The fact of his entrance into Red Canyon and the date are recorded, apparently by Ashley's own hand, "Ashley, 1825," on a large rock on the left bank of the river, over a sharp drop in the water, in the upper portion of the canyon. Of this I made a copy in 1871 and append a reproduction. The rapid, or fall, at this point is named after the bold General, Ashley Fall. The account of the canyon trip is from Beckwourth, to whom the General told it. I have never seen any other. I cannot understand why they did not climb out, which could have been done in many places; and the heights abounded in game. Perhaps the reason was that, constantly expecting the end of the gorge, they went on till hunger caused the high walls to seem unscalable; or perhaps they were not in such desperate straits for food as Beckwourth declares.
His rich cargo of pelts Ashley took to St. Louis by way of the Yellowstone and the Missouri, building boats for the purpose. On the way he met General Atkinson, an old friend, who had been sent by the Government up the Missouri for the purpose of driving out Hudson Bay trappers. These did not then much intrude into that region, so his task was a light one. Ashley reached St. Louis at last with the furs and from being in debt became rich. He treated his men handsomely, putting them up at the best hotel with carte blanche as to orders, paid wages in full, and for faithful service gave each a present of three hundred dollars and a suit of clothes. Ashley thus was more successful with his enterprise than Lord Selkirk was with one he embarked in to settle the Red River country in what is now Manitoba. He obtained in 1811 a large grant there, but the North-west Company opposed him, not desiring to see the country civilised, and finally after battles and bloodshed the colony collapsed.
The year following his very successful return, Ashley, 1826, went again to the mountains, taking a six-pounder with him all the way to Utah Lake, then called Ashley's Lake, where he built a fort. His men had ramified in every direction, busily trapping during his absence. It was in the winter of 1824-25 that Bridger, to decide a bet between two comrades as to where Bear River emptied, was selected to trace the stream from their camp in Cache Valley, to find out. Thus he came to Salt Lake and tasted its waters. The report he took back to the camp caused the men to believe that this salt water was an arm of the sea, an idea which was not dispelled till the spring of 1826, when four of the men circumnavigated it in a skin canoe, searching for beaver streams. Robert Campbell, who was in Cache Valley when the party came back, is firm in awarding the honour of discovering Salt Lake to Bridger, but as Provost had been in that neighbourhood as early as 1820 he may have seen the lake before Bridger, and it has been asserted that he did.
The treatment of the natives was often abominable, and each year the breach between whites and Amerinds widened. Clarke, of the Astoria enterprise, had hung a Nez Perce in full view of his comrades because he stole a silver mug, and it was such treatment as this, and the shooting of them for "fun," that convinced them they must eternally fight the white man's advance. They therefore adopted various methods. One favourite exploit was to run away with horses, to accomplish which they would sometimes pretend friendship. These incidents were sudden and startling. Beckwourth relates this one: "We encamped that night, keeping a strong guard, and saw all round us, as far as the eye could extend, numerous signal fires." At daylight operations began. The cry went up:
"The ropes are cut! Shoot them down! Rifles began to crack, and six of the Indians fell, five of whom were instantly scalped (for scalps are taken off with greater ease while the bodies are warm), and the remaining Indian having crawled into the river after receiving his wound, his scalp was lost. One of their chiefs was among the slain. He was shot in our camp before he had time to make his retreat."
The Blackfeet were always hostile to everybody, white or red, and the Arapahos and Sioux were apt to be. Some tribes were friendly most of the time; others were friendly all the time.
Beckwourth describes numerous bloody engagements, especially when he was a chief among the Crows, but doubtless these accounts must be somewhat discounted. Once he and Sublette dragged a wounded Amerind away from the enemy's lines, although the desperate fellow clung to the grass and made it a difficult task. They placed him for execution before one of their own men, who had been wounded, in order that this man might have the satisfaction of killing one of the hated race. "But," says Beckwourth, "the poor fellow had not strength sufficient to perforate the Indian's skin with his knife, and we were obliged to perform the job ourselves."
Ashley finally sold out his interest to Sublette, Fitzpatrick, and others, who made up the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and himself returned to St. Louis to settle down and enjoy the large income now his from the success of his energy and judgment. He never went to the mountains again. He had "handsome grounds" about his house, and enclosed within them one or two of the ancient mounds which then were common on the site of St. Louis. At this time in St. Louis there was a variety of architecture. There were broad, steep-roofed stone houses of the French; tall stuccoed dwellings with tiers "of open corridors above them, like a once showy but half-defaced galleon in a fleet of battered frigates,"—the houses of the Spaniards; and the "clipper-built brick houses of the Americans—light as a Baltimore schooner and pert as a Connecticut smack." The population was seven or eight thousand, extremely varied with plenty of trappers and frontiersmen, who "think as much of an Indian encounter as a New York blood does of a spree with a watchman."
Ashley was a popular man in every way and was twice elected to Congress from his State. Beckwourth relates the parting incidents when Ashley left his men in the mountains: "We were all sorry to part with the General.... There was always something encouraging in his manner; no difficulty dejected him; kind and generous in his disposition, he was loved equally by all.... He left the camp amid deafening cheers from the whole crowd." The Rocky Mountain Fur Company prospered under Sublette and Fitzpatrick, though the enormous returns of the first years could not again be secured. As every company had from forty or fifty to several hundred men constantly at work, the beaver ranks were rapidly thinned, and profits correspondingly diminished.