The Art of Manliness - The Epic Adventures of America’s Forgotten Mountain Man

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.960 plenty of famous explorers and frontiersmen emerged from america's periods of expansion

00:00:15.520 and exploration and today the likes of daniel boone kit carson and davy crockett remain

00:00:20.340 household names you're probably not familiar but should be with the name of another prominent

00:00:24.380 pioneer jedediah smith smith was a hunter trapper writer cartographer mountain man and explorer

00:00:31.280 who notched a lot of firsts he was the first to lead a documented exploration from the salt lake

00:00:35.980 frontier to the colorado river and was part of the first parties of u.s citizens to cross the mojave

00:00:40.480 desert the sierra nevada and the great basin desert having survived three attacks by native americans

00:00:46.020 and one mauling by a grizzly bear smith's explorations became resources for those who followed after

00:00:51.020 and led to the use of the south pass as the dominant route across the continental divide

00:00:55.320 for pioneers on the oregon trail in the new book he co-authored throne of grace a mountain man an

00:01:00.860 epic adventure in the bloody conquest of the american west my guest bob drury uses the oft

00:01:06.000 forgotten smith as a guide to an oft forgotten period in american history today on the show bob paints a

00:01:11.360 picture of a volatile american landscape in which trappers and native americans collided and clashed

00:01:15.500 in the early decades of the 19th century we discuss how the lewis and clark expedition created a lust

00:01:20.340 for adventure among young men how the humble beaver played an outsized role in settling the western

00:01:24.660 frontier and how warfare changed amongst native american tribes with the introduction of the horse

00:01:29.080 along the way bob shows us how the life of jed smith intersected with all these historic trends

00:01:34.340 and shares the epic exploits that he and other mountain men took part in while exploring and mapping

00:01:38.880 the american west after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is mountain man

00:01:50.340 all right bob drury welcome back to the show oh thank you brett thank you it's always a pleasure

00:01:59.780 so you got a new book out with your co-author tom clavin i really enjoyed this book it's called

00:02:05.060 throne of grace a mountain man an epic adventure in the bloody conquest of the american west and what

00:02:11.360 i liked about this book is it covers a period of american history that i think gets overlooked by a lot

00:02:17.200 of people this is the period after the lewis and clark expedition but before the the mass migration

00:02:24.920 of americans into the west starting in the 1830s 1840s and then you tell the story about this period

00:02:31.620 through the life of this guy named jedediah smith and this guy i didn't know this guy existed he had an

00:02:38.480 epic life so let's do some background here before we get into jedediah smith and these mountain men

00:02:43.640 so in 1803 the louisiana purchase happens the u.s acquires a ton of new land from france

00:02:50.180 and thomas jefferson sends out lewis and clark to go check it out so what was the purpose of that

00:02:56.200 expedition and then how did that expedition influence american culture afterwards all right

00:03:02.560 so you have 1803 with the acquisition in the louisiana purchase from napoleon we doubled the size

00:03:09.860 veritably of the united states now president thomas jefferson what's out there what beasts are out

00:03:17.660 there there were all kind of rumors of cyclops and sirens and it was almost like a homeric that the

00:03:25.320 monsters that could be out there in the mountains the rocky mountains and beyond so of course jefferson

00:03:30.980 extracts from congress money for the lewis and clark expedition that takes two years from 1804 to 1806

00:03:37.420 they make it to the pacific and now they have a vague idea of how big this continent is or how big

00:03:42.840 the north american continent is and not only politicians but businessmen back east or the germ

00:03:50.140 of a coast-to-coast empire starting to to germinate if i may repeat myself how do we make this happen

00:03:57.360 now at the same time you mentioned in your intro about this is an era that has really not been covered

00:04:04.420 too much and when my co-author tom clavin and i looked into this we were we were shocked as we

00:04:10.640 think most americans will be about the violent mechanizations that were going on the political

00:04:15.520 mechanizations that were going on west of the mississippi i mean the northwest the oregon country

00:04:21.380 not the oregon territory the oregon territory became the state of oregon but the oregon country at the time

00:04:26.900 which which today's states of washington oregon idaho the western sliver of montana the top of

00:04:33.800 utah nevada it was contested territory we did not have a canadian border in fact we are negotiating in

00:04:40.260 london where the border would be between canada and the united states it was the 49th parallel but that

00:04:45.780 only ran to the rocky mountains so jefferson and presidents after him from madison to monroe they were

00:04:53.780 worried that the british were going to we had thrown them out during the american revolution

00:04:57.740 we had repelled them during the war of 1812 and here they were using a private proxy the hudson's

00:05:04.940 bay company to kind of filter down from canada and come in the back door of the north american continent

00:05:10.280 and businessmen railroad magnets politicians were rather up in arms about this because the

00:05:17.100 trappers the beaver trappers from the hudson's bay company they were building stockades and forts along

00:05:23.200 the same route that lewis and clark had taken to the pacific so everyone 3 000 miles away in

00:05:30.620 washington dc was urging the westerners and by westerners at this point i mean this the newly

00:05:36.080 elected state of missouri we've got to get people trappers up into those rocky mountains and beyond i mean

00:05:44.340 everyone knew that it was a uh it was a scotsman who coined the phrase possession is nine tenths of the

00:05:50.700 law so whoever gets a foot in that back door so to speak they're going to have man the cliches are

00:05:57.600 rolling out of me today but they're going to have a leg up on settling this land colonizing this land

00:06:03.060 of course what i'm really saying is stealing this land from the indians and then not only were there

00:06:08.480 the political conflict between the united states and great britain there's you know mexico was kind of

00:06:14.340 there too a little bit and then you also had in this area speaking of native americans we're going

