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This publication is one of a series of handbooks describing the historical and archeological areas in the National Park System administered by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior. It is printed by the Government Printing Office and may be purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington 25, D. C. Price 30 cents.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HISTORICAL HANDBOOK SERIES NO. 28 Washington, D. C., 1958

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.

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:

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.

Stuart's journal was not published until many years later, and the tremendous import of his geographical discovery--a central route across the continent--was lost amid preoccupation with the War of 1812 and the seizure of Astoria by the British forces. For the next decade the fur traders, operating out of St. Louis, concentrated on sending expeditions up the Missouri River, persisting in their notion that this was the only logical route westward. Manual Lisa, William Ashley, Andrew Henry, and Joshua Pilcher were among the leaders of numerous invasions of the Upper Missouri country. Beaver pelts were plentiful, but the Blackfoot, Ree, Gros Ventre, and other Indian tribes were unfriendly. A series of disastrous encounters with these Indians reached a crisis in 1823, when a large fur brigade under William Ashley was treacherously attacked above Grand River by the Rees, the same who had blocked the path of the Astorians 11 years before. An appeal for military aid resulted in an expedition from Fort Atkinson under Col. Henry Leavenworth. The Indian villages were besieged but the results were indecisive. Thereupon Ashley and his men abandoned their efforts on the Upper Missouri, and struck out overland to the mountains. This decision led to the discovery of the rich beaver valleys of the central Rockies, and the rediscovery of South Pass and the Great Platte route. It ushered in the historic Rocky Mountain fur trade, and opened a new chapter in the history of Scotts Bluff.

Among the enterprising young men employed by Ashley, who received their baptism of fire at the Ree villages, were several destined to achieve great fame in the annals of the West. Conspicuous among them were Jim Bridger and Etienne Provost, who soon discovered the Great Salt Lake; Jedediah Smith, who led a band of trappers across the Black Hills and the Bighorn Mountains to explore the headwaters of the Green and Snake Rivers, and to become the first American to challenge the supremacy of British fur traders in the Oregon country; William Sublette, who became the founder of Fort William on the Laramie River; Thomas Fitzpatrick, noted "mountain man," emigrant guide, and Indian agent; and Hiram Scott, one of Ashley's clerks who would soon die tragically near the bluff which now bears his name.

If any white men traveled by Scotts Bluff in the decade following the downstream passage of the returning Astorians, they left no distinct record. It is surmised that Canadian half-breeds roamed and trapped in this region during this period since several geographic names of French origin seem to have survived from the earliest days of the fur trade. Laramie or "La Ramee" River and Goshen or "Goche's" Hole, both in nearby Wyoming, tell of early trappers about whom there survive only the haziest traditions. We can only say that the second group of white men in the North Platte Valley who can be positively identified were four of Ashley's trappers who, in the spring of 1824, attempted to bring their beaver pelts down the Platte River. With this event, Scotts Bluff once more emerges on the pages of history.

Following a successful harvest of beaver, Jedediah Smith delegated Thomas Fitzpatrick, James Clyman, and two others to transport the pelts to Fort Atkinson. This led directly to the rediscovery of the strategic Platte route and the beginning of a half century during which Scotts Bluff became one of the great landmarks of that historic route. Fitzpatrick failed in his effort to transport the furs down the Sweetwater by bullboat and, lacking horses, was compelled to cache them near Independence Rock. He and his companions were subsequently scattered by marauding Indians, but they all arrived safely at Fort Atkinson. Fitzpatrick promptly took horses back to Independence Rock to retrieve his furs, and so passed Scotts Bluff three times in 1824.

Ashley was impressed by Fitzpatrick's report on the success of his employees in locating rich beaver territory. Late in the autumn of 1824, he hurried westward up the Platte River, sending his brigades out to trap while he personally led an exploration of the lower canyons of the Green River. In 1825, reunited with his men at Henry's Fork of the Green, he led them to the head of Wind River where they constructed boats and floated their cargo to St. Louis via the Bighorn, Yellowstone, and Missouri Rivers.

