under Tudor, Wyeth was limited by lack of creative and entrepreneurial
opportunities.
Wyeth soon became
interested in opportunities in the Oregon Country, and enrolled in Hall
Kelley’s “American Society for Encouraging the Settlement of
Oregon,” founded in 1829. By
June, 1831 Kelley had formulated plans for establishing two commercial and
agricultural settlements on the
Columbia River. Wyeth spent considerable
time and effort supporting the effort, but as the expedition was scaled
back, and then the planned departure time postponed, Wyeth became
convinced that nothing would come of Kelley’s proposal and he determined
to take action on his own.
Wyeth organized a
joint-stock company, to trade for furs on the Columbia River. The plan was for a five year
expedition, and after the first year, a ship would sail to the northwest
coast to pick up a cargo furs. There
was not much public enthusiasm for the venture and the people of
Cambridge considered the enterprise to be “extremely notional.”
Wyeth spent considerable of his own funds, assigned his ice-cutter
patents, and even mortgaged his home to support the venture.
On March 11, 1832
, Wyeth and twenty men left Boston. By the time the men reached
St. Louis
in mid-April, it was apparent that Wyeth did not have the experience or
knowledge to successfully venture into the wilderness.
At the time Wyeth’s party arrived in
St. Louis, Robert Campbell and William Sublette were preparing a pack train to
resupply the Rocky Mountain Fur Company at the 1832
Rendezvous. Seeing no real
competitive threat from Wyeth, Campbell and Sublette allowed Wyeth’s
party to travel with their pack train.
On
May 12, 1832
a combined party of 80 men left
Independence. The trip involved much
hardship, sickness and hunger for Wyeth’s greenhorns and the experience
may have been made worse by Wyeth’s own stubbornness.
For example when the pack train arrived at the
Laramie River, high water made it necessary construct boats and rafts to cross.
Sublette and his men constructed bull boats, and advised that Wyeth
do likewise. “However,
Captain Wyeth was not a man easily diverted by the advice of others,”
and he ordered his men to construct a raft to be guided across the swift
current by a rope anchored on opposite banks.
In crossing, the rope broke and the raft was carried downstream
till it hit a snag where it’s cargo of irreplaceable blacksmithing tools
and gunpowder was lost. After
the disastrous river crossing, the party endured additional hardships
which included intermittent snows, fireless camps and an attack by
Blackfoot Indians resulting in the loss of a dozen horses.
The pack train
arrived at the Pierre
’s Hole Rendezvous on July 8th and remained there until the
17th trading goods, supplies and alcohol.
During this time, Wyeth’s men, who were not involved in the
trading, were having second thoughts about the venture.
At town-hall style meeting Wyeth solicited the intentions of his
men. Seven of the eighteen
remaining men chose to depart, leaving Wyeth with eleven men to continue
his venture.
After rendezvous,
Wyeth attached his party to a brigade of west bound trappers headed by
Milton Sublette and Henry Fraeb. The
combined party traveled only eight miles that first day.
The next morning a large caravan was seen approaching the trappers
camp, however, no one was alarmed. The
caravan was assumed to be the American Fur Company’s pack train which
had failed to arrive in time for the rendezvous.
In reality the approaching caravan was a large party of Gros
Ventres Indians (closely related to the Blackfoot Indians) with whom the
trappers were not on friendly terms. On
initial approach, Antoine Godin, one of the
trappers initiated hostilities which lead to the day-long Battle of
Pierre’s Hole. Wyeth and his
men stood off and did not participate in the battle, feeling that this was
not their fight. After the
battle, the trappers including Wyeth’s group returned to the main
encampment at the rendezvous site, where they remained until July 24th,
tending to the wounded and burying the dead.
Once again the
trappers set out towards the Snake River, accompanied by Wyeth and his men. The
brigade moved slowly, trapping and “making meat” along the way.
While on the
Portneuf
River, Wyeth cached six loads of goods and furs.
When the brigade reached the
Snake River
Valley, they found that the area had been recently trapped out by
Hudson
’s Bay Company (HBC) men. The
combined parties continued on down the
Snake River
till near its confluence with the
Owyhee
River. From here Wyeth’s party
continued alone westward across the
Blue Mountains
and then down to the HBC’s
Fort
Walla Walla
on the
Columbia River
.