00:06:20.620 to talk about this here in a bit the conflict between native american tribes started going up

00:06:24.520 and you also started seeing that conflict carry over to white americans and you also mentioned after

00:06:29.960 this lewis and clark expedition it really did it's it it set a fire particularly under young men

00:06:35.900 to go out there they they saw these guys they were celebrities these guys were rock stars lewis and clark

00:06:40.680 they're like i want to be like this guy correct and so you had all these young men signing up with

00:06:45.560 these trapping companies to go out and be like lewis and clark well you you hit it on the head because

00:06:52.860 i only mentioned the northwest territory we didn't realize during the research for this book i mean you

00:06:58.300 think of the alamo in 1836 and texas becomes a republic the mexican-american war 10 years later

00:07:05.160 but as early as the beginning of the 19th century americans were already casting covetous glances

00:07:12.260 at the northern mexican territory which of course at the time was texas new mexico arizona

00:07:18.040 and the jewel in the crown california not to mention large swaths of nevada and utah and colorado

00:07:24.200 and so you have the brits to the northwest you have the mexicans to the southwest and in between

00:07:31.000 are these tribes which had over the centuries pretty much delineated their territory whether

00:07:38.800 it was the sioux near ari cara in the missouri river corridor whether it was the pawnee cheyenne

00:07:45.260 arapaho out on the plains the blackfeet and the gross venture in the shoshone up in the mountains

00:07:50.460 and these tribes they warred among themselves to secure this territory and what most people are i

00:07:58.340 i think unaware of and probably because hollywood influence a lot of these tribes that we think of

00:08:03.800 being horseback raiders the cheyenne the pawnee they were sedentary tribes they were farmers

00:08:10.160 who lived in mudwaddle houses and tilled the ground until the great north american horse dispersal

00:08:18.920 when in the 1500s the late 1500s the pueblos rose over through the spanish overseers who were

00:08:27.000 basically enslaved them and wanted nothing to do with european culture so they freed all these

00:08:33.840 horses all these mustangs who just started proliferating across the west and they followed

00:08:40.580 the old trading traces so the apache were first to get horses then the comanche then the kiowa

00:08:46.960 and if you would almost follow the northern trail until the cree in canada had horses and these horses

00:08:54.500 changed everything now where previously you really had to think about making war if the sioux were

00:09:00.560 going to attack the aricara or if the crow were going to attack the cheyenne it meant a hundred mile

00:09:07.500 march a 200 mile march and then a siege but now with the horse everything changed and everything in the

00:09:13.860 west became so fluid so into this fluidity steps these american beaver trapping outfits at the time

00:09:21.620 they were all most of them were outfitted in saint louis and the best way to get up into the mountains

00:09:27.440 was by flatboat up the missouri river it was a long arduous journey each flatboat did have a sail but mostly

00:09:34.940 you were just pulling or pulling through rapids and in the beginning the tribes helped lewis and clark

00:09:40.800 lewis and clark would have not made it to the pacific if it wasn't for the help of several different tribes

00:09:45.440 everybody knows about sacajawea who was a shoshone by the way but the black feet showed them how to get

00:09:52.080 through the rockies the uh the aricara put them up for several weeks they didn't mind these this small

00:09:59.260 group of white men white hairy beasts they called them they didn't mind them passing through but as

00:10:05.240 more and more of these trappers started trespassing into their territory they became violent yeah and part

00:10:12.640 of the problem too is these white settlers these white mountain men they were stepping into they didn't

00:10:18.880 understand completely the fluidity of the geopolitics amongst native american nations they think like

00:10:24.820 oh i'll work with the the kiowa but they didn't understand well the kiowa don't doesn't like this tribe

00:10:28.920 and then like that other tribe is going to attack and they just they stepped in it several times because

00:10:33.500 of that you trade with the sioux sewer bitter enemies with the aricara you trade with the sioux and then

00:10:39.780 you mentioned jedediah smith his outfit would go up and then attempt to trade with the aricara and they

00:10:45.480 say well wait a minute you were just with our mortal enemies i mean the sioux hated the the aricara and

00:10:50.600 and and the pawnee the black feet hated the cheyenne the cheyenne hated the crow so it was almost it reminds

00:10:57.020 me when i was in afghanistan every other valley was at war with the next valley until either genghis khan or

00:11:05.960 the british or the russians or eventually us came in and then they banded together more or less to fight us

00:11:13.100 well it was almost the same in the early 19th century american west okay i hate you and i've hated you for

00:11:20.540 centuries but here come these white men and they don't want to just pass through they want to take our land

00:11:26.740 and the concept of owning land of course was foreign to most of the western tribes and it just created

00:11:34.660 a really violent mess i mean the throne of grace is not for the queasy i mean we depict many ways to

00:11:41.180 die whether it's disembowelings or beheadings or burnings at the stake by both sides but by both sides

00:11:47.960 and uh and it created a dangerous milieu for these trappers who became known as mountain men to be

00:11:55.340 entering into yeah the chapter about how the horse and the gun changed native american warfare was

00:12:02.560 really fascinating and you you talk about this i thought it was really interesting how tribes in the

00:12:08.000 west we're talking like west of the mississippi they fought differently than tribes in the east and so

00:12:13.880 you had these trappers who were coming from the east who were maybe familiar with the iroquois and how

00:12:19.220 they did things shawnee and the mohawk they were kind of hit and run they didn't have horses they did have

00:12:25.020 horses but horses weren't as uh proficient and also horses weren't as expedient in the woodlands as

00:12:32.420 they were on the plains so the eastern woodland tribes would raid for uh say there they had been