Ashley is credited with conceiving a new scheme of handling the mountain fur trade which became known as the rendezvous system. Instead of building expensive fixed trading posts in the wilderness, dependent upon the Indian trade, the idea was to send white trappers to camp out all winter, trapping while the beaver were in prime fur, then all to foregather at some prearranged mountain valley where they would meet traders bringing pack trains of equipment and trade goods from St. Louis. Casks of whisky, standard trade items, insured that the annual mountain carnival or rendezvous would see not only a rapid exchange of trade goods for beaver pelts, but also carousing and roistering on a scale suitable to compensate the trappers for their long lonely winter vigils. For 15 years Scotts Bluff would witness traders' caravans, going mountainward in early summer, and returning in the autumn laden with their harvest of furs.

In the summer of 1826 the first of the colorful traders' caravans, led by Ashley, Sublette, and Smith, and probably including young Hiram Scott, passed the yet unnamed bluff en route to the first big rendezvous, on the shores of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The swarthy, colorfully garbed trappers escorted 300 pack-laden mules on this trip. At Salt Lake there were two notable events. Ashley, who had now become comfortably rich from skimming the cream of the beaver trade, sold his interests to a partnership which became known as the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and Smith embarked on the first of his notable expeditions across the Great Basin to California, becoming the first American to reach that Mexican province by this route.

The year 1827 went much as those before, with another rendezvous at Salt Lake where Smith reported his adventures. He then set off on another California trip . Hiram Scott was among the traders who returned that year to St. Louis. This we know from a document dated October 16, 1827, preserved in the files of the Missouri Historical Society, for Scott is there listed as an employee of Ashley , having earned 0 in wages for his season's labor.

That Scott ranked high in the esteem of the fur trading fraternity is attested not only by this document but also by the official records of the Leavenworth Expedition of 1823, wherein Scott shares with Jedediah Smith the distinction of being a "captain of volunteers" under General Ashley. In another document, a letter of April 11, 1827, written by Ashley at Lexington, Mo., Scott is described as "alive to our interest" and "properly efficient." One other source implies that he was a trader of high rank. These meager facts are all we know about Hiram Scott, who was doomed to die mysteriously a year later, while returning with the homeward-bound caravan of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

The facts concerning Hiram Scott's death are even scarcer than those about his career. There is a wealth of tradition and legend, but these cannot be accepted as established facts. Of the innumerable versions, almost no two are identical.

The classic account of Scott's death, and the one first published , is that given in Washington Irving's story of the adventures of Capt. Benjamin Bonneville, on leave from the United States Army. Irving relates that on June 21, 1832, the Bonneville party

On the ensuing summer, these very individuals visiting these parts in company with others, came suddenly upon the bleached bones and grinning skull of a human skeleton, which by certain signs they recognized for the remains of Scott. This was sixty long miles from the place where they had abandoned him; and it appeared that the wretched man had crawled that immense distance before death put an end to his miseries. The wild and picturesque bluffs in the neighborhood of his lonely grave have ever since borne his name.

A very touching and pathetic story, but it is quite different from the version offered by Warren Ferris of the American Fur Company. In 1830, he passed Scotts Bluff on the north side of the river 2 years ahead of Captain Bonneville, and just 2 years after the event:

We encamped opposite to "Scott's Bluffs," so called in respect to the memory of a young man who was left here alone to die a few years previous. He was a clerk in a company returning from the mountains, the leader of which found it necessary to leave him behind at a place some distance above this point, in consequence of a severe illness which rendered him unable to ride. He was consequently placed in a bullhide boat, in charge of two men, who had orders to convey him by water down to these bluffs, where the leader of the party promised to await their coming. After a weary and hazardous voyage, they reached the appointed rendezvous, and found to their surprise and bitter disappointment, that the company had continued on down the river without stopping for them to overtake and join it.

Left thus in the heart of a wide wilderness, hundreds of miles from any point where assistance or succour could be obtained, and surrounded by predatory bands of savages thirsting for blood and plunder, could any condition be deemed more hopeless or deplorable? They had, moreover, in descending the river, met with some accident, either the loss of the means of procuring subsistence or defending their lives in case of discovery and attack. This unhappy circumstance, added to the fact that the river was filled with innumerable shoals and sand-bars, by which its navigation was rendered almost impracticable, determined them to forsake their charge and boat together, and push on night and day until they should overtake the company, which they did on the second or third day afterward.

The reason given by the leader of the company for not fulfilling his promise, was that his men were starving, no game could be found, and he was compelled to proceed in quest of buffalo.

