Returning Astorians at Scotts Bluff Christmas Day, 1812. Original sketch in Oregon Trail Museum.
Following LaSalle’s traverse of the Mississippi and the establishment of French settlements along that river, several French explorers—notably Bourgmont and Charlevois—penetrated the fringe of the Great Plains, bringing back reports of strange shaggy beasts in numbers so vast that they blackened the landscape. The Platte River was named by Frenchmen who explored its lower reaches; for this is the French word for “flat,” a literal translation of the Oto word, “Nebrathka.” The Upper Platte was not explored by Frenchmen until 1739 when the Mallet brothers lead a small party from the mouth of the Niobrara across Nebraska, up the South Platte, and thence to Santa Fe. The high tide of French exploration of the Plains was marked in 1743 by the long journey, on foot, of the Verendrye brothers from the Missouri River westward. How far west they traveled has been a widely debated subject, but most scholars believe that they reached the vicinity of the Black Hills of South Dakota.
The famous Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-6, dispatched by President Jefferson to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, followed the natural passageway of the upper Missouri and Columbia Rivers to become the first Americans to cross the continent. While they triumphantly returned to St. Louis, Lt. Zebulon Pike visited a Pawnee village on the Upper Republican River, then proceeded southwestward up the Arkansas. In the wake of these official explorers came the fur trappers and traders, a strange breed of men who traced out and rough-mapped the tributary streams of the western plains and mountains in their search for beaver hides. The early history of Scotts Bluff is closely linked with the history of the western American fur trade.
First White Men at Scotts Bluff
Fur traders were the first white men known to have seen Scotts Bluff. They were the returning Astorians—a group of seven men under Robert Stuart, traveling from their trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River to St. Louis. On Christmas day, 1812, Stuart recorded in his journal:
21 miles same course brought us to camp in the bare Prairie, but were fortunate in finding enough of driftwood for our culinary purpose. The Hills on the south have lately approached the river, are remarkably rugged and Bluffy and possess a few Cedars. Buffaloe very few in numbers and mostly Bulls.
The Astorian Expedition of 1811, so-called because it was an enterprise of the wealthy fur trader, John Jacob Astor, comprised the second group of Americans to span the continent. Led by Wilson Price Hunt, the “Astorians” ascended the Missouri River until they were blocked by the treacherous Arikara or “Ree” Indians near the mouth of Grand River. Then they traveled overland, skirting the Black Hills and the Bighorn Mountains, and reached their Columbia River headwaters via Jackson Hole. Joining forces with another Astor group who had reached the mouth of the Columbia by ship, they built Astoria, the first American trading post on the Pacific slope. In 1812, Robert Stuart and his small band started back overland to carry messages to Astor. By their successful mission they performed one of the great feats of western exploration, for in their perilous journey eastward they blazed the route via the Upper Snake, Green, and North Platte Rivers which was destined to become the Oregon Trail! (See map on pages [30], 31.)
Constantly imperiled by exposure, starvation, and Indians, they crossed the Continental Divide near South Pass and descended the Sweetwater and North Platte Rivers. After they had passed Scotts Bluff, the hostility of the wintry Plains impelled them to retrace their steps to a point near present Torrington, Wyo., where they camped for the winter and built canoes. Early in the spring of 1813 they resumed their journey. They were unable to navigate the shallow, braided, upper reaches of the Platte River, and it was not until they reached Grand Island, that they successfully launched their canoes.