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: CS1 maint: date and year (link)William Henry Ashley | |
---|---|
Member of the U.S.HouseofRepresentatives from Missouri's at-large district | |
In office October 31, 1831 –March 3, 1837 | |
Preceded by | Spencer D. Pettis |
Succeeded by | John Miller |
1st Lieutenant Governor of Missouri | |
In office September 18,1820 –November 15,1824 | |
Governor | William Clark Alexander McNair |
Preceded by | Position created |
Succeeded by | Benjamin Harrison Reeves |
Personal details | |
Born | c. 1778 Powhatan County,Virginia |
Died | March 26,1838 59–60) Cooper County,Missouri | (aged
Military service | |
Branch/service | Missouri Militia |
Battles/wars | War of 1812 |
William Henry Ashley (c. 1778 –March 26,1838) was an American miner,land speculator,manufacturer,territorial militia general,politician,frontiersman,fur trader,entrepreneur and hunter. Ashley was best known for being the co-owner with Andrew Henry of the highly-successful Rocky Mountain Fur Incorporated,otherwise known as "Ashley's Hundred" for the famous mountain men working for the firm from 1822 to 1834. [1]
Although born a native of Powhatan County,Virginia,William Ashley had already moved to Ste. Genevieve,in what was then a part of the Louisiana Territory,when it was purchased by the United States from France in 1803.
On a portion of this land,later known as Missouri,Ashley made his home for most of his adult life. Ashley moved to St. Louis around 1808 and became a brigadier general in the Missouri Militia during the War of 1812. Before the war,he did some real estate speculation and earned a small fortune manufacturing gunpowder from a lode of saltpeter mined in a cave,near the headwaters of the Current River in Missouri. When Missouri was admitted to the Union,William Henry Ashley was elected its first lieutenant governor,serving from 1820 to 1824 under Governor Alexander McNair. Ashley was a candidate in the 1824 Missouri gubernatorial election,losing to Frederick Bates.
In the early 1820s,William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry,a bullet maker he met through his gunpowder business,posted famous advertisements in St. Louis newspapers seeking one hundred "enterprising young men . . . to ascend the river Missouri to its source,there to be employed for one,two,or three years" to be hired at $200 a year. [1] The men who responded to this call became known as "Ashley's Hundred." Between 1822 and 1825,Ashley and Henry's Rocky Mountain Fur Company sponsored several large scale fur trapping expeditions in the mountain west.
In 1823 Ashley's Hundred set off on their first expedition to the Rocky Mountains but their ammunition wagon,carrying 800 pounds of powder,blew up. Ashley's Hundred returned on a second trip but were driven back in a fight with the Arikara. [1] Ashley was given a rifle made by Samuel Hawken which he took on this expedition,a 42 inch barrel predecessor of the Hawken rifle. Jedediah Smith's party,part of Ashley's Hundred,were officially credited with the American discovery of South Pass in the winter of 1824. Ashley devised the rendezvous system in which trappers,Indians and traders would meet annually in a predetermined location to exchange furs,goods and money. His innovations in the fur trade earned Ashley a great deal of money and recognition,and helped open the western part of the continent to American expansion.
In 1825,he led an expedition into the Salt Lake Valley. South of the Great Salt Lake,he came across Utah Lake,which he named Lake Ashley.[ dubious – discuss ] [2] He established Fort Ashley on the banks to trade with the Indians. Over the next three years,according to 19th century historian Frances Fuller Victor,the fort "collected over one-hundred-and-eighty thousand dollars' worth of furs". [3] In late 1824,he explored present-day northern Colorado,ascending the South Platte River to the base of the Front Range,then ascending the Cache la Poudre River to the Laramie Plains and onward to the Green River.
On June 2,1823,Ashley was beaten by Arikara Indians at their villages near the Grand River. Ashley reported twelve men killed and eleven wounded,of whom two died. [4]
In 1826,Ashley sold the fur trading company to a group including Jedediah Smith but continued supplying the company and brokering their furs. Upon the death of Spencer Darwin Pettis in August 1831,he was elected to finish out Pettis's term in the United States House of Representatives. As a member of the Jacksonian Party,Ashley won election to the seat in 1832 and re-election in 1834. In 1836,he declined to run for a fourth term in Congress,instead running unsuccessfully in the 1836 Missouri gubernatorial election. Many attribute his defeat to his increasingly pro-business stance in Congress,which alienated the rural Jacksonians. After the loss,he went back to making money on real estate,but his health declined rapidly.