Poor Scott! We will not attempt to picture what his thoughts must have been after his cruel abandonment, nor harrow up the feelings of the reader, by a recital of what agonies he must have suffered before death put an end to his misery.

The bones of a human being were found the spring following, on the opposite side of the river, which were supposed to be the remains of Scott. It was conjectured that in the energy of despair, he had found strength to carry him across the stream, and then had staggered about the prairie, till God in pity took him to Himself.

Such are the sad chances to which the life of the Rocky Mountain adventurer is exposed.

The Hiram Scott legend is mentioned by almost all early travelers who have left record of a journey up the North Platte Valley, but it would be fruitless to recite the many other varied, conflicting, and often quaint versions of how he died. There are differences of opinion as to the distance the poor fellow crawled, if any; whether the party traveled on foot or by horseback, muleback, bullboat, raft, or canoe; whether he was a victim of Indians, exposure, drowning, freezing, disease, or starvation; the location of his skeleton; the identity and number of his companions; whether their desertion was premeditated; whether it was justified; how their treachery was exposed; and, finally, whether the whole thing might not have been a grisly hoax!

It was not a hoax. Though the legend has become hopelessly confused, research has proved that there was a Hiram Scott prominent in the Rocky Mountain fur trade from 1823 until 1827; and that he disappeared in 1828 and was never heard from thereafter, except through the faint echoes of the legend. His companions remain unidentified, but research strongly suggests that William Sublette was the leader of the 1828 caravan, who issued instructions to these men to remain with him; and it was William Sublette who led the springtime caravan of 1829 that discovered Scott's skeleton, miles away from the spot where they reported he had died.

Rufus B. Sage, who passed the bluff in 1841, was particularly impressed with the melancholy circumstances of Scott's death, and was moved to impassioned poetry:

No willing grave received the corpse of this poor lonely one;-- His bones, alas, were left to bleach and moulder 'neath the sun!

The night-wolf howl'd his requiem,-- the rude winds danced his dirge; And e'er anon, in mournful chime sigh's forth the mellow surge!

The spring shall teach the rising grass to twine for him a tomb; And, o'er the spot where he doth lie, shall bid the wild flowers bloom.

But, far from friends, and far from home, ah, dismal thought, to die! Ah, let me 'mid my friends expire, and with my fathers lie.

The mountain men have engraved their names on the topography of the West with such place names as Scotts Bluff, Jackson Hole, Colter Bay, Bridger Pass, Sublette County, Provo, Ogden, and Carson City which forever remind us of these colorful figures with seven-league boots who spearheaded the invasion of the West.

In 1827 Ashley had sent a wheeled cannon up the Platte route to impress the Indians at Great Salt Lake. However, the first bona fide wagons on the Oregon Trail were those of the Smith-Jackson-Sublette caravan of 1830, headed for the rendezvous scheduled in the Wind River Valley, near present Lander. In a famous letter to Secretary of War Eaton, the partners reported

a caravan of ten wagons, drawn by five mules each, and two dearborns, drawn by one mule each ... eighty-one men in company, all mounted on mules....

For our support, at leaving the Missouri settlements, until we should get into the buffalo country, we drove twelve head of cattle, beside a milk cow.... We began to fall in with the buffaloes on the Platte, about three hundred and fifty miles from the white settlements; and from that time lived on buffaloes, the quantity being infinitely beyond what we needed.... The country being almost all open, level, and prairie, the chief obstructions were ravines and creeks, the banks of which required cutting down, and for this purpose a few pioneers were generally kept ahead of the caravan. This is the first time that wagons ever went to the Rocky mountains; and the ease and safety with which it was done prove the facility of communicating over land with the Pacific ocean.

At Wind River the parties sold their interest to another group of seasoned trappers--Fitzpatrick, Bridger, Fraeb, Gervais, and Milton Sublette. Thus far the Rocky Mountain Fur Company had a monopoly of the choice beaver country, except for occasional brushes with the Hudson's Bay Company in the Snake River country. Now an ominous rival presented itself, Astor's powerful American Fur Company, which sought to regain the trading empire lost during the War of 1812. In a brief time Astor's company would outmaneuver the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, absorb its leaders, and take over the monopoly. But first there would be fierce competition. In the vanguard of this invasion came a pack train headed by Joseph Robidoux and William Vanderburgh. They passed Scotts Bluff on May 27, on the north side of the river, just a few days behind their rivals. Robidoux and Vanderburgh's adventures have been chronicled by Warren Ferris.

