Expeditions and Trappers
“Beaver Flats”
“John Colter Visits the Crows 1807”
Jackson Hole witnessed the exploration, settlement, and exploitation that characterized the opening of the West. Early events centered around the fur trade and survey expeditions. John Colter generally gets credit as the first white man to visit the valley, purportedly crossing it in the 1807-1808 winter. Colter trekked west with Lewis and Clark and got permission to leave them on their return east. Other trappers whose names pop up before Jackson Hole’s fur trade died out in the 1840s are Jedediah Smith, David Jackson, William Sublette, Kit Carson, and Jim Bridger. All were inveterate explorers and adventurers. Sublette probably named the valley, after his trading partner, Jackson. The fur trade died out when beaver hats—the prime pelt market—went out of fashion in Europe. By then, beaver had been severely reduced over much of North America, anyway, and a process for making felt from far cheaper rabbit pelts had been developed. The first survey expedition ventured into Jackson Hole in 1860, guided by Jim Bridger. In command was Capt. William F. Raynolds, topographical engineer. The War Department conducted these early surveys to find out about the Indians, farming and mining possibilities, and potential transcontinental routes. Raynolds turned thumbs down on a rail route here. In 1861 and 1862 gold seekers prospected the valley but found nothing. An Interior Department mission, the 1872 Hayden Survey led by Professor Ferdinand V. Hayden, explored the Tetons and Jackson Hole, guided by Beaver Dick Leigh. Many Jackson Hole features are named for Hayden Survey members. These include Jenny, Bradley, Taggart, and Leigh Lakes. An expedition led by Lt. Gustavus Doane nearly perished here in the 1876-77 winter and would have starved but for the fishing skills of one private. The color illustrations are by Jackson Hole artist John Clymer.
The Indians
No Indians made permanent, year-round homes in Jackson Hole. Winters were too severe. Before white settlement, a small, recluse Shoshone group camped in the area for as many months as possible because of repeated raids from northerly tribes who had British-supplied guns. Other Shoshone knew this small band as Sheep Eaters, because they depended on the bighorn sheep for food. They lived scattered in family groups, not as a tribe. When it seemed safe, they would fish, hunt, and gather plants, seeds, and berries. They used dogs as beasts of burden.
Codsiogo, a Shoshone warrior.
They made bows of elk antlers and sheep horns reinforced with elk and deer sinews. Early trappers seldom encountered the Sheep Eaters although they sometimes saw smoke from their fires. The Sheep Eaters stayed near the mountains until joining other Shoshone under Chief Washakie on reservations in Idaho and Wyoming about 1879. Some artifacts and other evidence of their life are still found today in the Tetons. Archeological studies show that various Indian groups migrated through here on a seasonal basis. The Shoshone peoples arose in the semidesert Basin of the upper Southwest. As food became scarce they migrated east of the Rockies, into the plains and mountain parks of Wyoming and Montana, probably in the 1500s or mid-1600s. In part they were escaping slave-trading Ute Indians. By 1730, however, records begin to show the Shoshone as the most important plains tribe. They were walkers until about 1740, when they got Spanish horses from the Comanches to the south. Mounted, they would raid as far as the Saskatchewan River to the north and the Black Hills to the east. During the whites’ overland migrations, the Eastern Shoshone, under Chief Washakie, avoided confrontations. But Chief Washakie knew his people’s nomadic way of life was over.
