Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark in 1804 to explore and report on our
new possessions, the unknown land of the Missouri River, and the River of the
West--Columbia. Their published report together with hours of listening to the
tales of sea captains, inspired the imagination of Hall Jarvis Kelly, Boston
school teacher, who, practically unaided, enlisted a membership in an Emigration
Society of over eight hundred, in 1832, among whom were Captain B.L.E.
Bonneville and Nathaniel Wyeth of Boston.
Encouraged by the enthusiasm of Hall J. Kelly, Wyeth a young married man of thirty began in the winter preceding his expedition of 1832 to hold meetings in his home every Saturday night, with a band of young mechanics and farmers near Boston, discussing every phase of their intended journey to the Columbia to establish then an American state founded on good character and pursuing the useful arts. Twenty-one of this left Boston in the spring of 1932, under Wyeth, provided with guns for hunting, but not intended for human slaughter, strong boat-built wagons, and instead of munitions of war, the chief baggage was a complete outfit for a blacksmith shop, anvil and all
Of Wyeth's eleven men, two died Vancouver, two remained in the country and were the first American settlers in Oregon, five returned by sea, two trapped for other companies in the mountains, and Nathaniel Wyeth journeying home alone of all these Americans, did an amazing thing unmatched for assurance and belief in himself. He made a contract with Milton Sublette and Fitzpatrick of Sublette's rival company to bring $3,000 worth of goods to their rendezvous in the spring, gave bond for its delivery, took bond of $1,400 in case of their failure to pay
In the spring of 1834we see Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, now thirty-two of age, wending his way from Boston to St. Louis, this time accompanied by Thomas Nuttall, botanist of Harvard, and John R. Townsend, naturalist of Philadelphia, and the two Indian lads, bound for a second expedition to found a fortune in the Columbia River fishing and fur trade, which Wyeth had begun to organize the next day after his return in November 1833 from a trip that any other man would have counted a total failure. It was very simple. Wyeth did not see failure, he saw and sensed only success, and with such truth, that hard headed Boston merchants saw eye to eye with Wyeth, and financed a second enterprise.
At St. Louis he engaged 70 men, this time experienced frontiersmen. At Independence he bought 250 horses and outfit, with now four rival companies of the fur trade secretly thwarting him. With these men and horses he arrived at the Green River rendezvous with the $3,000 worth of goods for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company according to the contract with Milton Sublette and Fitzpatrick on the Big Horn; but Captain William Sublette, head of the company, advised against having anything to do with Wyeth. Fitzpatrick refused the goods, but the payment of $1400 guarantee given by the Rocky Mountain Company. Said Wyeth,"Gentlemen, I will roll a stone in your garden that you will never get out."
With these goods on hand, Wyeth had no other choice than to bring them on. He could not with wisdom found a competing fur trade in the territory east of the Rockies, then nameless except Louisiana, and on come these trinket intended for the Indian trade into the neutral territory of the Oregon country, into present Idaho. Past Bear Lake came Wyeth, past Soda Springs, the Bottoms of Snake River, the thirty-five mile stretch of Snake Valley that dimpled in when the mountains crinkled up. And here in the Bottoms on the edge of the Snake, Wyeth shot a buffalo on the morning of July 15th, 1834, and said, "Here I will build my fort."
Wyeth know very well about this Bottoms place, looked down on by Old Mount Kinport since time began. The Bottems was known from the Mississippi to the Western ocean as the best beaver country in the west, the best feeding grounds, the warmest sheltered winter place for miles around
Son on that July morning in 1834 history was in the making at the beautiful meadow of the Snake River Bottoms. Here Wyeth built the peaceful trading post know as a "fort" but never used for military purposes. Never a treaty was made within its walls, nor a battle fought. Here at this peacefully occupied post citizen Nathaniel Wyeth played a losing game with the Hudson's Bay Company. Leaving eight men at Fort Hall to take care of the intermountain Indian trade which he had never intended to cultivate, he proceeded on the early morning of August 6th, 1834, to the Columbia, where he founded Fort William, the only post he had intended to found until the breach of contract by Fitzpatrick at Rendezvous cause the accidental founding of Fort Hall.
On went Wyeth from Fort Hall to the Columbia, where good Dr. McLoughlin, chief factor for the Hudson's Bay Company had a policy to support, and it was to discourage American enterprise in Oregon.
By treaty with Great Britain, Oregon was yet neutral territory, claimed by both nations. Fort Hall had as a place of Destiny settled this dispute in favor of Columbia.
And so in 1836 he sold to the Hudson's Bay Company both his Fort William at the mouth of the Williamette and Fort Hall, eastern gateway to Oregon on the Oregon Trail.
It was roads and not fur trade that made the importance of Old Fort Hall. Here in the Bottoms centered roads north , east, south, went and southwest. Here at Fort Hall, men's minds were changed for them, and by them, and the result is the extension of the United States to its present northern and western boundaries.
As soon as the Great American Migration of two hundred wagons got past Fort Hall in 1843 through the presence and wit and will of Marcus Whitman, first wagons got past Fort Hall after Hudson's Bay occupancy. Immediately thereafter Captain John C. Fremont, following in the rear of this migration, records at Raft River he saw to his surprise a well marked wagon train leading to the Southwest. Since Whitman's 200 wagon train had been the first wagons to pass Fort Hall, and this was just one month before, this must have been a newly made road. It was the first road to California
Because of Fort Hall we have Oregon and also California; and because we had the
Oregon and California gold, this nation held together in the Civil War; and
because we held together, we are the great nation we are today, with a place in
the sun to work out a just government among men.
Copyright 1934 by Minnie F. Howard