On March 26,1838,Ashley died of pneumonia at age 59. Ashley was buried atop a Native American burial mound in Lamine Township,Cooper County,Missouri,overlooking the juncture of the Lamine River and the Missouri River.
William H. Ashley is the namesake of the small community of Ashley,Missouri. [5] Also Ashley Falls [6] and Ashley Creek in northeast Utah,and the Ashley National Forest are named for him. [7]
Jedediah Strong Smith was an American clerk,transcontinental pioneer,frontiersman,hunter,trapper,author,cartographer,mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains,the Western United States,and the Southwest during the early 19th century. After 75 years of obscurity following his death,Smith was rediscovered as the American whose explorations led to the use of the 20-mile (32 km)-wide South Pass as the dominant route across the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.
James Felix Bridger was an American mountain man,trapper,Army scout,and wilderness guide who explored and trapped in the Western United States in the first half of the 19th century. He was known as Old Gabe in his later years. He was from the Bridger family of Virginia,English immigrants who had been in North America since the early colonial period.
A mountain man is an explorer who lives in the wilderness and makes his living from hunting and trapping. Mountain men were most common in the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through to the 1880s. They were instrumental in opening up the various emigrant trails allowing Americans in the east to settle the new territories of the far west by organized wagon trains traveling over roads explored and in many cases,physically improved by the mountain men and the big fur companies,originally to serve the mule train-based inland fur trade.
South Pass is a route across the Continental Divide,in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Wyoming. It lies in a broad high region,35 miles (56 km) wide,between the nearly 14,000 ft (4,300 m) Wind River Range to the north and the over 8,500 ft (2,600 m) Oregon Buttes and arid,saline near-impassable Great Divide Basin to the south. The Pass lies in southwestern Fremont County,approximately 35 miles (56 km) SSW of Lander.
Hugh Glass was an American frontiersman,fur trapper,trader,hunter and explorer. He is best known for his story of survival and forgiveness after being left for dead by companions when he was mauled by a grizzly bear.
The Arikara War was a military conflict between the United States and Arikara in 1823 fought in the Great Plains along the Upper Missouri River in the Unorganized Territory. For the United States,the war was the first in which the United States Army was deployed for operations west of the Missouri River on the Great Plains. The war,the first and only conflict between the Arikara and the U.S.,came as a response to an Arikara attack on U.S. citizens engaged in the fur trade. The Arikara War was called "the worst disaster in the history of the Western fur trade".
The non-existent Buenaventura River,alternatively San Buenaventura River or Río Buenaventura,was once believed to run from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean through the Great Basin region of what is now the western United States. The river was chronologically the last of several imagined incarnations of an imagined Great River of the West which would be for North America west of the Rockies what the Mississippi River was east of the Rockies. The hopes were to find a waterway from coast to coast,sparing the traveling around Cape Horn at the tip of South America.
Peter Skene Ogden was a British-Canadian fur trader and an early explorer of what is now British Columbia and the Western United States. During his many expeditions,he explored parts of Oregon,Washington,Nevada,California,Utah,Idaho,and Wyoming. Despite early confrontations with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) while working for the North West Company,he later became a senior official in the operations of the HBC's Columbia Department,serving as manager of Fort Simpson and similar posts.
David Edward Jackson was an American pioneer,trapper,fur trader,and explorer.
The enterprise that eventually came to be known as the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was established in St. Louis,Missouri,in 1822 by William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry. Among the original employees,known as "Ashley's Hundred," were Jedediah Smith,who went on to take a leading role in the company's operations,and Jim Bridger,who was among those who bought out Smith and his partners in 1830. It was Bridger and his partners who gave the enterprise the name "Rocky Mountain Fur Company."
