Smith-Jackson-Sublette Expedition of 1830. William H. Jackson sketch in Oregon Trail Museum.
Among those in Sublette’s train in 1833 was Sir William Drummond Stewart of Scotland, a wealthy adventurer, the first of a series of notable Britishers to travel through the West, recording their impressions. We are indebted to him, as well as to Warren Ferris, Osborne Russell, and Joe Meek for vivid pictures of the wild and colorful rendezvous scenes. From 1833 until 1840, these rendezvous were held on the Upper Green, near present Daniel, Wyo.
Traders, Missionaries, and Adventurers
The year 1834 was a lively one along the trappers’ trail up the North Platte. This was the year that Robert Campbell and William Sublette halted their caravan at the mouth of Laramie’s Fork, some 60 miles above Scotts Bluff, to establish log-palisaded Fort William, the first of a succession of trading posts, and later a military post, which became the great way-station on the Oregon Trail, called Fort Laramie. A few days behind Sublette, Nathaniel Wyeth led a caravan upriver to establish rival Fort Hall in Idaho. With Wyeth were Thomas Nuttall and John Townsend, the first men of scientific attainments to follow the trail, and Jason and Daniel Lee, first Methodist missionaries to Oregon.
The earliest known sketch of Scotts Bluff, drawn by Alfred J. Miller in 1837. Original in Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.
In 1835, when the American Fur Company emerged as the dominant trading concern, it took over Fort William on the Laramie and placed Lucien Fontenelle in charge there. That year Presbyterian missionaries Samuel Parker and Marcus Whitman accompanied Fontenelle and the traders’ caravan to the rendezvous on the Green River, then went on to scout the Oregon country.
Impressed by what he saw, Marcus Whitman quickly returned to the States to organize more missionaries. In 1836 he brought his wife, Narcissa, and the Rev. Henry Spalding and his wife, Elizabeth, westward to Oregon. These two white women, the first ever to see Scotts Bluff and the first to reach Oregon, were well guarded on their journey by the veteran Thomas Fitzpatrick and his swarthy crew.
At Scotts Bluff the Whitman party met company employees from Fort Laramie, descending the Platte River in fur-laden bullboats. This was to become a common method of transporting furs to St. Louis, although the shallow Platte was poorly suited to navigation, and the boats often came to grief on sandbars. The trips could only be made during the June rise of the Platte. Since travelers from the States usually arrived at Scotts Bluff by mid-June, the trappers’ boats were often reported in this vicinity.