00:12:40.980 wiped out by a village had been wiped out by drought they needed men they were kidnapped kids

00:12:45.060 the tribes in the west they had vast vast territories to cover and the tribes in the east never kind of

00:12:52.640 raided for territory but the tribes in the west did and that came down to one thing the buffalo where

00:12:58.340 are the buffalo trails where are the buffalo moving that's the land we want and if the crow

00:13:04.720 happened to be on that land then the sioux was going to push them out if the black feet happened to be on

00:13:10.580 that land then the shoshone is going to make war in the black feet and once again i'm repeating myself

00:13:16.360 but it was such a fluid sense of violence that here we come we i mean euro americans here we come

00:13:24.560 walking into this and we really have no clue we just want beaver beaver pelts at the time were the

00:13:30.000 most expensive fur in the world and if we happen to step on some black feet toes or some arry carrot

00:13:36.400 toes or some gross ventra toes as we're going after the beaver so be it you know and you also talk about

00:13:42.360 how a lot of these mountain men they were shocked about how western tribes fought because like it

00:13:48.060 was no quarter given no no and everyone understood like all the tribes understood if you get killed or

00:13:53.400 you get captured you're going to have a bad time you're going to get mutilated because i guess it's

00:13:57.380 just part of their belief that you know a happy hunting ground right believed most i i don't want

00:14:03.340 to put 100 but i'd say a good 85 to 90 percent of the western plains and mountain tribes believe that

00:14:10.340 you went to the afterlife the happy hunting ground in the shape in which you died so if you wounded or

00:14:18.360 captured or and then you killed one of your captives first you were going to take out his eyes because

00:14:25.100 this afterlife was beautiful it was filled with game it was filled with fair maidens it was the land of

00:14:32.080 milk and honey so to speak but if you went there with no eyes and you couldn't see it well that was your

00:14:37.660 problem if you went there with no fingers or no arms to draw back a bow to take this game well then that

00:14:43.800 was your problem if you went there with no penis they cut your penis off and you could not take

00:14:49.180 advantage of these wonderful beautiful maidens well you were almost in a living hell even though it was

00:14:54.160 heaven to them it was almost like sending your enemy to hell and that was another reason when the

00:15:01.180 euro americans and later americans stepped into this violence they were just aghast i mean there were

00:15:08.820 many soldiers that well we're not talking soldiers yet for we got another 50 years to go even though

00:15:16.020 the first declared war against the native american tribe did take place against the ara cara in 1820

00:15:22.140 but for the most part the mountain men and the early soldiers they would take a boot strap or even a

00:15:29.420 piece of string and they would tie it to the trigger of their long rifles and before if they were losing

00:15:34.320 a fight and they knew they were going to get killed they'd turn that long rifle around and put the loop

00:15:39.700 of the string around their toe and they blow their own heads off rather than be captured yeah it's crazy

00:15:44.800 so you mentioned the beaver trapping and i didn't know this you know i think most people think about

00:15:50.300 the western expansion they think of buffalo and what happened in the 1850s and 1860s with the buffalo

00:15:56.020 hunting you know you hear those stories of hunters just riding on trains and shooting buffalo right but

00:16:01.900 the next time you see a beaver you see these little animals i see them when i'm out on hikes we have to

00:16:07.160 thank that animal for western expansion like that that animal had such a big part in expanding the

00:16:14.020 american territory so tell us about this what did the beaver fur industry look like in the 19th century

00:16:19.560 you alluded to it a little bit but flesh this out more all right so the beaver has pretty much gone

00:16:24.640 extinct in the mountains of europe beaver of course live in high altitude cool territories where they

00:16:31.760 they make their burrows and they they dam up rivers and streams and they live in these ponds

00:16:36.520 and so at the time beaver fur as i mentioned was the most expensive fur in the world more expensive than

00:16:43.800 mink than otter and the reason was i don't want to get too much in the weeds here about the science of

00:16:49.380 of the lanolin in the beaver fur made beaver fur waterproof so the hat making industry in europe

00:16:58.360 here's a stat that just blew my mind between 1800 and 1850 british milliners shipped 20 million

00:17:06.880 beaver headpieces to the continent they were couture in paris they were wanted in italy and spain

00:17:13.460 the russians had killed off all their own beaver and even the chinese would make long beaver coats

00:17:19.160 and because of the oddity of the beaver fur being waterproof and in fact here's a little aside i always

00:17:26.600 i love these little asides when they would make the mash to shape the beaver hat hat makers would

00:17:33.180 add mercury now if you got mercury poisoning it mimicked the symptoms of insanity and that's where

00:17:39.440 the saying mad as a hatter came from because of people making beaver hats and adding to mercury

00:17:44.620 so anyway you could get rich and many people did including our protagonist jedediah smith you could

00:17:50.940 get very wealthy going up into the north american mountains which was the last bastion on earth

00:17:57.000 we'd even played out the daniel boone generation had played out the beaver and the appalachians

00:18:02.460 so the last place on earth were in the rocky mountains stretching down from canada all the way down

00:18:08.220 to new mexico and so when we started going after this beaver it just upended politically socially

00:18:16.720 and culturally everything that had happened in the previous millennia in the western united states

00:18:24.360 okay so you have this situation the united states has acquired new territory they are worried about

00:18:30.980 the geopolitics they're worried about britain coming in and taking territory that belongs to us

00:18:36.360 connected to that is the beaver trapping industry because great britain was basically using the

00:18:41.940 beaver trapping industry as a as a front basically right there was a slow cold war a slow cold war

00:18:49.260 going on in the northwest and then it all came out of st louis that's sort of the starting off point

00:18:54.020 for all these things and you talk about there's basically there was at the time in the 1820s start