From
Fort
Walla Walla, Wyeth and his men traveled downriver on a borrowed HBC barge to
Fort
Vancouver
arriving in late October 1833. Here
they learned that the ship that had been sent out to meet them had been
wrecked in the South Pacific. This
bad news was the breaking point for Wyeth’s remaining men.
Unanimously they requested to be released from their engagement.
Despite the
hardships and lack of success, Wyeth remained convinced of the
possibilities for commercial success in Oregon. He spent the winter of
1832-33 traveling throughout the
Lower
Columbia
River basin and the Willamette
Valley
evaluating prospects for agriculture and fisheries.
Wyeth, and two
men belonging to his former party that he rehired, left Fort
Vancouver
on
March 3, 1833
. Wyeth hoped to salvage a
little of the previous years effort by recovering the packs of furs cached
near the
Portneuf
River, and selling them at the 1833 Rendezvous.
The men joined Francis Ermatinger’s HBC fur brigade headed for
the Flathead country in what would become northwest
Montana. Wyeth would be unable to
recover his cached goods for lack of horses.
During the
previous winter Wyeth had been well treated by the
Hudson
’s Bay Company while traveling in the lower
Columbia
River basin, and while at Fort
Colville, wrote to George Simpson, Governor of Hudson’s Bay North American
operations. Wyeth proposed a
five year agreement with the company, with the HBC supplying men and
supplies. In return Wyeth
would limit his trapping activities to the area south of the
Columbia River
, and would deliver his entire harvest of furs to HBC posts.
From
Fort
Colville
the party traveled slowly to the
Missouri River, trapping as they went. In
late May, Wyeth and Ermatinger were joined by a party belonging to Captain
Bonneville. The combined party
traveled up the Salmon River
. By late June Wyeth was
camped on the Upper Salmon River
near Bonneville. Here Wyeth
proposed another commercial partnership.
Bonneville would supply men and trade goods, and Wyeth would lead
the party on a trapping expedition south of the
Columbia River
and into
California. Bonneville appears to have
initially accepted the proposal, however, quickly rescinded the agreement
when it became apparent that returns from his own trapping parties would
not provide sufficient capital to purchase the supplies and equipment that
Wyeth would need. Wyeth
continued to travel with Bonneville’s party to the 1833
Rendezvous on the Green River, where they arrived on July 17.
While at rendezvous, Wyeth wrote a letter to Ermatinger warning him
that he would be robbed of both beaver and goods should he come to the
rendezvous stating, “There is here a great majority of Scoundrels.”
After the 1833
Rendezvous broke up, Wyeth left in the company of Milton
Sublette and Thomas Fitzpatrick of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company
& Christy, and some company employees bound for the confluence of the Yellowstone
and
Missouri Rivers
with the years harvest of furs. For
the first few days the men were accompanied by William Drummond
Stewart, a
Scottish noblemen and adventurer, who was returning to
St. Louis
after attending his first rendezvous.
While with Milton Sublette and Thomas Fitzpatrick, Wyeth was
successful in convincing the partners that Wyeth could provide supplies to
the Rocky Mountain Fur Company & Christy more cheaply than they were
obtaining goods from William Sublette and Robert Campbell.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company was deeply in debt to William
Sublette and Robert Campbell, who as suppliers to the mountains controlled
both the cost of goods and supplies, and the price paid for beaver.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company & Christy was desperate to break
the stranglehold that Sublette and Campbell held it in, and Wyeth provided
a means. Wyeth entered into a
secret agreement with the company to provide the supplies for the 1834
Rendezvous. The party
traveled together by boat down river to
Fort Union, an American Fur Trading post, where they arrived in late August and were
received hospitably by the post factor Kenneth McKenzie.
McKenzie had been
pursuing his own secret project “the Cincinnati Project” which had
only recently come to fruition. In
order to evade federal laws regarding importation of ardent spirits into
Indian country, McKenzie had ordered that a still be constructed at the
fort. (see also Evading
Liquor Laws) The still had
gone into operation and using
Mandan
corn was producing a potent whiskey.
At this point
Wyeth parted from Milton Sublette and Thomas Fitzpatrick so he could hurry
on to
Boston to start preparations for supplying the 1834 Rendezvous.
However, when he passed through
Fort
Leavenworth, a
U.S. military facility, he apparently reported the presence of the illicit distillery at
Fort
Union
.