Hiram Scott was not the only casualty in this dangerous fur trading. Jedediah Smith was slain by Comanches in 1831 on the Cimarron River, en route to Santa Fe. Vanderburgh was soon killed by Blackfeet Indians near the Three Forks of the Missouri. Kit Carson later killed a fellow trapper in a duel over an Arapahoe maiden on the Upper Hoback River, and Thomas Fitzpatrick suffered serious injuries from a near-fatal encounter with the Gros Ventres. The mortality rate among the mountain men was high, but the survivors continued their annual rendezvous. The decade of the 1830's was the golden age of the fur trade.

Captain Bonneville, who launched the Hiram Scott legend, made history in 1832 by taking his loaded wagons across the Continental Divide at South Pass, foreshadowing the mighty covered wagon migration that would begin within a decade. While Bonneville built a fort on the Upper Green, the rendezvous of 1832 was held in Pierre's Hole, on the west slope of the Tetons, and here the assembled trappers had a famous pitched battle with the Gros Ventres, which resulted in several fatalities.

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.

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.

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.

It was in 1837 that Scotts Bluff, the martial sentinel of the North Platte Valley, stood for its first portrait. The magnificent sketch, now preserved in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, was the work of Alfred J. Miller, a talented artist who accompanied Sir William Drummond Stewart and William Sublette to the Green River rendezvous. Miller's notes on Scotts Bluff reflect the same awe and imagination that inspired countless later emigrants. He writes, "At a distance as we approached it the appearance was that of an immense fortification with bastions, towers, battlements, embrazures, scarps and counterscarps." He records also that this neighborhood abounded in delicious "Rocky Mountain pheasant," and in jack rabbits, antelope, and bighorn.

The supply train of 1838, led by Andrew Drips, was accompanied by another missionary party, including the journalist Myra F. Eells, who commented on the "grand scenery" of the bluffs, and the Swiss fortune hunter, August Johann Sutter, on whose California ranch the discovery of gold 10 years later would precipitate the most famous migration in American history.

In 1839, Dr. Frederick Wislizenus from St. Louis, traveling to Fort Laramie with the caravan led by Moses Harris, described the bluff:

... We traveled somewhat away from the river, toward the left, and enjoyed a picturesque landscape. All about were rocks piled up by Nature in merry mood, giving full scope to fancy in the variety of their shapes. Some were perfect cones; others flat round tops; others, owing to their crenulated projections, resembled fortresses; others old castles, porticos, etc. Most of them were sparsely covered with pine and cedar. The scenery has obvious resemblance to several places in Saxon Switzerland.

The last of the traditional rendezvous was held in 1840 on the Green River. This year's expedition was led by Andrew Drips, and it was made notable by two parties who accompanied it. One was the Joel Walker family, the first avowed Oregon emigrants; the others were Jesuit priests headed by Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, who would become one of the West's most prodigious travelers and reporters. Like many others, De Smet, impressed by the scenery of the North Platte, wrote:

The era of the transcontinental covered wagon migrations began in 1841, for in that year came the initial band of 80 Oregon homeseekers, guided by Thomas Fitzpatrick and accompanied by Father De Smet on his second western journey. John Bidwell was the historian of this expedition. Another traveler was Joseph Williams, an elderly but energetic Methodist preacher, who described the building of Fort John . Although the beaver trade had declined, a brisk trade with the Indians for buffalo robes continued, and the American Fur Company would occupy Laramie's Fork for eight more years.

Dr. Elijah White, the new agent for the Oregon Indians, lead a party of 112 westward in 1842. Among them was Medorem Crawford, who described Scotts Bluff as "the most romantic scenery I ever saw." Lansford W. Hastings, who was to write one of the first emigrant guidebooks, was also of this party. Lt. John C. Fremont's first expedition to the Rocky Mountains traveled up the Platte in 1842; his official report would likewise become a standard reference. He described Scotts Bluff as "an escarpment on the river of about 900 yards in length" which "forces the road to make a considerable circuit over the uplands." He found the plain between the bluffs and Chimney Rock almost entirely covered with driftwood, testifying to a recent flood.

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