00:18:58.640 of the 1820s there was this race like we got to get as much beaver as we can and acquire as much

00:19:03.340 territory over there and claim it and there was i think there was like four big trading outfits that

00:19:08.600 were in competition right right three of them out of st louis and one of them overland out of

00:19:12.760 minnesota and they were all egg don is not strong enough they were all encouraged as i said by the

00:19:19.460 politicians by the business magnets back west we got to get a foothold here in the in both the

00:19:24.020 southwest and the northwest so so you got these outfits going in to the mountains and beyond

00:19:31.160 into the snake river to the snake river country into what was then the oregon country and most

00:19:37.780 people think the monroe doctrine was aimed at spain because of their caribbean holdings their

00:19:43.180 central american holdings but it was really aimed at the brits it was monroe telling them stay out of

00:19:48.960 the oregon country that's our country we had lewis and clark out there a decade and a half ago and we

00:19:54.260 began to keep that country so you've got this mechanism and when you have the hudson's bay company

00:20:02.340 trappers running into the american trappers out of st louis there are near gunfights and so how is all

00:20:09.460 this going to be settled it's all going to be settled by getting the most people in there and

00:20:13.440 that's what we tried to do and that's exactly what we did we're going to take a quick break for

00:20:17.220 word from our sponsors and now back to the show so jed smith jedediah smith came of age in this

00:20:28.440 milieu and this is the protagonist of your story tell us about this guy what was his origins where

00:20:32.800 was he born and then how did he end up becoming a beaver trapper well here's the deal brit tom clavin

00:20:38.620 and i i don't know especially with our frontier books not so much our world war ii books and

00:20:43.520 our other combat books but with our frontier books blood and treasure the heart of everything

00:20:48.820 that is we like to think that we write biographies of eras as opposed to a people but if we're going

00:20:56.560 to write a biography of an era and once again when we started looking into this the first half of the

00:21:03.080 19th century you want to call that an epoch we said there's stuff here there's great stuff here but

00:21:08.720 who is going to be our guide to take us through and just as daniel boone was our guide through

00:21:14.500 blood and treasure just as the sioux warrior chief red cloud was our guide through the heart of

00:21:19.360 everything that is we started digging into the logical place to start was in st louis in 1822 the

00:21:27.620 lieutenant governor of st louis put out a an advertisement in all the st louis papers asking for 100 good men

00:21:35.480 to ascend the river missouri to its source right on the continental divide divide and to stay for one

00:21:43.000 two or three years trapping beaver so we started going through who are these guys you know it's the

00:21:47.960 it's it's the butch cassidy question to the sundance kid who are these guys that answered this ad and

00:21:54.860 there were so many to choose from i mean jim bridger i'm surprised he's not a bigger name today

00:21:59.480 he was only a teenager when he signed up but he knew more than men well i don't say twice his age

00:22:05.880 because there weren't that many old mountain men but he was teaching people oh your buckskins are

00:22:11.080 riddled with uh lice take them off and put them over a red anthill the ants will eat your they the

00:22:16.980 ants will eat the other insects it was said about bridger that however many bullets he went out with

00:22:22.700 that's how many buffalo he would come back with and broken hand fitzpatrick thomas fitzpatrick

00:22:28.360 was an irish born he became a scout and he was probably the most he handled horses better than

00:22:35.700 any mountain men we read about there was this one journal keeper jim klyman he was born in virginia

00:22:41.720 and he had had something of an early education from methodist circuit riders and when we were reading

00:22:48.240 his journals you could tell he was an educated man he would write things like the troop i am riding

00:22:53.480 with now makes fall staff's battalion look genteel but we could not find anyone who was kind of

00:23:01.000 our zelig our daniel boone our red cloud until we ran across jedediah strong smith jed had been born

00:23:09.420 in 1899 in new york susquehanna valley and 1799 1799 i'm sorry and his family a part puritan stock

00:23:19.820 had moved west with the expanding nation first to pennsylvania then to ohio then to illinois by the

00:23:27.500 time he was uh in his late teens he had already worked as a seaman on supply boats in the great

00:23:33.840 lakes supply ships on the great lakes he was a crack shot and when he saw general ashley's ad

00:23:40.440 ashley being the lieutenant governor of missouri he took a skiff from illinois down the mississippi

00:23:47.260 to saint louis and he signed up and ashley immediately hired him as a hunter trapper

00:23:52.080 ashley liked the uh the cut of smith's jib so to speak i mean among all these whiskey swilling

00:24:00.720 cigar smoking womaning up mountain men with a wife quote unquote in every tribe smith carried that

00:24:08.900 puritanism with him i mean in his saddlebags he carried the family bible he abhorred the smell of

00:24:15.460 tobacco smoke he he drank he would sip a wine when necessary just for politesse but he was not a

00:24:22.180 drinker he never womaned up one of the contemporaneous uh descriptions of him in the saint louis newspaper

00:24:28.620 was and i like this phrase i want to make sure i get it right the mountaintop was his altar the forest

00:24:34.860 glade his confessional i mean brett the guy shaved every day have you ever envisioned a mountain man

00:24:40.440 without a big burly beard but what really drew tom and i to jed smith was that he was an assiduous

00:24:47.160 journal keeper and letter writer and his journals and his letters we feel that contemporaneous writing

00:24:54.480 is the key to the books we write and jed smith supplied us with he was the trail breaker and we

00:25:01.440 followed his trail via his journals and via his letters and he had nothing against commerce he wanted to

00:25:08.180 get rich but more important lewis and clark were his idols when he was a teenager a country doctor

00:25:13.880 had given him the lewis and clark journals and he yearned to follow in their footsteps and he wanted