Major Andrew Henry was an American miner,army officer,frontiersman,trapper and entrepreneur. Alongside William H. Ashley,Henry was the co-owner of the successful Rocky Mountain Fur Company,otherwise known as "Ashley's Hundred",for the famous mountain men working for their firm from 1822 to 1832. Henry appears in the narrative poem the Song of Hugh Glass,which is part of the Neihardt's Cycle of the West. He is portrayed by John Huston in the 1971 film Man in the Wilderness and by Domhnall Gleeson in the 2015 film The Revenant,both of which depict Glass's bear attack and journey.
The Hawken rifle is a muzzle-loading rifle that was widely used on the prairies and in the Rocky Mountains of the United States during the early frontier days. Developed in the 1820s,it became synonymous with the "plains rifle",the buffalo gun,and a trade rifle for fur trappers,traders,clerks,and hunters. It was displaced after the American Civil War by breechloaders and lever action rifles.
Thomas Fitzpatrick was an American fur trader,Indian agent,and mountain man. He trapped for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and the American Fur Company. He was among the first white men to discover South Pass,Wyoming. In 1831,he found and took in a lost Arapaho boy,Friday,who he had schooled in St. Louis,Missouri;Friday became a noted interpreter and peacemaker and leader of a band of Northern Arapaho.
Étienne Provost was a Canadian fur trader whose trapping and trading activities in the American southwest preceded Mexican independence. He was also known as Proveau and Provot. Leading a company headquartered in Taos,in what is today New Mexico,he was active in the Green River drainage and the central portion of modern Utah. He was one of the first people of European descent to see the Great Salt Lake,purportedly reaching its shores around 1824–25. However,Jim Bridger also reached the lake at about the same time,in late 1824,and maps from the 1600s may show the Great Salt Lake,possibly indicating European explorers reached the area over a century before Provost or Bridger.
John Henry Weber (1779–1859) was an American fur trader and explorer. Weber was active in the early years of the fur trade,exploring territory in the Rocky Mountains and areas in the current state of Utah. The Weber River,Weber State University,and Weber County,Utah were named for Weber.
The Rocky Mountain Rendezvous was an annual rendezvous,held between 1825 and 1840 at various locations,organized by a fur trading company at which trappers and mountain men sold their furs and hides and replenished their supplies. The fur companies assembled teamster-driven mule trains which carried whiskey and supplies to a pre-announced location each spring-summer and set up a trading fair. At the end of the rendezvous,the teamsters packed the furs out,either to Fort Vancouver in the Pacific Northwest for the British companies or to one of the northern Missouri River ports such as St. Joseph,Missouri,for American companies. Early explorer and trader Jacques La Ramee organized a group of independent free trappers to the first ever gathering as early as 1815 at the junction of the North Platte and Laramie Rivers after befriending numerous native American tribes.
The fur trade in Montana was a major period in the area's economic history from about 1800 to the 1850s. It also represents the initial meeting of cultures between indigenous peoples and those of European ancestry. British and Canadian traders approached the area from the north and northeast focusing on trading with the indigenous people,who often did the trapping of beavers and other animals themselves. American traders moved gradually up the Missouri River seeking to beat British and Canadian traders to the profitable Upper Missouri River region.
Hiram Scott was an American mountain man,trapper,and pelt trader who trapped and took part in expeditions throughout the western United States during the 1820s. Born in Missouri,Scott joined the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1822 and took part in the first fur trade expedition at the Great Salt Lake in Utah. He died at age 23 near a cliff along the North Platte River in Nebraska which was named in his honor. The circumstances leading to his demise have given rise to many diverse accounts and theories.
Edward Rose was an early American explorer,trapper,guide and interpreter. During his life,Rose alternated between residing with Native American tribes and working on behalf of commercial fur trapping expeditions funded by Eastern companies. His position at the intersection of these cultures made him a sought-after facilitator of communication and exchange of goods.
Benjamin O'Fallon (1793–1842) was an Indian agent along the upper areas of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. He interacted with Native Americans as a trader and Indian agent. He was against British trappers and traders operating in the United States and territories. He believed that the military should have taken a strong stance against the British and firm in negotiations with Native Americans. Despite his brash manner and contention with the military,he was able to negotiate treaties between native and white Americans. In his early and later careers,he built gristmills,was a retailer,and a planter. He collected Native American artifacts and paintings of tribe members by George Catlin. His uncle William Clark was his guardian and financial backer.