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The tradition of the mountain rendezvous was
started by General William Ashley and the men of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company
in 1825. The first rendezvous was simply a designated location to exchange
pelts for supplies and reorganize trapping units following the disastrous
attempts to get men and supplies upriver past the Arikara villages in
1823-1824. To his surprise,
Ashley discovered that the trappers greatly preferred this arrangement
to the previous practice of returning to St. Louis and “civilization”
annually or biannually for re-supply.
Obviously, dragging a keelboat 1,000 or more miles up the Missouri River
was not a desirable task. Ashley seized on this to become the supplier of trade goods to the
mountain rendezvous, selling out his fur company to Smith, Jackson and
Sublette. Alcohol was not one of the items included in the supplies at the
first rendezvous. This oversight
would be corrected and generous supplies of rum and/or whiskey were
present at all subsequent rendezvous.
Markups on merchandise traded at rendezvous ranged from 600% to as
high as 1500% over prices available in St. Louis.
“Mountain prices” became synonymous with being cheated.
After a while, pricing became so intolerable under the company of
Smith, Jackson and Sublette, that the free trappers sent a delegation,
including Hugh Glass, down to St. Louis to
implore a rival outfit (the American Fur Company) to come to the
mountains. The system was so
profitable for Ashley that he was able to retire from the mountains in
1826 and from the fur trade entirely in 1830.
He went on to become a Representative to the U.S. Congress from the
State of Missouri. After the first rendezvous, the
tradition of the rendezvous swiftly evolved into a wilderness party
lasting any where from a couple of weeks to approaching eight weeks.
Although the business of exchanging furs for supplies was generally
concluded within a couple of days, the participants would start gathering
a week or so prior to the arrival of the pack train, and festivities might
continue for some time after the pack train loaded with furs and skins had
departed for St. Louis. The gathering was not limited to company trappers, but also attracted free trappers, Indians, French Canadians, trapper/traders out of Santa Fe and Taos, native wives and children of the trappers, travelers bound for Oregon, and in the later years even tourists and sightseers from as far away as Europe would journey out to the mountains just to observe the spectacle. Representatives from Hudson’s Bay Company often attended the rendezvous as observers, to get a measure of the competition and to maintain commercial pressure on the American companies. Total attendance at the rendezvous might exceed 2,000 individuals in some years. Mountain Man James Beckwourth
described the festivities as a scene of "mirth,
songs, dancing, shouting, trading, running, jumping, singing, racing,
target-shooting, yarns, frolic, with all sorts of extravagances that white
men or Indians could invent." An easterner gave his view:
"mountain companies are all assembled on this season and make as
crazy a set of men I ever saw." Kirk
Townsend, a naturalist accompanying a supply train to the 1834 rendezvous
provides the following description: “These
people, with their obstreperous mirth, their whooping and howling, and
quarrelling, added to the mounted Indians, who are constantly dashing into
and through our camp, yelling like fiends, the barking and baying of
savage wolf-dogs, and the incessant cracking of rifles and carbines,
render our camp a perfect bedlam…I am confined closely to the tent with
illness, and am compelled all day to listen to the hiccoughing jargon of
drunken traders, the sacre and foutre of Frenchmen run wild, and the
swearing and screaming of our own men, who are scarcely less savage than
the rest, being heated by the detestable liquor which circulates freely
among them.” The event
had some aspects of an impromptu Olympics and there were hor The rendezvous, however, were not
entirely lawless gatherings. Safety
rules were adopted for these gatherings, at least informally, and some of
the rules were rigidly adhered to. For
example at the Green River Rendezvous of 1833, a rabid wolf or wolves came
into camp biting men on several successive nights.
Charles Larpenteur writes of this “We
could have shot the wolf, but orders were not to shoot in camp, for fear
of accidentally killing some one…”
Map
Showing locations of the Rendezvous. The rendezvous
system would come to an end in 1840, a victim of near extinction of beaver
in the mountains, changing fashion in Europe, diminishing harvests,
shrinking markets and declining prices.
Although trapping furs and skins would continue to be a major
business till the end of the 1800's, after 1840, it would not provide
much more than a living. Gone
would be the “shining times” when a man who was ambitious and smart,
could accumulate a vast fortune in a couple of seasons.
Mountain Men were skilled in the ways of survival and were adaptable. At the end of the rendezvous period, they would be required to apply these skills in new ways in order to survive. Many traded on their vast knowledge of western geography to become guides for the parties of emigrants bound for Oregon, or California, while others became scouts for the Army. Still others chose to join with the emigrants, to become businessmen, farmers, ranchers, or leaders in Oregon and California. And some, who couldn’t give up the old way of life, would continue to eke out an existence trapping furs, even though the glory days had gone. For More
Information about Rendezvous see the following reference: Rocky
Mountain Rendezvous, by Fred R. Gowans, published by Gibbs Smith 1985.
This book provides excellent descriptions of attendees, trade
goods, locations, as well as maps and modern photos of each of the
rendezvous sites from 1825 through to 1840.
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