00:25:20.380 to be an explorer like lewis and clark if he happened to make some money trapping beaver along the way

00:25:25.740 all the better and so here was our guy and i know i'm going on but when we kind of started digging

00:25:34.520 into jed smith tom and i were like we found our man i mean we never used the word discover in our

00:25:40.720 books i mean daniel boone no more discovered the cumberland gap than jed smith discovered south pass

00:25:47.360 which of course is that break in the rockies that became the oregon trail it was wagon friendly but

00:25:53.840 i gotta say jed smith was the first american to pass through to stumble through south pass in the

00:26:00.780 middle of a blizzard with the help of the crows he had gotten direction from the crow tribe and the

00:26:04.880 only reason he knew he crossed the continental divide was because he dug down into the snow and

00:26:10.040 he could see beneath the ice at the frozen streams running west he was the first american to cross the

00:26:15.920 escalante and mojave deserts and lead a party into california from the east he was the first american

00:26:22.080 to scout from san diego up to what is today the canadian border then he came back east along the canadian

00:26:29.140 border and dropped back down into utah around the great salt lake if you can envision this in your

00:26:35.560 mind's eye and our book has plenty of maps to help you envision this this man filled out the blank spaces

00:26:42.340 that today are the contiguous united states so when we found smith we said we have our guide we have our

00:26:48.460 boon we have our red cloud and we just ran with him yeah and this guy you mentioned all the stuff that

00:26:54.020 he did is the first that he he notched but you also talk about the things that he encountered

00:26:58.560 along his expeditions on these trapping trips he had encountered a couple conflicts with native

00:27:04.720 americans there's that first one with the iraqa arikara arikara that was the war i mentioned before

00:27:10.860 that was the first declared war the united states declared on any indian tribes west of the mississippi

00:27:16.720 it was smith's trapping outfit who were ambushed by arikaras on the beach below their villages

00:27:21.840 and they were pretty much wiped out smith survived as did a dozen others but that forced the blue

00:27:28.880 coats in missouri to march up missouri river and it was wasn't much of a war the iraqara just scattered

00:27:35.880 once the americans started firing cannons and owitzers the iraqara just disappeared into the vast

00:27:42.180 plains but smith he led an expedition and his outfit was ambushed by mojave indians and he and just a

00:27:50.180 few survived when he made it into california he was immediately jailed as an american spy

00:27:55.640 and when he escaped from the jail near san diego made his way back up and he left his trapping crew

00:28:04.680 on the eastern slope of the sierra nevada once again another first he was the first man to cross the

00:28:09.780 sierra nevada in the middle of winter and then crossed the great man-killing great basin

00:28:14.780 across utah nevada recruited another party to rescue the men he left behind when he got there

00:28:22.340 they made a run for the oregon country and on the way they were they were ambushed by umkwa indians

00:28:28.760 south of the willamette valley and everyone but smith and two others were wiped out so he knew

00:28:35.900 indian fighting he knew trapping he was an inveterate as i said journal keeper and here's someone

00:28:42.940 one day is sending plant cuttings new plants he had never seen before sending them by dispatch rider

00:28:49.820 back east to botanists so they could study them and the next day he's fighting mojaves in the desert

00:28:54.820 outside the mojave desert the man was a well a well-rounded man brad he was a well-rounded man

00:29:00.440 yeah and so some of the things you talk about that first attack by the area cara that was uh 1823

00:29:06.640 and then his trip out west of california where he you know was taken prisoner then escaped and then

00:29:13.180 uh got another attack that was 1826 correct so he was constantly on the move during this period he's

00:29:18.280 never resting no and also during this time he he had a i think he got attacked by a grizzly bear right

00:29:23.080 oh yeah well it's almost like the word hevernal from the french hibernation if you had spent a winter

00:29:29.980 in the high peaks in the high rockies you were considered a hevernal which was a mountain man now

00:29:36.160 you're a true mountain man but you weren't a really really really true mountain man until you

00:29:43.880 were mauled by a grizzly and of course jed was mauled by a grizzly as he was passing through the

00:29:48.700 black hills took off the top of his head and he always wore his hair long after that took off his

00:29:54.200 eyebrows took off part of his ear but he he survived and i find it so many you glass jed smith

00:30:02.140 i feel that it was kind of accepted the flat landers called the mountain men french indians

00:30:09.400 and they were true mountain men if they had spent at least one winter well i feel you weren't a true

00:30:13.960 mountain man until you got mauled by a grizzly bear well so you mentioned hugh glass this is another guy

00:30:19.180 you talk about famous mountain man if you've seen that leonardo dicaprio movie you've heard about

00:30:25.100 the richard harris movie before right for those who aren't familiar with hugh glass tell us about

00:30:29.100 this guy because it's unbelievable what happened to this guy well to be a true and good mountain man

00:30:33.800 and to live they've not many of them lived long lives but to live you had to have a little luck and

00:30:38.740 hugh glass was one lucky man he was moving up to missouri with one of smith's outfits and actually

00:30:44.700 smith had broken off to explore the black hills and he was attacked by a silverback and basically

00:30:51.660 he was mauled so badly that andrew henry the man who was in charge of the party paid two men one of

00:30:57.660 them was jim bridger stay with him until he dies and bury him but they were surrounded by hostile

00:31:03.500 aricara and bridger was just a kid but the older man said he's dead you got to get out of here

00:31:08.860 that's the shortened version of it and so hugh glass wakes up his gun is gone his knife is gone

00:31:14.860 all he's got is his flint in his possible sack possible sack was all mountain men carried that

00:31:20.260 because anything you possibly needed was in the sack and he made his hundreds and hundreds of miles