Once back in
Boston, Wyeth had no time to spare. With
the contract from the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in hand, he had little
trouble finding investors for his new venture the “Columbia River
Fishing and Trading Company”. The
new venture was to be much bigger than simply resupplying the Rocky
Mountain Fur Company. The
value of the contract represented only about twenty-five percent of the
total goods Wyeth intended to take to the mountains.
With the remainder of the goods Wyeth intended to establish a base
on the
Columbia River
. With such a base and
resupply by ship up the
Columbia River
, Wyeth felt that he would obtain huge savings on transportation and wages
that he would quickly be able to monopolize the fur trade in the
Northern
Rocky
Mountain
region. Wyeth may have planned to
offer a service for conversion of flintlocks to percussion locks to
hunters and trappers (see
speculation). In addition, inferior
grades of salmon were selling in
Boston
at $16 a barrel, and Wyeth proposed to pay the costs of freight by sailing
ship by return cargos of salmon, with the fur providing profit.
With the exception of the salmon, this was nearly the same plan
which John Jacob Astor had attempted to implement more than twenty years
earlier.
The winter of
1833-34 was frantic for Wyeth. He
had to arrange for the ship and goods, purchase the supplies to be taken
overland, learned how to take latitude and longitude, and he also attended
to Frederic Tudor’s ice business. He
escaped
Boston on
February 7, 1834
, and with only brief stops in
New York
and Baltimore, arrived in
St. Louis
on March 10. In
St.
Louis Wyeth would hire nineteen men for a period of eighteen months at
$250 ($13.89 per month). These
contracts would expire in Indian country.
Wyeth also agreed to allow a Methodist missionary, Jason Lee and
his party, as well as two naturalists, Thomas Nuttall and John Townsend
accompany his pack train.
By mid-April
Wyeth and his men moved up to
Independence
where he intended to purchase the horses, mules and livestock for his
train. However, in Independence
animals were scarce and prices high because of demands from both the U.S.
Army and
Santa Fe
traders for livestock. Wyeth’s
departure for the mountains was delayed by the late arrival of Lee.
While waiting for the missionary Wyeth impatiently wrote, “it is
like keeping a bag of fleas together to keep the men in this whiskey
country.” The departure was
critical because William Sublette and Robert Campbell were sending their
own pack train to rendezvous in competition with Wyeth.
The pack train,
which eventually totalled about 70 men including men from the Rocky
Mountain Fur Company & Christy, departed
Independence
on April 28th with Wyeth and Milton Sublette in the lead.
Milton Sublette, troubled by an infected leg returned to
civilization after only ten days on the trail.
Wyeth’s
“secret” agreement with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company & Christy
had become known to William Sublette and Robert Campbell, and there ensued
a race between rival pack trains to the mountains.
Wyeth’s train departed a full week ahead of the train of William
Sublette and Robert Campbell. Wyeth,
although now longer green, simply couldn’t match the experience of
Sublette and Campbell in running a pack train.
By May 12th Sublette and Campbell’s pack train passed
Wyeth in the dark of the night.
Realizing that he
had now lost the race to rendezvous, Wyeth sent a letter ahead to
Fitzpatrick stating that he would arrive at Rendezvous about July 1, and
imploring Fitzpatrick to wait for him.
Sublette and
Campbell, now with a commanding lead, halted at the confluence of the
Laramie
and
North Platte
Rivers
where they commenced construction of
Fort
William. After construction was
well under way, the pack train departed, leaving some men behind to
complete the fort. Wyeth
arrived at the fort on June 1st, only days behind Sublette and
Campbell. When he reached
Impendence Rock an inscription by Sublette indicated Sublette had passed
through three days earlier. When
Wyeth reached the agreed rendezvous location, no one was there.
The trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company & Christy, and
Sublette and Campbell’s pack train were located about 12 miles upstream.
When Wyeth found them he was frustrated to learn that the Rocky
Mountain Fur Company & Christy would not accept the goods and supplies
he brought. Prior to his
arrival William Sublette and Robert Campbell had called in the company’s
debts, and forced it into insolvency.
Wyeth did collect
a $500 forfeit from the successor company as well as repayment of cash
advances he had made to Milton Sublette.
However, this was a major blow to his plans.
In a letter to Milton Sublette Wyeth promised to “roll a stone
into [their] garden that [they would]never be able to get out.”