00:31:25.720 he stumbled walked crawled eating dead buffalo calves that wolves had chewed over he made it back

00:31:33.100 then when he made it back he survived an indian attack and he vowed to go back up into the mountains

00:31:37.740 to kill the men who left him for dead by the time he gets back up into the mountains

00:31:42.140 he only finds bridger and he changes his mind he goes you're a kid i should kill you but you're a kid

00:31:48.380 so anyway now he's trapping again and andrew henry his uh foreman sends him back i need i need to get a

00:31:54.840 message to st louis but don't go back down the missouri river it's too dangerous so he goes south and he's

00:32:00.120 coming back down the plat and he's attacked he and four others are attacked by pawnee two are killed right

00:32:05.900 away glass once again is left he escapes he finds a kind of a cave-ish mountain rocky outcrop that he

00:32:14.680 hides in but he's still once again he's hundreds of miles from what was then called civilization an

00:32:22.720 army outpost he makes his way back to the army outpost he straggles in and once again it's like

00:32:28.760 you glass we thought you were dead for the second time for the third time and after that i don't want

00:32:34.200 to give away what happens to you glass but after that he temporarily abandoned beaver trapping

00:32:39.160 to try his hand at trading down in santa fe but he does end up back in the mountains at the end of

00:32:46.040 our book and uh and he meets uh no pun intended a grizzly end so if you were a boy scout you probably

00:32:55.380 did something i did this the mountain man rendezvous so you'd get together with like a bunch of other boy

00:33:02.060 scout troops from a big geographic area jamborees didn't they call them jamborees out west yeah there

00:33:07.780 was there was jamborees but i i did there was like they called them rendezvous um and it was supposed

00:33:12.080 to mimic the mountain men rendezvous that happened during this period where you'd go and you'd trade

00:33:17.860 stuff you'd trade pocket knives and patches and and things like that it was fun so tell us about this

00:33:23.200 is a this was an important part of mountain man culture and smith played a big role in that what was

00:33:28.640 the rendezvous well in the early 1820s they realized them by the day i mean the trappers and their

00:33:36.260 backers the money men behind the trappers they realized they were losing money taking these kill

00:33:40.640 boats up the missouri river and then down its tributaries whether it was the yellowstone or the

00:33:45.400 powder or the tongue or the muscle shell or up to judith there's got to be a better way and after

00:33:52.660 jed smith more or less stumbled through south pass and sent word back hey here's a way through the

00:33:59.700 mountains where we don't need the rivers anymore well this enabled first it took a while took several

00:34:05.660 years before wagons actually came through but this enabled long pack trains to go overland so they

00:34:12.520 realized going all the way hundreds and hundreds of miles from st louis through south pass and then to

00:34:19.100 pick up these beaver furs and deliver supplies and then come back we have to have some system to this

00:34:25.100 just so jed smith and his benefactor and boss by this time jed smith is partners with general henry

00:34:33.420 the lieutenant governor missouri they said you know what why don't we do this every summer we'll set a

00:34:39.460 place where all the mountain men throughout the west will come in june and they'll bring in their beaver

00:34:46.300 pelts plews they were called they'll bring in their plews and we'll sell them their moccasin all

00:34:53.120 their new buckskins their knives their saws their ammunition and shot their new guns and most of all

00:35:00.540 their whiskey and rum and this is how the rendezvous started it almost started by accident and of course i

00:35:06.600 think if you ask most people today what they know about the mountain men it would be oh the rendezvous

00:35:12.820 so these rendezvous went on for uh a good 15 years they kind of petered out in the late 1830s

00:35:19.260 as sadly for the mountain men not only had they denuded the northwest and the mountains of beaver

00:35:27.160 but the new silk trade with newly opened china british silk trade silk kind of uh took over

00:35:34.960 as headgear fashionable headgear from beaver headgear but for a good 15 years these mountain

00:35:41.780 men rendezvous i i but brett i can't imagine you or i what we would how wide would our eyes be if we

00:35:51.580 saw we're standing on a bare plot of land where the rendezvous was supposed to be say we're there

00:35:56.820 two days early and here comes men from hundreds of miles all over the west trickling in you know

00:36:04.620 carrying leading horses with hundreds of pounds of beaver pelts a how did they find it b where did

00:36:13.480 all the indians come from because the indians knew it was going on and they came to trade

00:36:17.340 and see the gunshots the games the drinking the athletic contest the shooting contest it's just

00:36:26.340 something that i can't imagine in a modern world it's just it's something uniquely american that only

00:36:32.800 happened for 15 years and i'm not nostalgic about it at all i'm just i just wondered what would i be

00:36:39.640 like if i were there so yeah it was crazy it was all word of mouth you know they didn't have

00:36:43.980 like the postal service wasn't really set up no telegraph no smoke signals no it was yeah meet you

00:36:50.120 meet you in a year you know in the valley the aspen valley just northwest of the great salt lake okay

00:36:58.000 we'll find you actually that aspen valley became known as cache valley c-a-c-h-e because the mountain

00:37:04.120 men would return every once in a while in cache their beaver pelts and then go back out again waiting

00:37:07.960 for the rendezvous to occur yeah and again you know smith he helped set this up he was definitely

00:37:12.880 so not that advertisement that he he answered to uh it was henry you know the advertisement said

00:37:17.860 to enterprising young men and smith was an enterprising young man yeah well when you think about it i mean

00:37:24.420 not only i mean i don't want to paint this guy as a religious prude because he was a leader all those

00:37:29.520 the the broken hand and jim bridger and climbing they all gravitated towards smith because they knew

00:37:36.560 that he had the right stuff for his day probably would have been an astronaut in 1960s and just think

00:37:43.120 about it here's this well he's not a kid he's 23 years old he just turned 23 in 1822 he answers

00:37:49.420 henry's ad so he's hired as a greenhorn hunter trapper within two years he is partners with the

00:37:57.560 general and within four years he and two other partners have bought the general out so he's running

00:38:03.320 his own outfit as a 27 year old man the guy knew his stuff so you mentioned earlier once we acquired

00:38:11.400 the louisiana purchase it was sort of like there be monsters there we didn't really know what was

00:38:17.000 going on we thought there's these might have been these mythical creatures but there's also this

00:38:21.060 idea that there was this mythical river that went to the pacific ocean i didn't know about this

00:38:27.520 the rio buenaventura yeah tell us about this because this seemed like this was like the the el dorado

00:38:33.680 of americans precisely precisely in the mid 1700s a couple of lost spanish monks they went north out of

00:38:44.120 mexico to proselytize and they ran into some ute indians in utah of course who told them about this

00:38:52.140 river that ran to the salty water now of course they were talking about the three rivers that ran into

00:39:00.220 the great salt lake but the monks misunderstood them and for a good century different map makers both

00:39:09.000 european and american they had places rio buenaventura my spanish is buenaventura the river of good fortune

00:39:18.460 running out of the rocky mountains and entering the pacific somewhere usually around monterey

00:39:24.120 sometimes into san francisco bay and politicians from jefferson on were thirsting to discover this

00:39:32.440 river because if we can find this river that will truly glue this country together as a coast-to-coast

00:39:38.820 nation and so every trapper or every foreman of every trapping company had two orders bring in as

00:39:45.820 much beaver as you can and find the rio buenaventura and jed smith took a troop out and he had them circle

00:39:55.420 the great salt lake and he said there's nothing coming out of here there's three rivers coming into

00:39:59.320 it there's nothing coming out of here but wherever he went he kept his eye and finally he realized there

00:40:04.900 is no river rio bienaventura but no matter how many times he tried to tell the people back east

00:40:11.340 through dispatch riders there is no river it continued to appear on maps some maps into the uh

00:40:18.120 1850s yeah and that looking for when he was looking for that river that's when he got picked up by

00:40:24.000 mexico yeah what are you you're a spy what are you doing here that he was taking prisoner for a while

00:40:28.980 right right and he escaped and uh hightailed it uh and entrapped and trapped the sierra nevada as

00:40:35.420 they were running and he had two thousand that's why he didn't take his men with him over the sierra

00:40:39.720 nevada they had two thousand pounds of beaver pelts so they caged him and he said wait here for me i'm

00:40:44.740 gonna go get a company i'm gonna come back and we're gonna get this stuff out of here and that's when

00:40:48.920 they made the run for oregon and that's when they were ambushed by umkwa indians and it just one thing

00:40:56.520 after another i mean really and jed smith lived all through it he lived through it and uh well for a

00:41:03.940 while anyway yeah it's a lot to live through and it you know you can't be a mountain man forever so

00:41:09.340 how does jedediah plot the next phase of his life like what happens to him he's five years in the

00:41:14.580 mountains hasn't seen st louis hasn't seen quote unquote civilization for five years but he's getting

00:41:20.880 homesick and he's a wealthy man at this point so he finds out that his mother has died back in

00:41:26.720 illinois and he decides to come out of the mountains in cash and his chips he sells his company and this

00:41:32.700 is how how much money he had accrued he made sure that st louis banks set up an annuity for his widowed

00:41:40.140 father which would today be the equivalent of 75 000 a year to uh how did jed smith to ease the pillow

00:41:48.720 of his old age but you can tell that he's had it with the mountains he's only in his early 30s

00:41:56.660 but his letters back home while he's in st louis he's writing letters not only to his father and to

00:42:02.200 his brother and there's a religious i mentioned before he was a hard puritan there's a religious

00:42:07.960 motif running through these letters uh he wrote to his father the greatest pleasure i could enjoy

00:42:13.560 would to be in the company of my family and my parish he used the word home eight times in one

00:42:21.360 paragraph with the assistance of divine providence i will be coming home soon father he was even more

00:42:28.260 up front to his older brother ralph i just i'm reading as it respects my spiritual welfare dear brother

00:42:34.960 i hardly durst speak oh when shall i be under the care of a christian church i have need of your

00:42:41.440 prayers my brother i wish our society to bear me up before the almighty's throne of grace well when

00:42:48.980 tom and i read that letter that's what i said there's our title right there so anyway he's in st louis

00:42:55.080 and not only is he writing letters home but he's writing these long missives reports really

00:43:00.940 to president andrew jackson's secretary of war john eaton and when i told you before the specificity

00:43:09.320 of his journals he is telling eaton exactly how many cannon the mexicans have in each military

00:43:16.460 presidio he is telling eaton the disposition of the british along the columbia river uh what shipbuilding

00:43:23.800 capabilities they have at fort astoria which is in fort george how many farmsteads they're opening

00:43:29.740 on the river and he is pretty much railing saying we have to get out there americans have to get out

00:43:36.720 there or this is never going to be part of the united states so anyway while he's doing this

00:43:42.220 sending his father money he sends his brother ralph money there's a farmstead he buys a farmstead next

00:43:48.480 to ralph's farmstead in illinois and he decides he's going to retire there and like his idols his heroes

00:43:55.680 lewis and clark he's going to write his encyclopedia of the west everything he's seen he even hires a

00:44:01.980 professional map maker to put together to professionalize his crew drawings he hires a

00:44:07.780 magazine editor to collate all his journals and his letters and his notes as he's ready to ship back