The combined
parties moved camp to the site of the 1834
Rendezvous on Ham's Fork in late June from which Wyeth sent out
messengers to nearby Indians inviting them to trade.
However, with no solid prospects for profitable trade, Wyeth raised
camp in early July and
traveled to a location a few miles upstream from the confluence of the
Snake and Portneuf
Rivers. Here he chose the site of
the “stone” he would roll into the garden of the Rocky Mountain Fur
Company. By August 5th
the log walls of a fort to be named Fort Hall
(after one of the investors in the Columbia River Fishing and Trading
Company) were raised.
On August 7th
Wyeth left Robert Evans in charge of the new fort with eleven men.
Wyeth and the remaining men set forth on a trapping expedition to
the
Columbia. He reached Fort Vancouver on
September 14th, and the following day borrowed a canoe which he
took to the mouth of the Columbia to meet the sailing brig “May Dacre”
The “May Dacre” had had its own difficulties and had arrived
too late for the salmon run and Wyeth directed the ship to Oahu for a
trading voyage and to obtain Hawaiian laborers.
While awaiting
the return of the “May Dacre” Wyeth and his men constructed
Fort
William
on Multnomah
Island
at the mouth of the
Willamette
River. He also chose the site for a
farm about forty miles up the
Willamette
River. He also sought to salvage
some profit from the situation by attempting to establish commercial
relations with the HBC. Although
John McLoughlin, Chief Factor of the HBC Columbia Department was convinced
Wyeth was no threat, and could be better controlled while commercially
bound to the HBC, George Simpson, Governor of HBC’s North American
operations opposed any assistance to the New Englander.
Wyeth spent the winter trapping south of the Columbia River. In April 1835 the “May
Dacre” returned and Wyeth made preparations for the seasons salmon
catch. Packing went slowly,
and by September only about half of the planned catch had been packed, and
because of the fiasco at the 1834 Rendezvous, Wyeth had few furs to add to
the return shipment.
Wyeth returned to
Fort Hall in December 1835. Here
he found most of the men who had been hired under the 18-month contract
merely waiting for their discharge, their contracts having run out in
October. Osborne
Russell was one of those men awaiting discharge and he details his own
experiences with Nathaniel Wyeth in his journal.
In February of
1836 Wyeth again traveled to
Fort
Vancouver
in a last attempt to salvage his commercial operations through some kind
of agreement with the HBC. Although
he was able to come to an agreement with McLoughlin, George Simpson again
opposed any alliance. Finally
with no hope of a commercial rescue, he returned briefly to Fort Hall, and
then on to the 1836 Rendezvous where he
met the Whitman/Spalding missionary parties including Narcissa
Whitman and Eliza Spalding, the first white women to cross the
Rocky Mountains
. Wyeth offered the
missionaries the hospitality of Fort Hall at
such time as they passed by.
Wyeth returned to
St Louis
by way of
Taos
and Bent’s Fort.
By early autumn he was back in
Boston. The high costs of holding
and maintaining Fort Hall made it necessary to dispose of it, and Fort
Hall including all equipment and supplies was sold to the HBC for
$8,179.98 in October 1837. With
Fort Hall now under HBC control, Wyeth’s dreams of low cost trading
center would be realized. From
Fort Hall the HBC would now unleash a devastating commercial attack
against all of the American fur companies in the
Northern Rocky Mountains
, effectively ending any further advancement in the region by these
companies.
Back in Boston, Wyeth returned to work for Tudor’s ice company where he would be
employed until 1840 when he would leave in a dispute over the original
patent assigned to Tudor in 1832. Wyeth
received an additional fourteen patents for significant improvements in
ice cutting and storing machinery and expanded his business to include
shipping refrigerated garden produce.
He continued to be an important figure in the ice and produce trade
until his death on
August 31, 1856
.
Although success
in the fur trade never belonged to Nathaniel Wyeth, given the vast
magnitude of the uncertainties in the physical, cultural and business
environment of the West at that time, it is amazing that he accomplished
so much. Later through his
letters and memoirs, he did much to familiarize the East with the
potential of the Oregon Country, and thereby helped open the door to the
emigrant waves that spread westward in the final years of the 1840’s.
For more information about Nathaniel Wyeth see:
The
Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, Volume V; edited by
LeRoy R Hafen, published by The Arthur H Clark Company, Glendale,
California, 1966.
Townsend
John Kirk. Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the
Columbia River. Published 1839.
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