00:44:14.300 east three of his younger brothers show up in st louis ira benjamin and nelson they all want to be

00:44:19.960 mountain men he's like he's aghast no you do not want to be mountain men you don't know what it's

00:44:26.120 like up in those mountains so nelson was only 16 so he sends him he puts him in a college across the

00:44:31.420 river in illinois here's ira and benjamin i can't forbid them to go up into the mountain but let me

00:44:38.300 give them a taste of what the frontier life is like so he organizes a wagon train full of supplies

00:44:45.240 that they're going to trade in mexican santa fe they're going to take the santa fe trail now the

00:44:50.580 santa fe trail had been open maybe eight years before so it was still rough and it was still

00:44:56.120 frontier but it wasn't the mountains by any means he figures okay let me give my brothers a little

00:45:01.340 shakedown cruise here to let them know what they're going to be up against so they set out in the spring

00:45:07.280 of 1833 and uh they make they're following the trail but jed had bought a map that showed a shortcut

00:45:15.160 across this arid desert piece of land they called the water scrape so they crossed the arkansas river

00:45:22.420 which was then the boundary the border between mexico and the united states and they're about eight days

00:45:28.740 out and they're out of war they've run out of water jed is looking for the cimarron river now the cimarron

00:45:35.480 like the mojave river is a dry river which means it runs underground it only surfaces during heavy

00:45:42.620 rains or when it hits impermeable rock underground he sees this rock outcropping several three miles

00:45:49.520 away and he says that's that's got to be the cimarron so he starts riding toward the the tongue of his

00:45:55.220 mustang is lolling out of its mouth that the horse is staggering and he gets about a half mile away and

00:46:00.580 he sees 15 to 20 riders come out from behind the rock outcropping he recognizes them immediately as

00:46:07.400 a combination of kiowa and comanche the kiowa and comanche had formed an alliance that became the

00:46:13.700 most fierce the fierce warriors in the southwest they had cowed the spanish the mexicans after them

00:46:19.160 they'd even driven the mighty apaches out of the territory now they have been watching wagon trains

00:46:25.720 along the santa fight trail bisect their territory for seven eight years now and so they're on the

00:46:31.680 warpath so smith sees them and he figures okay i could try to make a run for it but he notices their

00:46:39.680 horses are well watered which means he was right the cimarron river was out there uh two he could find

00:46:47.240 some cover a sandhill maybe draw his creamer long rifle and his brace of flintlock pistols try to fight

00:46:54.940 him off and hope that the wagon train which is maybe eight miles behind him uh will hear the shots

00:47:00.620 and send reinforcements or he can brazen it out and he could ride right into them and try to parley

00:47:06.920 and so those are three choices i brett i don't know what choice you would make in that situation i'm not

00:47:13.560 sure choice i would make in that situation but if you want to know what choice jed smith made in that

00:47:19.460 situation you're just gonna have to read the damn book aren't you

00:47:22.020 so what was the legacy of this guy in the end like what influence did he have on american culture

00:47:27.880 i think at the time he would have been on the 19th century uh mount rushmore with bridger

00:47:35.040 with kid carson and probably with boone the reason that he's not as well known as boone or crockett or

00:47:43.520 kid carson is a he wasn't a self-aggrandizer i mean john c fremont wanted to run for president so he

00:47:51.520 made sure everyone knew every second of what he was doing it was almost like they had facebook in

00:47:57.840 those days and crockett couldn't say a sentence without the word davy crockett in it and carson

00:48:04.060 and boone were lucky enough to live to a fairly old age so dime novelists and newspaper men and

00:48:12.060 magazine reporters and biographers hagiographers really they could talk to these men and i think

00:48:17.680 that's what made them famous i think jed smith just died too young and i hope that his achievements

00:48:24.420 i hope our book throne of grace will somehow bring them a little more to light than they happen

00:48:29.480 yeah again like think about all the first that he did he he filled in the gaps that americans had at

00:48:36.100 the time of their newly acquired territory if you envision his travels that's the western that's the

00:48:41.880 western half of the contiguous united states when did the the age of the mountain man finally end in

00:48:47.600 america by the 1830s the beaver were pretty much played out and also as i said beaver couture in

00:48:56.000 europe was being overtaken by silk headwear so late 1830s i think the last rendezvous might have been

00:49:03.620 1840 1841 there were mountain men who just stayed up in the mountains through the 40s the 50s the 60s

00:49:10.840 but i'd say the heyday was the 1820s to the late 1830s so it was a very short period in our nation's

00:49:19.500 history but uh it was certainly a an exciting period and due to the exploration that these men made

00:49:26.660 it was an important period well bob this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn

00:49:31.820 more about the book and your work oh anywhere i mean as you well know brett we're everywhere i i

00:49:37.280 understand i prefer i i give my business to independent bookstores but i know that amazon

00:49:42.780 is cheaper and if you want to buy the book on amazon that's fine and i'll be interested in seeing what

00:49:48.160 kind of feedback we get from historians which we always do about how this may or may not raise

00:49:56.940 smith's profile in the that that pantheon of american explorers that we talked about before

00:50:02.280 well bob drewy thanks for your time it's been a pleasure brett thank you i appreciate it's always

00:50:07.080 a pleasure my guest name is bob drewy he's the co-author of the book throne of grace it's available

00:50:12.180 on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere check out our show notes at aom.is slash mountain man

00:50:16.820 where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:50:19.440 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:50:30.660 artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that

00:50:34.500 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you haven't done

00:50:37.860 so already i'd appreciate it take one minute to give you know podcast or spotify it helps out a lot

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00:50:54.040 into action

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The Epic Adventures of America’s Forgotten Mountain Man

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